The Best Way to Start Every Communications Project

Write your headline. That’s it.  Come up with up to 12 words that summarize the point you're trying to make.  No matter what the project, if it’s centered on communicating something to someone, condense it all into a headline.

If that’s a bit too restrictive then perhaps think in terms of tweets.  Write your concept in up to 140 characters or less.  But certainly no more.  See if you can boil the whole message down to that.

Why?

Because no matter how long your annual report, how big the audience at that next speech, or how breakthrough the news will be in your next press release, chances are your targeted audience will come away with a single and simple concept of what you communicated.

If it’s an annual report, the reader will want to know quite simply, “Was it a good year or not?”

If it’s a speech, “What one thing do you want me to remember when I leave here today?”

If it’s a news release, “Why is this important and why now?”

Even in crisis situations, it’s worth the time and the effort to think in terms of the headlines that will come out of the situation. Think worst-case scenario first. What’s the worst headline that can appear here?   And then think in terms of the best possible headline, and work towards that.

So, as you start to scope out your next communications project, one of the most valuable exercises you can do is to develop the right headline to guide your vision and your work.

5 PR Lessons from the NCAA's "March Madness" Tournament

It’s here.  The brackets are out and the NCAA’s "March Madness" is upon us.  Over the next few weeks, over 68 college basketball teams will compete for a National Championship, but if that’s all this is about then few outside of some hard core bettors and die-hard basketball fans would care.

But the NCAA tournament is big.  Start with the colleges involved.  Students, parents, alumni and the fan base for each of the 68 teams in the tournament will be engaged in the process as the field whittled down to the "Final Four." 

With the exception of the NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, the NCAA March basketball tournament is perhaps the top sporting event where the process of finding a champion is arguably bigger than the championship game.

So, what can we learn in PR from the NCAA’s “March Madness?” 

Have a Structure – Even though it’s called March Madness, the structure for the process is anything but mad.  Brilliantly, the NCAA has branded each phase of this process.  The first week, over 68 teams represent their schools and conferences in a four-day college basketball binge.  The next week, the field is smaller and is branded the “Sweet Sixteen,” out of which come the “Elite Eight.”  They will set up the “Final Four.”  This structure provides a level of consistency that is required to sustain momentum and interest. 

Have a Story Line – The tournament to select a champion has a story line.  There are “favorites” and “underdogs.”  We know each and every year a team that’s supposed to win will lose to a team that’s just lucky to be there.  These “upsets” create a story line that feeds the tournament’s drama that unfolds over three weeks.   There are missed shots, bad calls and “buzzer beaters,” all that serve to heighten the intensity. 

Have a Means for Engagement – Brackets. “Bracketology.”  Even if you’re not a fan, chances are if you go to the office this week someone will be filling out a bracket trying to make their best guesstimates on who will win at each phase of the tournament.  Some workplaces may even make it a group thing, and you can fill out your own bracket for a chance to win a prize.

I once knew someone who picked her bracket based on the team mascots she liked, and her winning percentage in the end was higher than someone else I knew who was an avid college basketball fan.

Brackets are simple. Brackets are easy. Brackets are accessible.  In the NCAA’s case, the bracket is an effective means of engagement.  Brackets feed the buzz. 

Have a Sub-plot – As the nation starts to follow the NCAA tournament, one of the most intriguing sub-plots each year is the emergence of a "Cinderella team," one that may never should have been invited to the “big dance,” but for some reason found its way.  And now that it’s there, it’s going to beat teams it shouldn’t and run deep into the tournament, maybe even reach the Final Four.  That’s a Cinderella team.  What makes these teams confounding is that they usually destroy most peoples’ predictions and their brackets suffer, along any chances they had to win a prize.  Of course, some peoples' Cinderella teams are other peoples' "bracket busters," and love them or hate them they provide a necessary sub-plot to put the madness in March. 

Tie it all Together in One Big Moment – The weekend of the Final Four is when the best four teams face off for the national championship.  On a Saturday night, there are two games.  The winners of these games will meet in the national championship.

