Accentuate the Positive, 3.0

…but only if you are aware it is there to begin with.

This is the cast of Firefly, a wonderful show that the fates of television dealt a losing hand.  The characters and storyline were recently resurrected in a theatrical release, Serenity.  The creator, Joss Whedon, has hinted that it might come back if someone will back it.

Well, now the “browncoats” are “aimin’ to misbehave,” and it appears a couple of them have.  The pair from San Diego started a website pitching for donations to raise the millions of dollars it would take to finance a miniseries or a new season.

With little buzz, the site raised less than $1,000 in two days before shutting down collections and returning the money.  Could it be that Whedon didn’t like what appeared to be a weak posture, and asked them to stop?  Or maybe the thought of raising a substantial sum but not getting quite enough would be awkward?  Either way, there were a lot of ways this could reflect badly on Whedon, and not very many good outcomes.  (This is what I preach, trying to stay in a Positive Position.)

Companies with a reputation to maintain need to monitor the internet, and it doesn’t just end with the public relations department maintaining a clip file.  The above case was scuttled in a matter of days, avoiding a lot of potential embarrassment — even from those who are well-meaning.

We faced a similar circumstance recently within the American Red Cross:  a producer made a public pledge on national television that he would give 100% of the profits from the sales of certain videos to benefit Red Cross Disaster Relief.  When you’re faced with a billion-dollar project, that kind of news is welcome.  Unless the gift is coming from Joe Francis, the entreprenuer behind “Girls Gone Wild:“

“Year after year the city of New Orleans and its citizens have welcomed us with open arms, and we have looked forward to our yearly trip to the Big Easy. The utter destruction of New Orleans and many parts of the Gulf coast truly saddens us,” said Joe Francis, founder and CEO of Girls Gone Wild, in a statement.

The Mardi Gras-themed DVDs and videos include such titles as “Mardi Gras 3-Pack,” “Mardi Gras 2K4,” and “Girls Gone Wild Doggystyle” with rapper Snoop Dogg.

With friends like that, your reputation doesn’t need enemies.

Friday the 13th has brought forth a traditional media meme: how to parlay silly, outmoded superstitions into “lifestyle” news.

Disney has taken it one step further, actually commissioning a survey to find out “What scares you?” As happy coincidence would have it, Disneyland is opening its new “Monsters Inc.” attraction.

The survey seems somewhat useful, in a slow-news-day kind of way:

The survey found that 86 percent of adults and 91 percent of youngsters admitted to being very scared of something. Nearly one-in-five adults (18 percent) also said they are scared of more things now than they were as a child. Adults admit to other scares, including snakes (38 percent), fear of heights (36 percent), watching scary movies (22 percent) and the dark (eight percent).

Of course, when this gets reported (as I saw on the full-screen Good Morning America graphic), it winds up as:

Biggest adult fears:

• 38% – Snakes
• 36% – Heights
• 22% – Scary Movies
• 8% – “the Dark”

Gee… what ever happened to “public speaking?” Wasn’t that conclusively proven to be the number one fear, above death?

Thanks to this, my new number one fear is that newsfolk don’t have the brains or patience to sort through statistics and surveys, and will basically pass on whatever someone hands them. “This just in… two out of three teevee newscasters cannot handle simple fractions. Mary, that’s almost half.” (Maybe it’s time to move beyond aspiring to be an interview coach/media consultant. The real market is in snake removal.)

Some have perfected the art of the stunt, and some haven’t.

One entity that has played the stunt card well is GoldenPalace.com. The internet casino has paid people to streak, box, and climb buildings wearing temporary “Golden Palace” tattoos.

You might be more familiar with the company’s rather unusual collection of weird eBay items, made famous at the end of most local newscasts.

The Jesus Cheeto

$22.50

The Christ Pierogi

$1,775

The Monster Flake

$156

Gigantor the Lemon

$29.99

The Pope Hat Dorito

$1,209

The Grilled Cheese Mary

$28,000

Well, here’s the latest:

The bat that all-time baseball hit leader Pete Rose used for his 159th home run will be sawed in half to determine if it was corked, according to the Internet casino that purchased the bat at auction for $103,631.

Mike Heffner, the president of Lelands auction house in New York, said before last week’s sale that the black Mizuno bat showed signs of having been corked.

GoldenPalace.com, the betting Web site, said in a statement that it will saw the bat in half to see if it’s been enhanced, an event that will raise money for charity and draw media attention for the casino.

Good for them. Not so good for Donald Trump.

Yeah, I’m picking on him again, for mixing his messages like he wants us to mix our drinks.

On this morning’s radio commentary, Trump talked about his late brother Fred who had problems with alcohol. He talked about his agonizing decision to lend “Brand Trump” to vodka, having seen the effects in Fred Trump’s life. Donald reasoned that someone else would be selling vodka if he didn’t, so he announced he’d be giving all of his vodka profits to MADD.

