Author: Martin Keller

Remember the scene in Network where the news anchor Howard Beale (played deliciously by Peter French) shouts his famous line, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”? This past summer thousands of Target shoppers expressed that same sentiment online when they found out their favorite general store had donated piles of cash ($150,000) to an organization that supports Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, whose tax policies Target said it liked, but who also holds anti-gay views and a few other controversial opinions, according to the Star Tribune:

“Emmer opposes gay marriage and abortion, supports Arizona’s immigration law, and previously has proposed chemically castrating sex offenders and steering state money away from AIDS prevention programs.” Insert your political reaction thought balloon here….

Of course big companies make donations all the time to politicians both sides of the aisle to cover their ah, clout with law makers. But the reaction to Target’s influence-peddling gift met an almost immediate Social Network avalanche and a tsunami of trad media as well. Some 58,000 Facebook friends joined together and called for a national boycott, plus the story generated more negative news coverage in August than five years worth of PR expenses paid to big flak companies to try and prevent that from ever happening. Once this Emmer thing went viral, it was all over for the Bullseye except for the back peddling.

On the other hand, the Jet Blue story about their employee slipping out on the job down the emergency chute was more contained by the low-cost airline, due to some extent by the way true Blue handled the story online, if you believe this analysis from Social Times below (and I do because in the age of sensational news reporting and crowd sourcing where almost anything can become “newsworthy” if enough people are paying attention to it, you need to take the air out of some stories quickly):

“The majority of media analysts felt JetBlue was sitting on a ticking PR time bomb by keeping silent. Finally, two days later, JetBlue posted 140 words on their blog with a mixture of tongue-in-cheek, self-depreciation and a reference to the cult movie Office Space.

How did JetBlue fare in the court of everyone’s opinion on the social web? Sit back and learn, because JetBlue nailed it. Its response was notable for four things:

1. Acknowledging the weirdness of the situation rather than its seriousness may have kept the social media conversation away from topics that could have turned critical of JetBlue.
2. Using a tone consistent with the JetBlue brand reinforced the brand as sufficiently resilient to weather this storm.
3. Refraining from firing off a quick defense before they knew against what they were defending may have prevented the airline of having to defend itself at all.
4. Responding only in their blog almost guaranteed wide distribution across social media.”

On the other hand – even though we have used both hands already and do not really have a third hand – can you really compare the two situations, an errant employee and an errant political donation? You decide and send me the verdict.

Yes, my friends, as that Arizona politician John McCain often says (although you wonder if he’s really their friends, like on Facebook,) that is the kind of PR strategy – or some shape of it — that every company large and small needs to have available for handling issues in a social media world. You can read the whole Social Times post here:

http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/08/jetblue-social-media/

Given the pervasive nature of communications online, you should start planning that strategy now. And, of course, don’t forget to bet on your favorite political racehorse by writing a fat check. It’s not too late. Just ask Target, which has yet to reconcile its widely accepted policy (in the business world) of spreading dollars around like fertilizer to party front runners without a visible thought to the social or ethical implications.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

They had been together for more than 12 years. Clients loved their work. Everybody on the 30+-person staff toiled really hard every day. Even though there were a couple annual parties to spread good will and share the love, something was missing…..Validation.

If the above scenario sounds like your workplace, take heed. The above company is a real one — and a virtual one to boot. Perhaps the lack of a bricks-and mortar setting — or validated parking perks everyday — added to the lack of feeling like “a real company,” a somebody, an affirmed entity. But the employees really did not feel like they were working for a bona fide company until a business profile of the company in the leading local newspaper gave them that boost, that third-party validation, that blessing from outside to make them feel “whole.”

A couple of blogs ago, we looked at an international acquisition that had prepared all of the messages and nuances for the news release. And then the question was asked, “What about the employees of the acquired company and those in the existing company?” What were they being told? A public relations strategy was quickly put in place to communicate internally with the people who report to work everyday, because employees are ultimately public people too who need to be related to with the same professionalism displayed to the company’s customers/stakeholders, media and others.