The night of the Final Four, people who’ve invested themselves in this process get one last night of multiple games involving the best teams.  The event is a social event, not as big but not unlike the Super Bowl, where people have parties, sports bars are packed, and host cities rake in millions. 

Then there is that national championship game.  By now, people are likely ready for it to end, but not without one final crowning moment, and that is the game.

The NCAA has honed this process over the years and it is unlike any other.

In PR, we may not be able to create our own NCAA tournaments for our organizations or clients, but we can learn from it.  We can incorporate story lines, messages, structure, accessibility and the kind of sub-plots that may be needed to keep our targeted audiences engaged. 

So, did you fill out your bracket yet?

Pittsburgh St. Patrick's Day Parade Takes Me Home

Sometimes an important step in your career or life, one that transcends the traditional measures of success, is right in front of you. In fact, it may have been there for a long time, but you just weren’t ready to see it.

This was the case for me up until about seven years ago, not long before I decided to more meaningfully embrace my Irish-American roots and serve as the Public Relations chair of the Pittsburgh St. Patrick’s Day Parade. I had many reasons for doing so, and they were all intertwined.

First, a little background on the parade. Mother Nature dropped a blizzard on it in 1993, and the show went on. Nothing stops this parade, among the largest in the nation. On a typically blustery March morning in Pittsburgh, the parade attracts an average of 150,000 spectators and 23,000 marchers – bands, Irish dancers, drums and pipes - all “Irish for the day.” When the weather has been unseasonably nice, we’ve attracted more than 350,000 to the parade.

It’s the town’s way to say goodbye to Winter and welcome in the warmer months with a citywide party. The fact that Pittsburgh – according to the U.S. Census – counts the Irish as one of its largest ethnic groups doesn’t hurt.

So it was that several years after starting my business and deep into my communications career, I had this strong urge to get back to my roots. To find a way to combine some of the things I care most about into one. This parade presented that opportunity to me.

I handle communications and marketing for the event and the growing number of activities that lead up to it. This parade is not just a three-hour march down a couple of city streets. Second, I have an opportunity to focus all of my PR efforts on a project that is mostly feel-good in nature. For this reason, the work and the planning can be a lot of fun. And third, I have the chance to work with new friends with similar backgrounds, and reconnect with a cross-section of people and families I’ve known since childhood. In some cases, the people I meet come from families that knew mine since before I was born. This dynamic keeps those who came before us alive in our hearts as we plan our annual rite.

Since I’ve been involved, I’ve been proud of a few of our PR and branding accomplishments, but also in putting a celebration of Irish heritage more at the forefront.

Before my time on the Parade Committee it had started to make a concerted effort to reposition the event as a family activity and not just an excuse to party and play to a stereotype of the Irish. The group took concrete steps to address this issue, and over time that has begun to pay off. I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the numbers of young families with strollers lining the parade route. More Downtown businesses are hosting family-friendly events to cater to this increased traffic.

Awareness of the parade and surrounding festivities starts to build weeks before the actual event.

On parade day, I have two secret pleasures. The first is to take in that quiet pause at the starting line when 23,000 marchers are lined up and ready to go as over 150,000 spectators wait. Lights flashing, marching units in formation, musical instruments all silent if just for that moment. You can feel the collective anticipation of a city, not just for a parade but for a celebration of better weather and better days ahead.

The other secret pleasure is a little thing. I like to watch the spectators more than the parade itself. The smiles and the excitement of parade-goers, whether they are one or 96 years old, are plentiful.

That makes it all worthwhile, and gives this event for me a sense of going home.

Lesson from Keith Olbermann's Penn State Twitter Feud: Respect the Fourth Wall

Right about now ESPN's Keith Olbermann should be finishing up his foot-in-mouth-imposed suspension from the sports network for getting into a war of tweets with a bunch of students from Penn State.  What made this situation somewhat different than others is that the target of the sports commentator’s ire was a group of students that had just raised over $13 million for patients with pediatric cancer and their families.

What happened was, last Monday night, a Penn State alum tweeted a link to Olbermann that centered on a news story about how a large group of Penn State Students had organized their annual THON dance marathon and raised over $13 million for the Four Diamonds Fund.  That’s a nonprofit organization dedicated to pediatric cancer patients and their families.  They’ve been doing this in State College, Pennsylvania since 1977.

