Accentuate the Positive, 3.0

Good spokespeople can be born… but the best ones are made.

That’s not just a self-serving statement on my part. I am living it.

As I write this, I am in the Birmingham airport waiting for a ride to Dallas. The American Red Cross is training communicators this week.

Now, I was in broadcast journalism for 16 years, and I very well understand what reporters and editors want and how to give it to them. My media training business is built on the idea that “civilians” can overcome a lot of fear and poor press by knowing how the sausage is made. If you can take the trepidation out through advance training, you can enhance the message and be confident that your point will at least be heard.

However, the Red Cross program I am entering is a specialized breed. When a major disaster strikes a community, the local Red Cross spokespeople are usually running beyond full capacity just getting vital information to the public. You can easily fill 16-hour days just fielding calls from local reporters, monitoring local news, and pushing important updates to local media. (I was doing 18-hour days during Katrina.) Simply put, you don’t have the luxury to deal with Good Morning America, CNN, the New York Times, and Newsweek.

That’s where this training comes in. Rapid Response Communicators take on-call shifts, and are ready to zip into a disaster area. By shielding the local volunteers from national media, it allows the important services and information to flow uniterrupted. It also ensures that the national media will get consistent information and Red Cross messaging.

Major disasters already have enough confusion and chaos — the flow of assistance doesn’t need to be choked off by poor communication. Particularly when you have hundreds of thousands of volunteers, any one of which can create national embarrassment with a stray or ill-informed comment.

I’ll share what I can through the week.

Know your audience — and know your media.

It’s not just the rules that are changing ever faster… it’s the evolution and revolution of the game.

I still run across “old-schoolers” who beat the same mantra they memorized out of the old PR texts. That includes the old “sneak the bad news out on a Friday” canard.

Several of major things have changed:

• The news cycle is now constant, so there’s no benefit in dropping bad news on Fridays. Even traditional print publications are seeing the value in updating websites between issues.
• The news is now niche-oriented, which means that specific outlets will run you down regardless of the time.
• Reporters and editors have learned, and have evolved new habits. Particularly the financial reporters.

The two keys are knowing your audience and cultivating your relationships with media gatekeepers. Yes, that is starting to include bloggers, who are the nichiest of the bunch, are the least beholden to news cycles, and appreciate your time and attention more than most.

And don’t forget about placing stories on Friday. From my experience, Friday was one of the more difficult days to nail good stories. A couple of quick calls in the morning will let you know if the reporters and editors in your area are already budgeted for the day, or if they are in need of what you are pitching. (The greater their need, the greater your control, and the more prominent the placement.)

In my market, most of the civic meetings that draw media attention are on Tuesdays. I do my best to avoid scheduling events or releases for Tuesdays, moreso than Fridays. Your mileage may vary.

Hey Pandora — no need to fix that lock. The technology is out, and we can’t close that box if we tried.

I apologize in advance for using a basketball reference, but most people understand the concept of the “full court press.” That’s where a team doesn’t concede an inch of the court, and pressures the ball at every moment, trying to force a steal or a turnover.

For teams not used to seeing “organized chaos” in action, it can be devastating. When the players executing the defense are that much faster and quicker to the ball, opposing coaches sometimes cheat in practice. I remember doing drills on my team where we moved the ball up the court against seven defenders. When game time came around, handling five was a snap.

What if the other team wasn’t just bringing five, but five-hundred? Five-thousand? A sea of humanity, on the playing field? Let’s just say controlling the ball gets nearly impossible.

When it comes to protecting institutional reputation, the rules have changed by orders of magnitude. This is still a business of relationships, and knowing key people can give you the edge in getting your message across. The problem today is that the genie is out of the bottle. There are no real “gate-keepers” anymore, and to be honest, there haven’t been for quite some time.

The “tipping point” emerged a few years ago, when tabloids started getting information that “panned out.” Emboldened by the truth, it was nigh impossible to shut them down, because they didn’t care about whether you liked them or not. Consequently, the “publicity culture” adapted, and used the new rules to create celebrities that were famous for being famous, and nothing else.

The genie boldly left the bottle about the time I started blogging. (I’m not taking all the credit — I just happen to be part of the Blog Boomer generation.) Now, little tidbits about anything can eventually hit critical mass, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

It might be a slow-burning misunderstanding about a well-vetted idea. It could be an innocent mistake that gets trumpted worldwide before you even know about it. It could be the break-up rumor that just won’t go away. Or, it could be any of the political blogs that get traction after a couple of days.

