10/24

When have you heard that young folks were turning conservative?  I hadn't.  Maybe there are more Republicans on college campuses, but I don't think they are close to a majority.  On the other hand, if there are more conservatives, does that say something about American society?  Is it possible that the country is turning more conservative at a time when I, for one,  thought it  might be getting more liberal?  This bears watching because it will affect the way we communicate to the young should they indeed be getting "square."

The second story was even more interesting from a communications point of view.  A study of media trends during the recall in California concluded that voters in Democratic districts of California relied  mostly on televised debates and network and cable news to decide what to do whereas voters in GOP districts looked for information in newspapers and online. 

Huh?  Let's go over that again.  A survey of 500 voters in an online survey purportedly showed that Democrats opt for TV and Republicans for newspapers and the Internet.   There is a lot about this that makes no sense to me.  TV news viewers skew old -- in the 50s.  Online users skew young.  Is it possible that the media survey validates the college campus survey?  That hardly seems possible, especially when nearly all candidates in the recall relied on a TV strategy and not a newspaper or online strategy. 

If Republicans watch television less than Democrats, does this mean Republicans are better educated?  I suspect it does. 

What it tells me is that reaching target audiences is less a mass media strategy than ever if people have media preferences by political leaning.  I have written often over the years that mass media is a misnomer.  It is mass to the sender, not to the receiver.  It seems once again we are reminded how divided things are.  Add to this the plummeting viewership on networks in  the US this Fall and you have a conundrum.  Are all those staying away from network TV shows Republicans?
 

10/23

The reporter, Michael Skapinker, was complimentary to PR practitioners -- well, to in-house practitioners.  He dismissed agency folks like me whom he calls consultants.  And, I understand why he does.  His reasoning is much the same as mine and what I have complained about since I started writing this blog two years ago.  Here is what he wrote.

"Decent as they are, many of the PR consultants are, in any event, not up to scratch." 

He's right.  They aren't.  Skapinker says he has to put up with them pitching him useless stories and not knowing what they are talking about. 

On the other hand, he praises in-house PR practitioners because, he says, they know their companies, but he also notes they aren't having much fun.  Again, Skapinker:

I have known dozens of in-house PR people over the years and have invariably found them good value.  What is noticeable, however, is how worn out and dispirited they are.  It is not just the constant crises, late-night calls and inaccurate reports that get to them.  It is that the people at the top of the company do not listen.  I have watched in-house PR people flinch as their chief executives put their feet in it.  And I have heard company spokesmen and women despair, off the record, at the trouble they saw coming that the board refused to recognise.

That's an accurate description as well. 

Where I fall out with Mr Skapinker is his belief that outside consultants cannot tell the truth to CEOs because they are "supplicants, dependent on their next contract from the company."  That may be true for some outside practitioners but it is not true for all.  I personally have watched colleagues over the years deliver bad news to clients.  Just yesterday we told a client that his Big Idea did not make sense.  We did it without flinching, but we were also careful to tell the client what would work. 

Skapkiner has had bad experiences with outside consultants, so he has written them off.  That's too bad.  There are consultants who do their homework and know their clients as well as insiders do.  There are consultants, whom I daresay,  know their clients better in some areas than insiders do. 

I am defensive because I and my colleagues work hard to understand clients and their businesses.  I don't like to be dismissed as someone who knows little.  Now, it is true some clients don't tell me anything, but they don't tell their in-house people anything either.  It's a frustration.  I still try to learn their businesses in order to counsel them. 

So while I thank Mr. Skapinker for his complimentary column on public relations, I just wish he had been a bit more temperate in his remarks.
 

10/22

Intel Corp.'s CEO Craig Barrett delivered a keynote speech at the Gartner Symposium in Lake Buena Vista, Florida yesterday and said Intel would not invest in California.  Intel was founded in California and was instrumental in making Silicon Valley what it was and is.  There is no more native industry to the state than Intel.  But, here is what the news report said:

In his Gartner Symposium keynote talk here this morning, Barrett condemned California's high business taxes and said Intel is not making any new investments in the state. "We're investing outside California. Its workers comp system and taxes are a disaster," he said.

Talk about PR you don't need if you happen to be the incoming governor who has promised to bring business back to the state. 

