Paula Deen Situation Offers Few PR Lessons

I’m not going to rehash the whole Paula Deen saga other than to say if you’re not familiar with it, here’s an extremely superficial summary:

Paula Deen is the countrified and hugely popular Food Network star.  She’s built a mini-media empire out of her folksy, southern-style recipes and rather likable persona.  That all came crashing down over the past couple of weeks because she admitted to historically making racial slurs as part of the legal discovery process into allegations of creating a hostile workplace at one of her businesses.

Then came the bigger story, which was her disastrously failed attempts at damage control.  She posted a few YouTube videos where she apologized and came across as emotionally broken.  Her sponsors started to leave her, the latest one being Walmart.  The media has loved this story, and even made a story out of Deen not appearing for a pre-scheduled Today show interview.  The media then made a second story out of the re-scheduled interview.

Through it all, there has been arm-chair quarterbacking of how she’s handling this.

The fact is, not well. 

It’s difficult to determine what she did, what she said and what are simply allegations.  To be sure, what she already admitted is very damaging and does constitute use of the term “communications crisis.”

But she and her team have not handled it like a communications crisis. They have handled it like a middle school lunchroom drama.

Responsible crisis management in this case would require much more prudence and self-control on Deen’s part.  Let the legal process follow its course.  Issue statements.  To a certain degree, let people tweet or post on social media without feeling the need to respond to every rumor or allegation. 

Maintain self-control and accountability in your media interviews, but pick your spots. Don’t flood YouTube with what you think are sincere, if unpolished videos.  Your fans and the public are used to seeing a much more together TV personality.  YouTube is no exception.

Be more measured.  And when you’ve had time to breathe and regroup, then choose interviewers and interview settings where you can at least tell your side of the story, warts and all but without the emotionally charged, circus-like distractions.

Yes, Deen would still lose sponsors and this would still be a story.  But as it has turned out, her reaction to the story is now the bigger story, and that’s not good.  It demonstrates more of what not to do when faced with a communications crisis.  

America's Worst Charities

One of the more longstanding mantras of PR is to “do well by doing good.”  This often means factoring a social benefit into the work we do for businesses, industry organizations and others.

Cause marketing is a whole area of communications centered on building a marketing campaign around a worthy cause.  The hope is that the marketing campaign is built on a sincere interest in the cause, that its efforts to raise awareness and donations might in fact help achieve some progress for the cause, and the ratio between the inherent self-serving nature of a marketing campaign doesn’t tilt too far away from actually providing support to the cause.

A good example of a cause marketing campaign is when a soda company creates a new pink can to raise awareness of breast cancer and promises to donate a portion of sales to certain reputable breast cancer charities. 

A bad example would be if the same company created the pink can and did nothing else, assuming that simply by featuring the color pink on the can it is raising awareness of breast cancer and that is enough.  While it may help raise awareness, a situation like that does more to sell soda than anything else, since consumers tend to be conditioned nowadays to presume pink packaging is tied to financial support of certain breast cancer charities.

Unfortunately, many good causes are exploited for financial gain, and the losers are those who spend or donate their own money thinking it will go to the cause at hand.  The other ones affected are those who could easily be exploited to raise donations or sell product – in the example above that would be breast cancer survivors.

Just recently, the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting published a study that covered a comprehensive review of 6,000 charities and identified some of best and worst of the bunch.

More to the point, the criteria for what the study presumed is a well-run charity is one that maintains its own staff to raise funds, and most importantly, contributes the vast majority of those funds to activities and programs that provide a direct benefit to those who need the help.

Poorly run charities are those who tend to spend more of their budgets on outside consultants to raise funds, and who in turn gobble up the majority of the funds they raise, thereby depriving some of those who otherwise would and should benefit from the donations.

Based on a quick review of the charities who received poor ratings, it seems that the most often exploited causes and constituencies are: emergency responders; children’s charities; cancer; and military veterans.

The Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting ranked the following as the ten worst charities based on cash paid to solicitors and the percentage spent on direct cash aid to benefit recipients:

1.       Kids Wish Network

2.       Cancer Fund of America

3.       Children’s Wish Foundation International

4.       American Breast Cancer Foundation

5.       Firefighters Charitable Foundation

6.       Breast Cancer Relief Foundation

7.       International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO

8.       National Veterans Service Fund

9.       American Association of State Troopers

10.   Children’s Cancer Fund of America

Here is a link to the full report:  America’s Worst Charities

Gettysburg, 150 Years Later

I happened upon Gettysburg in much the same way the General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army did – from the south and by chance.  

In August of 1990, I was returning from the beach with my wife and one-year-old son.  We had left South Carolina two days early and didn’t really have a plan for where we’d stay on the return trip.  As new parents, we had learned to build our schedule around our son’s sleep schedule.  We assumed we’d find a nice hotel when he indicated to us he had enough of car travel. 

That happened with a loud, non-stop shriek as we rounded Washington, D.C. on the Beltway.  This was pre-GPS.  Using a paper map and our trusty AAA guide book, we ended up at a Holiday Inn in Fredrick, Maryland. 

The next morning, we decided to take a more scenic, roundabout way home and hopped on Route 15 North.  We put the map away and relied on road signs, our general sense of regional geography, and our fancy to guide us.

Our next mission was to find a place for breakfast.  We crossed into Pennsylvania where picturesque towns, farms, the roadside produce stands lined the road.

Before we could get our bearings, we started to sense we were nearing a town that wasn’t garden-variety Small Town USA.  The clues presented themselves quickly enough.  The houses and buildings were festooned with red, white and blue bunting.  A young boy “marched” alongside his parents on the sidewalk.  He wore a blue Union Army replica cowboy hat.  He carried a toy rifle over his shoulder.  There were other kids dressed and behaving similarly.  We were near Gettysburg.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, we were in fact entering the town from the same direction, using the same road the Union army used to enter one of the bloodiest battles in American history. 

We drove through the town and then decided this was as good as any place to stay.  We found a small motel to the west of the town center.  We unpacked and went to the coffee shop for breakfast.  After that, I asked the hostess if there was anything to see nearby.  She tapped the wall behind her and told me on the other side was the small building General Lee used for his headquarters during the battle.

That’s where it started for me.  Over the years I’ve gone back to Gettysburg too many times to count.

During that trip, I picked up a copy of Michael Shaara’s Civil War novel “Killer Angels.”  As soon as I finished the book, I wanted to go back to Gettysburg.  Those fields, houses, monuments would start to resonate with me on the next trip, and they did. 

As a family, we found different ways to experience Gettysburg over the years.  I remember staying at a bed and breakfast one weekend with my wife.  We went to antique shops that time. Then there was the father-son trip I took with my older son.  By then, he was one of those boys with the hats and toy guns “marching” into ice cream shops and on sidewalks. 

At different times, we saw the town while walking on our own, riding in tour buses, and driving our car with a park ranger as a tour guide.  But the experience was much more than tours.   Gettysburg is quite accessible.  You can go just about anywhere in the town or on the battlefield and get a sense of history in true three dimension.

The Jenny Wade House seemed to make an impression on my kids, who put their fingers through the hole on the kitchen door created when a musket ball shot through, killing the only civilian casualty in the entire battle. 

After my kids were exposed to American history in this way, even before they entered school, the subject of history in the classroom would be different for them than it was for me.  Most of history for me during my school years was reading from a book and listening to a teacher. My kids learned that there was more to history than dates, proclamations and orators. 

At Gettysburg, the one thing that my kids and I came to more fully understand was the impact a historical event can have on thousands and thousands of regular people, each with his or her own story, and then on the millions of people who somehow were later affected by an event the magnitude of Gettysburg.

One time, we visited the well-preserved room where President Lincoln stayed the night before delivering his famous Gettysburg Address.  A moment of time frozen to today.  We also stood where he stood when he gave that historic speech.  On several occasions, we climbed hills that soldiers climbed, and peered from behind rocks where sharpshooters once stood.

Then there was the time I stood with my kids on a hill called Little Round Top, where some of the most dramatic action of the battle took place.  We came across a group of West Point cadets and their instructors who made a special trip to this hill.