Memo to self: Create the environment and tools to do that consistently and go the extra mile when big news is in the pipeline.

Internal communications are just as important as your external ones — and in some cases, they may be even more important: How many news stories have you read about “a disgruntled former employee” doing something to avenge his or her treatment, a grudge, or a valid complaint at their former workplace?

Given the variety of channels people have today to flamethrow their pet peeves or their legit rants about where they have worked, validating employees through good communication tactics is simply a no brainer. It doesn’t even have to be a story that’s written about where they work (but that kind of third-party affirmation is priceless — and has a long shelf life). But it does need to be effective.

P.S. You probably didn’t notice — and thank you, if you did — but this blog has been on vacation recently. I should have warned you, or sent a memo around, but I didn’t, I apologize. Nothing personal. It won’t happen again, dear readers and blog constituents. It’s August. If you haven’t taken your time off, get to it. The dog days of summer have set in to be followed quickly by the fall toss of the pigskin and the ringing of the school bell.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

 

You’ve heard of the NIMBY syndrome, Not in My Back Yard. It’s never pleasant when its symptoms are first detected and it’s usually around the building of new housing that might include public housing units, or a home for the mentally challenged, a halfway house or something similar. There are plenty of examples in any city and you don’t have to look far to find them getting voted up or (usually) down.

NIMBYism showed up like the angry mob in the name your favorite angry mob-Frankenstein-like-movie-here when a client wanted to tear down a butt-ugly old and long-unoccupied bank building and build a mixed use structure that included several public housing apartments and revitalize the rest of the block with new a retail space. Said client contacted their media consultant late in the game, as they were preparing to attend their first big public meeting about the project. (As a closet screenwriter, I would offer that given the basic three-act structure of a good, well-built screenplay, we were already in the early stages of Act III and things did not look good for the home team.)

The mob had been whipped into a near frenzy about the project, with circulating flyers containing a lot of distortions and stinging calls going out to people with rant-slanted talking points and other tactics — not unlike those we’ve sadly seen slithering through the electoral process these many years. The Mob Whipper Upper (MWU) was a seasoned lobbyist at the state legislature who also had property adjacent to the site. Man, the MWU wuz good! Even one of my best friends in that ‘hood was opposed to the project based solely on the garbage put in front of him.

The big meeting featured 300-400 people from several nearby neighborhoods in a crowded church community room, and was run by a neutral third party, the League of Women Voters, who had their hands full. It was a total failure in terms of trying to win over people with our own hastily prepared materials that relied on the facts, who the owners were, and how the neighborhood would actually be better — cosmetically if nothing else — once the block was rehabbed (a city councilman who later toured the site even called it “really distressed real estate” and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about).

Nonetheless, after that first big meeting, the owners felt forced to scale back the scope of the project to just include the mixed-use building. Still, hot heads were still overheating and the MWU looked positively triumphant, as if nothing could stop the sweep of the ugly sentiment that had been purposefully generated.

The next meeting, a smaller one with the immediate neighborhood group where the new building was being proposed, also featured the city council rep from that district. Afterwards with the owners and architect and moi, who had yet to be introduced to the good gentleman, the councilman exclaimed, “This project is a PR disaster.”

“You got that right, Councilman,” I said, introducing myself as the guy in charge of the said miasma. “But we are just getting started.” He wished us well with a look that screamed, “Please don’t be seen with me in public again.”

Fast forward two months down the long and winding road: The Zoning Commission approved the project and it went forward as the NIMBY outrage faded to black once the facts got out and the public process played out. Today, the butt-ugly building is long gone. The now-attractive building has a nice real estate operation on the first floor and the apartments are all rented. The rest of the buildings on the block still look like crap, but their tawdry look just makes the new place shine so much brighter.

