Strategic Public Relations

The 2004 Presidential Election & Media News

I'm about to post on Edwards and media use around the 2004 election. Yet it's NOT about John Edwards OR blogs.

GASP!

Sign me up for XM Satellite Radio: Well, Bob Edwards has left the building—NPR's to be specific. His morning reports will soon be heard on XM Satellite Radio.

No surprise here. There was much gnashing of teeth when NPR ended Edwards' 25-year stint with "Morning Edition." NPR handled the initial response poorly, but stepped in quickly to stem additional negative response. In fact, they turned their example of crisis communications from what not to do, to what you should do—albeit with better timing.

What IS interesting is how Bob Edwards is going from public radio to fee-based radio. Message heard loud and clear Bob.

Democratic National Convention: While we are all well aware of one new form/format/forum of convention coverage this year, cell phones offer another new approach that is getting less attention. Pushing coverage to cell phones is an obvious move, but it reminds me that maybe I should stop lamenting the lack of RSS integration into browsers and start cajoling cell phone companies to start doing so?

RSS feeds for cell phones make even more sense in my opinion. RSS can take advantage of a cell phone's primarily text-based interface.

TiVo Sales to Surge in Swing States: Well, blogs are making an impact on the elections this year, but we all know it will never replace current forms of media. Case in point: Business 2.0 tells us that non-stop campaign advertising is forthcoming for swing states.

If you're looking for political ads, visit Ohio. According to the study -- the first of its kind to track all 210 media markets across the nation -- four of the top six destinations for presidential campaign advertising dollars are in the Buckeye State (Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo). Other saturated Middle American cities include Detroit; Erie, Pa.; Kansas City, Mo.; and St. Louis. Outside the Midwest, Las Vegas and Portland, Ore., round out the top 10 markets. The media-buying logic is simple. "If you see a state lost or won by 10 percentage points, there's no point in committing resources to it," Rivlin says. "The battle lines are already drawn."

As for the audience in these battleground states, both parties are targeting older voters. According to the study, those over 55 have seen the most ads. "Young viewers are notoriously difficult to reach through television advertising," says Jeff King, managing director of Nielsen Monitor-Plus. So the most money is flowing to programs with more mature viewers. Forty percent of all political campaign spending is on local news, while morning news programs like Good Morning America and The Today Show make up 11 percent of the pie. Both campaigns are also targeting female viewers. (More than 21 million single women who are eligible to vote do not exercise that right; getting this powerful group to the polls could be a deciding factor, especially in a tight race.) Accordingly, the next-largest political ad spending category for both parties is syndicated daytime talk programs such as Dr. Phil, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Regis & Kelly.

Again, no surprise, but the public relations industry could learn one heck of a lot from political campaigns.

Weblogs & Crisis Communications

Understandably, public relations folk focus on the defensive element of crisis communications—conducting damage control to minimize negative impact. But there is also a very human element to crises that must be addressed.

This example of how essential a blog can be in a crisis reminds us of this fact.

The Appeal posted frequent updates, often every 10 minutes, on its Web site, NevadaAppeal.com. Until the fire was put out on July 20, the blog provided information on areas threatened by the blaze and locations where people were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses. Readers could also list comments on a message board if they needed assistance or were able to provide help.

An impromptu, temporary blog was quickly established to navigate a terrible situation.

Online Public Relations

E-consultancy hosted a roundtable to fuel a white paper on online public relations. Contributors hail from a range of companies, including: COI, Smart Interactive, Direct Line, Mantra PR, Blaupunkt, Hellomagazine.com, Immediate Future, LloydsTSB, Sony, Rodale, Citibank, O2.

In addition to the usual suspect topics, it was good to see "using PR to drive search engine traffic" as a topic, which also addressed public relations and pay per click. "There is a unique opportunity in online PR as you have absolute control over the content of releases. This can play a major part in improving search rankings and driving relevant traffic through to your website."

"Spreading word offline" was also a welcome subhead. All too often, online enthusiasts shun or downplay the need for a well-rounded approach to public relations—particularly when focused on the medium. But I will say the advice in this section is underdeveloped.

