Straight Talk PR .com

Why Not Talk About It? This Economy Is A Reality Check, Even For Alfred E. Neuman

What, me worry? Given the developing economic slump in the United States, if not throughout the world, corporate blogging expert Paul Gillin thinks that even the best corporate blogs are keeping their pens -- if not their heads -- in the sand and just try to ignore our festering troubles. As Debbie Weil points out, Gillin's headline says it all: "Corporate Blogs Blather While Markets Tumble." After reviewing blogs for 15 blue-chip corporations, Gillin writes:

Between checking Marketwatch.com and commiserating with colleagues, it’s safe to say there wasn’t a lot of work getting done this week. Nervous investors flocked to the Web for some sign that the turmoil in the financial markets would soon die down. With so much attention riveted on the future of the economy, this seems an ideal time for corporations to use their blogs to provide guidance and reassurance, or at least perspective, on the Wall Street meltdown. However, a quick tour of 15 prominent sites demonstrated that they were doing anything but that.

Three companies from Gillin's research are worth calling out because they bucked the trend set by the rest.

1. General Motors, which is famously synonymous with the U.S. economy, has a recent post on its highly regarded FastLane Blog containing a YouTube clip from CEO Rick Wagoner favoring federal financial intervention in the form of loans to automakers to meet fuel economy mandates. Give GM lots of credit for currency and realpolitik on this one.
2. The BenettonTalk blog has had two entries on the crisis. On Sept. 30, Benetton's blog addressed the economy's disintegration. And the next day, the economy was back with a blog review of Americatown, an HBO serial that looks at a near-term future in which U.S. economic dominance has waned.
3. PriceWaterhouseCoopers addresses the crisis from the standpoint of corporate directors.

On the other hand, Southwest Airlines, whose Nuts about Southwest blog just won the best blog award for the second year from PR News, has said little about the financial markets crisis. I agree with Gillin's conclusion about the need for straight talk and clarity about the economy and our roles in it. Here's how Gillin concludes his review:

My point isn’t to ridicule these companies as much as it is to demonstrate how far we still have to go in achieving the culture of openness that new media enables. Here was an opportunity for some of America’s most respected corporations to offer guidance and thought leadership to frightened consumers. Instead, most have chosen to serve up the same old happy-talk mush they’ve delivered for years. That’s their right, but that isn’t leadership. These are historic times that offer businesses the chance to break through the noise and do something daring and different. So far, corporate America has fumbled the opportunity. Perhaps, as the economic picture becomes clearer, some will start talking with their customers instead of marketing at them. That would be a welcome development.

It's Okay. U.S. Steel Didn't Expect an Invite to Al Gore's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Today is the day former U.S. Vice President Al Gore accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, for his work to alert the world to the dangers of global warming.

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune carried a report about three heavy-duty polluters on Chicago's doorstep in Northwest Indiana -- and on the shores of Lake Michigan, too. The three facilities are U.S. Steel Gary Works, Mittal Steel USA Indiana Harbor West (East Chicago), and BP Products North America Whiting.

Two of the companies took the not-entirely-welcome-but-documented environmental reporting by the newspaper in stride. But the third company seems to have a wee victim complex, seeing the Tribune as a persecutor, to wit:

In response to questions, BP and Mittal said they have steadily reduced pollution from their facilities. U.S. Steel spokesman John Armstrong sent a one-sentence e-mail declining comment and accusing the Tribune of "malicious misreporting and journalistic terrorism."

You know, "denial" is a river in Egypt, and all that jazz.

(cross-posted to Those "I" States)

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.

We Interrupt This P.R. Blog for an Indiana Politics Break: (1) Gary Mayoral Election and (2) *Sigh* Major Moves, Again.

Two quick comments on the p.r. perceptions of Indiana and its politics. We're going to (1) take a surprising twist on the surprising mayoral developments in Gary and then (2) we're going to return, God help us all, to the bipartisan gridlock on the Major Moves transportation highway funding program.