Little Round Top was at the far end of the Union line, and it could have been the weak point that lost the battle for the North.  If the federal soldiers would have fallen there, our country’s history could have been much different.  It all came down to one small regiment from Maine that was running out of ammunition and had no reasonable chance to think it would survive, let alone make a difference.  They were desperate. Their colonel Joshua Chamberlain was a college professor before the war, not a military man.  He was described as more of a romantic.  But he was smart. 

Out of options, he ordered his exhausted troops to fix bayonets and prepare for hand-to-hand combat in a counter-attack, one last ditch effort before they were to give their lives for their country.

What happened next is the stuff of legend, and it’s a case study still analyzed in America’s military academies.  Colonel Chamberlain devised a way to charge downhill, giving the Confederates the impression they were being attacked by larger numbers from all sides.  The Maine regiment held the hill and the battle was not lost.

My boys and I followed the West Pointers and listened in as they learned more about the battle.  What a sight it must have been.  Thirty cadets in military camouflage, two young boys with fake plastic swords and their camera-toting father.

Unrelated to the fighting, another interesting site we visited once was the Dwight D. Eisenhower house, the retirement home of the former World War II Allied Commander and President of the United States.  The tour of the house is interesting because actors portray Secret Service personnel, who give the tour under the pretense that it’s the early 1960s, the height of the Cold War, and the former president is away from the house for a while.

You don’t have to be a Civil War buff to enjoy a visit to the town.  It’s a slice of Americana.

So what does this have to do with PR?

I could say it’s the correlation between the military lessons of Gettysburg and what they could teach us in PR.  Always look for the high ground.  Concentrate your resources.  Never assume you know what’s happening on the other side.  Always know where the opposition is located.  But you don’t need to see Gettysburg to understand these things.

Rather, the appeal to me is much more basic.  The first days of July In 2013, Gettysburg will mark the 150^th anniversary of the battle.  Almost fittingly, its anniversary leads up to July 4^th, the most important anniversary in our nation’s history. 

Ever since I was in journalism school, I learned to appreciate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.  You know, the one that protects freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

For me, a visit to Gettysburg is a chance to see and get a feel for a place where so many from the North and the South fought for their respective causes.  Over 157,000 troops converged on that small town over those three days in 1863.  Over 50,000 died.

In November of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic Gettysburg Address, further embossing Gettysburg into the nation’s consciousness.

When I visit Gettysburg it always reminds me of the sacrifice others have made for the freedoms I enjoy.  It’s really nothing more than that. But for me, that is enough.

A Case for Accreditation in Communications

Not that infrequently, a discussion board on a PR blog or LinkedIn centers on the never-ending debate over whether PR professionals should be accredited.  Before digging into the meat of the issue and in the interest of full disclosure, I am accredited by the Public Relations Society of America, so that should tell you where this article is going.

But first I need to cover some very good reasons for NOT being accredited.  PRSA’s accreditation acronym is “APR” for Accredited in Public Relations.”  The Association of Business Communicators'  accreditation program recognizes members with the title Accredited Business Communicator or “ABC.”

If you’re considering accreditation, don’t do it for the letters after your name.  They mean nothing to most people.  Having APR or ABC on your business card is not likely to win you any more business, earn much more respect, or get for you a promotion that your own personal charisma wouldn’t get for you.

PRSA’s accreditation program is for those with at least five years’ experience.  By then, you should know most of the things in the material used to test you as part of accreditation.  Still, the process is a great refresher course where much of what you should know is consolidated and used as part of a solid professional development process.

The fact is, APR or ABC after your name not the same as having the letters, CPA, MD, JD, or even MBA after your name. Those designations reflect a significant amount more preparation than the communications accreditation processes require.

The reason accreditation will never match these other accreditation types of processes is rooted in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  In America, anyone has a right to say just about anything so long as it doesn’t interfere with another person’s health, safety and constitutionally protected rights.  In other words, you don’t need a license to express yourself.

But you do need various forms of licensure to practice medicine, law and accounting.  These are highly regulated professions. Communications is not.  That’s not to say we don’t have parameters.  A few of the federal agencies that lay down regulations that at times govern communication include: the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Patent and Trademark Office, and the Securities Exchange Commission.

So why get accredited?

