Communications

Hot, Flat and … intolerant (and why it’s going to change)

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Yesterday we had a book discussion on Thomas Friedman‘s Hot, Flat and Crowded.  There was a good cross section of people, and I truly enjoyed the student perspective on the key things Friedman diagnoses as the problems in the US (isolationism, infrastructure and nation building) we need to fix.

What timing! This was first of 4 sessions here at the Decision Theater, a place where we look at alternative  scenarios and sustainable futures.

The dominant metaphor in the book is the US consulate in Istanbul that was built so secure, it’s a place where “birds don’t fly.”

Having covered the technology space for awhile, this isolationist metaphor seems at odds with what’s going on in the US with regard to collaboration and connectivity. We build open source platforms for business, gaming, virtual worlds and education. We invented wikis and blogs and send the opposite message outside our borders. Obviously we are not singing from the same song sheet, –as this T-shirt at a rally reflects. (Guess who’s rally that might be?)

As we saw last night, hot, flat and intolerant is a losing proposition.

YouTube as your briefing room – State Department shows how

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Hey, whoever said the government was slow to adopt and risk averse? Take a look at what the State Department is doing, as an extension of what has been going on at DipNote for the past year.

They asked people for video questions and responded to it via video, in a briefing room at YouTube.

Sean McCormack takes your questions!

McCormack makes some excellent points in his post last Friday, saying this Briefing 2.0 strategy was not done for the expected reasons –to bypass the mainstream media:

“insisting on a 20th century world behind the walls of the State Department while the watching a 21st century world develop outside the walls is not a sustainable posture…”

I’ve never, in all my years of travel, considered connecting with diplomats and state department officials except from the other side of a piece of glass two inches thick. Who knows, it might be possible to ‘friend’ them one of these days on a social network.

In many of our organizations, we may think ourselves more user friendly and accessible than a government office, but we have our two-inch thick firewalls. It’s called standard business practice. The officers on the frontlines of our online press rooms do not take questions. They are there to tell us things, not respond.  When they put things down in print, to give us a bit of insight, it comes in the form of a boilerplate, at the bottom of a press release. Certainly not a blog post. Dipnote shames the business world into becoming more accessible.

Public Relations not a game

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This is a follow up to my post last week (“do we trust journalists?”) and how important it is to understand what they want.

I frequently come across the argument that while PR people like to be proactive about pitching stories, they don’t do a good job of targeting, and even responding. It’s often a cat-and-mouse game.

Alec Klein, professor of journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern wrote a thought-provoking piece this week on the PR game, and his experience as a journalist when trying to get the gatekeepers to be forthright. He talks of how, “when PR people essentially stonewall a reporter, all they are doing is forcing the reporter to find other ways to learn what is going on.”

Last Friday, after the Media Relations training session, I asked one of the attendees her reactions, one big take away was that reporters are not the enemy:  “We have to understand that they are just doing their job, and we could always find ways to help them improve their story,” she said. As long as you you how to talk to the media, you can turn what seems like an inquisition, into a dialogue. Bottom line: It’s not a game. Even if it seems like one, both sides need to win.

Sidebar: Speaking of which, this may be slightly academic, but in case you are interested, the Institute for Public Relations has a very good exploration on Ethics and Public Relations. It delves back into Plato’s Dialogues, truth and advocacy in the modern age.

(A shorter version of this appears in ValleyPRBlog)

Do we trust journalists?

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

I spoke to someone whom I thought might be interested in a Media Training session today. His reaction was “I don’t talk to the media. Nothing good ever comes out of it!”

Wow!

I was slightly taken aback, even though I have heard something like this before. (No, it was not Sarah Palin.) In fact, I have a mailer on my wall that announces “Don’t talk to the media…” On the reverse, is the line “until you talk to Gerard Braud.” Gerard is an IABC member I met earlier this year, who conducts this kind of thing, and his point is that you could tell an honest story, stripped of spin, and still have a great media experience.

Which brings me to the whole point of this. A survey of journalists just out (Bulldog Reporter/Techgroup International) on media relations practices. It’s an excellent insight into how journos think, what they do to connect (or avoid) PR spin, and how they stay on top of stories using social media. Among the findings:

  • Only 29% of journalists read 5 blogs or more to keep up with their beat. The positive side of this is that 75% read one blog or more. One year ago, about 26% read 5 or more blogs.
  • RSS usage us low (58.4% don’t use it), journalists abhor phone calls from PR people, and those not familiar with their media outlet.
  • Interestingly, newspapers are still a key source of news for them (so will all those newspapers-are-dead promoters stop making it seem worse than it is?), and a large number of them are big on Electronic News Kits.

So if you don’t want to share the same oxygen as journalists, at least try to make it easy to let them suck in your RSS feed from a distance. And that’s not just your from press releases, and your ‘about us’ page, but from your white papers, interviews, podcasts, blogs & thought pieces (same thing, huh?). We may not trust them, but we could trust them to do their ground work if we give them less puff pieces.

Hey, I can afford to say this because I wear two hats. I communicate with the media on behalf of whom I represent, but I also interview companies for my freelance writing.

McCain’s campaign, a lesson in why consistency matters

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I get that the ‘maverick’ label allows you to stand on any side you please.

Except that when you craft a campaign, standing for different things at different times has the makings of a communications disaster. Especially now, when it’s possible to juxtapose them.

Take these two positions. These are statements to the press, not something the press distorts.

It’s like a brand manager placing ads for product X in different newspapers positioning it as a luxury item in one market and a discount product in another, hoping that no one sees both.

Unfortunately we do.

In tough times job seekers need to expand job description

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

One more follow up to my post about what communicators could do during these tough economic times.

Annie Waite at Melcrum has an excellent post on how to look for interim positions during the downturn. The key seems to be flexibility.

I used to put it another way: that old line “It’s not on my job description” is an attitude  that we need to expel. You can’t blame people who started checking all the boxes on their job description, just to get a great performance review. But in doing this, we box ourselves into our jobs, not realizing that over a few months that job has changed.

While doing a good job of communicating how good we are in what we do, we should not unwittingly communicate how unwilling we are to do something different, daring, unexpected. It’s easy to communicate you are an out-of-the-box type of person without using that tired expression.  Here are a few simple ways:

  • Read something new. Completely outside your sphere of interest. Ask someone with that expertise to clarify what it says. It will stretch your mind, and make you more accessible should the need arise.
  • Try something different every month. It could be a tactic, a piece of software, or sit in a meeting you might normally avoid. If you’re not sure what’s possible, check Managing The Gray, an excellent way to stimulate your marketing ideas. CC Chapman’s podcast is like a Red Bull for your mind.
  • Get feedback. It’s tough for someone who  thinks he/she is an expert to ask others to give some honest feedback, but asking for feedback communicates that you are willing to learn.
  • Hang out with some really ‘weird’ people. I say this in a good way. Don’t just socialize with people like yourself. Try attending a Podcamp (there’s one this weekend in Phoenix). Have lunch with a journalist or a geek. It’s amazing what you will learn in 15 minutes! I met some retirees over coffee this morning at Einsteins, and was introduced to The Black Swan, and epistemology!