Public Relations

Op-ed video proves Sarah Palin a wild card

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Stanford aw professor, Lawrence Lessig, has a great analysis of why Sarah Palin doesn’t stack up against other VPs in history (a claim she made to ABC’s Charlie Gibson recently).

He compares the experience factor to a long line of vice presidents, and concludes that yes she may be courageous and smart, but not enough to meet the challenges today.

Why is this interesting? Not just because this is an erudite response to a prepared (read: spun) answer for the media. But because this is a YouTube response that moves the news story (linked to and viewed more than 235,000 times on YouTube) forward.

Much of the media coverage of the candidates doesn’t get to this kind of detail. It’s amazing what those outside the realm of journalism can do with a story. Sure Lessig weighs in at the end, making it an Op-ed video. But it’s a lot more valid (and dare I say entertaining) than seeing governor Palin completely blanking out over the question about the “Bush doctrine.”

Tipping points, “drill baby drill,” and journalism

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

At the Sustainability Summit today, outside of the lofty discussions around  tipping points (are we there yet?), coalitions (enough tossing bombs at each other), and sustainability was the need for leadership.

As I speculated yesterday, there was an open call for those in the media to drive this train. To up the ante in a different way –explaining to consumers what the policy alternatives mean to them. To bring some clarity. Ah! Media leadership. Not exactly out of the ambit of an industry previously accused of ‘agenda setting.’

A telling quote from the session about the message we need to spread:

“Drill, baby drill” should include “change, baby change!”

“Rumor” about Jobs, a symptom of things to come

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Steve Jobs brushed it off with a slide. He used the Mark Twain line to note that the rumor of his death had been greatly exaggerated.

The rumor, was not a rumor but a publishing mistake –going live with a story that should have been behind a firewall. Bloomberg is not the first to make this new-media error.

The copy had the usual safeguards: “HOLD FOR RELEASE – DO NOT USE – HOLD FOR RELEASE – DO NOT USE.” There were placeholders such as “IF STOCK DROPS” leading into a sentence “…The decline is no surprise to investors…” All good intentioned.

But in the rush to do things to meet unforgiving deadlines, to hit the newsstands, and sate the digital newsfeeds, publishing must take these risks. Are we moving too fast, where we might accidentally push the button that could affect the stock price of a company?

Rumors –especially the online kind– are nothing new. United Airlines’ stock was a victim of a rumor just this week, while Yahoo! (temporarily) benefitted from the Microsoft takeover rumor that turned out to be more than a rumor.

Rumor is being slipped into the PR toolbox because it goes well with viral. Recently, there was one about the –ready for this?- Apple Nano iPhone. If you replace “rumor” with “forecast” a lot of this might make sense. The Nano iPhone story was based on a “forecast” using “unnamed sources in the supply channel.”

As we accelerate our marketing, our PR and how we generate news about organizations we represent, news, forecasting and speculating could begin to blur.

Dan Lyons, who once created the now-retired Fake Steve blog, didn’t mince his words describing Gawker, which republished the Bloomberg gaffe as “filthy hacks,” ending also with “Great work, Bloomberg. You dopes.”

Wake-up call for “DOS-based’ PRSA

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

My fellow blogger, Len Gutman at ValleyPRBlog is truly incensed by his profession’s approach to social media. I would have usually saved this quote for my Quotes of the week, but it’s too important to let it go. Here’s what Len says.

“The PRSA Web site is an embarrassment to the profession in terms of style and content. No social media strategy, no blogs, not even any discussion boards as far as I can tell. Is the site DOS-based?”

And here is the full post –I mean rant.

Image is everything. Beijing we don’t have a problem

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

So easy to criticize lip-syncing, now that the news is out that Lin Miaoke (the girl on the right) who ‘sang’ at the opening ceremony, didn’t. She was simply mouthing the words from Yang Peiyi (left).

“The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation,” the music designer Chen Qigang has observed.

I understand the transparency/ethics brouhaha. But when we get to this level of production, since this is ‘theater’ after all, what’s real and what’s fake? Wasn’t most of what happened on the massive stage an analog-to-digital suspension of disbelief?

Before you rant about the fakeness of it all (al la Milli Vanilli) consider too that the pyrotechnic creation of  29 footsteps leading up to the opening event was –for want of a better word, and I don’t mean this badly– fabricated using CGI for the billions of TV viewers. It was part real, part fake.  No different from how special effects around major events are staged, pre-made, and whatever Thesaurus word you can find to fit.

It’s all about the right image, whether we call it advertising, marketing or an opening ceremony. So give Beijing a break.

Amanda Beard’s PETA stunt foiled

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Poor Amanda. She may mean well, standing up for other creatures in the water and outside, on behalf of PETA.

But someone should have told her that when you plan to pull off a media stunt, it’s best to keep things under wraps until the final moment. Especially since nudity was going to be involved. Especially since PETA has had its sights on China and vice versa.

Like I said before, Beijing is going to be a venue filled with many controversial stories. It’s already begun, with the U.S. cyclist team apologizing for what was not exactly a stunt but a bad PR move. In this context, a swimmer planning to show skin outside of the Water Cube is not exactly a smart move.