Here’s what we did to turn this Hindenburg flame-out into a fairly standard Space Shuttle Lift-Off — and you can do it, too:

1) We met with the editorial writers of the daily and community papers and put the facts on the table, defending the project against the MWU allegations and stressing the fact that the owners and architect all lived in the neighborhood.

Both papers’ editorial boards came out in favor of the project for all the right reasons.

2) We lined up some key interviews on public radio and a couple of commercial stations. During the public radio interview with the MWU, wherein MWU was asked about NIMBYism, the interviewer offered enough rope and MWU took it like a lunk-headed fish chasing after and biting a fancy lure. Hook!

3) We contacted daily and community reporters to cover subsequent meetings, which did not play that well in the press for the angry mob, and it quickly grew thinner and less vociferous as the drama came to a conclusion.

4) We sent out a simple direct mail piece asking people to call local government and support the project, offering the talking points that we used in our media materials.

5) The owners met with people willing to talk with them around the neighborhood. One of them, who really knew her away around the housing bureacracy and city hall, worked all her contacts and sent them our background materials when requested. In short, the client made nice ‘cuz that’s who they were.

And that’s how a PR disaster morphed into a PR triumph, which was a win ultimately for all parties, even the ones who once opposed it.

“All’s well that ends well,” the poet says (and it’s easy for him to say, he didn’t fight battle).

“Roll the credits,” adds the closet screenwriter (including the line, “No MWUs were harmed during the writing of this blog”).

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at mkeller@mediasavantcom.com, or 612-729-8585

 

Public Relations is often about telling your story to the media. But what about the people who work for you?

Making news begins at home. It’s possible to send a strong new message to the press that covers your industry, or your company if you’re a big player. But is your message to the media the same one that you are telling internally? Internal communications can sometimes get left in the margins, or not fully engaged. The complications from that scenario should be clear but some of the more obvious ones — like keeping morale high during a transitional phase or a new C-level hire — can get lost or murky in the process.

Case in point: Last year a large, privately-held US company acquired a manufacturing concern across the pond. After a series of meetings to get clear on the media points and overall strategy, a couple of us PR types looked around the room and saw the client contented as clients can get (a good thing). But then we asked, “How are you handling the news here in the US with your employee base and how are you handling it abroad inside the company that is getting acquired (in a country that was already bleeding jobs because of the ‘deep recession’)?”

The three people on the client side of the desk looked at each other and then at their PR people and their contentment turned into a sour cream-like substance. They hadn’t thought of this piece at all. After another round of discussions, all parties agreed that a clear message should be crafted for the presidents of the two merging companies to share with their employees. Each message would reflect the overall merger-and-acquisition announcement but individually there would be take-home news for the workers and their families.

For the US-based employees (who might fear that such an acquisition would mean eventual cut-backs in the labor ranks to help fund the acquisition), the message was simply, “We are expanding our footprint abroad, which will add to our ability to market and manufacture more heavily on the continent. And there will be no loss of jobs in North America.”

For the company abroad being acquired, the message was similar but the nuance was slightly different: “Given the state of the country’s economy [worse than here], we want to assure you that the new ownership does not plan any layoffs at this site, or the other operation (in another city not so far away). In fact, not only will jobs be preserved, the acquisition will create even more positions in the near-term.”

The day the news went live on the international wire at noon, employees at both organizations had already been briefed at a company meeting two hours before the announcement. When the story was reported, both messages were conveyed in the US news release and the release abroad. The coverage was overwhelmingly positive everywhere it was reported. In fact, in the country where they acquisition was done, the news tone was often jubilant!

Moral of the story: Watch your backside in all your communications. Be uniform in your messages and personalize them to your internal audiences whenever you can. It goes a long way — and you won’t have that scent of cream going sour in the employee kitchen when the big news is coming down all round the people who make it happen every day they get up and go to work for you.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at mkeller@mediasavantcom.com, or 612-729-8585

Cast a wide net. No, not fishing advice, or an Internet command. If you feel you have exhausted your outreach to conventional reporters, editors, producers and assignment desk people, despair not in your quest for coverage. Consider the freelance writer or producer. They’re out there, and they are more in demand now than ever before as media companies trudge through the recession with less staff. Of course, there are more freelancers now than ever before, too, but that’s another story.

