05/02

That isn't the only dirty pool being played with Web sites.  You might have read recently that a Pro-life group bought  a URL with the name of James Madison University http://www.jamesmadisonuniversity.com and redirected the URL to a site called abortionismurder.org.  The group was incensed that the university stopped dispensing contraceptives to students. It doesn't matter that James Madison's real URL is www.jmu.edu.  Some visitors will make the mistake. 

These kinds of tricks have been around since shortly after the beginning of the web. Some people are still outraged that whitehouse.com leads to a porno site rather than the White House in Washington, D.C.  It's instructive that dirty tricks have fallen so far down the ladder of human activity that they are showing up in small New Jersey towns. 

There is a fundamental difference between public relations techniques used in politics and issue campaigns and elsewhere.  Politics is about winning and any technique is fair as long as the person can get away with it.  Political campaigning has simultaneously the most sophisticated and unethical use of PR techniques anywhere.  It doesn't say much for Democracy, but the First Amendment allows it.  Issue debates are the same.  Some stunts pulled by PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) are more outrageous that what has happened to animals themselves.

Civil debate is a rarity.  It was so even as the Constitution was being written more than 200 years ago.  Impassioned people stoop to barbaric language easily and some even to barbarity -- as we learned from the Al Quaeda. 

The group in the New Jersey town took down the site after candidates protested.  The link belonging to the Pro-life group was still redirected as of last night.

05/01

The Triumph of Text.  Jakob Nielsen, the guru of usability on the Web, has been saying since 1997 that banner advertising doesn't work.  He returned to the subject recently to ask why text-only ads on Google are effective and his insights are worth reading.  Click on http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030428.html. 

Nielsen makes a point every PR practitioner should know by heart.  The Web is content-driven.  Nielsen calls it a "cognitive medium, whereas TV is mainly an emotional medium.   This makes TV much more suited for the traditional type of advertising which is flashy and promotes superficial qualities of products."  He goes on to say, "Where TV is warm, the Web is cold. It is a user-driven experience, where the user is actively engaged in determining where to go next." 

He says text-only advertising works because people consider it in the same context as classified advertising, which is also content-driven.  He says search-engine ads work because people go to search engines to find something.  Again, advertising related directly to an individual's quest is content-driven. 

You have read repeatedly on this site that content comes first on the Web.  Nielsen contends the success of text-driven advertising is proof of this.  But, if that is so, why do we have ever-more-fanciful and intrusive banner ads that flop over copy, pop up annoyingly and otherwise behave rudely?   I think because Nielsen is not completely right.  He is mostly right. Secondly, creators of ads want to create.  They are driven by a desire to do something new, different and spectacular.  It offends them that a simple text ad might be more effective than a car putt-putting across a screen.  In other words, the skills of the message-maker drive the craft rather than receptivity of the message-receiver.  If you think this is backwards, you are right.  But try to tell that to a creative. 

I continue to maintain the Web is custom-made for public relations in which fact and content rule.  I think Nielsen agrees with me -- or I agree with him.  I wonder how long it will take before the rest of the world catches up?

04/30

It's astonishing, but the practical Web is just 10 years old.  What a decade it has been.  Even with greed, bubble madness and a plunge, the Web has fundamentally changed human communication.  No other medium -- not even TV -- claims a record of changing how we communicate in 10 years.  Television was invented before World War II but was not commercialized until after the war. 

It seems just yesterday we would hurry to see the newest site appearing on the Web.  There were only a few dozen then.  We would discuss them earnestly and ask whether this medium was going to amount to anything.  It was about this time I stated publicly in a hotel in Toronto that the Web was like Citizens' Band radios.  For awhile,  everyone bought two-way CB radios, used them and then stopped.  I have never lived down that stupid prediction.  I started online-pr.com in June or July 1997.  I don't remember the date precisely.  By then, I realized I had better get on the bandwagon. 

The measure of a life-altering technology is a state of mind that cannot remember how humans used to operate before a  technology arrived.  We are at that point with the Web.  We do so much on the Web now that business would be impaired without it.   A similar situation happened with the arrival of the personal computer.

