Accentuate the Positive, 3.0

Armstrong Williams has caught a lot of flak — but what about the “flacks” that hired him. (Not the Department of Education, but the middleman in this affair.)

Well, Ketchum PR is now “ketching” it for not stepping forward with a mea culpa. Elizabeth Albrycht says their initial silence became deafening in her CorporatePR blog.

Six days after the scandal broke, Ketchum CEO Ray Kotcher (pictured left) published this letter in PR Week.

“For our part, Ketchum has begun a thorough review of all existing federal contracts and is retaining an outside firm to conduct a complete process that will surely yield recommendations to improve transparency as it relates to government contracts.”

“Now drop, and give me a 20 second sound bite, you maggot!”

Okay, so the training probably isn’t that intense, but Editor and Publisher is reporting that U.S. soldiers bound for Iraq are now getting mandatory media training as part of their deployment preparations, since October. (The Marines apparently have required it for years.)

The training consists of one or two hours of briefings by public-affairs specialists (which is a little shorter than the typical Positive Position seminar, by the way.) Once in the field, soldiers are given “talking points” cards, which might be updated as often as once a week. Some highlights:

• The Marine Corps is trained, resourced, and ready to accomplish its missions. We are committed to the cause and will remain in Iraq as long as we are needed.

• The fight in Iraq is tough, but we will remain steadfast and not lose heart.

• We are moving forward together with the Iraqi government as partners in building a future for the sons and daughters of Iraq.

• Coalition forces will help our Iraqi partners as they build their new and independent country and take their rightful place in the world community.

• Our troopers and their families are our greatest and most treasured resource.

• The Corps is a national institution — it has never failed to do the will of the American people.

I’m not sure about whether the cards have been in use in Iraq since the beginning. My gut tells me that if they were that prevalent, at least one of the embedded reporters would have broken the story earlier.

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…. “

Update time…

It appears that most of the local Salvation Army “Kettle Drives” were more than successful.

Just Googling around, there are many areas that showed a great increase over last year, even without the projected losses from being kicked out of Target Store parking lots.

Meanwhile, Target is reporting that same-store sales were up 11.3% over last year.

Like I predicted. No losers.

After years of sitting back, taking it on the chin from competitors and protestors, and growing like kudzu, Wal-Mart is firing back to clear its image.

I guess all of the complaints about overseas trade imbalances, lower pay for women, union-busting, benefit-shaving, inferior products, shutting down Mom-and-Pops, invading trendy neighborhoods, driving truckers to exhaustion, and pagan animal rituals finally got to the brass. (Okay, I made the last one up.) But the point here is that the others, whether substantiated or not, had been repeated so vociferously and so often that the substance entered the general consciousness as truth.

CEO H. Lee Scott took out full page ads in more than 100 papers. He says he’s not worried about how the tactic appears, as long as Wal-Mart tells the truth. “There are a lot of urban legends going round these days about Wal-Mart,” said Lee Scott, chief executive. “For too long, others have had free rein to say things about our company that just aren’t true. Our associates [employees] are tired of it and we’ve decided it’s time to draw our own line in the sand.” (Now that he’s thrown down that gauntlet, he’d better well stick to it.)

Conservative commentator and talk show host Armstrong Williams got his hand caught in the cookie jar.

USA Today broke the story Friday morning, detailing how Williams’ company got a $240,000 contract from the US Department of Education to highlight the advantages of the No Child Left Behind Act.

The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists, “to encourage the producers to periodically address” NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said he couldn’t comment because the White House is not involved in departments’ contracts. Education Department spokesman John Gibbons said the contract followed standard government procedures. Gibbons said there are no plans to continue with “similar outreach.”

Williams’ contract was part of a $1 million deal with Ketchum that produced “video news releases” designed to look like news reports. The Bush administration used similar releases last year to promote its Medicare prescription drug plan, prompting a scolding from the Government Accountability Office, which called them an illegal use of taxpayers’ dollars.

Forget the ethical problems involved here. This is precisely the kind of trouble you can expect to get into when you aren’t careful about the multiple hats you wear. Williams deserves to be scolded, if for no other reason than for being stupid about how things will look under public scrutiny.

And Merry Christmas.

I’m on the road for a while, and can’t say for sure when I’ll get a chance to scout for further examples of good/bad/ugly.