Funny — none of that altruism was mentioned three weeks ago when it was initially announced.

Sounds like a backstroke, Donald. Your PR people are fired. Again.

Spin is about shifting the blame, or framing the issue — it rarely gets associated with accepting culpability and moving on.

Kudos to Warner/Chappell Music, for having the guts to admit it was wrong.

Last week, music publisher Warner/Chappell Music sent a threatening letter to independent Austrian programmer Walter Ritter, complaining about a free piece of software he’d developed that scoured Web sites for song lyrics and imported them into Apple Computer’s iTunes software.

The software was designed to find lyrics to the songs on your iPod, and download them so you could read along with your songs. Initially, Warner/Chappell saw this as a copyright violation, and sent threatening “cease-and-desist” letters.

Here’s a link to the apology, made public… and the parties may soon be in talks to work together on a way to do the same thing in a manner that doesn’t cloud the legal landscape.

Here’s the bonus — it’s not like Warner/Chappell had a lot to gain by pushing the issue. Others would have sprung up to do a similar thing in a different way, and corporate lawyers would have spent the next couple of years swatting flies. Rather than fight a Pyhrric battle, the company ended the fight without looking like a loser. By phrasing things toward collaboration and partnerships, they disengage as an equal.

“Sorry” can carry such a golden tune…

More signs that Media Relations people need to update the old models…

…with a tip of the hat to Corante‘s ‘Rebuilding Media‘.

First, a great media shift is already underway. 2005 saw the end of more than 2,000 newspaper jobs in the United States (including several folks down the street at the Birmingham Post-Herald.)

Combine that with the recent announcement that the Pulitzer committee is now accepting online content submissions, and the new president of the Society of Professional Journalists teaches online media at the University of Florida.

When the dudes with inky hands are filling out job applications, and the internet dudes are running the guild, and the dudes who hand out the hardware are changing the rules… maybe it’s time to take a hint.

B.L. Ochman’s mantra: the traditional press release is dead. It won’t happen tomorrow, but the “traditional press” is slowly heading that same direction. If you’re still promoting yourself the same way you did five years ago, you might still be okay. If you’re not looking for new ways to engage your current and future customers, you’re making a big mistake.

Knowing when to hold them and when to fold them is better than knowing why to fold them…

The CEO of the American Red Cross, Marty Evans, is stepping down at the end of the year. In the light of criticisms over the entire response to Hurricane Katrina (mostly pointed at the government), some might look at her leaving as a parachute landing or a forced resignation. I don’t buy that interpretation for a number of reasons:

1. It’s not uncommon within the Red Cross for “disaster burnout” to claim those in key positions.
2. Marty is a retired Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy, and it follows from the natural rythym of things that officers don’t set roots for very long.
3. Of the tiny fraction of the hurricane response criticisms that even mentioned Red Cross, most all were focused on local chapters — not the national organization.

In her statement, Evans explains that it was her desire to retire after her third year at the helm, August 5th. Had she left in the middle of hurricane season, the organization would have been in a lurch, and there would have been big questions. Had she bowed out any sooner than she did, there would be all kinds of people digging around looking for the “smoking gun.” Announcing her intentions now, in a time of calm, will at the very least provide no new fuel to those who like to criticize.

Timing is everything…

All this time I’ve been preaching the need for businesses and organizations to beef up their media savvy. Leave it to the stodgy Brits to make a game out of it.

Thumbs up for speed-dating councillors
RICHARD BATSON

The babble of voices grew louder over the “speed dating” session as the young questioners tried to get all the information they needed before the three-minute gong sounded.

But the race against the clock was not in search of romance; it was to quiz local councillors.

The novel training method is being used by more and more councils to help their members’ communication skills.

But it is also helping to break down youngsters’ stereotyped views about councillors, as the latest session in North Norfolk proved.

Seventeen-year-old Will Grey said afterwards: “I thought they were going to be a bunch of boring old Tories. But they are not.”

Fellow North Walsham student Steven Thompson said: “I was surprised to find out they were in touch with things we are concerned about – like there not being enough to do in town.”

Diana Rackham, 16, added: “I thought they would be negative about the needs of teenagers, but they were concerned about the whole community, including us.”

And Rosie Jones, 17, was impressed the councillors were knowledgeable about issues that concerned her, from coastal erosion to affordable housing.

Councillors moved around the tables when signaled by a DVD featuring a cheesy pop figure called “Big D Mocracy”, who said his hits included It’s My Party, and I’ll Resign If I Want To.

The youngsters’ questions ranged from how councillors got involved in politics and what the council had done for young people, to the war in Iraq and the need for lights at a new skateboard park.

