Catching Flack

Scott McClellan is going to be rich man. The former Bush press secretary’s about-face regarding what he and the White House said while he was Bush’s spokesman will make his book fly off the shelves and will probably double his speaking fee (and the demand for his services).

It’s safe to say that if McClellan had continued to parrot the party line in his book, it would not have been as good for business.

In order to cash in, though, McClellan had throw the PR industry under a bus. Thanks for the push, Scott.

Here’s just a sample of the fallout:

Anderson Cooper on CNN this week: “Isn’t this the job of PR people to spin constantly? Wasn’t lying for the administration his job?”

Actually, no. Believe it or not, most PR people, most of the time, are not lying outright about their company or their client. They may be shading the truth, putting it in its best light, omitting negative information, but they’re not constantly lying. And before you get a good chuckle out of the sentence above, who among us doesn’t want their story presented in its best light?

The PR industry has a code of ethics.  One of the values is honesty:

We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public.

David Vossbrink, former spokesman for ex-San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, says he adhered to the following four principles in his job:

1. Tell the truth
2. Represent somebody or something you respect
3. Answer all calls
4. Never become the story yourself

Said Vossbrink: “Looks like our friend Scott missed at least three of these.”

The Strategic Public Relations Center at USC has released its annual study of Generally Accepted Practices in internal PR departments, and it is chock-full of insights that should be valuable both to inside communicators and outside consultants.

The study looks at practices across-the-board including budgets, evaluation, reporting lines, use of outside agencies, management’s perceptions of PR, PR activities and integration with other departments. Over 500 internal communicators took part in the study, including participants from public and private companies as well as governmental agencies and non-profits.

The purposes of the study were as follows:

• Assess the effectiveness of PR techniques
• Develop new techniques
• Maximize recognition among senior management of the value of effective, ethical techniques
• Help to define the evolving role of PR
• Elevate the skills of practitioners

It’s a massive and thorough review of current best practices — so much so that I will break it down for you starting next week in a series of posts that summarize the findings and best practices in each of the categories above.

But if you want to get a head start, you can download the whole thing yourself here.

Porter Novelli trendspotter Marian Salzman spots trends for a living. In a recent interview, she shared some of her secrets for identifying the latest craze (UPDATE: Salzman sent her white paper to Catching Flack: Porter Novelli’s 10 Trends)

• There are basically three stages involving trends related to brand stewardship. The first is “discovery.” This is when you ask yourself, “Did I just” see that? Is there something new here? For example, when I introduced online market research through Cyberdialogue, I asked myself why we needed to do focus groups face to face. Why couldn’t we just do it online and around the world? That was a “Wow!” moment—a real “Did I just” find a way to get real–time consumer feedback worldwide? We got rights to do online research from America Online and created focus groups in cyberspace.

• The second stage is “experimentation.” This is when you ask yourself whether you believe in the idea and you set about determining whether it’s feasible. To do that, you have to experiment. For example, when I introduced the concept of “metrosexual” to the market, I asked myself if it was just crazy PR news–making fodder. No, it wasn’t. We were working on an Italian beer and it became clear this was a real marketing insight that could help drive consumption of a blond beer called Peroni.

• The third stage is “acceptance and news–making.” This is where a trend becomes a popular press kind of thing. You read about it in places like The Economist and The New York Times style pages—but what I’m really talking about here is the trend showing up in places like the morning shows. That’s when you know it’s taking off. The idea or trend moves quickly from “Aha!” to part of the national conversation and water cooler talk. By this stage, you already should have had a branding strategy in place based on your ability to have spotted that trend before others outside your market.

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Wondering which blogs journalists themselves find most valuable? Brodeur Strategies and Marketwire did an online survey. “We did the study because we wanted to help clients better understand the interplay between online news activity and journalism. We know who the traditional reporters are that cover our clients’ industries and beats but we need to better understand where they’re getting their information online.” (Jerry Johnson, executive vice president, Brodeur Strategies)

Here are the results:

Lifestyle journalists:

• TMZ
• Perez Hilton
• MSN Lifestyle
• AOL Living

Political journalists:

• Huffington Post
• Real Clear Politics
• Talking Points Memo
• Daily Kos

Tech journalists:

• Engadget
• Gizmodo
• Boing Boing
• Arstechnica
• GigaOm

Travel journalists:

• Tripadvisor
• Frommers
• Forbes Traveler
• Travel Channel
• Yahoo! Travel

Healthcare journalists:

• NIH
• WebMD
• Mayo Clinic
• MSN Health

While it’s not certain that there will be a broad and prolonged economic downturn, there are already signs of weakness and the first reports of layoffs at PR agencies are starting to roll in.  Is your agency ready to withstand the downturn?

According to PR agency management experts Bruce Bishop and Rick Gould, the key to surviving a downturn isn’t getting more clients, it’s managing your agency’s personnel and finances better. More clients wouldn’t hurt, of course, but managing your expenses better and making your team more productive are also crucial steps toward strengthening your firm.

Steps to take include:

• Cull your client base (yes, fire unprofitable clients and poor credit risks)
• Cull your least-productive staff if you need to cut, but try to keep your best people, even if you have to give them raises and temporarily trim your profit margin
• Try to keep your agency intact, as it may be in a stronger position to pick up business coming out of the downturn

Bishop and Gould will join me on a Bulldog Reporter PR Management Roundtable on Friday, June 6 at 1 pm Eastern (10 am Pacific) for a full hour of solid agency management strategies for not only surviving a possible downturn but also strengthening your agency management in the long-term.