Keep checking — and we’ll see you when we see you! God bless!

The Minneapolis-based retailer Target took a hard look at its solicitation policy, and made a harder decision to enforce it against Salvation Army bell-ringers.

As you might expect, there has been a media and consumer backlash. The Salvation Army announced that the ban outside of Target stores would cost the non-profit in excess of $9,000,000 for this season’s kettle campaign. And to make matters worse, some of the boycotters are adding their own agenda to the fire, claiming the bell-ringer ban is really an attack on Christians fueled by gay rights organizations.

Not content to sit on the sidelines, Wal-Mart is one of a number of competitors that has embraced the bell-ringing volunteers — and has even announced it will match those gifts dollar for dollar (up to $1,000,000) through Christmas.

The press attention has been extremely one-sided. Outside of the initial reports, there has been no mention of the fact that many shoppers might prefer not having to make a token donation each time they walk by. Recent stories have failed to take this into account. Also — not only will the Salvation Army more than make up that deficit because of the backlash, it doesn’t rely on the kettle drive for everything. By far, the biggest source of revenue for the Salvation Army is planned giving and bequests. The organization is in better financial shape than just about any non-profit in history. It will be interesting to see how the Salvation Army really fares at the end of the Kettle Drive, and even more interesting to see how Target’s holiday sales end up. It’s not out of the question that both will end up better for the deal — and Wal-Mart could sneak in and get a piece of that too.

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.

The state of Alabama has taken a lot of grief from the rest of the country (here and here and here, and many others in Google News search results) over a failed statewide referendum to remove racist language from the Alabama Constitution.

Michael Ciammara with the Alabama Policy Institute is trying to correct the record.

He’s been making the rounds, trying to get people to understand that voters weren’t voting “for racism” when they narrowly defeated Amendment 2. He ought to know. He opposed the referendum, and he was the man who authored the thing in the first place.

Ciamarra says he’s resubmitting his original Amendment 2, without the additions that were secretly tacked on by a lawmaker. Meanwhile, the pounding continues.

Too much spinning can make you dizzy, and you wind up throwing up on your customer base.

DaimlerChrysler is reporting that the feds are calling for the recall of more than 600,000 Dodge Dakotas and Durangos.

NHTSA is making the recommendation after investigating reports of upper ball joint separation on dozens of vehicles. When that joint separates, the suspension can collapse and the wheel can fall off.

Those reports are tied into causing a number of accidents, but no injuries.

Now, as a spokesperson, it’s important to put the best face on a situation. DaimlerChrysler spokesman Max Gates was quoted this way in the New York Times:

“We don’t think a recall is appropriate,” Mr. Gates said. “We haven’t had any serious injuries or fatalities. We’ve been saying this is not a safety defect.”

CBS News first reported the request for a recall.

The traffic agency could force the company to recall the trucks, but that process could take years and could potentially be delayed by litigation.

Mr. Gates said the problems with the trucks generally occurred at low speeds during turns. He also said most drivers would have advance warnings of a potential problem because of excessive tire wear or unusual noises coming from the front of the trucks.

As a driver, that would make me feel more secure. As a DaimlerChrysler stockholder, I’d feel more secure if Mr. Gates didn’t leave himself open to creative editing. Some journalists will latch onto parts of your statement if you are not careful. Like in this Associated Press brief that hit dozens of television news sites, like this one:

The company spokesman says it does not think “it rises to the level of a safety defect.”

Wow. Big difference. And there’s no context to let you know that Gates has a point, instead of just blowing smoke.

How do you avoid this? It’s real tricky. Proactive techniques work with regular beat writers and producers, where you get a chance to explain the connection in a way they will understand. Lacking that opportunity, you need to phrase things differently, so the “juicy” part of the quote is harder to remove from its context:

“For this to be a real safety issue, wheels would be falling off without warning or at high speeds — and there’s no recorded instance of that. Most drivers were alerted by unusual front-end noise, or tire wear.”

That was just from the top of my head. It’s not perfect, but it demonstrates some principles in the war of words:

- The potentially damaging phrase is placed within a dependent clause. “We’ve been saying this is not a safety defect” can stand alone as an independent sentence. It is harder to take your phrase out of context when it is clearly dependent upon surrounding words for meaning.