Welcome to the brave new world of image management. Pass the popcorn. We’re all a part of the full-court press.

If you can’t beat ‘em, beat ‘em to the punchline. That’s the tack White House spokesman Scott McClellan is taking to mitigate “Hunting-gate.”

McClellan took it on the chin Monday, no doubt. The White House press corp savaged him soundly, trying to construct a “what-did-he-know and when-did-he-know-it” timeline regarding the Vice-President’s hunting mishap. McClellan wasn’t exactly getting forthcoming information from Cheney’s staff, and had to suffer the slings and arrows alone. (Good thing Cheney isn’t a bowhunter.)

Anyway, as you can imagine, Monday was a watershed night for the Daily Show, Leno, and Letterman.

What’s not so funny is the slow response from Cheney’s people. A simple appearance from Cheney to field the questions would have done a world of good. But instead, we’re treated to another day or so of mountains out of molehills (that are of the administration’s own making.)

McClellan is doing his best to take the steam out of it all, though. He delivered a pitch-perfect punchline of his own, using a topical peg: the White House visit by the National Champion Texas Longhorns:

“The orange that they’re wearing is not because they’re concerned that the vice president may be there,” joked White House press secretary Scott McClellan, following the lead of late-night television comedians. “That’s why I’m wearing it.”

Well-crafted, timely, and in a self-effacing way, somewhat humble.

Considering it was a lack of forth-rightness and humility that got them into this mess to begin with, it’s a good start. Best case scenario, the story starts to fade, to be replaced by a recurrent punchline.

(I wonder if the left will stop complaining about Justice Antonin Scalia’s hunting trips with Cheney, and start urging more of them instead.)

Dick Cheney is the first Vice-President to shoot a man since Aaron Burr popped a cap in Alexander Hamilton. However, the real duel is being waged now in the media.

The first volley, much like the bird shot that hit Harry Whittington, is coming from the comedians. After all, this is fair game for comedy.

What may be more problematic is the response from anti-gun advocates James and Sarah Brady:

“Now I understand why Dick Cheney keeps asking me to go hunting with him,” said Jim Brady. “I had a friend once who accidentally shot pellets into his dog – and I thought he was an idiot.”

“I’ve thought Cheney was scary for a long time,” Sarah Brady said. “Now I know I was right to be nervous.”

There are times to use news pegs to plant your take in the media, but are these comments from the Bradys even on target?

Jim Brady, in consecutive sentences, appears to say that Cheney wants to shoot him in the woods. Then, he equates an accidental shooting with idiocy.

Which is it? Is Cheney a deliberate danger? Or is it really an accident?

Sarah’s comment also seems out of place. She thought he was dangerous, as though he had ever invited her hunting?

It’s also not as if Cheney was using a controversial automatic assault rifle, or even a handgun, which was at the center of the Brady cause and mission for so long:

The Brady Campaign, the Million Mom March and the Brady Center believe that a safer America can be achieved without banning all guns.

If you’re not going to ban all guns, then which ones do you leave in society? Hunting rifles and shotguns are too big to be concealed, and too specialized for criminal work. Cheney’s bird gun is the type of weapon that usually attracts the least concern and political heat (unless you’re from PeTA.)

That’s why the Bradys’ comment on this situation seems a little forced, smacks of partisanship, and could dilute their future impact. It plays to choir, and doesn’t appeal to the middle.

I don’t do memes here, normally. But it’s Saturday.

Four jobs I’ve had

• Television Reporter
• PR Guy
• Director
• Inventory Control

Four movies I can watch over and over

• Shawshank Redemption
• Office Space
• Best in Show
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Four TV shows I love to watch

• Grey’s Anatomy
• Lost
• Boston Legal
• Earl/The Office

Four places I’ve been on vacation

• Alaska
• Gatlinburg
• Jackson Hole
• DisneyWorld

Four favorite dishes

• Cantonese Chicken
• Taco Casa Sanchos
• Poppy seed Chicken Casserole
• Prime Rib

Four places I’d rather be

• In the mountains
• Practicing Kung Fu
• Writing my screenplay
• Working on my legal project

Four bloggers I am tagging

• Wade
• Jason
• Amy
• Drew

Four websites I visit everyday

• AL.com
• Watching Washington
• Neal Boortz
• Consumerist

Everyone likes to wax on about how the speed of the media and public perception has changed the way PR folks and their clients need to revamp the old rules. But the same technology that vaults us to light-speed video-game-twitch reactions also forces us to look to the past if we are to succeed.