Maybe she gets it, now quoted as saying “PETA is a little more risque, a little more out there …That’s not me. That’s not my tactic.”

Really?

Forrester’s acquisition shows research matters

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

It didn’t get the same dog-eat-dog coverage that Microsoft has been receiving, attempting to acquire Yahoo! Research, unlike Search, isn’t sexy. But we all lean on it one way or another.

The acquisition of JupiterResearch by Forrester Research tells us that in a downturn, especially when things are not looking great for the economy, research matters.

Forrester knows how to make numbers relevant. It reports on things like “Ideas that influence buyers and markets” and all things related to marketing and strategy. To many of us in marketing, Forrester and Jupiter were the archetypal ‘frenemies’ — you liked the fact that they competed hard; there was no either/or.

This comes through from a post by Jupiter analyst, David Schatsky: “We have not always seen things the same way, and we have scoffed at times at some of Forrester’s market forecasts and bold pronouncements on the future. But Forrester has a lot of smart people, and has gotten a lot right. And they have executed their business strategy masterfully.” Frenemy talk.

Interesting fact: Jupiter was in the social media scene long before Forrester. When Forrester’s Charlene Li (who has since left the company) started a blog in 2004, research director David Card had this to say: “But Forrester is about a couple years behind Jupiter Research on the weblog front. Some of the Jupiter analysts have been writing weblogs since 2002.”

Quotes for the week ending 2 August, 2008

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“The humidity is really something here, you are dripping of sweat in a few minutes ..I guess i should not be complaining at all about humidity, being from Delhi, India.”

Rajyavardhan Rathore, Indian shooter, one of the Lenovo-sponsored bloggers, having just landed at the Olympic village in Beijing.

“I suggest someone be kind and bring an Airport Express or other Wifi router and share the Internet love.”

Andrew Lih, commenting on the claim that internet access in the Olympic village is not free nor cheap.

“Beijingoism”

One word re-used by The Economist magazine this week to describe what it calls a ‘virulently assertive strain of nationalism’ mixed with feelings of diplomatic triumph. In December last year, the article on the Challenge of Beijingoism, called the Olympic preparations a ‘colossal makeover.’

“When I first broached the idea of doing YouTube some people looked at me as though I must have completely lost the plot.”

Queen Rania of Jordan, on using her own YouTube channel to address important issues.

“Even though I am avidly digital, my devotion is not pure-play. There are six print news and culture magazines entering my household … — and of course the thump of a daily newspaper to my doorstep.”

Kendall Allen, on balancing old and new media as the news business goes digital.

“Come like you did for Don Bolles; come to Phoenix and stop this madness.”

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, telling the national media to scrutinize Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration sweeps like the way it focused on Bolles, an investigative journalist killed by a car bomb.

“You’ll get respect from providing the media what they need, and writing in AP Style is just icing on the cake.”

Charlotte Risch, at ValleyPRBlog, on whether journalists care or tear their hair out over AP style.

The end of anachronism? SEC could change Internet disclosure law

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

It’s been more than a year since Sun Microsystem’s Jonathan Schwartz complained about the Securities and Exchange Commission being slow to recognize that the Internet exists. He and others lobbied for changes to Regulation FD, a 1934 law about guidance and disclosure to investors.

Why wouldn’t blogs serve the role of a press release, he asked? He put it much better than that:

“we have to hold an anachronistic telephonic conference call, or issue an equivalently anachronistic press release, so that the (not so anachronistic) Wall Street Journal can disseminate the news.”

This week, there was a breakthrough. The SEC’s Special Counsel recommended that the SEC give some leeway with an ‘interpretive release’ so that companies could use web sites and electronic channels to release public information.

Too bad the announcement came via this long, convoluted press release from the SEC. I guess they don’t have someone like Cabinet secretary Mike Leavitt to bring some clarity to this via digital means.

Schwartz hasn’t commented on it yet.


McCain caught between rock-star and hard place

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

The news about John McCain’s campaign isn’t looking good. Or positive. The folks directing marketing communications have to juggle between keeping too many metaphors alive: Maverick, fighter, experienced politician etc. They forget McCain has another metaphor: celebrity — for the right reasons.

The trouble with going after Obama with the latest round of attack ads is that it earns him the metaphor that sticks too fast: desperate.

It doesn’t help when the media, that used to be supercharged with maverick-ism, is not so enamored with the tactic. The dirty little secret, however, is that the media loves it. It gives the campaign coverage a lot of juicy bits to savor. So why the McCain campaign serves up these silly hors deurs (like the Brittany/Hilton analogy) beats me. The public already know that Obama is a rock-star, politics aside.

In the end, since I am more interested in positioning not politics, McCain’s brand that the media loves is more durable, and he needs not try so hard to reposition the rock star. If his campaign lets McCain be McCain, he would pick a different kind of fight, the kind of fight he’s best known for –on policy. No glitzy Euro photo ops required.

No dumb YouTube videos, too.