Funny, I’ve actually had political clients where the goal was to “unstodgy” and “un-Torie” them.

Sports analogies can be overused, but some concepts are just easier to get across this way. Like the interview Chris Cuomo did with that PR flack for Metroline on the December 1st “PrimeTime.”

Francisco Oaxaca is the guy’s name, and to an untrained eye, it would appear that he took a beating. Cuomo made the case that Metrolink was running recklessly by “pushing” trains on return trips instead of pulling with a heavy locomotive.

I say “made the case” with a bit of a sneer, because Cuomo just got promoted to ABC’s “Senior Legal Correspondent,” and this whole story is being “pushed” by a lawsuit.

This trainwreck started in Glendale, California, when a commuter train going to LA derailed after hitting a parked SUV. Eleven people died, and just now the lawsuits are starting to dredge to the surface.

The Primetime piece is slugged “Is there a ‘Coffin Car’ on your train?” And again, after the prosecuting reporter got to lay out his case, the defense was given a chance to speak.

Oaxaca acquitted himself quite well, and I took particular notice to the way he stood his ground on a point:

Since the Glendale accident, Metrolink has made an important change in the cab car: The area where people are most often hurt is now roped off.

Metrolink said they had established the area out of respect for those who died in the Glendale crash. The sign says quiet area — but critics say the more likely reason is safety.

Oaxaca said they didn’t call it a safe zone “because we can’t draw that conclusion. We’re not saying that this area is unsafe. We’re saying that until the answers are in, until the research that’s being done is in, the science has been completed we’re not taking any chances.“

The web transcript cuts off the last part of the exchange where Oaxaca called any determination premature.

One of the key ideas behind Positive Position Media Consulting was there are going to be those instances where you absolutely cannot win. Some circumstances are impossible to completely overcome, no matter how good your spin. Yet the most important thing, every day, is to leave your employer or client with the best score possible. Taking public perception from -50 to -5 is a much greater accomplishment that going from 10 to 30.

In this case, Oaxaca stood toe to toe with an aggressive reporter, and at the end of the day, refused to say the words for which Cuomo was so desperately angling. Metrolink did not “win” the exchange, but like in baseball, the tie goes to the runner.

When you’re looking for help with interview coaching, you get what you pay for.

Try Googling “media relations” sometime, and see what turns up. There are a number of firms out there that put information on the internet (this one included.) What they rely on is a mistaken public notion that “if it’s in print, it must be true.”

Here’s some of the advice I recently found on the PR Zoom Newswire:

“When talking with a reporter:

• Make a note of the reporter’s name and the name of the media when the caller first offers identification. This serves two purposes: you have an accurate record so you can follow up to see how the story appears; and you can use the reporter’s name during the interview, to help you build rapport with the reporter.

Boy, does this get abused. I can’t tell you how many people I interviewed who thought that starting every other sentence with “Well, Ike” or threw in a “The problem with our widgets, Ike, is…” It actually got in the way of getting the information in a usable form, and was highly annoying. You don’t talk to your friends that way, do you?

• Provide sufficient evidence for your statements. Reporters love numbers: try to give them numbers whenever you can — particularly when it helps you sell your own agenda.

Yeah, reporters love numbers. NOT! The vast majority of reporters are actually very bad at math (just like the rest of society.) Some wear it as a badge of honor. Unless they operate on a specialized beat that requires background knowledge, you can count on a reporter to need help deciphering statistics, financial statements, polling data, economics, and just about anything else involving numbers you can’t reach with your fingers. Seriously. If you just throw a stats at them, you are just as likely to have them misreported or misrepresented out of ignorance. Give them the context, and make sure they understand them. Don’t try to obscure the truth with a flash of digits.

Reporters are, as a rule, experts at nothing. Treat them with respect, but don’t assume they know everything. There is a lot of ego invested in being a “public figure” through the media, and many reporters (the young ones especially) will be hesitant to ask a question that appears elementary, or even stupid.

Being good conversationalists, they skirt the issue of the “dumb question” in the hopes of gleaning the answer through later context. If you’ve got a delicate detail, point of law, or sticky statistic, by all means take the extra time to make sure the reporter “gets it.” You’re less likely to insult their intelligence, and more likely to cause them a sigh of relief for answering the question they wouldn’t dare ask.

(Note: Yeah, I use the internet to market myself too. The difference is that I have 16 years experience in news from which to tell you how a reporter thinks. I also have dozens of “articles” on this very blog that back up what I proclaim. Caveat Emptor.)

If you’re going to deflect a reporter to a spokesperson, make sure it’s not a dead end.

The board of directors of the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club in New York is on the hot seat. A former board member (who was one of the go-to-guys in launching liberal talk network Air America) is now being investigated for redirecting more than half-a-million dollars in grant money and “investing” it in the Air America startup.