RSS. Podcasts. Citizen journalists. High-tech IPOs. Search engine optimization. Guerilla marketing. Blogs, blogs, blogs, blogs…

…not to mention 24-hour news cycles, and an endless need to respond.

Entire industries and technologies have sprung up to make sure corporations and businesses can know what’s being said about them, and the focus is on how to quickly react.

When you monitor the “now,” don’t forget to monitor the “when.” In many cases, you can find articles, opinions, and blogposts lingering on the net that slipped past that first-day search. Ask Francisco Oaxaca. I wrote about his performance during an extended interview with PrimeTime Live on ABC. My take hit the web on December 2nd — and you’ll notice the very recent comment from Mr. Oaxaca.

I can understand how my piece might have flown under the radar. It was my first substantive post since relaunching my blog — post-Katrina, post-address-change, post-WordPress conversion.

It’s part of our culture to honor speed and efficiency, but don’t forget to look back. Search engines have 20/20 hindsight and freeze moments in time, where we can see them from all the angles and dissect them with impunity.

In a future post, I’ll talk about my experience with “Deja New.”

What one word best describes the state of PR today?
Would you believe… Alaska? (sorry. bad pun.)

Apparently, the ham-fisted pork-barrel antics of Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens has left the state with a reputation for being a little… piggish?

An extended tip of the ten-gallon to Tex over at Watching Washington, for keeping up with all of the links:

Governor Frank Murkowski (R-AK) wants to change America’s image of Alaska.

He’s afraid the lower 49 think of Alaska as a “freeloading frontier.” Why would we have that opinion — after the infamous “bridge to nowhere” and billions more in pork from the recent highway bill?

So the Governor has suggested the state hire a public relations firm to change Alaska’s image.

It’s nothing new to see government spending money on image and positioning. It’s especially vital in the competition for landing new industry and bolstering cash-cows like tourism.

Gov. Frank Murkowski says it is time for an image makeover. He wants the state to hire a public relations firm to change the perception of Alaska and its people as greedy for federal dollars and all too willing to plunder the environment for profit.

Ultimately, he wants to sway public opinion in favor of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Most Alaska politicians favor drilling in the refuge, which would fill the state’s coffers like the trans-Alaska oil pipeline has done for decades. But environmentalists have fought back for a quarter-century, and in December the state was thwarted again in Congress.

Would this fly as a legit expense? You have to examine both the source of the funding and the desired target of the campaign — and that’s one thing I love about Terry’s work at Watching Washington.

Wonder how long until Alaska’s Congressional delegation pay for it with federal dollars?

Alaska already got federal money for a PR film on the state’s roads and bridges. And more federal dollars to paint an airliner to promote the state’s salmon industry.

Trust me. He’s got it all documented.

Even if the PR practitioners hold to recognized professional ethical standards, there is no hard and fast rule about what passes the “taxpayer smell test.”

Taking public money to sway public opinion about the fact that you do more than just take public money… well, that’s really bringing home the bacon.

We’re told that ignorance is no defense… except when the law is so poorly defined that it “really is.”

Case in point: Richard Scrushy, the ousted founder of HealthSouth.

During his fraud trial, some pundits wondered whether he could put away the ego and admit to “not being in charge of the ship.” It was his only real defense, as five former CFOs took the stand to implicate him.

Some would go down swinging, especially those who are so concerned about their reputations and public personae.

The dynamic that played out here was a quirk of the new Sarbanes-Oxley law: it required “proof of knowledge.” One had to knowingly violate it — and science-fiction aside, there is no way short of a paper trail of proving what is going on in someone’s head.

