Accentuate the Positive, 3.0

“It’s not enough to be liked by good men — you must strive to be despised by bad men.”

Confucius was a Sheriff and a Guru, but he didn’t pander to people who didn’t matter to him. These days, we are so obsessed with perception that we can forget the goal.

I some cases, like the Natalee Holloway disappearance that has Aruba’s image at stake, perception can become reality.

In other cases, like the 1964 slayings of three civil-rights workers in Mississippi, there is justice to be served.

When outcomes are more nebulous, like the US Senate apologizing for decades of ducking anti-lynching laws, your pragmatic side can start to ask if you’re just inviting additional complaint and scrutiny.

In some scenarios, you just ignore public opinion entirely. Some GOP senators are now questioning the value of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, strictly because it is becoming more a PR liability than a proven one.

In all four of the above, those crafting the key messages must take into account that their strategy — be it capitulation, defiance, or perserverance — hits only the approprate target.

Did Michael stop and wave at his adoring minions, who were releasing doves to the sky?

No.

Did Michael take to the microphone and plead with the world to let him resume his life?

No.

Instead, he piled into a caravan and booked it to Neverland.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, then nothing screams “guilt” like a slow-speed Bronco chase. (Was Al Cowlings driving?)

The jury.

Stuff like this needs to be moderated.

Seriously — where are the keyword filters to ensure this kind of thing doesn’t cause a PR headache?

Or, for the highly cynical… how many people think someone at Kraft dreamed this up as a way to generate web traffic through viral marketing?

Have a safe weekend everyone… especially those in the South, about to get another good drenching.

“The number of days it took Wal-Mart to botch its new proactive public relations strategy.”

“What is Thirty-three.”

“Correct.”

“I’ll take “Self-inflicted Public Relations Nightmares” for $800, Alex.”

You don’t have to be a Ken Jennings know-it-all to recognize a bad idea.

After waking from decades of PR hibernation, it took Wal-Mart less than five weeks to stumble across a PR disaster. (At least one of its own making.)

A Wal-Mart PR manager has now resigned, after taking out a controversial ad in an Arizona newspaper. It was part of an informational campaign to answer opponents a Flagstaff Wal-Mart expansion.

The ad attempted to draw a parallel between book burnings and the prevention of free commerce. The accompanying text read:

“Should we let government tell us what we can read? Of course not . . . So why should we allow local government to limit where we shop?”

That’s a fairly complicated message to attempt given the short-attention span of our culture. The problem is that no one realized the picture was from a Nazi book-burning. No one, except the Arizona Anti-Defamation League.

Not only has the executive responsible resigned, but the firm that produced the ad severed its retainer with Wal-Mart.

Here is a link to a .pdf of the actual ad.

This is especially foul because Wal-Mart turned a corner in both proactive and reactive PR messaging, holding a press junket on April 5th of this year. It didn’t take long for the rookie mistake to emerge.

(By the way… Wal-Mart spent nearly $300,000 on that Flagstaff campaign, just to add a grocery section to one of its stores. Apparently, they spent just enough. The ordinance limiting Wal-Mart’s expansion was overturned by two percentage points.)

…to make a few trillion.

Just a quick link to projections about how businesses are trending on spending.

“Web development, combined with public relations, will capture $100 billion of the one trillion dollars earmarked for marketing expenditures in 2005, according to research firm Blackfriars Communications. The company’s new report evaluates marketing budgets by industry.”

Interesting that PR and “web development” are intertwined in that report. Could it be because there will be a lot of overlap in those categories? There sure are more and more job opportunities for corporate bloggers.

Television stations love to hype their weather coverage. Nothing says “promo” like viewers who say “Channel ## saved my life!”

In my years of tornado chasing, I had more than a few people who noticed the irony, that while my station’s weather department was telling people to take cover, my news department was plotting my intercept course with the funnel.

Well, a similar type of incongruence has led to a public squabble in Tampa. WFLA News Director Forrest Carr is now the ex-News Director, and he says it’s because there was no station hurricane plan.

Carr claims he got frustrated with General Manager Eric Land, because WFLA had no back-up plan and no evacuation plan for the next hurricane that threatened. Carr says he was canned after asking if this was a violation of evacuation laws, which Land perceived as a threat.

Of course, Land claims this is a personnel issue, and he can’t comment on it. Sure makes him look bad, along with owner Media General. (So much for “on my side.”)

Still, there is a narrow window of opportunity here for the station to do a little good PR. A lot of public information, followed by a recounting of WFLA’s own plan will do wonders.

After all… you’d hate to see in interview after the next hurricane with someone in a body cast, who says “If Channel 8 wasn’t taking it seriously, why should I?”

In San Fran, even fumbles have aftershocks.
What did they know, and when did they know it?

As chronicled on last night’s “Outside the Lines” on ESPN, a lot of the heat directed at the San Francisco 49er’s over their media training video has to do with timing. Apparently, the top brass had known about the video for months with no repercussions.

Uh oh.

What a pair of whiny-pants.

Brad and Angelina don’t want to talk about their relationship while out promoting their new movie. Instead of politely declining to answer questions, they use legal muscle. You can’t even get into the room to ask a question unless you sign a document promising to only ask about their movie. (Unless you want to talk about their globe-hopping charity and politics.)

The “contract” goes so far as to promise legal action if any of the interviews are used in an unflattering manner.

I guess it’s hard to promote “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” with words like “homewrecker” being bandied about.