"There should be more cross-promotion, between offline and online media, to generate the best results." Well yeah, but this means more than making sure everything offline is emblazoned with your URL. We need to start blurring the lines between offline and online strategies. This is more than a consistency issue; it's an opportunity we're not tapping into.

The piece also found a red flag for public relations agencies:

We asked those (big brand) clients present at our online PR roundtable the following three questions:
1. Do you have a retained PR agency? – ALL said yes
2. Do you think this “online PR” we are discussing is important and valuable? – ALL said yes
3. Do you have confidence that your current agencies have this covered? – ALL said no"

Bottom line: The piece is strong, and not just because Global PR Blog Week participants are listed as resources at the end of the piece. But early adopters will find the study more of a review than anything else.

Goofus & Gallant – Food vs. Fat, Outsourcing vs. Reality TV

Plenty of Goofus and Gallant’s to hand out this week.

Food vs. Fat: The U.S. Department of Agriculture gets the Gallant for dusting off the food pyramid. Now 14 years old, it's getting a new look. In the meantime, Medicare goes Goofus on us by announcing it will cover the treatment of some obesity claims, resulting in billions in health care costs.

Why does Medicare get the Goofus for finally acknowledging obesity as an illness? It is a completely reactive measure that will not stop consumers, or the companies feeding them, from changing their habits. Not to mention, it puts more pressure on a troubled healthcare program.

Outsourcing vs. Reality TV: The next round of awards go to our friends in the media. Business 2.0 goes to great lengths to prove a point in its August issue. The Gallant-winning magazine outsourced part of the latest issue to India. “This cut the costs for the section in half and showed how journalism might stand up to the outsourcing trend.”

From inspired to tired, Reality TV gets this Goofus (if not the lifetime achievement Goofus). We’ve seen the programming ideas get steadily worse each season. Now the network executives are feuding over plagiarism.

Perhaps they should take B2.0’s lead and do a reality show on themselves. I doubt the tasteless and unoriginal genre would improve, but sweeps is just around the corner...

Beta Testing & Customer Evangelists

There's a great NYT article today detailing how beta testing is being used to engage your most vocal customers and create some serious buzz. Of course, the poster child for "beta buzz building," Google, is featured. Which reminds me, I no longer have any GMail invites to hand out. Sorry!

Still, beta testing is often less about testing and improving software than it is about flaunting status. Savvy companies seem to have seized upon this impulse, turning chances to acquire beta versions into marketing opportunities. It is not unusual for them to reward their most loyal customers with beta slots. In allocating betas for Star Wars Galaxies, for example, LucasArts gives the most active members of the game's community accounts before turning to a random lottery system. Veteran players are likely to be invited as testers, Mr. Blackman said, as are users who post prolifically on the forum.

My biggest takeaway from this phenomenon is to always reevaluate your business to find new marketing opportunities. In the past, companies would never have dreamed of showing customers a less than perfect product. Now, you can do it to increase customer loyalty, market share and improve the quality of your final product. To which I say, SCHWING!

Consumer-Generated Media

BlogPulse is hosting a free Webinar on consumer-generated media (CGM) on Tuesday, July 20 from 4-5 p.m. edt. The last BlogPulse Webinar was well-attended by large consumer/technology brands and I highly recommend it. You can register here. So, what is CGM?

"Consumer-generated media describes a variety of new sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other about products, brands, services, personalities and issues.

Ever growing in number and format on the Internet, CGM refers to any number of online word-of-mouth vehicles, including but not limited to: consumer-to-consumer email, postings on public Internet discussion boards and forums, consumer ratings web sites or forums, blogs (short for weblogs, or digital diaries), moblogs (sites where users post digital images/photos/movies), social networking web sites and individual web sites.

Although influenced or stimulated by traditional marketers and marketing activities, online word of mouth is nonetheless owned and controlled by consumers, and it often carries far higher credibility and trust than traditional media, especially as media channels become more fragmented and less trusted. The growth of its influence poses challenges and opportunities for marketers."