- The potentially damaging phrase is shrouded in the cloak of possibility. “Wheels would be falling off at high speeds.” Now, the recall is cast as a precautionary probability, instead of avoiding a certain doom. Subliminal in effect, yet very effective. The glass is mostly full.

- The potentially damaging phrase is couched along with advice to drivers about what to look for. If I was a Dodge driver, and I heard that wheels were falling off, I’d be livid. If I knew there were a couple of easy things to check, I’d feel better about staying on the road until time for the recall repair. Because of the construction of that short paragraph, the information I would want is right there.

You can’t always gurarantee that reporters will write things the way you meant them. So write them in a way that gives less leeway for misinterpretations. Put on your “pretend journalist cub reporter” hat, and look at a few phrases or sentences in your statement. See which ones you’d twist or stretch if you were a competitor. Fix what you can, and then don’t sweat it. Your long-term credibility is more important than short-term spin.

NYU is staging a boycott of Coca-Cola products, because of allegations of child labor and human rights violations in El Salvador.

Coca-Cola responded to this nearly a half-year ago, detailing how it met with the Human Rights Watch on several occasions.

Apparently, the folks at NYU are still putting stock in the Human Rights report from June 4th, with little attention paid to Coke’s response of June 10th.

What’s really funny here is that since 1985, American Coke has been made with high-fructose corn syrup.

Bottom line, though — Serious accusations filed, Coke filed a quick response, but there’s something else you have to take into account: “A person can believe anything he wants, as long as he can disparage the motive of the debunker.” Therefore, it pays to be vigilant, and ensure that the general public isn’t bypassing your efforts to reach them with the truth.

Actually, Thomas Sowell said it this way:

“It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.“

A British cyber-security firm is reporting that the biggest looming threat on the net isn’t viruses or exploits… it’s good old-fashioned smear campaigns.

According to mi2g, Corporate hate sites are the new rage — or vent for rage, however you want to look at it. They surveyed 125 global CEOs to substantiate their warning.

Already, there are more than 10,500 anti-corporate hate sites online. Some are meant to vent grievances, others are more insidious. In some cases, the owners of the “hate site” offered to sell the domain to the smear target… which is really little more than digital extortion.

As the keeper of your corporate reputation, it might not be a bad idea to “google” yourself every now and then, or even use a tool like Google Alerts to do the web-crawling for you. Watch for website names that are variations of your company name, including words like “ihate” at the beginning or “sucks” or “myths” at the end.

Note to “self appointed public relations representatives”: Don’t skimp on the purple tee-shirts.

Seriously, we wish nothing but the best for Marengo County Junior Miss Contestant Elizabeth Hamilton (That’s her on the left, by the way. If you know her, apologize on my behalf for singling her out.) Though a little long, this article does carry some valuable lessons.

1. Puff pieces do get ink.
   When you see something like Special to the Times, that usually means someone at the paper took a press release that was lying around, and dumped it into the word processor. When you see a newspaper that has a lot of “specials,” you know where you can find an outlet for easy publicity.
2. Don’t laugh at the tee-shirts.
   It’s not the most sophisticated thing a marketer could use, and it certainly doesn’t always qualify as cost efficient. But then again, these pageants are highly political, and there’s nothing wrong with a little campaigning. When you have a limited target audience (a panel of judges), a little bit of well-placed advertising can help. Judges like to be popular, too.
3. Mom and dad are right.
   Pageant people don’t get enough credit for their training:
   

   One of the unnerving parts of the competition is the personal appearances. The girls have been warned they could be photographed at any time, and Beth already got a taste of what she is in for.

   “They stuck cameras in our faces during orientation.”

   To help her poise, she has spoken to the Demopolis Pilot Club and will speak at Kiwanis. She will be using a line from the poet e.e. cummings as part of her 15-second self-expression statement.

   She also is boning up on current events.

   “Mom kind of walks around the house and says ‘Beth, what do you think of…’.” laughed Beth.

   She doesn’t even get a reprieve from her father. “I thought he was on my side,” she said in jest.

   Yeah, 15 seconds doesn’t sound like much. But how many of you aspiring and current spokespeople can nail a perfect 15 seconds at a moment’s notice? With the camera in your face? On a random topic?

   Sounds like a winning training exercise to me.

Have a safe Thanksgiving weekend, everyone.

And don’t count on the turkey to knock you out.