Catching Flack

The rush of journalists out of the media and into PR continues. Yesterday came word that the managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News had left the paper to become a PR guy and open the Silicon Valley office of Sitrick & Co. Now, Dan Abrams, late of MSNBC (his show was booted to make room for Rachel Maddow) has opened Abrams Research, which claims it will “connect business leaders with top media professionals around the world.”

Abrams doesn’t plan to do it the old-fashioned way, through what we PR people call “media relations.” No, his business plan seemingly calls for his company to pay working journalists and others to “offer insights, data and personnel never before available to businesses.” (We’ll see how that goes down with their bosses)

I’d say Abrams already has one PR skill down: spin.

I’m sure with his high profile, Abrams will snag a few clients. But then he’s going to find out how the PR business really works, and he might be in for a bit of shock.

You see, if journalists really had the ability to advise businesses on mission-critical communications and strategic issues, they wouldn’t be journalists. They would be high level strategists. (Take David Axelrod, former political reporter and Obama’s chief strategist, as a prime example.)

Journalists are, for the most part, dreamy storytellers, many with an inflated view of their importance and the uniqueness of their opinions and views.

But once they get out into the for-profit business world, in my experience, they quickly realize that PR isn’t nearly as easy as they think.

Here’s an example from Abrams’ site of the value-add he imagines he will provide:

A video game distributor is seeking an assessment of how blogs in a particular market will react to its new product.
Abrams Research can reach out to the most influential industry bloggers and present an overview of their opinions on a particular marketing message.

Good luck selling that exclusive service, Dan.

PS — Abrams is hedging his bets, too. He’ll keep his job as MSNBC’s legal analyst.

Unwittingly, the CEOs of the Big Three automakers gave lawmakers all the PR ammunition they needed to fight back against the auto industry bailout when all three arrived in Washington to beg for money in private jets.

That’s right. Three. Private. Jets.

If that act of arrogance doesn’t tell you all you need to know about the fundamental problems of our Big Three automakers, nothing does. Their organizations are bloated and inefficient from top to bottom, and they’ve been making cars America (and the world) doesn’t want to buy for years. So rather than tightening their own belts and truly economizing, they continued their high-living ways and showed up in Washington in airborne limousines.

Their spinmeisters were left to point out that at that level of Corporate America, such travel arrangements are de rigueur. Sure they are. For CEOs whose companies are solvent.

Memo to the next CEO to grovel for a government bailout: fly commercial!

God bless social media. Last week, there was no such thing as a “Motrin Mom.” This week, it’s an interest group.

The story: McNeil Consumer Health Care, makers of Motrin (otherwise known generically as ibuprofen), posted a 50-second seemingly tone-deaf “ad” on their site offering Motrin as a remedy for mothers of young children whose backs ached from carrying the kids in front-packs and such.

Shazam!

As fast as you can say i-bu-pro-fen, the video spread around the Net, mainly by outraged mothers who were offended by the implications of the ad (you can judge for yourself here). They congregated around Twitter, in particular, to share their outrage. By Sunday night, McNeil had pulled the ad and apologized, though of course, the ad itself lives on on YouTube and elsewhere, as does this newly formed interest group.

So, the scorecard:

• Score one for activist online moms who were probably rightly offended by the tone deaf ad.
• Score one for the power of social media to give the aggrieved a place to vent and organize.
• Score one for Motrin as well. An expensive brand in a crowded field dominated by Advil and generics, they’ve now gotten free publicity in the Associated Press, the New York Times, and scores of other media. Can’t be bad for business, though some Motrin moms might disagree.

You may have noticed that I get PR news and insights for you from a lot of different places around the web. How do I find these valuable nuggets, you might ask?

I like to think of it as “walking my beat.” Here’s my basic routine:

1. Read PRSA’s daily email, Issues and Trends. I believe this is available to PRSA members only.
2. Scan Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog. Free sign-up here.
3. Scroll through Poynter’s Romenesko media news email. Sign up here.
4. Read Ragan’s daily PR email. Sign up here.

I’ve also set up a Google Reader RSS feed of 63  PR and media blogs, which I scan here at Google Reader. It’s obviously too long a list to copy into this blog post, but some of the better ones are listed in my blog roll in the right-hand column.

Don’t know how to use Google Reader to follow your favorite blogs? That’s a pity. It’s pretty simple. And it’s a great way to keep track of lots of news and opinions, because all you have to do is scan headlines and then click on them if they interest you.

If you’re looking for your free PR advice in video or audio form (as opposed to text), here are two of the best you should check out:

Doug Simon’s DS Simon Vlog Views:

Doug is a veteran New York video producer who has made the move into online video and decided to show off his talents by posting interviews with top PR industry leaders. Recent interviewees include Peter Shankman of HARO, Ken Makovsky, Richard Laermer of Bad Pitch Blog, and Sam Singer.

Eric Schwartzman’s On the Record, Online:

Eric is a machine, cranking out detailed podcasts and giving trainings about online PR at a furious pace. You get the benefit of it, as he posts his On the Record, Online podcast here. Recent interviewees include Dave Armon of PR Newswire, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, Keith O’Brien of PR Week, and David Carr of the New York Times.

