01/10

Adapting has not been all that successful for companies caught in fundamental change.  Some move too quickly into new technology when the market was not ready.  This happened most recently to dot-com companies that geared for a broadband Web that had not developed.  Some move too late and never catch up.   This happened to organizations like the U.S. postal service and Pitney-Bowes, which dominate the mail but are watching first-class volume slip away to e-mail and cannot seem to solve their dilemma.

Crashes can be sudden and violent like the commuter aircraft or slow motion like the Japanese economy that has been deteriorating for 10 years.

PR practitioners caught in crashing companies are like Sisyphus of Corinth who watched in despair as his stone roll down the hill everyday.  Even the willpower of a CEO and top executives cannot compensate for a doomed situation.  The best a CEO can do is to survive in some way or to sell the company, but the future will have little semblance of the past.

What does one do to maintain public relations in instances like this? Not much except to help prepare for transition and to spotlight the need for adaptability.  One can also leave, which for many is a better tactic.  It takes deep faith and responsibility to hang in when the world is falling. 

I have often wondered what pilots have done before their aircraft smashed into the earth.  Tapes from numerous black boxes indicate that most pilots worked the controls to the moment of death, but the sad fact is that they did die.  Companies are no different.
 

01/09

The Wall Street Journal in an article on broadband noted that more than 15 million Americans have broadband connections today and 100,000 are signing up per week.  By the end of 2003, 19% of all 107 million U.S. households will use broadband.  This does not include offices. 

Internet News reported that RealNetworks has concluded a partnership with the the National Football League's NFL.com site to sell exclusive playoff and Super Bowl multimedia programming.  The deal does not affect play-by-play webcasts offered free on the NFL.com site, but there is speculation that the NFL is moving to a pay-per-listen service similar to those offered by Major League Baseball and the National Basketball League.

The final report noted that the Online Film Critics Society of 132 (!) critics and cinema journalists featured on the Internet have picked their best films of the year. 

If you do not yet have an online PR strategy for every one of your clients, you are missing the boat.  Get going or get ready to swim.

01/08

We kicked a statement about for 15 minutes or so then I left when my colleague was interrupted with a phone call.  On the way back to my desk, I reflected on what we were doing and realized that it is not simple to write a "simple message" about dividends.  There are as many negatives as positives. 

For example,  dividends are for the rich, the Democrats say, but they aren't really.  Millions of Americans, especially middle-class retired Americans hold dividend-paying stocks.  It is income.  On the other hand, most stock is held by institutions and mutual funds so one could say the rich will benefit from single-taxed dividends. 

Another example.  Dividends will bring small investors back into the market, but will they?  Companies must be willing to pay dividends.  For the last 18 years, they have been moving away from them to stock appreciation and buybacks.  Why?  They are investing cash into capital projects with larger paybacks while stock buybacks can benefit shareholders as much as dividends in terms of return. 

A third example.  Dividends with a guaranteed payout are safer for smaller shareholders.  They might well be that but they are not necessarily safer for companies that pay them.  Dividends can strain cash flow at a time when a company is in need of retaining cash.  Stock buybacks, on the other hand, can be cancelled or slowed down with no appreciable affect from dissatisfied shareholders.

So are dividends a bad idea, and should we have told the CEO we wouldn't support his views?  No, dividends might be a great idea.  We don't know yet.  Elimination of double taxation will free companies to issue more stock and use less debt.  If small shareholders become dividend seekers, it could also rebuild a loyalty that companies lost when institutions dominated the markets by the late 1980s.

So who is to say who is right about dividends?  The only certainty is that elimination of double taxation will become the subject of demagoguery on both sides.  We can expect that kind of communication from Washington.
 

01/07

But the headline spotlighted the communications challenge that President Bush faces.  He wants Saddam gone, but he has to build public sentiment for removing him.  Moreover, he has pledged to abide by the conclusions of the United Nations. 

The U.N. inspectors, as good as they are, will not find anything because it is well hidden or it is no longer there.  What will Bush do next?  He has tens of thousands of soldiers and shiploads of military equipment in place to invade.  He just sent a hospital ship from Baltimore to be in position for a conflict.  It has been and continues to be a slow-motion buildup to war.

The fear of the American people and members of the U.N. is that this president is trigger-happy.  He has tried to communicate that he is not, yet he keeps moving troops next to Iraq's border.  Because people watch what you do as much as what you say,  anyone observing the president would conclude war is imminent. 

But should Bush invade without the backing of the U.N. and against the wishes of the American people, he has endangered his reelection and his authority to get legislation passed in the Congress that starts today.

He is engaging in communications like a high-rolling gambler.  You only hope that he knows what he is doing, but the fear never leaves you that he doesn't. 
 

01/06

The following link about the Top 10 Myths of Google (http://www.promotionbase.com/article/971 ) uses PR throughout its discussion, and it has nothing to do with public relations and everything to do with promotion.

Other than knowing the acronym distinctions, there is a serious point here for PR practitioners.  Page ranking in search engines can make or break a Web site.  It has been this way since the beginning of Yahoo!, the first site catalogue.  We use to natter about Page Ranking during the early days of web launches, but it has fallen from view except within the Web community.  So much has changed in getting pages ranked that older techniques and search engines have less value. 

I am not sure what one does anymore.  There is a constant attack-defense game going on between search engines and Web masters, who game the system.  Publicity is still important but it was long ago that one could get press simply because a site was launched.  The site today has to be interesting, useful, compelling -- use any adjective here that means "raised above the pack."  Of course, most sites are in a norm and not differentiated.  What they have to offer does not generate  word of mouth that can be supplemented by publicity. 

Page ranking now is a targeted rather than mass-appeal exercise.  One defines a narrow audience and reaches it through multiple techniques.

PR for PR is not what we used to do just four years ago.