Through no fault of his own, the 2008 prize for being in the wrong place at the wrong time in your PR career probably goes to former FT Editor Andrew Gowers. It was March 17th and in the wake of one investment bank's collapse, Gowers and three colleagues had just spent the day reassuring journalists that everything was fine with the bank they worked for. Then the voice of the chief executive, legendary for his aggressive confidence in the company he'd come to embody came on the speaker phone in their Canary Wharf office. He said:
"I don't think we're going bust this afternoon but I can't be 100% sure about that. A lot of strange things are happening ..."
The chief executive was Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers.
(The final part of Andrew Gower's account of the fall of Lehman Brothers is in The Sunday Times next week.)
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There was a time, before the rise of social media and user generated content when organisations could get away with scurrilous acts of consumer extortion safe in the knowledge that the muted customer had few ways to hit back other than writing to Watch Dog.
Then came user generated content, forums, websites like ‘ihatedell’ and this week the magnificent ‘www.trainsardine.org’ a platform for commuters to complain about the million pounds a week they pay to travel like sardines in this country.
As a result, ethics suddenly has an elevated place at the board room table because a lack of them can now seriously damage a company’s profits.
Makes you proud doesn’t it.
The Citigroup logo I’m used to seeing blazing proudly at night atop their Canary Wharf office block has been extinguished this week, perhaps out of respect for the 50,000 redundancies announced on Monday and what with Lehman’s once proud sign now unscrewed and lying in the liquidator’s skip, Auden’s words ‘pack up the moon and dismantle the sun’ seem weirdly apt for the financial sector these days.
However, in other areas of the economy we may be over- gloomy. “It’s a recession not Armageddon” said the CEO of Next, Simon Wolfson today in Drapers and the belief that financial journalism must bear some responsibility for talking us further into recession is something also spotlighted this week in a timely report from POLIS – the LSE think tank which analyses the affect of media on society. They say:
“Whilst the root causes of the crisis appear to lie in the behaviour and regulation of banks and other investors, many have asked what role financial reporting may have played in the crisis, and whether the crisis would have been so sudden and deep if a different approach to the practice of financial journalism had been taken.”
Not that it’s all the journalist’s fault - PR strategies are seen as one of the four major problems facing financial scribes. I wonder if by PR strategies they mean lack of them. If food companies can stem consumer fears over contamination by announcing immediate action why didn’t the banks and the government? It seems the knee jerk reaction is to keep a low profile, issue as little information as necessary and perhaps even go as far as to turn the light off on the logo of your company headquarters.
Big problem with that is people will wonder what else you’re hiding.
Listening to Barack Obama’s speech yesterday, I was reminded of Shaw’s quote about how different we are in our use of language. Obama’s genuinely inspiring speech, referencing Martin Luther King in his call for supporters “to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day” while magical in a US context, sadly wouldn’t work for our politicians.
If, for example, David Cameron became Prime Minister and started quoting Churchill in the tone of a US politician on the podium, he’d be derided as pompous, possibly crazed and certainly a bit ‘up himself’.
The differences continue in business language. A favourite US phrase at the moment is ‘reach out’ as in, ‘company x is reaching out to its customers’. I quite like the feel of this phrase but put that in front of a British journalist and they’re unlikely to read any further.
The best a PR can do is write the release in the language and style of the publications they are targeting and in the UK this means free of any hyperbole or blatant self promotion. If this is done well, the release may appear verbatim in the target publication – the ultimate accolade for the anonymous PR.
Incidentally, one other thing that doesn’t always translate is abbreviation. Hearing one supporter referring to Obama as BO was a bit of an eyebrow raiser.
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And so are blogs according to a journalist from US Wired last week - a story that somehow made it into the Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times, Radio 4, Brand Republic in the UK - and those are just the one’s I happened across. What’s interesting about this isn’t the idea 'blogging is dead’ – which is obviously a preposterous notion, but the amount of coverage making such a controversial claim can get you.
With the imminent launch of a UK version of Wired – I detect some non- coincidental PR at work here. Whoever you are, congratulations, you truly hit a media nerve point. I think for my next press release, whatever it is, I shall claim it is dead.
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Back in the balmy financial days of June I was bemoaning on this blog the absence of Mandelson and Campbell and the general decline of the spin doctor. All hell breaks lose politically and financially and suddenly they're back, Campbell masterminding Brown's speech at the Labour conference and Mandelson returning from european exile to number 10. I guess there's nothing like a crisis to make PRs feel needed.