Some of their other insights:

• To run an agency well, you need strong financial controls and solid cash flow from clients
• Keep a close eye on non-compensation expenses: keep rent below 8% of sales, business development below 5% and everything else in total below 7% of sales.
• Communicate your financial goals to your staff — remember, you’re running a business and they work for one

What do Dell, Panasonic, Hormel, H&R Block and Zappos.com have in common? They are all actively monitoring what’s being said about them on Twitter, the micro-blogging site where people post very short bursts of opinion, information and other marginalia.

If these companies have figured out Twitter, it’s time for your company to understand it too. For a primer on Twitter, here’s a new BusinessWeek article on it. There’s also a very helpful companion slide show.

Twitter is the latest in short-attention-span uses of the Internet — it’s like Instant Messaging except you post it publicly instead of just sending it to one person or a small group. You don’t post to the whole world, though — you build a community of people who are “following” your posts, and whose posts you are “following.” But you don’t have to ask permission to follow someone’s posts — you just add them to your feed.

In addition to companies monitoring Twitter, journalists are using it too, to get story ideas and to take pitches from PR people.

You don’t have to become a Twitterer yourself. I keep trying to get into it and so far, I can’t — I just don’t want to share my thoughts with the world every few minutes, or even in short bursts. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel like I should have a handle on it, and you should too — if only to avoid embarrassment when your boss says something like, “What’s Twitter, and should we be using it?”

PS — Robert Scoble passes along this helpful post, 101 Everyday Uses for Twitter.

Last week, we talked about how President Bush was breaking new ground in doing the first Presidential on-camera online only interview. This week the news is about the Republican who wants to succeed him, John McCain, and his creative blogger relations strategy. McCain is scheduling briefings with left-wing bloggers like those from Talking Points Memo and The Huffington Post and single-issue bloggers, such as health-care bloggers A Chronic Dose and Med Gadget.

McCain has two big issues to overcome in the general election:

1. His close ties to the current unpopular administration
2. The perception that he is too old and out of touch to be President

This strategy seems to be a smart way to address both issues head-on [again, ed. note: this isn't a political blog. It's about 'smart ways to win the PR game' and this is another example]. McCain has always been an independent thinker, so this strategy doesn’t come as a complete surprise, but it does represent some genuinely creative thinking that could sway some voters.

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Feeling a syngergistic need to multi-task? Hoping to have a results-oriented week full of out-of-the-box thinking? Want to take your PR writing and corporate-speak to the next level? Then here’s a crib sheet for you: a fresh article on the latest in corporate and PR buzzwords, courtesy of PRSA’s Tactics and Strategies.

Here are a few of the gems of corporate-speak:

• Run it up the flag pole
• Democratization
• No bad ideas
• Raising the bar
• The next level
• Bottom-line results
• Results-oriented

Writer Tim O’Brien added a second list just for PR and marketing practitioners, including:

• Targeted communications
• Internal clients
• Media landscape
• Engaging our audiences

I think you’ll find O’Brien’s list to be a fully-scalable, integrated solution to your buzzword needs. But if you think he missed something, chime in and post your own favorites here!

Some companies expend a lot of energy to fill out applications to be listed among the “most admired” or “the best places to work.” But do these lists really impact the business in any meaningful way, or are they effectively make-work projects for the PR department?

Burson-Marsteller came out with a list of the most sought-after lists to be listed on (got that?), including such lists as Fortune’s “most admired” and BusinessWeek’s Best Global Brands.

Aside from the “best places to work” that might sway some jobseekers, I just don’t see what value these lists have. I’m sure it feeds the egos in the C-suite and marketing departments, and may be an excuse for a cake-and-ice-cream celebration, but does it impact the company’s ability to generate leads, snag customers or boost sales? And on the flip side, does it hurt companies who don’t make the list?

George Bush’s online on-camera interview this week on the web site Politico marks a turning point in the use of the media — one that the C-suite ought to take note of.

The interview itself is unremarkable — it’s the decision to do an interview online that’s worth noting. Somewhere in the White House communications machinery, someone decided it was worth the President’s time to sit down for an interview that wouldn’t be seen on the major networks and cable, only online. That’s significant.

In terms of national politics, you can be sure it’s not the last time a President will be interviewed exclusively online — national politicians are actually a bit more willing to try to reach audiences through new media than business executives.

Where this development really ought to reverberate is in the executive suites of American corporations. That’s where the old media hold-outs are holed up.

Forward-thinking corporations are already using online communications to reach new audiences and demonstrate that they “get it” when it comes to new forms of communication. Unfortunately, that’s still a tiny minority of the business community — after all, only 13% of the Fortune 500 even have blogs. The predominant culture at this point seems to be a) stick your head in the sand and b) force your communications people to “prove” why the company should have an online PR strategy.

Well, here’s another proof point — if it’s good enough for Bush, it should be good enough for America’s business leaders.

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Need more fodder? Ted Demopoulos of the Blogging for Business site has posted his slides from a recent speech called “How to Sell Blogging to Your CEO and Clients.”