My feelings have evolved on this.  I was accredited in 1990, and did it because I felt it couldn’t hurt.  Over time, I always told those who were considering accreditation was something to the effect, “It can only help, and it’s a great development experience.” 

After all, some of the best PR people I’ve ever known never bothered to get accredited and it didn’t hurt them.

But the emergence of social media has started to harden my feelings in favor of accreditation.

I follow a number of communications blogs and Web sites where PR professionals from around the world contribute content and comment on articles.  In recent years, I’ve been more exposed to more broad and diverse views on communication than I ever had been prior to the age of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

I’ve found that these are great tools to keep a finger on the pulse of the latest developments and trends affecting the communications business.  But I’ve also learned something else. 

The PR business is loaded with people completely unprepared to call themselves professional communicators in the truest sense of the word. 

To be sure, there are thousands and thousands of solid PR people across the country doing unbelievable work.  But based on what I see in the profession, there are also thousands of people who work in agencies, companies and other organizations who have PR-centric titles who can’t write, don’t understand the basics of communications strategy, don’t understand the role communicators play as problem-solvers, and quite often operate one-dimensionally. 

They may have been hired to handle social media for an organization, and they’ve never spent the time and energy to develop their newswriting skills to create good press releases.  Or they’ve been hired to handle media relations for an organization, but they haven’t learned how to apply that knowledge to crisis communications planning and response.

In order to become accredited, you have to start to take a much more comprehensive view towards communications and your work.

So, now when a younger pro asks me whether he or she should become accredited, I say ‘yes.’  I say this because I don’t have the time to mentor all of them, and there probably aren’t enough potential mentors out there to assure that people with less than five years’ experience are getting the kind of training they need.

Accreditation provides a benchmark for what every professional communicator should know by the time he or she has accumulated five years’ experience.  If you’ve been in the business that long, and can’t pass the accreditation test, there are some gaps that need to be addressed.

So, in the end, what do you get for becoming accredited?

I would compare it to being an avid runner who sets a goal to run a marathon.  You set a goal, you prepare, and in the end you do it for yourself.  And if you decide to get even more serious about your running, having the title “marathon runner” on your resume certainly can help separate you from others who have not run marathons.

This is true for communications.  If you are serious about your profession and want to make a statement about your commitment, accreditation is in line with this.

One final thought, and this one is for those who are not in the business of communications, but who may be in position to hire a communicator or a communications firm.  I’d strongly recommend that you put accreditation on your evaluation criteria. There are simply too many people who have found it easy to call themselves communicators, who may even have their own communications consultancies, who haven’t done the proper work to prepare themselves to work for you. 

Technology has made it easy for novices to package and present themselves to give the impression they know much more than they actually do.  Asking any candidate you are considering to hire whether he or she is accredited, is just one way to begin to determine who is most serious about their profession and deserving of your business.

Happy 90th Birthday, Ketchum

Ketchum is celebrating its 90^th birthday this year with a flurry of activity.  I was with the firm for ten of those years.

When I started, Ketchum was ranked among the top ten U.S. PR firms. When I left, it had a global presence, was part of the Omnicom Media Group, and was always on the short list of candidates to work for some of the world’s leading companies and brands.  That’s the business summary.

As with anything, the thing I remember most are the people I worked with and for during that time.  Because Ketchum Communications was headquartered in Pittsburgh for much of the time, and because my niche was in corporate communications, and crisis and issues management, I had the chance to do many things that mattered, at least to me.

I had the chance to work directly with agency leadership on agency initiatives.  As the company newsletter editor, I became the default archivist for the company, so as I see some of the 90^th birthday celebration activities now, I recognize photos, events and other developments that I chronicled during my time at Ketchum.

My kids were young then, so every time I went to a new city on business, I bought a snow globe with the skyline of that city to bring home as a souvenir.  Those were among the most accessible souvenirs to find at airports.  By the time I left Ketchum, my sons’ bookshelf was full of those snow globes.

Clients I had the chance to serve included the Pittsburgh Pirates, the American Iron & Steel Institute, H.J. Heinz, FedEx, law firms, accounting firms, steel companies and others.  I had the chance to do a lot of pro bono work for charities that Ketchum supported, and the firm encouraged all of us to get involved in the community on our own, which we did.