So the state couldn’t make a case, Scrushy was acquitted, and now he’s touring state pulpits as a reformed man. He recently appeared on Hannity and Colmes, painting himself as a cockolded spouse:

“I think the buck stops with the people that are guilty,” Scrushy said. “In any situation you can be deceived. Take, for example, a husband and wife, live together for many, many years. The wife finds out the husband was having an affair. They sleep in the same bed every night. They brush their teeth in the same bathroom. They eat together every day for years. So, if you’re deceived, if something is concealed and not shown to you or if no one tells you about it, you shouldn’t be held responsible for something you had nothing to do with.”

Scrushy said a company as large as HealthSouth makes it more difficult to monitor what everyone is doing.

“I do know that when you have big corporations and you have a lot of people – the CEO – there is no way that he can know everything,” he said.

The folks over at CFO.com took a different read, calling it the “Sergeant Shultz defense:”

Last night, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes made Larry King look like Edward R. Murrow. I’m referring to Hannity and Colmes’s cartoonish interview of Richard Scrushy on FOX.

Scrushy didn’t need to break a sweat in reprising his ”Sergeant Schultz” defense — that he ”knew nothing” while his rogue underlings, including five former chief financial officers, committed a $2.7 billion fraud at HealthSouth.

The pathetic bipartisan duo allowed Scrushy to say things like “the buck stops with people who were guilty,” to compare his innocence to the person who is unaware of their spouse’s transgressions even though they share a bed, and to assert that the government didn’t spend that much time investigating his case.

Why the fuss? The Scrushys still aren’t out of the woods yet, with civil suits (and a lower burden of proof) still looming. Expect the positioning to continue.

I’ve had more potential clients than real clients in my slowly-growing media consultancy gig. But what is more frustrating is what keeps getting in the way.

One state agency wanted to train a bunch of folks a few years back. The nature of their jobs created some real headaches when it came to defending their actions and protocols. I pitched a program tailored to their needs, and off we went.

My only problem at that time was my continued employment in television news.

What I needed was a solid firewall. Someone else who would bankroll the training, preventing any real conflict-of-interest charges. We found it, in a private foundation grant. (Bear in mind that I only did seminar work geared toward prevention at that time, and was not a resource for people looking for real-time crisis messaging.)

Then “bad headline #1″ hit the papers, and the agency was too busy with damage control to consider damage mitigation training.

Months later, we were ready to go again, and actually had a contract drafted that fit all of the applicable criteria. I never did get the signed fax back, and I found out why the next morning, when “headline #2″ splashed across the front page.

Again, too much heat to consider working it then and there. The client did not want to be seen spending money on image and reputation management.

Finally, we got everything worked out again. I was free of any possible conflicts, and actually had a couple of new seminar options available that would have helped this agency’s employees immensely. Who knew that one week later the agency would be sanctioned by a judge, and the director (with whom I had dealt) forced into an early retirement???

For a lot of people, “crisis management training” is this iffy insurance policy. There really is no tangible guarantee it will make anything better. (Other than the word of every person whose ever faced a pack of cameras, and felt more confident because of the prep work.) It’s just frustrating when the very people who need the training the most are the ones whose lack of training gets in the way of getting it.

Light PR content here — just a few thoughts about why I’m here and why you’re reading it.

Those thoughts and more are in the “About this blog” section near the upper right of the page:

• Comment policy
• Why I blog
• Why I left television
• Why you read
• Frequent Answers

This is inspired by some of my PR-blogging colleagues who have addressed their reasons for being on the web.

This makes sense. Before you can persuade anyone of anything, you have to tell your story. If you don’t lay your motives on the table immediately, you’ll never get past those initial questions of “Why is he here? What is he selling? What’s in this for him?”

Consider yourself warned.

This marks one year of PR blogging for John Wagner over at On Message.

He’s worth the read if you are so inclined.

How do you know when you’ve gone too far — and how do you keep from getting there?

That’s really the question posed by Peter Himler in today’s post on “The Flack.” (Peter brings his A-game every day, and is on my short list of must-reads.)

Today, he looks at the cycle of bad decisions surrounding the Peace Mom, Cindy Sheehan.

Without getting all-political, her message started to dilute itself when she got off the “peace for peace sake” bandwagon, and onto the “Elders of Zion Bush puppet regime and anything else I can come up with” path. Peter rightly points out that her latest visit to Venezuela’s “Mr. Smiles and Sunshine” Hugo Chavez stands to get in the way of connecting with any average American again.

My comment actually started sounding more like a post in and of itself so I brought it here — but I invite you to go to Peter’s blog and carry the conversation there. And bookmark him.