Air America has been quick to point out that it is under new ownership, and has the appearance of deniability.

The current Gloria Wise board is running into trouble, though. Hugh Hewitt at the Weekly Standard tried getting some answers:

My producer and I have spent a lot of time trying to get a member of the board on the record about the investment. The only one who agreed to talk to us referred us to Rubenstein Public Relations. An assistant to Richard Rubenstein called me to relay that he didn’t know anything about the “Gloria Wise story.” Odd.

Either there is a huge disconnect in protocol at Rubenstein (which I highly doubt,) or someone is trying to buy some time.

To make matters worse, the article didn’t mention which board member had been approached, so now this little cloud of avoidance is hanging over all of them, until it gets cleared up.

We’ve seen in the Richard Scrushy case how important your pre-trial PR posture can be. Looking like you’re ducking tough questions is not the way to get there.

In my “previous life” on television, my last beat was education.

Birmingham’s City School System had an annual problem with students who waited until after Labor Day to come to classes. It was a cultural thing here, and a lot of parents needed re-educated about why missing three weeks of school is a bad thing.

Once the system started having severe financial problems, it became dire. The state allocates funds based on average enrollment for the first 40 days of the school year. If a sizable chunk of the student body isn’t around, the money goes away. Yikes!

To combat the problem, Birmingham instituted an initiative called (I’m not making this up) “Just Show Up“.

Talk about your inspirational messages! It ranks right up there (down there) with “Delta: We Get You There!” (late, sans luggage, and hungry… but THERE.)

Needless to say, the program caught a lot of heat for sending the wrong message to kids. After all, we don’t want them just showing up. We want them learning things, and becoming better future citizens. The project was already being slammed as a dismal failure before it was halfway through.

At the halfway point of the 40-day census period, I asked for the enrollment figures from that year-to-date compared to the previous year. Based on my calculations (ones which the schools lacked either the ability or the creativity to figure), Birmingham’s Board of Education “saved” more than $6,000,000 that would have been lost had the students “shown up” along past patterns.

“Just Show Up” just plain worked, in terms of getting the word out and getting butts in seats. But it still wasn’t working as a positive message once the morning bell rang.

This year, the same program has a new title and a new theme: “Going to the Head of the Class.”

Edit: Welcome to all of the TOTALFark visitors… glad to have you here.
(So tell me, exactly what sort of link to this blog is bringing you all here, anyway?)

You’ve seen this guy. You’ve heard this guy. Later, you’ll probably agree that he had one of the most memorable lines in the entire Star Wars saga: “Stay on target… stay on target!”

Well, he has a name. Graham Ashley. And that role as X-wing pilot “Gold Five” will live forever.

Maybe it’s because that line has become a mantra for crisis communications. “Stay on target… stay on target!”

Conservative pundit Armstrong Williams is exercising that muscle right now, in an attempt to control the damage as previously outlined. Williams was on the talk-show circuit, where columnist David Corn observed the following:

“He was quick with his main talking point: “It was bad judgment, Dave. Bad judgment.” His phone rang. He answered it, said hello, and then told the person on the other end, “It was bad judgment. You know, just bad judgment.” I was reminded that in addition to being a pundit, Williams, a leading African-American conservative and Clarence Thomas protégé, is a PR specialist with his own firm. Not too long ago, Michael Jackson called him for advice. Now he had himself for a client, and, heeding conventional crisis-management strategy, he was practicing strict message discipline: bad judgment, bad judgment, bad judgment.”

Unfortunately for Williams, he let’s his guard down. Corn continues:

“And then Williams violated a PR rule: he got off-point. “This happens all the time,” he told me. “There are others.” Really? I said. Other conservative commentators accept money from the Bush administration? I asked Williams for names. “I’m not going to defend myself that way,” he said. The issue right now, he explained, was his own mistake. Well, I said, what if I call you up in a few weeks, after this blows over, and then ask you? No, he said.”

There comes a point where you need to shut up.

Just as Jek Porkins. Porkins, one of the most famous unknowns in the Star Wars universe, got to say a lot more than Gold Five did. He had such lines as “Red Six standing by” and “I’m right with you Red Three.”

Speaking more can hurt you, as Porkins soon found out.
“I’ve got a problem here.”
“I can hold it.”
“No I’m alright, I’m alright aaaarrrrrggghhhhh…. “

Kurt Busch is a NASCAR champion, who was just a punch or two away from being the next Ron Artest.

Fortunately, some of his big-money sponsors saw the light, and staged a media training intervention.

Youth + speed + high exposure can be a formula for a real car wreck… it can also be a recipe for a media relations nightmare. If proper media training is lacking in your marketing plan, you run the risk of countering your own message.