Said companies often will backfill with a little help from the brave and noble freelancer (and these days, that can often be a former staffer who was cut or opted out). I can’t think of a section of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, for example, that doesn’t rely on one or two freelance bylines every day of the week. Knowing who they are and what they cover can be a good way to pitch your story if you’re not working with a PR agency or consultant.

Advantages to Working with Freelancers

1) Freelance writers and producers usually have tight connections to editors, upon whom they rely for work — and vice versa. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, usually grown over time that proves its worth with every publication or piece that makes its way into your local newspaper, on to a radio or TV broadcast, and into a magazine.

2) With the economy, or recovery, or whatever you want to call it taking its sweet time to make the nation whole again, it’s likely that this trend will become more commonplace. Magazines have always used an abundance of ‘lancers to fill their pages because it’s a business model that works. Newsprint and to some extent, broadcast are now embracing it.

3) Freelancers are hungry for work. Speaking from personal experience, the nonaligned scribe either is hustling to make ends meet and/or working a part time job so they can do what they love more, write or produce. If you feed them a good story, chances are they will come back to you when their own story ideas run out, or perhaps offer you as source in another piece — thus achieving one of the goals in PR: to make media aware of you enough so that they call you as source rather than your PR person. It happens. All the time.

4) Freelancers generally abide by the same rules and professional conduct of those in full time positions so there’s no need to feel that these individuals are somehow second-rate or are not to be trusted or won’t do a good job. I know a handful of freelancers that write and produce circles around their peers and I often pitch them as regularly as I do the folks “inside.” And they usually have more time to hear your pitch.

5) Freelancers can turn into staff employees overnight. When hiring freezes go away, job offers sometimes go to these individuals first. Having a good relationship with a freelancer in that case just become a huge plus for your or your organization.

Do your homework and see who’s freelancing articles in the media you need to reach. Given the many means of finding contact information on many social networking sites, or by just calling the media company where that person is contributing work, can usually get you the information you need to make the connection.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at mkeller@mediasavantcom.com, or 612-729-8585.

 

Looking for additional ways to get exposure for what you do? Consider writing an opinion or editorial essay — commonly known as an Op-Ed piece. Most business sections of the daily and weekly papers have such a space and welcome contributors who know what they are talking about. The trick is to provide insights into the industry in which you work without sounding like a self-promoting foghorn. In other words, keep the piece generally free of things that your company has done and focus more on an issue in the industry merits addressing, or something in the regular news that you can address in a meaningful and hopefully original way. You can make an aside or allude to something in your own experience but don’t dwell on it. Readers sniff out such puffery and are often put off by it.

For example, the principals of a financial staff augmentation firm were interested in looking at big-picture hiring trends — including what the advantages were for using temporary staff from both the corporate side and the consultant side.

After their PR pro did a few hours of research and put together the essay, the piece provided good insights into the developing trends in the economy and illustrated how the work force was rapidly changing, with more people wanting to work more flexible schedules, or even to work five months and take the next two off to go on a dream trip. Plus with downsizing, corporations wanted the flexibility that temps provided, too, since they could not afford top talent full time and did not have to pay benefits. The editors of the local business pages liked it too (“it’s got a lot good statistics and we love that in the business section!”) — and they did not hear any bellowing foghorn in the distance.

What did the client get out of it? A load of goodwill in the business community because many people commented to them about it and some new opportunities to discuss placing their consultants in key, but short-term, high-end financial and accounting positions. Such editorials can help position you as a leader, or “thought leader,” in your industry, and they provide great content to re-purpose to your website, to share in social networks and to use as marketing collateral (this particular company had the article reprinted and available to read in all of its meeting rooms for both potential consultants and clients to read while waiting for meetings to begin).