If there was one thing, one thing that I could change about the PR industry, it would be the poor writing skills that are rampant in PR. It must be something about the people who are attracted to PR as a profession, because nothing else explains it. For an industry in which good writing should be a core, deal-breaking skill, the mediocrity of PR writing skills is, frankly, baffling.

I’ll let you in on a semi-secret: one of the reasons I moved over from mainstream media to PR 15 years ago was that I knew that with my above-average writing skills, I would always be able to find work. I’m sorry to say that 15 years later, there’s still plenty of demand for my writing skills in the PR industry.

If this sounds like a harsh critique, you’re right — it is. Good writers aren’t born, they’re made. And they are made with tough, no-nonsense criticism of their writing.

As we head into a downturn, this may be a skill you’ll want to improve. It could be one of the wisest investments you make in your career.

I got the idea for this item because next Wednesday Nov. 19 I’m moderating a PR University audio conference called, “Write Like a Journalist: Media Wordsmiths Share Proven Copywriting Secrets for Earning More Ink.” I’ll be joined on the 90-minute conference by:

• Sandra Allen, Director, Public Relations Studies, Columbia College Chicago
• Evan Cooper, Senior Managing Editor/Online Editorial Director, Investment News; Author, “The Ultimate Press Release: How to Create Breakthrough Press Materials for the Digital Age”
• Joe Grimm, Visiting Editor in Residence, Michigan State University; Writer, Poynter Institute Career Center
• John McIntyre, Assistant Managing Editor, Copy Desk, Baltimore Sun (circ. 372,970)
• Joan Stewart, President, Editor, The Publicity Hound

You might want to attend. But if you can’t, you should still make working on your writing skills a must-do for 2009.

It’s that time again — time to be a good interviewee. If you haven’t lost your PR job already, you very well might by this time next year [sorry to be a downer, but better safe than sorry].

Even if you haven’t lost your job, you might be looking around and thinking this is a good time to get a better, possibly more secure job.

Either way, the competition will be fierce. So you better bone up on your job-seeking and interview skills.

From HR World, a comprehensive cheat sheet of background information on the job seeking and interview process. Via Lindsay Olson’s blog, aka @PRjobs on Twitter.

The Internet may have changed everything, but let’s face it, most Americans still get a lot of their news and information from local TV news. And the principles of getting local TV coverage remain the same:

• Keep it simple and direct and relevant to the day’s news
• Make sure — MAKE SURE — you have good visuals to illustrate your story

Compared to print, PR actually has a better shot at developing good relationships with TV journalists, and here’s why: they need us more. “People think I have relationships with John Chambers [Cisco CEO] or Meg Whitman [ex-eBay CEO] but I don’t,” says Scott Budman, tech reporter for NBC Bay Area (KNTV-11). “I don’t. I have relationship with you [PR people].”

Translation: writers have more time to develop relationships and hence don’t need the PR person as an intermediary as much. TV people have intense jobs that require a lot of logistical coordination [lighting, locations, backgrounds, etc.] so we PR types can come in handy — if we know what we’re doing.

PRSA Silicon Valley had a “meet the editors” day at KNTV last week, and Budman & Co. gave a great inside look at how a TV newsroom really operates.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s your PR tip of the week: write yourself a page of new messages that include the phrase “because of the bad economy…”

As in, “Our revenues are flat because of the bad economy.” Or, “We have to lay off people because of the bad economy…”

Now, I’m not making fun of companies that are really having serious economic problems as a result of the increasingly perilous economy. But I’m skeptical of companies that are starting to roll out “bad economy” as an all-purpose excuse for whatever goes wrong.

Take Circuit City, for example, which filed for bankruptcy protection Monday. It has been a far less well-managed chain than its main competitors, mainly Best Buy and Wal-Mart, for years, during the good times and now the bad. So it was far than just the “bad economy” that felled Circuit City. But I didn’t hear anything about “poor management” in the post mortem about the chain.

Of course, it’s convenient and easy to blame the economy rather than taking a look in the mirror.

But I caution you to use the all-purpose excuse sparingly.

Why?

Because it’s a credibility killer.

Sure, it’s a tough economy right now. But the economy isn’t to blame for everything. So if you use ‘the excuse’ and it turns out not to be true, it will make you look foolish. And less believable.

People are starting to make budgets for 2009 spending, and the conventional wisdom is that corporate spending will be cut, whether that company is starting to see actual business declines or not. We’re in that weird period of the cycle when there is more uncertainty than certainty, and so corporate bosses go into “better safe than sorry” mode.

Even CEO-of-the-Universe Eric Schmidt of Google says they are feeling the pinch. In a Saturday New York Times interview, Schmidt said Google is starting to look for ways to trim expenses in anticipation of a potential advertising slow down.

Schmidt: The issue we face with the economic crisis is we don’t know as managers how long the crisis goes. So what is a prudent answer? A prudent answer is to watch hiring. We are hiring but at a slower rate. Last week, we made some number of tens of offers. I suspect that will continue. The other thing we have done is fairly detailed expense reviews to make sure we are not wasting money.

So let’s share some information here on the Catching Flack blog.

There are two polls below, one for people who have PR budgets (Client poll) and one for those who seek contracts with people with PR budgets (Agency poll).

What we want to know is this: are you starting to see budget cutbacks at your corporation or other enterprise, or are you starting to feel them or plan for them if you are on the agency side?

Please share your market knowledge in the comments section as well voting in your poll.

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