CGM's broad focus includes blogs in its definition and I think the term works better than particaptory journalism. Participatory journalism sounds too academic. (Phew. There, I said it.)

Tracking CGM provides marketing intelligence that can provide insight into areas including product launches, quality and safety issues, customer service, advertising effectiveness, relationship marketing and corporate reputation.

Which reminds me, during Global PR Blog Week 1.0, Anita Campbell wrote about using blogs to track trends.

To provide some more insight into this new entry in the blog tool arena, I'll also be interviewing Pete Blackshaw. Blackshaw is CMO at Intelliseek, the creators of BlogPulse. Prior to Intelliseek, Blackshaw co-founded Procter & Gamble’s first interactive marketing team. He lead initiatives dealing with online issues monitoring, rumor tracking, online sampling, viral marketing and word-of-mouth behavior. He's also an avid blogger with a great story to tell on the power of blogging. Stay tuned.

The Martha Stewart Crisis

Whether you consider Martha Stewart a criminal, hero or victim, her sentencing signals the end of a long, punishing crisis. This analysis will focus on what Stewart did right and wrong from a public relations perspective; and how the scandal was shaped by the media and corporate reform.

Weighing in on this topic are authors Eric Dezenhall and Al Ries.

Dezenhall is an oft-quoted expert in damage control and the author of "Nail 'Em: Confronting High-Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Businesses."

Ries is the best-selling author/co-author of 12 marketing books including our favorite “The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR.”

But before we dive in, one point to make:

The basic history of Stewart’s crisis will not be covered here. If you need a refresher, check out this timeline. Or just follow today’s news.

Every Meal Starts with a Salad
The media feeding frenzy around Stewart’s fall from grace began after her now infamous appearance on CBS' The Early Show. During her then weekly cooking segment, she was asked about the ImClone issue.

Stewart tried to dodge the question and noted she wanted to focus on her salad. Media training executives around the globe quickly added the footage to their training tapes of how not to handle direct questions.

“This interview took place too soon after the ImClone story broke,” says Dezenhall. “She was too flip and hadn't endured the crucible long enough to show human depth. When you live by personality you can die by personality. There are acute limits to what you can do with someone with Martha's personality.

“The same doggedness that served her well on the way up, served her poorly on the way down. Avoiding the CBS salad interview would have been a good place to start. But you can't tell divas that diva behavior is wrong. After all, until now it was effective.”

Silence isn’t Golden, it’s Guilty
Stewart’s first public appearance during the scandal was the most damaging of all. We could note this snafu proves out the importance of media training, but lets consider the bigger issue of brand strategy. Crisis communications’ and media training's role in a brand strategy is to preserve and reinforce the brand—when used proactively. Far too often, they're used reactively with mixed results.

Stewart fell silent after the CBS spot turned bad into worse, canceling public appearances. She hired The Brunswick Group to handle damage control and help create a crisis strategy (Citigate Sard Verbinnen now handles this work).

She should have engaged a crisis team the day the scandal broke. Especially during a crisis, silence isn’t golden, it’s guilty. Until Martha Talks was unveiled, the media had no comment from Stewart and they were left to assume, and assign, guilt.

Web Page As Spokesperson
Martha Talks proved the effectiveness of the Web in crisis communications. And as we’ve discussed, a blog could also support crisis communications.

Martha Talks tells Stewart’s side of the story. It generates support and presents her as a normal person—not the uber-perfect home heroine her shows and the media make her out to be. The site is humble, subtle and presented in a way that communicates, while Stewart maintains her innocence, that she realizes the serious nature of her legal issues.

Timely trial updates, statements from Stewart’s legal team and a library of different op/eds written on her behalf populate the site. It’s become a news source, getting Stewart’s point across without her having to field interviews. Of course, she did conduct strategically-timed interviews with Larry King and Barbara Walters.