How does it work? Pretty easy. Find something you are passionate about in your business or industry, or that you have been giving a lot of thought to. Write a brief four-or five sentence summary of it with a catchy headline. Submit to the editor, perhaps with a link to your Bio, or a short statement about who you are and what you do. Email it. Follow up with a call a week later or so if you haven’t heard back. If you get the nod, the editor will usually give you a word count (do not exceed it, since if you make more work for him or her, they will be less inclined to take or publish another such piece). Not only do Op-Ed articles help build your credibility, they sometimes lead to the opportunity to become a regular contributor to a publication. If you get this offering, take it. You’ll be surprised how many people will read your “stuff” and maybe even call you to do business as a result.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

 

A cardinal rule in media interviews is never go off the record (and conversely, watch out for what you do say on it!). It can be dangerous for you and the reporter if you do. And you don’t have to look far in today’s news to see where setting such boundaries with journalists is a good idea. Because when they aren’t set, Generals can be forced to tender their resignations and the life of that one news story just turned into a cat with eight lives more to go.

Going off the record serves no real purpose — even though most journalists will respect it (my favorite time this happened, the reporter simply put down her pen — she wasn’t using a tape recorder — and the client told their little aside. And it didn’t really add to the telling of the main story). But some journalists won’t respect it, simply because they get lazy or careless about note taking, or forget what you said wasn’t for publication. In the rare case, an off-the-record comment can contain information that blatantly contradicts a case that you might be trying to make. Granted, this happens more in hard news stories, but even in the business world, a lot of inside information or a slip of the tongue can move things in another direction, the direction you didn’t want go.

If clients have clear messages or talking points beforehand, and even do a mock interview just to get comfortable with the process, you won’t have this problem most likely. If you are unclear of what you need to say in a particular discussion during an interview or in answering a question that seems potentially loaded, it’s okay to say, “This isn’t for attribution, but let me give some background here.” The difference between saying that and going off the record is significant. Your PR person will and can often speak for you in this framework, usually before or after the media is done talking to you and the media source needs some follow-up information or clarification.

Most clients however do not want their PR peeps speaking for them on the record. Still, others will designate them to be the spokesperson for the company, or a division, or in the case of serious family or personal matter, they will strongly need someone to handle the talking. Make sure you establish this responsibility early in your working relationship.

Looking at the public relations issues related to General McChrystal’s interview in Rolling Stone magazine makes for a pretty great case study in how not to conduct an interview — and to know when not to go on the record, let alone off it. It’s simply amazing Michael Hastings, the reporter, had as much access as he did (the military aid/flack who set this up has also filed his quitin’ papers, it turns out). As noted in the Huffington Post online today, McChrystal’s sentiments about President Obama and the perceived failure of the president’s Afghanistan war strategy were a serious negative the military media handlers should have protected against — providing they acknowledge that they are serving their Commander-in-Chief, the president elect. The Huffington Post reports:

Michael Hastings, who wrote the profile of General Stanley McChrystal for Rolling Stone, said today that he wasn’t quite sure why the general gave him the near-total access that led to the publication of explosive comments that brought about McChrystal’s resignation.

Speaking on the phone from Afghanistan to ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Hastings said he think the decision speaks to McChrsytal’s often reckless behavior:

“It was a sort of natural kind of recklessness that General McChrystal had, which has been with him through his entire career, as I understand it. And inviting me in, was a obviously a risk, as it always is when you invite a journalist in.”

DUH!

Now the military has lost a dedicated life-long general and the White House has lost another round in defense of the escalation of the conflict in, what is it they call this forlorn place with trillions of dollars in minerals and poppies, the graveyard of nations?