Of course In the business world, many large companies have crisis PR strategies and dedicated agencies for the task in place for if the worst happens - to manage their shareprice and protect their brand. Disasterously the US & UK governments don't seem to have had anything of the sort in place and so we've been treated to an unrelenting tide of negative coverage punctuated by occasional unconvincing statements of action by politicians while the world's stock continues to fall off a cliff.
An hour ago Mervyn King at The Bank of England released a statement designed to ease fears on the PA website. Predictably, his release headlined 'Bank loan move to help ease crisis' became the negative and emotive 'British banks bailed out' on the BBC.
So this leads to two 'systemic' PR issues the government needs to correct if we ever get out of this mess. Where was this statement and others of its kind two weeks ago and how much responsibility does the media bear for talking us into more of mess than we'd otherwise be in.
Having steadfastly refused to ‘do a Cherie’ Sarah Brown has finally stepped out of the shadows today and by introducing her husband at the Labour Party Conference, set the tone for a speech which appears to be doing the impossible in inspiring the party to get behind their beleaguered party leader – at least for a while.
A former Brunswick PR, Sarah Browns appearance reminds us that Gordon is not just a politician but a family man who cares about people and the country. OK, he’s never going to be a charismatic speaker but by demonstrating his human side and his party’s past achievements, he’s going some way to re establish his leadership on a solid footing.
Alistair Campbell had also been drafted in to handle the BBC’s coverage of the speech in a dual with John Sopel and appears to be winning,
Nice to see PRs doing a decent job for Labour at last.
So 79% of PR agents have yet to add any online services to their portfolio according to Bigmouthmedia. I guess from this we’re meant to get the impression that the PR industry is a set from ‘Life on Mars’ with a visitor from the future – Bigmouth themselves presumably, striding around looking astonished at how backward we all are.
I suspect the truth is that every agency actually offers some form of online service, however basic, it’s just that they are probably not promoting it very well. There’s no doubt a lack of expertise and maybe confidence in just what part PR plays online. Should we be involved in content for search? Should we be involved in website content? Blogs? Vodcasts?
The answer is yes, absolutely. The internet has opened up a limitless demand for the written word and PR agents are needed in the thick of it.
I must admit I was suprised to read this sentence in a letter from the NUJ recently. "The NUJ considers PR as work within journalism.."
Can this be right? I suspect a few journalists may disagree.
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As a result of some holiday movie watching, I’ve concluded that PR characters in films seem to follow a fairly standard template. Though always slightly oily, they are generally depicted as idealistic people trying to find a moral purpose in a cynical world.
Three examples:
Unsuccessful PR man Ray tries to persuade corporations to donate a percentage of their profits to his climate charity finds an even less promising project – the transformation of alcoholic bum with super powers - Hancock, into proper comic book super hero. His inspired strategy is to persuade Hancock to show contrition and go to jail. He emerges, phoenix like in tight fitting leather suit to save the world.
Sports agent Jerry (PR near enough) is fired for suggesting his sports management company were too profit focussed. Jerry knows something isn’t quite right about his world but isn’t sure what exactly. His character arcs from superficiality to profundity finding meaning and success in his business and personal life.
Ageing burn out publicist Eli Wurman musters all his powers and famous friends to attend a benefit for a worthy cause but taking a moral stand against the corrupt political and celebrity forces he represents has fatal consequences.
With the persistently gloomy news agenda of credit crunches and house price deflation it’s a ray of light in a dark news world to read about a PR firm in Chicago managing to transcend money issues altogether with the introduction of an employee appreciation programme which aims to reward staff with positive feedback rather than cash.
Here’s an excerpt from their press release about it:
Is this weird? I’m not sure. Looking at their client list which includes ‘the nation’s leading sex therapist’ and ‘Space Command’s stress doctor’ it looks like it may just be a classic case of the PR agency adopting their client’s values. As my clients are mostly in online marketing, I guess I’d eventually end up doing a PR blog on a website about marketing..
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As little as six years ago the majority of press releases still came by post. On DM Week, we used to have huge piles of them typed up so we could edit them on our trendy orange macs. How archaic that now seems. These days they arrive in unprecedented numbers by email and I’ve often wondered, as an agent now responsible for quite a few of them, how this change in volume and format has affected their impact.
Unable to find any research on the area I recently conducted my own small survey of B2B journalists. The results were surprising – at least to me. They show the average number received to be 35 a day (far less than I’d anticipated) of which 50% were considered irrelevant or poorly targeted (better than I’d thought actually). The main complaint (apart from targeting) turned out to be a lack of clear labelling.
