07/11

Now, I'll tell you why.  It just happened to public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard (FH) whose confidential PR advice to a client was exposed for the world and activists to see.  As you might expect, it turned out badly.  Click here to read the story. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37144-2003Jul10.html

Apparently, FH is not to blame for the fiasco.  It provided PR advice to a consortium developing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)  Tags to replace the bar code on every package you pick up in a store.   There is an activist group opposed to RFID.  It calls RFID tags an invasion of privacy.

The group, called CASPIAN, Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, was delighted when it found FH's PR memos posted on the Web site of the Auto-ID center, a research group affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology that is developing RFID.  The documents were apparently marked "Confidential, for sponsors only."  But, there they were, and they told consortium members how to overcome consumer objections to the use  of RFID.  The Center said it makes all documents public in three months anyway, but someone wasn't thinking.  CASPIAN immediately picked up the FH memos and used them to publicize the "spin" the industry is using to dupe American consumers.

And, of course, because it is PR advice, it is automatically deemed devious and untruthful.  I'm sure FH would rather not be associated with the publicity from this screwup, but it can't hide.  The Center is apparently passing the whole thing off as a tempest in a teapot, but CASPIAN is keeping the pressure on AND criticizing MIT for lax security.

So, once again, if it is sensitive, keep it off a public Web site.  Seems obvious, doesn't it?  Tell that to the engineers at the Auto-ID Center.
 

07/10

At the end, the tape was switched off and handed over to a transcriber.  I got back 12 pages of single-spaced type yesterday  with frequent inserts like this, [Unintelligible],  or this, [Talking over one another].  As a result, I started without 15% of the conversation.   Fortunately, I took a form of steno , so I had notes of the beginning of the conversation and key sections throughout.  That meant, however, that I had to translate my scrawl.

Here was the challenge.  Out of the 12 pages and handwritten notes, I had to distill a flowing conversation of 2000 words with a  logical backbone that made the individual seem intelligent.  The problem was there was nothing of the kind in the material before me.  What to do?

Over the years, I've developed a process.  First, I get rid of anything that would never be part of a final story -- such as a bawdy joke told in the middle of the interview.  This leaves random tidbits of meat.  Then I start positioning major paragraphs of conversation into a seeming order.  This means picking chunks from the end of the interview and placing them at the beginning -- and vice versa.  Finally, I fit random sentences of conversation against or inside major paragraphs as extensions or amplifications of conversation.   I then edit the crude conversation savagely until it appears that the individual moved smoothly from one topic to the next.  Sometimes I have to add a phrase.  Most of the time, I chop sentences and words.

The conversation dropped from 6000 words to 2000, and it covered four topics by time I turned it over for a first reading.  It needs work, but I think I have the bones of a final piece.

How many hours did it take me?  About five, and I don't know any way to speed the process.  People don't talk in logical order.  They start ideas, stop, reverse field, pick up another idea, stop again, come back to the original thought and move onto something else.  Only a few individuals whom I have met talk in a logical flow such that their remarks needed little editing.

Editing a transcript is assembling a puzzle.  It only looks good when you're done.
 

07/09

But, stock options have been the victim of wretched PR.   The  bad PR came from CEOs and others who abused options and accounting to make sure they got their compensation whether or not they legitimately hit their targets.  Options also spurred a short-term mentality among CEOs that degenerated into quarter-by-quarter performance targets that ignored long-term company health.  When the Bubble burst, so did options.  Worst of all, when options sank to worthlessness along with a company's stock price, some firms re-priced options to make them worth something again rather than live by the original agreement.

It's too early to say whether Microsoft is in the vanguard of companies getting rid of options, but what Microsoft has done is dispense with a PR headache that isn't going to get better, especially if companies have to expense options as the Financial Accounting Standards Board is directing.  Microsoft said employees will earn stock awards for reaching targets and that 600 of its senior executives will get stock based on the growth in number and satisfaction of customers.

PR practitioners in high-tech companies with options now have a task of explaining why their firms are keeping them and why they should not be expensed.  My guess that one or both positions will be futile in a year or two.

There is a lesson here that no one has picked up yet, as far as I can determine.  Compensation systems built on greed are fated to fail.   Options were built on greed although boards thought they would spur entrepreneurs to work hard and make their companies succeed.  Executives who lived and died by options were not adverse to distorting the system to make sure they were paid.  Executives who wanted to build a company first and worry about the rewards later, like Bill Gates, seemed to have done better.   Somewhere along the line, boards ignored human psychology when they established option awards. 

No wonder they degenerated into bad PR.
 

07/08

Samsung announced yesterday it is banning camera cell phones from its factories to prevent industrial espionage.  Japanese publishers are incensed because Japanese women are not bothering to buy fashion magazines.  They snap a photo of a page in which they are interested using their camera cell phones and send the picture to friends for comment. 

One commentator says the camera cell phone will change the way we communicate when millions of camera phones are out there and available day and night.   This commentator said people are transmitting photos of suspicious characters directly to the police, taking pictures of accidents and submitting them to authorities, using phones to snap pictures at construction sites so supervisors can see developing problems, etc.  This is happening with low-resolution 1.3 megapixel camera phones: Higher pixel versions are coming on stream.

We have written about camera phones before, but we never got into alternate uses.  What is shaping up is a battle similar to what the recording industry is having with song-swappers, except this time it will be with everyone else. 

PR practitioners should pay attention to what is happening in the Far East.  It will get here too, perhaps not as quickly as picture -obsessed Japan, but it will come.  Start thinking now about the problems and opportunities of picture phones and think through a few policies for your organization.  For example, what should be the policy of someone snapping a picture of a co-worker in an embarrassing position and sending it to others -- e.g., sleeping at his desk or wrapped in the arms of a secretary? What should be the policy of allowing picture phones near confidential financial and marketing material?  Should users attending confidential meetings be forced to check in picture phones like gunfighters checking their arms at the door of a saloon?

Your boss might laugh about this today.  In a year, the laughter will be a worried smile. It will take only a few instances of a breach of privacy or secrecy in the US to get people to wake up. 
 

07/07

As a result, it is good for one's professionalism and humility to bump into limitations once in awhile.  I find something like that happening now.  I hope I rise to the occasion, but I'm beginning to worry I might not. This is a piece I'm supposed to write.  It was supposed to come out of another document, but there wasn't enough information in the document to make the piece interesting.  So I wrote something I thought I could sell to editors.  With some reservations, my boss thought it might work.  The client hated it.

So it was back to the drawing board with a verbal outline from the client as to what the client wants to see.  I wrote a second piece that followed the client's outline closely.  My boss hated it.  The client hasn't seen it yet.  

Now, my boss wants me to attempt the piece a third time but this time distill it from yet another document that he thinks might provide information to make the piece come alive.  I'll do that early this week.  With my luck, both my boss and the client will hate the new one. 

I've learned over the years that some work is fated to go bad, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.  I fear this piece is one of those.  I suggested that we drop the piece because the client wasn't likely to be happy with anything we wrote.  My CEO vetoed that idea.  I feel like I'm caught in a netherworld in which everything I write is targeted for editor's strikeout, and I will keep writing this piece into eternity with strikeouts longer and more frequent. 

It's good to have this helpless feeling.  It reminds one that in PR, one is never quite the master of one's own fate.  Many others are there to tell you what to do -- and how to do it.  It keeps one from getting a big head.