Reckless or candid, the McChystal comments/debacle underscore how wrong things can quickly go. The PR lessons are many and at some point, we’ll return to them again when the friendly fire has cleared and it’s safe to armchair analyze the fallout.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

 

In our last installment, we left you with a closing item about General Mills having to quickly snuff out a fake news release saying that the President of the United States (POTUS — in Secret Service talk) was investigating the company’s supply chain for alleged product recalls. The makers of many mainstream cereals like Wheaties (Breakfast of Lakers, er, Champions) and many other product lines jumped on the pseudo news release with a real one of their own, stating that it was indeed false and the authorities likewise would be investigating (but most likely not with POTUS, since he’s now up to his waist in Gulf oil and up to his nose in methane gas, plus holding the feet of BP officials to the fire of the “small people” along the gulf…. Careful, there are combustible elements here…).

This issue again calls for the critical importance of having a good crisis plan in place to handle a brand’s public reputation and good monitoring systems to track it. This kind of prank news can tank the stock of a publically traded company like General Mills and others within minutes (fortunately, the New York Stock Exchange was closed when the hokum release went out over PR Newswire). General Mills, however, did all the right things by quickly refuting the news release for what it was — in so many foodie words, phony baloney.

According to General Mills spokesperson, Tom Forsythe, quoted in the Twin Cities media, “We were the victim of a hoax. We found the false release and removed it within minutes, but even false information can still spread incredibly quickly on the Internet.” Got that right. The Internet some days seems built just for jackals and jackasses only. The lesson is that in the PR management of any company’s public face whether on the stock exchange or on the Web, the m.o. must constantly be, Remain Vigilant. What kind of protection or systems do you have in place to track what’s being said about you online, in social network channels, and elsewhere offline? This part of the PR world is often a highly specialized practice area and some firms and individuals are very good at doing it.

In this case, the jackal seemed to be attempting to manipulate the company’s stock price through the very traditional means of a PR distribution service that remains blameless in the incident. Seemingly undaunted by the fraud, the food maker’s stock rose 16 cents on Thursday, June 17, 2010 — a day after the false news, so no harm done. This time.

What’s curious about the event is that it occurred in the same week the NYSE halted trading of shares of the Washington Post, when the stock doubled in price in apparent erroneous trades — on the same day that the new “circuit breakers” to prevent such hanky panky were put in place. It’s a wiggly world and getting wigglier, especially with the global economy still bursting at the beltline and surrounded by all sorts of malodorous gasses while unseen forces try to game or crash the system.

A conspiracy theorist might have a real picnic with these two seemingly unrelated events at General Mills and the Washington Post. A conspiracy factualist — one who accepts that conspiracies do sometimes happen and not just in good movies, or good Old Europe where the small people are being trampled about by the cratering Euro — might simply just go make a sandwich, and remain vigilant.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

The last blog looked at why Public Relations should never be confused with “spin” and “hype.” Today’s edition serves up something more tasty and nutritious — one of the best resources enjoyed and highly appreciated by publicists, marketing communications folks, reporters and others. I’m talking about Help a Reporter Out — fondly known as HARO — among the many HARO-ites that utilize the FREE online service that allows reporters to post stories they’re working to PR people who then have the opportunity to pitch their clients as sources. Think of it as a killer social media PR app.

Conceived by social media guru and all around marketing/PR wiz, Peter Shankman in New York City (Google him, he’s kinda famous, is in-demand on the speaking circuit, occasionally outrageous and likes to skydive, train for the Ironman and other body-punishing disciplines), HARO is only two-plus-years old and yet its ranks have swollen to more than a 130,000 users both sides of the desk worldwide!

Three times a day, an average of 20-35 queries on subjects ranging from business to technology to life and leisure and other areas are delivered to your desktop with hungry reporters, producers and others from local newspapers to top-of-the-media-food-chain network news machines (potenially) in search of your clients. Herr Shankman floats a brief advertisement for various things with each post, from new and helpful books to professional services, cool, new or undiscovered products, and other stuff. These apparently work as powerfully as HARO’s matchmaking between PR people and media mavens. Plus they are usually a fun read since Shankman has the gift of a good scribe and the gift of gab.