On this basis even if your press releases are relevant and clearly labelled, you’re still competing with around 17 other emails a day for a journalist’s attention. These are not great odds.
Your chances lessen even more if you happen to email the likes of Five News’s editor David Kermode who in the latest issue of PR Week says this:
“One of my biggest bugbears is when an email arrives in my inbox that is obviously PR crap – it gets immediately deleted. One sure-fire way of not getting my attention is a bog-standard email. What irritates me about PR is the blanket nature of it.”
So the effectiveness of emailed press releases seems to lie somewhere between ‘not very’ and ‘suicidal’.
Note to self, best call Natasha direct.
It's good to hear I'm not the only one who thinks Labour's spin doctors are letting the PR side down. No less than Colin Byrne, Weber Shandwick’s chief and former Labour party chief press adviser says in PR Week today, “there’s no way these mistakes would have happened when Alistair Campbell was there.” He also compliments Conservative comms chief Andy Coulson for outmanouevering his opposite number.
Meanwhile, the client, no doubt fed up with the state of his public image, has escaped online, bypassing journalists altogether to commune direct with the electorate on You Tube. Good idea this, especially as press relations don't seem to be improving much under the charge of Labour's special press adviser whose approach is, according to Byrne, “just phoning up people and shouting at them.”
Perhaps with enough personal phone calls and vodcasts The PM can cut out the troublesome middlemen altogether. Might be easier to employ an effective PR though.
Well pull my sweatbands off and throw them to the crowd, when I wrote the blog below yesterday about Stuart Higgins's work with Andy Murray I had no idea he’d got as far as the union jack shot on the front of the sun – the holy PR grail for all aspiring Scottish, sorry I mean British athletes. Let’s hope his moment in the sun (thank you) lasts beyond his bigger biceped opponent Nadal this afternoon.
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Former Sun editor Stuart Higgins who was appointed Andy Murray’s PR adviser in March must have enjoyed the transition of his enfant terrible into centre court favourite last night more than most.
Just three months ago, Murray’s no show at the Davis cup tie against Argentina , the subsequent spat with his brother and a reputation for surliness with the press meant that despite his undoubted talent and the two ATP titles he’d already won in 2008, he was not exactly a favourite within UK tennis or with the British public.
I got into a bit of a spat myself at his last Wimbledon in 2006 when I suggested to a Scottish friend that Murray could do with a bit of PR advice. She felt that one of his most attractive qualities was that he wasn’t concerned about impressing the media and just wanted to play tennis. I can see that side of the argument – McEnroe was one of my favourites – and it would be boring if every tennis player was perfect on and off court. In any case, that’s Federer’s job.
But there’s a balance to be struck. Higgins has clearly given Murray media training and that is making a big difference to the reception he’s getting from the UK press this year. Whilst you’d never want him to turn into some hideous smiling media bunny, you also don’t want him to be given a kicking off court due to a natural reticence – or Scottish dourness - that can look surly to those not familiar with it. Higgins seems to have helped Murray find the right balance.
Whilst he’s improving with the off court stuff, his public image will principally be fashioned on the tennis court and for the most part in just two weeks every year at Wimbledon. Based on last night’s extraordinary performance, he no longer has much to fear in either respect.
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Two weeks ago, Sotheby’s International Realty’s public relations officer in South Africa – Maurice Levin was fired three months into the job for publicising an internal memo from owner Lew Geffen which urged franchise holders to persuade luxury house owners to reduce their prices by 25% due to an anticipated 40% decline in house prices.
Levin apparently turned the memo into a press release and the first thing Geffen knew about it was a phonecall from Levin revealing the good news that he’d arranged a radio interview to discuss the impending property meltdown. The owner hung up on him, presumably in a hurry to speak to Personnel. More surprising though is that two weeks after the firing, Mr Levin still doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong.
He’s even been using his PR skills to get press interviews in which he has criticised his former boss for not sticking with the comments in his internal memo. Showing the sort of PR insight that secured his exit, Levin explains that there was a difference between what the chairman would say in private and what he was prepared to say publicly:
“Clearly what he tells his franchise holders – who cough up millions to carry the company name – is not what he tells the general public, otherwise he’d not have been perturbed by the media’s possession of the document.” Levin says.
Clearly he was in the job three months too long.
ROSS FURLONG
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