Ketchum made a commitment to its employees by investing in professional development, the pinnacle of which was Camp Ketchum, a management training boot camp in Long Boat Key, Florida.  While it was a pretty intense program, it was the most fun week I had while at the firm.

One of the things I respected about the firm was that in its mission statement, and in its core values, there was language about doing things the right way, and doing the right thing.  While the language wasn’t very flowery, it was genuine.  The firm backed it up.  I saw this first-hand throughout my time there, whether the decisions were large or small.

And that brings me back to those people.  From the newest assistant account executive to the most senior member of agency management, there was an expectation.  Generally speaking, Ketchum was positive, smart, proactive, ego-less, and dedicated to client service.  Ketchum people were more likely to be optimists than pessimists.  They knew how to laugh and when to ease the stress.  And they knew when to get down to business. 

I met some great, life-long friends while at the agency.  Some were coworkers, some were vendors, and some were clients.  I hesitate to name names here because I’m sure to leave out people who have been extremely important, but I have to mention three of Ketchum’s most visible leaders while I was there.

Larry Werner ran the Pittsburgh office.  No one was more committed to providing quality work for clients, doing things ethically, and treating people with respect.  He is one of the finest people I’ve known in the business.  He set the tone for the Pittsburgh office and had a strong influence on the national culture of the agency.   I’m only one of many in Larry’s fan club.

Jerry Voros (see the video below) was the president of Ketchum Communications, the PR  and advertising firms’ parent.  A Korean war veteran and an ex-Marine, he was one of the toughest clients I had.  I worked with him on the Ketchum News, the company newsletter.  But as tough as he was on making sure we met the highest standards of quality in the office, he was equally compassionate and caring when it came to community causes and people. 

David Drobis (again, see the video below), was the Ketchum Public Relations president.  I worked with him on several projects.  He led the agency through a period of major growth and change.  David had this unique ability to take people from many diverse backgrounds, geographic locations and even at different levels in the company and get them to work together to create something that was nothing less than great. 

I could go on about the people who I worked most closely with - those of us in the trenches - account people, administrative people, everyone.  The people made going to work every day a pleasure.  Just thinking about them brings a smile.

When I left Ketchum to manage a corporate communications function, I took the Ketchum approach to communications with me.  And since I started O’Brien Communications, not a day has gone by that I haven’t tapped the Ketchum way to meet client expectations and business objectives.

So it is with the utmost sincerity that I’d like to wish Ketchum a very Happy 90^th birthday and many more.

Click HERE for the Ketchum video.

Credibility is Not Always On Message

One of the staples of the PR business is the inevitable set of talking points we create for those who are about to participate in a media interview or speak at a media event. 

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the purpose of talking points and how they are used, it’s pretty simple.  PR people and others usually work together to hone some key points that the group believes the person being interviewed should make during the interview.  Sometimes, the preparations also involve certain questions that could come up and how the interviewee should respond.

In development talking points and preparatory Q&A, those of us in PR should follow a range of ethical principles that ensure that our interviewee is responding to the questions in good faith, with answers that include information that is as accurate and complete to the best of his or her knowledge.

At the same time, the primary purpose of creating the talking points is to provide focus.  We want to make sure that during the course of the interview, the interviewee stays “on message,” or focused on the key points that need to be made, regardless of any attempt by the interviewer to knock the interviewee off track.

Why would an interviewer do such a thing?

Reporters are more often than not smart.  They know that the people they interview have something they want to say.  Reporters see it as their job to get deeper than simply to take what the interviewee wants to say on face value.  Quite often, reporters don’t know if there is more to know, but they will ask questions to find out.

They use a variety of techniques to throw the interviewee off, such as interrupting, changing the subject and then coming back to the original question.  Asking the same question in different ways over and over.  Presenting hypothetical situations and asking for hypothetical responses.  Quoting third parties such as, “Critics say….”, and then seeking a reaction.

When an interviewee is on the receiving and of these techniques and stays focused, we say that the interviewee is “on message.”

From a PR standpoint, this is usually a good thing.  But there are times when simply staying on message creates the perception that the interviewee is one-dimensional or just a talking head.  That usually undermines the point of participating in the interview in the first place.