There was/is a big PR news release distributor that charges a hefty fee for a similar service that doses exactly the same thing as HARO, making it out of reach for many small PR concerns with tight budgets and small staff. Not any more. HARO is a gift, don’t look it in the mouth. Subscribe today. As subscriber number 3,000-something, I have been to its mountaintop and placed a client on The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and other clients in a bunch of magazines, newspapers and websites. And I look forward to it dinging my inbox three times a day like a triple-A PR supplement that you just can’t do without.

Join the party. With the six-digit number of users, of course the competition has become fiercer — but so have the opportunities. The FREE service has been so successful that it was acquired last week by Vocus, a publicly-traded on-demand software company founded in 1992. The new buyer promises to keep it FREE and upgrade its utility even more. Stay tuned (did I mention it was FREE?!).

Now, from a fortified PR Tip to a real PR rip, in this “developing story” as they say in the real world that we will explore more on Friday: Someone today, June 16, 2010, put a phony news release on PR Newswire saying that the supply chain of General Mills — a publically traded company — was being investigated on orders from President Obama after several food product recalls. The phony news was reported by several large media orgs and later withdrawn. Talk about helping a reporter out. NOT.

Read the story here:

http://www.startribune.com/business/96474569.html?elr=KArksUUUU

We’ll chew on this more right after our Breakfast of Champions (go Celtics!) come Friday morning.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

—————————

Caterpillars spin cocoons. Spiders spin webs. Young kids sometimes spin to make themselves dizzy. Whirling dervishes definitely spin toward a higher power, and fitness clubs are fond of offering spin classes. But is PR spin?

Most of the public relations professionals that I know consider “spin” to be a pejorative term in their profession. It connotes fabricating something to influence public opinion. Facts, the troubling things that they can be, can’t be “spun” although they can be interpreted differently depending on how they are presented.

I think when people use the term spin, they really mean “position.” For example, a client once called and had an annual environmental report to release, complete with letter grades. “How do you want to spin these this year?” the client innocently asked.

What he really meant was, in what context should we put the grades out to the public, given that there were many variables that determined the grade score and numerous geographic locations that were being graded. The answer to his real question — How should we position the grades that reflect the realityof the environmental regions in question? — was relatively simple.

We would describe what each grade meant, but we would also (and more significantly) put the overall grade totals within the context of the region’s wider environment health. By positioning these markers against the larger issue, the public could get a genuine understanding about the general state of the environment, plus a good snapshot of which specific areas needed improvement, which ones had improved and which ones showed no change. Moreover, in the same news release, we would offer proven tips on how people could take personal responsibility on their own property, in their neighborhoods and their community to help make improvements in order to maintain a good grade, or to bump up the grade.

If we had approached this issue using the “spin” mindset, it would have given us license to play fast and loose with the facts and made the organization look disingenuous, if not duplicitous. Using spin, we could have resorted to subterfuge to gloss over the areas with lower grades, and we could have used hyperbole to inflate — or hype, another word often mistakenly used to describe PR — the area with strong B and A grades. The result would have been a much muddier environmental assessment that did not reflect the true status of the areas in question.

Still, pop culture continues to malign PR by equating it with spin or hype, most likely out of naïveté and general ignorance. The new “reality” show with celebrity Kim Kardashian reported today at PR Newser — a great little newsy and insightful PR trade website — is a good example of why I’m feeling a little dizzy at the moment.

The headline, “E! Launches PR Reality Show ‘The Spin Crowd,’ Produced By Kim Kardashian,” pretty much says it all. The show, allegedly about how to set up and manage red carpet events in Hollywood, readily falls so far from the realm of what most PR people do in many different capacities each day that it barely merits mentioning. And now that I’ve accidentally hyped it in this hallowed space, it’s time to go for a real spin and get some fresh air.