Traffic Shows Support
Stewart also translated traffic stats into a show of support. The site has received more than 34 million hits and more than 170,000 supportive emails since it was launched in June, 2003. This information is brought to your attention on first view.

Personally, I think she could have employed a blog or comparable comments/bulletin board section to build on the e-mail support base the site developed. The danger is that anti-Stewart fans can also post, but I think the pros of pushing her site further to tap into this audience outweigh the cons.

“Stewart's Internet campaign was quite good,” says Dezenhall. “It allowed her to mobilize and to communicate with supporters. In the end, it didn't turn the jury, but it was a good move to establish the Web site.

“I am a skeptic about too many TV interviews, especially with a personality like hers. When I have a legal defendant I've been conservative about press, but because Martha had a publicly-traded company there was reason to do it. In the end, the killers were bad facts against Martha, the hostile Marie Antoinette climate and Martha's persona.”

Brand Personification
Can the brand survive without Martha Stewart? Wharton School offers up an interesting article on this entitled: “When the CEO is the Brand, But Falls from Grace, What's Next?” (login now required – sorry!)

The article explores brand personification—when the brand is tied to an individual. The main point is to strike a balance when you rely on the CEO as your brand.

"Strike a balance, where the company benefits from an appealing public personality like Martha Stewart and Donald Trump or Ralph Lauren and Michael Dell, while it builds a strong identity that doesn't rely on the individual.

“Like Stewart, Trump places his name on everything he gets involved in. He is a visible, vocal brand voice. Lauren and Dell, however, have cleverly created a separate, institutional identity that doesn't make them so vulnerable if they have a personal problem.”

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO) is moving in that direction with products and projects that do not bear Martha's name. It will be interesting to see how much more they will need to change at MSLO to strike a balance.

“It's a long road, to differentiate your company from your personality,” says Dezenhall. “But it's do-able.”

Ries disagrees.

“The Martha Stewart brand can’t survive without her,” says Ries. “But we do think that brand personification is a good idea. For every failure there are many successes. Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and George Foreman to name three.”

MSLO and Martha Stewart have been very inconsistent on how much MSLO’s house of brands relies on Stewart. MSLO is quick to point out that Stewart is one employee of a large company. How could one person possibly account for the bulk of the brand?

Then after the guilty verdict, the lawyers had everyone saying that MSLO could not survive if Stewart were in prison. There was lots of waffling here. And not the Belgian kind, made from scratch for your next Sunday brunch (you KNEW there would be a domestic reference in here sooner or later).

What's in a Name?
“Eventually the goal will be to make Martha Stewart a Betty Crocker-type figure,” says Dezenhall. “This is someone who we know as a symbol, but do not know personally. I'm not even sure if Betty Crocker was a real person. [she’s not]

“In a less radioactive climate, the name Martha Stewart still has equity. I'd be throttling back on her personality but not necessarily doing away with her image. There is no singular strategy here, and much will depend on the business and cultural climate after Stewart's sentence is served.”

The New York Times brings us an interesting fact: "Since last June, when Stewart was indicted on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice, MSLO has applied for 12 trademarks—none of which include her name."

The article notes, "trademarks are a capital asset—property a company can own to enhance a brand, product or service. An exclusive name or image often increases a product's value."

Based on how the sentencing goes Friday morning, I'm predicting that MSLO might even start referring themselves as just that...MSLO, or their ticker symbol MSO. I call it pulling a KFC. Unfortunately, this is no longer an accurate statement as KFC tries to distract us from the sizzle and crackle of the deep fryer by evolving from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC and now to Kitchen Fresh Chicken? They should have stopped at KFC.

CEOs & Corporate Reform
Personally, I think Stewart is a victim of much needed corporate reform.

Keep in mind, she’s not being convicted of insider trading, rather lying during the insider trading investigation. Her worth has plummeted from billions to millions and she lost the helm of a diverse company she built all by herself. Hopefully U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum will hand down a sentence fitting the crime.

