Straight Talk PR .com

Global Warming: Gore Eloquent in Nobel Peace Prize Speech

Al Gore's speech yesterday accepting the Nobel Peace Prize is a classic. I loved its eloquence and its imperative.

A speech is a derivative of face-to-face contact. A good speech can change the world. In the case of this particular speech, I certainly hope that it does. Al Gore is one of my heroes.

Okay, Okay! "Dell Hell" is Real

Mea culpa. Shel Israel was right. There really is a "Dell Hell."

In October 2005, I protested that the Dell Hell thread running through many blogs amounted to piling on bad reviews for a good company. Unfair, I said. Dell still provides good customer service.

But on Friday night, a crazy train of phone calls to multiple toll-free numbers handed to me by clueless Dell customer representatives (clueless because each rep had a different 800 number to which they referred me) left me with the distinct feeling I was in Dell Hell. Worse, the main number I kep trying -- a number I found on Dell's support website, could have referred me to the tech support to fix my problem. Instead, for a computer covered by a bumper-to-bumper service plan, I spent two or three hours on the phone being shuffled around.

"You know, Dell is an worldwide company," one rep told me. Not my problem, I said. It's not my job to navigate a worldwide company. It's Dell's job to navigate its own tech support system. I'm usually tolerant, but Friday night I was jerked around. I didn't like it.

On Sunday, I went to the Apple Store in Indianapolis. I'm tired of fighting. The next time I buy a computer, I think I'll switch.

It's Right Now. Do You Know What People are Blogging About Your Organization?

There are ways to monitor blogs to see what's being said about you or your organization.

ZD Net describes why and how this should be done.

Sago Mine Dusaster is a Cruel Lesson in Crisis Communications

The Sago mine disaster this week in West Virginia is a cruel, cruel call for sensible crisis communications planning by businesses and other organizations.

As Editor & Publisher recounted, the media mistakes created an emotional disaster on the order of the original disaster, an explosion in the underground mine.

I think a few crucial steps in crisis communications were lost at Sago mine. They are:

Merriam-Webster's 'Words of the Year 2005' Stem from Natural and Political Crises

The "Words of the Year 2005" from Merriam-Webster Online are surprising.

In years past, the buzzwords have tended to be drawn from culture and technology. This year, crises both natural and political seem to have been the source of our buzzwords.

Merriam-Webster's first word of the year: integrity.

The rest of the Words-of-the-Year are in the following list.

One on One: The Most Valuable Form of Communication

During the last few weeks of 2005, I was repeatedly reminded of the value of the oldest form of human communication. This form of communication is low-tech and high-touch. It can be enhanced by fancy strategic communication planning and the latest technology. But none of that is needed for it to work.

This technique is one-on-one communication as well as its potent variant, face-to-face communication.

As a child of and an alumnus of the mass media, I have always argued in a knee-jerk way that the exact opposite of the ways in which I was instructed and inculcated could turn out to be the most powerful. Mass media is one-way communication, tradtionally. (Yes, mass media now often embraces feedback, but the main thrust is one-way communication.) One-on-one communication is two-way.

Mass media is one-to-many communication, with all the foibles of trying to transmit one exact-same message to hundreds, thousands, or millions of recipients -- and hoping they each receive it the same way, as they perceive it. One-on-one communication is customizable, flexible, and offers multiple opportunities for clarification of message and perception.

I have often told clients that the right one-on-one communication on any given day is better than the most successful news release, news conference, or mass-media interview. It was a good line, but I'm not sure that I ever believed it to the depths equivalent to the frequency with which I said it.

Rumors Fly When The Bloggers Blog Your Business or Organization. Just Ask the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel.

As an afternoon newspaper, the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News Sentinel is prone to being the subject of rumors. Circulation is dropping, in many ways the Internet has replaced the need for afternoon newspapers (morning newspapers, watch out!), and newsrooms rarely keep secrets well.

Stir it all together and you get a business problem that becomes the subject of intense community interest, even as the community -- by any objective standard -- is in the process of rejecting the product, no matter how good it is. When I was at the Indianapolis News and before that at the Raleigh (N.C.) Times, both now-defunct afternoon dailies, I'd tell people, "I work for the smaller but better newspaper in town." And I believed it, which made their demise hard to take.

But this post is not so much about sentimentality toward newspapers. It's about the free-wheeling nature of the Internet, especially about the rise of blogs, and how your business can be under the microscope -- iif not under attack -- before you know it.

IIn Fort Wayne, the story started with a no-attributed-sources story by the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly speculating that the News-Sentinel would convert to a multi-media online publication. It was picked up in the blogosphere by two blogs (click for Fort Wayne Observed - click for Indiana Parley). The editorial page editor of the News-Sentinel entered a blog entry to loudly deny the stories. His counterpart at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, while admittedly not privy to his competitor's plans, contributed a useful post on his own blog setting the whole matter in perspective vis-a-vis the newspaper industry nationally.

The story is covered on a new blog called "TRIB," which stands for "The Indiana Review of Blogs."

Blogs and Business: The Downside

The blogosphere in Indiana and the nation is growing rapidly. Its impact on Hoosier businesses may be powerful, but the jury is still out.

Here's a raw example of how blogging by seasoned professionals -- in this case, p.r. experts writing a book about business and blogging -- can louse up a business' good name.

I have a message for Shel Israel and Robert Scoble: Your book about blogging has some superb points in it and may become a standard work on the subject (to the extent any work is longlasting in today's online world).

But your rant against Dell doesn't seem warranted. Your personal experience is like mine: Good computers, good support, a computer system that works as a tool to extend my own reach rather than working as an impediment to my goals. That sounds like a good thing. Indeed, my three-year-old Dell Inspiron 4150 laptop is far more to my liking than much newer machines with similar horsepower.

So why knock a good thing? If your buds have a problem, let them complain. Your complaint strikes me as opportunistic and an attempt to draw attention to yourselves and your book. It is, in effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy: Dell is bad because we blog that it is bad.

This jaded outlook is no better for the greater good than the reporters who truly persue the "gotcha" tactics I wrote about in a post earlier today.

End of my counter-rant!

Jet Blue Shows the Way to 21st Century Crisis Communications

For years, one of my favorite pieces of humor was Tom Lehrer's That Was the Year That Was: 1965, a hilarious send-up of public affairs that year, pressed onto a 33 rpm LP record in the years before the satire and comedy troupes of Second City, Capitol Steps, Saturday Night Live, and even Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. And my all time favorite song from the album was the song in which a fighter pilot, figuring World War III would be very short indeed, suggested his mom just watch the whole thing on TV.

Well, last week, it wasn't war -- but it was a crisis involving flying machines. And when the Jet Blue airliner skidded to a stop at LAX in a shower of sparks, you can be sure that across the nation, Mom, Dad, spouses, co-workers, and the simply curious were watching in real time.

What was most remarkable, perhaps, as Scott McCartney explores in his "Middle Seat" column in the Wall Street Journal [paid subscription required], was the situation in which passengers on the aircraft found that they were able to watch themselves on the on-board TV.