As always with these Hoosier-centric posts, readers are encouraged to move along if the minutae of Indiana state affairs is of no interest.

The Old Economy: Chrysler is Too Big to Fail. The New Economy: Microsoft is Too Big to Be Prompt

Courtesy of Valleywag, a saucy blog that covers the down and dirty of software and hardware chiefly in California's Silicon Valley, comes a report that Microsoft is again delaying the debut of its new Windows operating system, named "Vista."

It's a classic p.r. problem, if not a nightmare: Over promising and under delivering. Microsoft is legendary for doing so.

Back East, when I was growing up, we used to say that the timetable for the Long Island Railroad was the best fiction published in America. With New York suburban railroads running mostly according to schedule these days, the "best fiction published in America" now seems to be news releases from Microsoft announcing timetables for product releases, especially operating systems.

In the Old Economy, we said Chrysler was "too big to fail."

In the New Economy, we might say that Microsoft is "too big to be prompt."

They can get away with it. All of us with corporate or personal incomes lower than Bill Gates Jr. and Microsoft, respectively, cannot get away with it. We'll lose every time we try.




Technorati Tags: Microsoft Chrysler Valleywag timetable Bill Gates

Start Up RV-1, Governor, Because Major Moves Needs a Major P.R. Road Trip

Thirty hours after Gov. Mitch Daniels' divisive "Major Moves" highway and job development plan was approved on a one-vote margin in the General Assembly, an evaluation from a public relations perspective is clear.

The governor still has a sales job to do. I hope he plans it strategically, and travels with an open mind and open ears. I hope that he takes lots of notes on tweaks in the plan that will mollify Hoosiers and can be implemented administratively or with passage of enabling legislation next year.

The reason that Mitch Daniels is in the odd position of selling his plan after the Legislature approved it is that while Major Moves has merit, the selling of it (and the selling of criticism of it, for that matter) can only be described as botched from the beginning.

P.R. Ethics Gone Crazy

Six AM, the blog of Richard Edelman of Edeman Public Relations points out a dangerous trend in p.r. -- linking public relations to shadowy payments for community relations as well as payoffs to local reporters.

Was I naive enough to think this stuff doesn't happen in America?

Sayeth Edelman in a January 20, 2006, post:

Another wonderful morning reading about the sleazy behavior of a so-called PR firm paying off a journalist to write favorably about a client. The stories in USA Today and the NY Times describe a pay-for-play arrangement organized by PR firm The Lewis Group with journalist Audry Lewis, a freelance journalist who received $10,000 for articles contributed to the Birmingham Times about former HealthSouth Richard Scrushy, on trial for defrauding investors. The Associated Press also reports that the Lewis Group paid a local pastor, Rev. Herman Henderson, to "help bring fellow black preachers into the courtroom in a bid to sway the mostly black jury in Scrushy's favor." A further complication--the PR firm is headed by Jesse Lewis Sr., founder of the Birmingham Times newspaper, whose editor is his son, James Lewis. To top it off, Charles Russell, described by the NY Times as a "prominent Denver based crisis communications consultant" working with Mr. Scrushy, also provided compensation ($2,500) to the journalist, for what Russell said was "freelance community relations work."

This sleazy arrangement was somewhat comically described by the editor, James Lewis, in the New York Times. He claims not to have known that the reporter was being paid, considering her a "community contributor" who was a classic citizen journalist. "Had I known the young lady was being paid by somebody, I'd have called Richard Scrushy and told him he could have bought an ad for a lot less money."

Isn't that exactly the point? Our business is being dragged down by an erosion of the hard and fast line between advertising and public relations. We don't buy space and we don't pay off journalists. We don't engage in murky relationships that are positioned with such code words as "doing community relations work."

Hat tip to Daily 'Dog for pointing the way to this commentary.

Technorati Tags: Edelman ethics "public relations" payoffs

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:

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!