California is an entity at the bottom of the reputation cycle.  For decades the state was a shining land that everyone wanted to live in.  Millions moved there.  The state is one of the largest economies on earth.  But, over years of political mismanagement, California became hard to do business in.  Worse, it fell from its envied reputation in a few months at the end of the Internet Bubble.  It was Icarus plunging to the sea after flying too close to the sun.

What intrigues me is what one must do to turn the State's reputation around.  The crisis is  beyond press releases and brochures.  There needs to be reform that makes the state desirable to employers.  But chances of reform are nil as long as one political party holds the legislature.  So, California may stagnate.

Lest one think this cannot happen, think of Japan.  The country slumped for 13 years because no one had the political will to reform the banking system.  Japan today is crawling toward a solution. Or, think of the UK, which slumped for decades.  And, there is France and Germany and Italy, all of whom face deep problems.  These countries require fundamental change.  But, there is no guarantee a country will change, only that it can change. 

Can California reform and turn around its reputation in the process?  It can, but will it?
 

10/21

As the recent Fortune magazine pointed out in a look at banks' contributions to Enron's fall, there was no sense of right and wrong.  The only criterion was whether one could get a deal done and earn the fat fees that came with completion.  To a banker who questioned whether a pending deal was legal, the response, referring to the pending $17 million fee, was that there were 17 million reasons for doing it. 

So too, 60 Minutes on Sunday showed a dispiriting memo from accounting firm Ernst & Young about tax shelters, most of which proved later to be illegal.  The memo pleaded with the accountants to "think green" and consider the money to be made from selling tax shelter advice.  And this is a firm hired to tell us whether companies follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.  Then to get depressed, I think about PR practitioners who professed to be telling the public the facts while guarding the reputations of shady clients.

We are not arbiters of morals in the PR business, but we should be arbiters of self-interest.  It was obvious that what was happening would come back to haunt clients.  We should have said so, and we should have said so publicly.  We didn't.  

On the other hand, I detest the ultra-religious sense of right and wrong that prevails in some sections of America.  This is the contention that since I am on the side of truth, anything I say must be right.  This leads to governmental and prosecutorial abuse that we see in the post 9/11 era.  It hearkens back to Puritanical history. 

There must be a middle ground in which one desires to do the right thing and can discern right from wrong.  It begins, however, with desire to do the right thing.  That is what was lost in the 90s, especially among the wealthy, and it is disturbing.  Countries can run on corruption for centuries, as Rome did, but eventually, they fall.  America is young at 200 years, but it risks its moral authority and longevity if it veers too far to materialism or absolutism.

Again, these are issues PR practitioners should be thinking about.  It falls on us to counsel clients wisely about communications issues and corporate reputation.  If we never challenge assumptions clients use, we fall into their habits and patterns of thinking.  We forget the larger issues that have a place in perception and reputation.
 

10/20

Thomas Jefferson had a naive belief that Democracy unchecked would sooner or later arrive at the right answer.  But, James Madison pointed to the tyranny of mobs when Democracy is not held in restraint.  The pragmatic Founders of the United States were too familiar with the devastation the French Revolution caused by chaotic mob rule.  Democracy ran amok and blood spilled in rivers. 

Democracy can only exist as an effective form of government when there is general acceptance of the value of life and civility.   In places like Iraq, Palestine, and West Africa, there is no semblance of give-and-take without killing one another.  We have witnessed the horrors of mob action over and over without the ability to stop it. 

Even in developed countries there is mob action that lacks reason and restraint.  We laugh at antics of the young but the antics are no longer funny when the young start killing themselves and each other with drugs, drink and guns.  We don't mind demonstrations against the powers in office -- in fact, we encourage it.  But, we are alarmed when demonstrations become violent and when authorities react without restraint in putting dissent down.   We tolerate sects until the sects incite violence against their own and others.

Democracy is warped as well when demagogues, the powerful and the rich use their powers and resources to sway those who don't know better. 

The problem is that the Internet because of its openness allows all of these perversions of Democracy to flower.   Worse, they flower out of the sight of many who do not look into Web pages with dangerous ideas and worse perversions.  We would like to ignore this element because it is not yet distorting our society.  But, should we be ignorant, especially when minds given to evil link locally and across nations?

This is an issue PR practitioners should be thinking about.  We communicate through the Web now more than ever.  We know, or should know, that activists,  hackers and others can disrupt our communications and distort our messages easily with counter-sites, viruses, e-mails, activism.  If we are not vigilant on behalf of our clients, who will be?