Today the Web is mature.  Companies have learned how to integrate it into their businesses.   We have a  good idea of what to do, and we know rules for what works and what doesn't. 

That said, creative expression on the Web is moving quickly.  There are Web sites now that are creativity without content:  Some are magnificent and the individuals behind them are artists as much as painters and sculptors.   I like clicking through these sites because they show the human mind in infinite variety. 

Happy birthday, Mosaic!  You didn't last long as a product, but you showed the way.

04/29

I enjoy the description:  We are villainous but not completely bad.  Demonic behavior is reserved for CEOs.  Oddly though, I don't know many who would say that I or my colleagues are truth- and fact-challenged.  In 20+ years working in PR, I have rarely met anyone who is smarmy and a liar to boot.  That doesn't mean they aren't out there, but I haven't met them. 

We're actually a conservative bunch.  We have to be because we know people assume we are liars and we have to overcome that perception.  Yet, for all that, we are "spinmeisters."  We don't change facts:  We change interpretations of facts with evenhanded and, we hope, balanced explanations for how the facts came to be.  Some reporters thank us for that:  Some resent it. 

I began thinking about what we do and wrote a white paper called "Truth, Fact and Perception:  A Constant PR Challenge."   You might find it of use.  Essentially, PR practitioners represent without knowing the truth behind stories they handle.  But that's how it is for everyone, reporters included.  We never know if we have all the facts about a story, issue or anything else.  We hope we have critical facts, but we can't be sure.   It is only later, much later that we can infer truth.  That is when we can reasonably infer intention, if an individual has acted. 

However, we can never know one's intention because we are not mind-readers, and yet, the truth behind most acts lies in the intent of the actor.  So, what we do is a mystery, but like reporters we do it anyway.  And because we are constrained by deadlines, we don't have the time to wait until all evidence is in.

Our bad reputation comes from the fact that PR has a history of smarmy publicists who would do anything to get clients into print.  Secondly, we are paid to represent clients, and we are not bound by law, so we could make it up if we wanted to.  The First Amendment is liberal with regard to freedom of speech, although the Supreme Court case pending against Nike shoes might constrict commercial PR speech in the US, if the decision goes against Nike.

If you have time, read the paper and let me know what you think.  
 

04/28

But a rational person might ask why.  Here is the explanation one animal rights activist gave to the Christian Science Monitor:

"Horses are not like cows and pigs and goats," says Jerry Finch, founder of Habitat for Horses, a Hitchcock-based (Texas) group dedicated to rescuing abused or neglected horses. "They're like pets, and the idea of eating them is repulsive."

That's interesting, but one man's pet can still be another's meal.  According to the Christian Science Monitor,  the Texas plants slaughtered 42,000 horses last year for overseas consumption as sausages, steaks, and sashimi.  The argument Mr. Finch made is a culturally based.  It is about the same as the cultural prudery that ruled 19th Century England in which gentlemen did not do certain things in polite society, but it was OK for the them to go to houses of prostitution, as long as no one knew.  

The US has more cultural prudery than it would like to admit.  For example, dogs are near sacred here, but in Vietnam, dog is a good meal.   Years ago, I was invited to partake of a dog meal, and I would have done so had not work intervened.  It was not a matter of breaking a taboo.  It was a matter of finding out whether I like the taste of dog or not.  I had learned already that many things Americans do not eat taste good and are good for you  -- as horse is, by the way. 

The ultimate point of this thought is that PR cannot fight cultural taboos and win.  If I were to crusade for the right to eat horse and dog in US society, I would be considered certifiably mad.  No one would care that both are eaten with relish elsewhere in the world along with snakes, lizards, monkeys and other assorted creatures that turn our stomachs.

It does no good to ask why Americans are narrow-minded culturally.  We just are.  But so is every other society.  It is also why Americans are often called arrogant by other societies.  We assume too often our way is right and other ways are barbaric.  When we think like that, how can we relate to societies unlike our own?