Peter, is it just me, or does it seem like every time the Democrats catch lightning in a bottle, they break the bottle?

A grass-roots agent drops right in their laps, one that by far comes across as more human and real than anything they could create — and they destroy her with packaging.

She would have been far more valuable over the long run if they hadn’t burned her out and used her up. She hit her sixteenth minute about, oh, 16 minutes in. Her handlers have devalued her as a human being — she is now a symbol. “Cindy Sheehan” the human is long gone and deceased. Her bones are now in a modern day Ark, being carted around by “The greater cause.”

Lesson: when you start treating your clients as objects and props, your message becomes self-parody.

A sundae with everything, including instant culpability.

A Delaware woman has filed suit against a McDonald’s franchisee, on the grounds that her son’s sundae had blood drizzled on the top.

According to court documents, Jara bought food, including four hot fudge sundaes, at the restaurant’s drive-thru window on Dec. 30, 2004.

Her son, now 13, dug into his sundae and “recognized the taste of blood and, upon careful inspection, noted a red substance on the side of the sundae cup as well as mixed into his ice cream,” the lawsuit claims.

Jara then went into the store and spoke to a swing manager, who confirmed that it was blood, according to the lawsuit. The manager, Joshua Ferrell, said the employee who prepared the sundae had an injured, bleeding finger, and told Jara that he had advised the employee to keep a bandage on his finger, according to the lawsuit.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

Michael Meoli, owner of the McDonald’s franchise, said the claims are unfounded, and that strawberry syrup probably had clogged the sundae machine.

Ferrell, who no longer works at the restaurant, should not have said the substance was blood, Meoli said.

“What is he, a botanist? No, he’s a 21-year-old assistant manager who saw her screaming in the lobby and said ‘whatever you say lady.’“

I’m lovin’ it! There may still be some issues in court (or more likely in settlement) because of that statement, as someone in management ought to know better than to make a statement like that.

Two lessons here:

• Don’t say things like the kid said, for legal reasons.
• Do say things like the franchisee said — short, to the point, and even somewhat aggressive when warranted.

Meoli was also right to end with this…

“I hope she gets the same thing the Wendy’s lady got,” he said, referring to a woman recently sentenced to nine years in prison for planting a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili to extort money from the fast-food chain.

…if for no other reason than to remind the public that many of these claims are unfounded.

Bonus look-see: Will McDonalds address franchisee issues like this on its brand-spanking new “Corporate Responsibility Blog?”

All things considered, Birmingham is not a bad place to be. It’s small for a big city, and too big to be a town. The lack of super-skyscrapers downtown is a direct byproduct of having an airport within sight — and that’s a rare thing these days.

The air is a lot cleaner these days, that the major industries are education and healthcare. And Birmingham has one of the most impressive underground fiber-optic infrastructures in the country.

Yet when you mention Birmingham outside of the region, most people are still stuck on discrimination, hoses, police dogs, dirt roads, and outhouses.

What has not changed is Birmingham’s success in telling its own compelling story to national and international audiences. As a result, there is little perception in key national markets of the Birmingham region as a place that not only exemplifies the possibilities of progressive change, but is building on the foundation of that change by seeking to develop its financial, logistical and human resources to the fullest extent. Yes, Birmingham has changed; but most of the nation – or, more to the point, most key corporate location decision-makers, most would-be entrepreneurs, most skilled talent in high-growth business fields – does not know that, or care to know it.

TechBirmingham is out to change that, and is actively pitching emerging tech industries. In my past life, I did a couple of features on these businesses that thanks to the internet could locate anywhere. Why not pick a place where you could set up in a historic brick building with character — enjoy a comparitively low cost of living — take a 15 minute drive to the airport if you need to fly — and still plug into a T3?

TechBirmingham is hitting this project on several fronts, including a local television PSA campaign aimed at educating locals about the advantages they enjoy. It’s volunteers have also embarked on a project to showcase all 199 (and counting) wireless access points within the metro. (Which includes all 5 acres of Vulcan Park. Free.) They are blogging about it here.

I’ll be tracking their efforts as they go, and may even pitch in as my schedule allows. (Although among my full-time job, my freelance consulting, my family, and my Kung Fu students, there’s not a lot of time left.)