Olbermann tweeted back one word, “pitiful.”

All bets were off after that.  Very quickly Penn State students, alumni and then many others jumped into the Twitter fray.  Olbermann further engaged them by insulting their grammar, the quality of their education, their school and its reputation.

The next day, ESPN decided to suspend Olbermann for one week and issued a statement:

“We are aware of the exchange Keith Olbermann had on Twitter last night regarding Penn State.  It was completely inappropriate and does not reflect the views of ESPN.”

From there Olbermann issued his apology on Twitter, saying, “I apologize for the PSU tweets. I was stupid and childish and way less mature than the students there who did such a great fundraising job.” 

Breaking Through the Fourth Wall 

Poor judgment aside, from a communications standpoint, what Olbermann may have been most guilty of was breaking through the Fourth Wall of the media.  Crashing through it might be a better description.

In theater, the fourth wall is considered the imaginary “wall” at the front of the stage through which the audience sees the performance.  When an actor talks directly to the audience, he breaks through the fourth wall.  Or, on television or in the movies, when an actress speaks directly into the camera, that is breaking through the fourth wall.

As effective as this can be as a dramatic device, it can be quite dangerous in the sports or entertainment worlds where real people in real-life situations are involved. It gets real any time a comedian responds to a heckler in the audience.  Or when professional athletes let the fans get to them.

One legendary example of this was in 2004 when, during an NBA game between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons, Indiana’s Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson jumped into the stands and got into a brawl with some fans.  Several people got hurt, and the police had to investigate.

Fortunately for Olbermann and those Penn State students, their battle was digital, but no less real, and that was the problem.

Celebrities have many opportunities to engage with the public.  It may be at a structured public appearance, like a speech, or it could be at a coffee shop.  They usually learn how to handle these situations.

Sports commentators may interact with fans at a game.  Again, they usually know how to deal with these situations.  And for seasoned pros like Olbermann, talking to the public via a camera lens is a talent.

Given his experience, you could assume Olbermann breaks the fourth wall all of the time.  But social media is different.  The interactions are as public as they are personal.  They are as uncomplicated as a personal discussion, but can be amplified to thousands and millions in an instant.

I can’t speak for Olbermann, but demeaning a bunch of college students who reached out in the context of raising $13 million for kids with cancer, was not a proper application of that technique – breaking through the fourth wall.  For celebrities, sometimes it’s best to operate as though there really is a safe barrier between them and the public and to respect it.

The lesson here for anyone, any brand, or any other celebrity is that when you engage one-on-one with fans or strangers on social media, you’re breaking through the fourth wall.  Know this and tread skillfully.

"Think Dirty. If you don't, they will."

One of my more memorable lessons from journalism school didn’t come from a book.  It was just seven words, uttered as a tip from one of my professors.

“Think dirty.  If you don’t, they will,” she advised.  The “they” in the tip were the readers, of course.

My professor provided this advice in the context of word choice and phrasing in our writing.  Her point was that it doesn’t matter whether the words we choose are the right ones, the accurate ones, if someone can make an obscene inference out of it, it was the wrong word choice.

That was then.  Today, any professional communicator has to be mindful of much more than newspaper readers taking words out of context, making them seem obscene, either seriously or as a joke.  Today, perceived obscenity is just the beginning.

“KKK Wednesdays” 

Just over a week ago, Krispy Kreme U.K. found itself in a bit of a Facebook jam when its store in Hull, England, posted to its Facebook page a promotion entitled, "KKK Wednesdays." 

In this case, the “KKK” was meant to stand for “Krispy Kreme Klub,”a sales promotion designed to recognize loyal customers at a group event.  Keep in mind, the people who came up with this “KKK” idea for a Wednesday, also came up with, “Colouring Tuesday,” and “Face Painting Thursday.”  Clearly, the American connotations of “KKK” were lost on them.

Still, you can imagine what came next.  The company felt the immediate backlash on social media, the post was taken down, but only after it gained wide notoriety on The Huffington Post and USA Today among other sites.