With this in mind, there are times, and they are completely situational, when the best approach is to go slightly off message.  There are times when the interviewee has to add color or nuance to a response that quite frankly makes the PR people in the wings cringe. 

I’ve had clients use very colorful language, tell jokes, and do a number of rather informal things in the course of interviews that were not only quite effective at developing a rapport with the journalist doing the interview, but were absolutely critical to building credibility.

Sometimes, staying on message is not enough. We have to demonstrate commitment, knowledge, understanding, empathy and compassion by responding with a little extra detail and information that conveys the credibility we need to support our messages. 

We certainly don’t want to contradict our messages, reveal proprietary or confidential information, or speculate irresponsibly.  But there are those times when going down a parallel path can actually help to make messages matter.

                                                              

Actress Angelina Jolie Demonstrates the Power of an Influencer

In the PR business, we often refer to some audiences as “influencers.”  Theoretically, an influencer is anyone we might target with communications who in turn will have some influence over others we may want to target with our messages.

A simple example is a hair stylist.  He or she may not be likely to buy the expensive luxury car we are selling today, but the stylist may have the kind of clientele we are targeting with marketing messages. And our research may indicate that our desired customer tends to confide quite a bit in his or her hair stylist and oftentimes listens to tips they get in the salon.

Well, that’s the idea.  Putting it into practice is quite another matter.

A much more real and dramatic example of the power of an influencer came this week when the news was filled with stories about actress Angelina Jolie’s decision to preemptively have a double mastectomy to prevent the onset of breast cancer.

First the background.  The actress’s mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer.  Ms. Jolie’s grandmother had ovarian cancer.  This is why when we go to the doctor’s office, they always ask us about family history. There is something to it.

Given this pattern, it was believed that the 37-year old actress had a strong likelihood that she could eventually be touched by cancer. 

 She had a test for a gene that confirmed she indeed was at high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.  It’s called the BRCA1 gene.  Needless to say, not all insurance carriers cover this test and it’s not inexpensive. 

So, Ms. Jolie decided to have her two healthy breasts removed in February, and later had reconstruction surgery. 

That’s the news.  Now, about the impact.

Because she is a pop culture icon, she can command the cover of nearly any magazine just by picking up the phone.  If she attends a red carpet ceremony, she’s sure to draw attention of the cameras.  When she grants an interview – “grant” being the operative word – there aren’t many reporters who would turn down the chance.  If she wants to speak to the U.N., the door has been opened to her. If she wants to meet with an elected leader in Washington, she can probably get a meeting with just about anyone.

This kind of clout carries with it some real power.  Millions of men and women follow and care about this actress whom they’ve never met in person and are not likely to ever see in person.  In a Hollywood-obsessed society, the most famous actors and actresses are regarded as assets to a large number of marketing and cause-marketing programs.  And that’s just if you can get them to endorse the cause verbally or through the usual means – press conferences, special events, advertising, etc.

Now, here comes a member of the Hollywood elite who not only has an opinion on breast cancer, but she has a family history, and further, she actually endured a double-mastectomy to prevent developing the disease.

What could be more powerful than that in drawing attention to breast cancer and the preventative measures that can be taken?

To be sure, I am not saying what Ms. Jolie did was right or wrong.  That’s not the point here.  I don’t know enough about the costs, the medical issues involved, or even the actress’s tolerance for risk.  Other women facing the same odds may opt not to take such a significant preemptive measure.

But what has happened this week is that the actress drew attention to the whole idea of taking preemptive action, preventative measures to combat cancer.  She may have stirred debate on the issue.  Those of us in PR know that this alone is good for raising awareness of important issues.

Because so many women respect her, she may have given some the idea to have themselves tested and make a more informed decision, whether or not they take the same action. 

And that is the power of an influencer.  In the PR business, if you can get an influencer – famous or not – to endorse your message, you’ve gone a long way towards moving the needle.  But if you can tap the power of an influencer who is willing to serve as an example for others, there’s almost no way to quantify a value on that. 

Usually I'm skeptical when I see the weight people ascribe to actors and actresses. But I recognize an influencer when I see one, and this week, Angelina Jolie demonstrated just how powerful an influencer can be.