Tightest ship in the shipping business? Four million people might beg to differ.

CitiGroup now admits that personal information on 3,900,000 consumer lending customers is now floating around somewhere.

Unlike other security lapses, this doesn’t involve an internet transfer. Instead, Citi was sending a physical tape with the data to a credit bureau.

And UPS, which ships 14-million packages a day, just happened to lose this one.

Citi is doing its best to point the finger at UPS, even going as far as releasing a statement that is tantamount to a pink slip:

“We deeply regret this incident, which occurred in spite of the enhanced security procedures we require of our couriers,” Kevin Kessinger, executive vice president of Citigroup (Research), said in a statement. “Beginning in July, this data will be sent electronically in encrypted form.”

While this looks really bad for UPS for the time being, let’s put this in perspective.

First of all, this is not another one of those stories about an internet breach or a computer virus or a phishing scam that has put your personal financial information at risk. No one (as far as we know) set out to procure this stuff. It’s just lost.

Second, the odds of someone stumbling across the tape who can recognize what it is and have the appropriate equipment to read it is fairly small.

Third, has it occurred to anyone that maybe CitiGroup might be just a little behind the times here? Running large chunks of data through a sneakernet? I’m sure a secure intranet connection would be faster, with more frequent transfers. (I’ll bet a dedicated fiber line directly to Experian would be cheaper than this PR headache will be.)

I’d like to know how many other outdated and inefficient measures Citi takes with regards to my profile. Is the electronic transfer going to be any safer? Isn’t the use of couriers supposed to keep the hackers at bay? If electronic transfer is safer, then why has Citi been hoofing it? If the relative shift in safety is unknown, then why issue an immediate policy change? If one method is clearly safer than the other, why haven’t they been using it? If not, then why suddenly switch?

I know what Citi is trying to accomplish in retaining consumer confidence. But its actions come across as rather rash, especially when placed under responsible journalistic scrutiny.

Maybe it’s time to break down and buy identity theft insurance.

It’s interesting to see how the slowly brewing Boy Scout recruitment story gets played out in local territories across the nation.

As we have talked about before, scout regions in Birmingham and Atlanta have been under federal investigation for inflating the numbers of minority members. (There was a special grant for recruitment in the inner cities.)

While the news out of Atlanta doesn’t look good, different areas are taking divergent tacks in their spin. For instance, scout leaders in Washington, DC are denying there’s a widespread problem. A spokesman in New Hampshire is telling local media they are conducting an independent audit to determine if there is a discrepancy.

You could make arguments either way. The DC posture is one of assurance that there is no local wrongdoing. The NH position seems wishy-washy on the surface (“We don’t know if we’re in compliance,”) but actually follows through with a demonstrable action. In the end, the NH strategy comes off a bit stronger, in my humble opinion. There’s also a chance that the DC statement will boomerang and haunt the leadership, should any type of financial question arise.

One is the bolder statement today. The other is the safer tomorrow. In your own dealings, choose the time frame that best fits your strategic goals and needs.

(In the spirit of the Deep Throat revelations, we’ll call this “Golden Gate-gate”.)

In past articles, I’ve commented on the growing media savvy in the sports world. NASCAR drivers, hockey players, and many others have sought specific training in learning how to deal with the media.

No one wants to be the next Latrell — or T.O. — or Jimmy the Greek.

Smart organizations are being proactive about coaching off-the-field behavior and on-the-record interviews.

Now, they ought to take a cue from the San Francisco 49er’s and be smart in executing that plan, too. (Smarter than the team’s ex-public relations director.)

In the video, public-relations director Kirk Reynolds cavorts with naked strippers, spoofs gay marriage and interviews then-team trainer George Chung, who does a parody of a Chinese accent.

Unfortunately, Reynolds works in one of the most diversity-sensitive zip codes on the planet.

The footage was enough for Doris Y.S. Owyang, a Chinese-American lesbian, to declare the end of her status as a lifelong 49ers fan.

“I’m mad. Did the civil rights movement never happen in this country? Have we struggled for equal rights for nothing when a professional football team that has fans in all these communities makes fun of the homeless, the mayor, gay marriage and Chinese.”

Owyang was incensed by scene in which Reynolds interviews a character called Suck Hung (played by Chung), who speaks in an exaggerated accent while translating a Chinese newspaper story.

Imagine the firestorm that would have erupted had there been significant Asian and gay populations in San Francisco. Oh wait. You don’t have to! Quick action on the part of the 49er’s may deflect a lot of the heat onto the “rogue agent” who did this on his own… but you know those wounds will be ripped open after the is tape goes public. You know it’s eventually going to leak to the internet. I’m betting by Monday.

Most public relations problems are the result of a mistake or a miscommunication.

Every so often, you run across an example of a blunder that makes you wonder: “What were you thinking???”

A middle school principal in Georgia is playing damage control, after denying a visit from a U.S. Marine who wanted to thank a class who wrote him while he was overseas.

So far, her backtracking and explanations have not been consistent, and she’s digging herself into a bigger hole.

…unless you’re the 900-pound gorilla.

The Wal-Mart bashers are out in force, and this time they are crying foul that the retailer would dare stoop to spending big bucks on “reputation management.” (After all, they ought to be using that cash to give employees better benefits, and raises so they can afford to shop at Target.)

I’m not the only one who’s been watching the awakening of the giant. Peter Himler has his take on a burgeoning double-standard in his “The Flack” blog.