Time for a corporate apology: “We are aware of the Hull store’s unfortunate naming choice for its Club program, and we are truly sorry for any inconvenience or offense this misstep may have caused our fans,” said company PR manager Lafeea Watson.

In PR and marketing circles where this story was discussed some have argued that “KKK” does not carry the same resonance in the U.K. as it does in the U.S.   This may be true, but the Internet has changed that.  Because digital communications happen broadly and instantaneously around the globe, geographic ignorance has become less of an excuse.  The same is true on matters of intent.  Even in the absence of malicious intent, any organization or brand can find itself in a mess over word choice or graphics selection.  Just because you don’t mean to insult, doesn’t mean a number of people won’t use social media to say you offended them.

Papa John’s Does Not Deliver for Iggy Azalea 

Another recent example of not thinking before posting involves pizza chain Papa John’s and pop idol Iggy Azalea.  The key thing about this situation is that it did not involve specific word choice, or offending a group based on vulgarity, race, gender, sexual preference or social issue sensitivities.  Rather, the issue at the core of this one was privacy and a seeming inability on the part of Papa John’s social media team to anticipate consequences for its tone.

Ironically, when the pop singer wanted to raise her concerns over a perceived violation of her privacy, she took it publicly to Twitter.

Here is what is reported to have happened.  A Papa John’s pizza delivery person must have dropped off a pizza to Iggy Azalea.  In the course of that, the pizza shop and the driver must have required Azalea’s cell phone number.

A little while later, Azalea got a text message from a stranger, claiming to be a relative of the pizza delivery driver, and also claiming to be Azalea’s “number one fan,” and then requested a callback.

Rather than call that fan back, or reporting the incident to the local pizza shop, the company, or even local police, Azalea opted to post the text message to Twitter for her 4.2 million Twitter followers to see.

To make matters worse, the social media team at Papa John’s decided to acknowledge Azalea’s tweet with a little tongue-in-cheek humor.

Said @PapaJohns: “@iggyazalea #We should have known better.  Customer and employee privacy is important to us.  Please don’t #bounce us!”

The #bounce reference was to one of Azalea’s songs.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Azalea’s response.

“When an employee steels information it’s called a data breach….” and, “I want answers @papjohns why is customer confidentiality a joke to your company?”

The company ended up issuing a more serious response to ABC News later, saying, “Privacy of our customers and employees is extremely important to us.  Papa John’s has taken appropriate disciplinary action with regard to the employee involved.  We are reaching out directly to Ms. Azalea and hope to resolve this incident and make it right.”

The lesson after all of this is simply to think before you tweet or post.  You can’t expect a company, particularly a pizza chain, to have full control over the judgment of every delivery driver.  But you should expect much more from a social media function charged with managing the organization’s online reputation.

Keep in mind, there were no clear boundaries crossed by the Papa John’s social media team. They did not cross into the use of offensive language. They weren’t combative or defensive. What they were, however, was unserious when the topic had quickly turned serious.

There are no guidebooks for this.  The subject matter on social media and on the Internet changes minute to minute for any organization.  It’s important to think seriously about the implications of every statement, comment, tweet and post, even if the nature of that post in the end will be designed to be lighthearted and fun.  It’s all part of a professional process.

If my professor were here today, I can hear how she might update her advice. “Think offensive.  If you don’t, they will.”

Presentations: When to Lead with the Financials

A few years back when working with a publicly traded company, I learned something about presentations which had everything to do with the order of things.  Or more to the point, when to present financial information.

Conventional thinking in corporate communications is almost always to put financial information at the end. When we submit PR proposals, the budget page is at the back. When we conduct sales presentations, the numbers come at the end.  And when companies tell their story to analysts and investors, the financials are often at the end of the investor relations presentation.

The notion that financials should always come at the end changed for me when I was involved in a series of analyst meetings that featured a CEO and CFO.  We started to notice that when the CFO got up to speak and gave a brief overview of the financial performance and data, we detected a noticeable shift in the mood in the room.  Analysts leaned forward, and sometimes literally, sat on the edge of their seats.  Their mobile devices, computers and note pads were less of a distraction.  Questions from them were more focused and purposeful.