So why the need to incarcerate her? Well, I’ll argue it’s because most folks cannot match these executives:

Rigas, Ebbers, Kozlowski, Fastow, Nacchio

to their respective companies

Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Qwest, Adelphia

The Justice Department has charged more than 700 people in the two years since the Corporate Fraud Task Force was formed. But Stewart is the celebrity CEO everyone recognizes. This sentence sends a message to corporate America.

Dezenhall notes, “Legally, Martha isn't a victim because she was convicted of breaking the law. Her career and her business certainly have been victimized. There is a witch hunt component to this on top of the legal violations. Her celebrity and her success played a role in the intensity of the scrutiny and the harshness of the punishment.

“We are living in a Marie Antoinette period right now. The savaging of success is considered universally good. Americans enjoy playing a role in building someone up, but once they rise out of our reach, they must be torn down. How it's done, in a court, in the media, is academic.”

The Big House or Stewart’s Farmhouse?
August 3rd is Stewart’s birthday. Will she spend it in the big house or at her farmhouse? We’ll find out, but legal experts estimate the prison sentence could be 16 months or more. Will a prison sentence spell the end of Stewart? Of course not.

“Stewart will be back,” says Dezenhall. “Americans enjoy the whole process of crucifixion and resurrection. A wounded Martha may be a lovable Martha. We do love to see the mighty suffer. A Martha comeback would be a story the media would love to do and that may dictate things.

“There are simply too many examples out there to tell us that scandal is not only temporary, but it could be the best thing that ever happened to someone.”

This post was created for Global PR Blog Week 1.0. Be sure to visit the site to comment on this post and dig into some other great content.

Scoble Weighs in on Corporate Blogging

An interview with Microsoft's Robert Scoble kicks off day two of Global PR Blog Week.

Today's content is already proving interesting, including a survey on, what else, corporate blogging. And the balance of the days agenda looks just as interesting with Todd Sattersten, a non-PR person, joining the fray and Anita Campbell's case study on using blogs to spot trends and forecast market behavior.

Be sure to stop by and weigh in with your opinion, as our goal is to create discussion on these topics. In addition to comment sections, several folks are making themselves available for e-mail discussion or, in some cases, instant message chat.

In the meantime, I'll be writing wrapping up my current event analysis on the Martha Stewart crisis for, what else, Thursday's crisis management segment.

Global PR Blog Week Kicks Off

Global PR Blog Week is underway with today's topic—PR in the Age of Participatory Journalism.

First up is an interview with Jay Rosen, Rosen is chair of the New York University Department of Journalism and author of the Pressthink weblog. A press critic and writer whose primary focus is the media's role in a democracy, Rosen teaches courses in media criticism, cultural journalism, press ethics and the journalistic tradition, among other subjects. He was recently credentialed to cover the Democratic National Convention.

Be sure to check out this event blog all week for some great content from nearly 30 globally dispersed pr practictioners.

Google Bans GMail Sales, Wears My TV?

From the "great problem to have" department, the BBC reports that Google is banning sales of its pre-launch GMail invitations. This is a masterstroke as it merely adds to the GMail buzz as Yahoo and Hotmail scramble to respond with their own expanded offerings.

Google's product launches at the beta stage of development get a Gallant while their approach to going public gets the Goofus. Thankfully for Google, Salesforce.com's CEO gaffe took the attention away from their brash approach to going public. If anyone really wants GMail, let me know as I have a few invite—like pretty much every other blogger in the sphere.

And while I note below that we should not use technology for technology's sake, the LA Times brings us TV Shirt technology—flat screen panels embedded into t-shirts. This will surely escalate the booth bimbo war at trade shows. But I can think of some other, more creative, uses for it within the marketing communications realm.

Street vendors could don these 6.5 pound shirts to deliver news and weather and a ton of guerilla applications come to mind. For instance, you could hook up the flat screen to receive cell phone pictures. This would allow you to send images from a remote factory floor, or offsite location, to a trade show booth to help illustrate a specific point. OK, a pure techie gimmick, but you are trying to get attention in guerilla applications above all else. And the TV Shirt seems to be another tool for consideration in this regard.