This had as much to do with how good those numbers were as anything, but it also told me as a corporate communicator that the corporate communications tradition of closing with financial information may not always be the most effective way to do it.

The company had a sophisticated technological story to tell, and its customers were deep in the infrastructure of a highly technical industry.   So, it made sense that the CEO would speak first, draw the audience in, educate it on the company’s technology and industry, and then set up the CFO who would go through the financials.

The CEO was a very talented speaker who could convey highly complex information in a way that was relatable and interesting.  The CFO was not known for his speaking talents, but that should take nothing away from his role in these sorts of investor relations presentations.  He was very good at plainly, directly and candidly delivering very detailed information on the financial condition and performance of the company.

Still, it was when the CFO spoke that we noticed that shift.  After noticing a pattern in the audiences, we decided to try leading with the financials.  This helped all the way around.  Not only were we satisfying the analysts’ natural curiosity in financial information, but we were setting up the CEO to tell the company’s story in ways the investor audience could relate.  We were providing better context.

The change in our presentation format meant starting with an attention-grabbing “what,” and then following with details that addressed the “why, how, when,” and “where.”

The reaction from the next few analyst audiences confirmed our instincts.  More routinely, analysts had a much quicker better and better grasp of the company’s technology, markets and prospects.  Our conclusion was that by giving them the financials first – subject matter with which the analysts were already comfortable – they were much better prepared to connect the dots and absorb the new information about the company.

This, of course, is not a cookie-cutter or one-size-fits-all approach to financial presentations.  There are many times it is wise to save the financials for the end.  So at best the decision on where to insert the financials into the company presentation is best handled case by case.  But the lesson here is not to automatically assume the financials belong at the end because that is what is always done.

Disruption Means Nothing without Leadership

It’s not uncommon to come across a blog post, column or article that laments the status quo or the notion of being stuck in the old way of doing things in public relations.  The article usually makes the case for disruption, equating it with forward-thinking leadership.  But it’s a mistake to assume that with disruption automatically comes leadership.

Or put more plainly, and as the cliché goes, anyone kick the bucket over but does that require vision, and most importantly, is that real leadership?

Quite often PR is about disruption. When there is a need for change there is a need for effective communication.  Not uncommonly, part of the change is in the way in which we communicate.  With this in mind, PR and disruption often go together.

When you work as a PR consultant or in a PR firm, you get to see all types of leadership styles, and you start to see which ones work best for the individual leader.  Many leaders may at first need to shake things up, to disrupt, if you will.  But there are still others who disrupt without leading.  These are the ones that aren’t all that specific about what they will do once they’ve attacked the status quo.

I once worked with a firm that had one young manager who considered himself a rebel.  To him that was a pretty cool moniker, and one easily embraced by both manager and staff.

But a true rebel can be very hard to follow.  Rebels, almost by definition, need a foe. Usually that foe is management and sometimes, painfully, a client.

So when this rebel became management, he didn’t know what to do.  His rebel tendencies led him to create imaginary foes to perpetuate whatever cult of personality he had built.

But the problem was, the organization’s goals and priorities got lost and the organization suffered. Those who still remember him, describe him as a shooting star at the company, one who fizzled out quickly.

True Leaders can be Disruptive 

True leaders may in fact be very disruptive, but they usually never introduce change without a clear and specific vision for the future.  They understand that solving problems and coming up with breakthrough ideas is just the beginning.  To get a team to accomplish organizational goals, they know they must get individual team members to achieve their personal bests and to contribute to the team. 

They know they must invest the time and energy to nurture and encourage staff development.  This requires the leader to have a broader skillset than the one-dimensional disruptor.  The leader must be willing to spend a lot of time on the little things, the day-to-day, the individualized follow-up with each employee on each project.

This can come off as micro-managing at first, but once expectations are understood, the good leader knows when to back away and become less of a micro-manager.  The leader has patience, and provides guidance and counsel as needed.  And above all, the good leader is in it for the long term, and that means perseverance.

Disruption can be a very good thing for any organization, but it can only be effective when a leader delivers it with a vision, a plan, and a commitment to seeing it through.