10/31

I am not  talking about a leader who sets high standards.  An unhappy client is a person who dislikes himself or herself.  Therefore, it is only fair that anyone working around this person be miserable too.

Get a great newsclip about the client, and the client will find fault with it.  Why did they mention this?  Why didn't they mention that?  How come they didn't put my name in enough times, or too many times?  Why did we do this story anyway?  It's not what I wanted in the first place. 

After a while, one stops trying.

I had a boss long ago who was like this.  She had me on such a short string that I sat at my desk all day long doing nothing until she saw fit to tell me to do something.  It was no fun at all.  Everything I did was picked to death.  I was told I was stupid, that I had no sense of accuracy, that I did not try hard enough, that..., that... that...  One day I told her in her office that she was a bad boss. She was incensed with me.  I didn't care.  Fortunately for me, the firm collapsed soon after and everyone was laid off -- the boss too.  I vowed I would never work for such a person again.

But there are always clients like that, and you do have to work for them unless you get the joy of firing them and living on beans for a time. 

If there is one rule about unhappy clients, it is this:  You can never make them happy. 
 

10/30

One study noted that the telephone was coming back into favor, but the fax wasn't and no one was using regular mail anymore.  What that tells me is I should use regular mail more often -- at least it would be distinctive on the reporter's desktop.

Some journalists keep two or more e-mail boxes now.  One is the published e-mail address, which they never look at.  The second and third are private addresses handed only to trusted parties.  This smacks of the same defensive maneuver journalists undertook when voice mail became universal. Some never listen to their messages on the office phone.  They let voice mails pile until the system cannot fit anymore.   These journalists use cell phones as substitutes for the office phone and they don't hand out their cell phone numbers easily. 

The net result of all the spamming is that some reporters are more isolated than ever from sources that can help them.  The worrisome part is that even if PR people used better discretion -- a near impossibility -- there is little that can be done to dam the spam floods.  It is a situation we will live with.  I don't know yet how to handle it.  Each reporter is different, but we're going to have find a way.
 

10/29

I am reminded of this because brush fires in California have destroyed more than 1,100 homes and more than 14 lives.  These are people who refused to listen.  For decades, authorities have advised against building homes in or near dense brush in Southern California mountains.  People ignored the advice and built anyway.

My image of hell comes from a Southern California brush fire in the Malibu mountains 30 years ago.   There were huge undulating walls of flame with roiling smoke and slate clouds as far as one could see.  When the winds blew, flame walls raced at 25 to 30 miles per hour up and down canyons and were unstoppable. 

So, why would anyone build a home on  brush-laden mountains?  Why too would one build a house on a flood plain knowing that a river can top its banks?  Why as well would one erect a house on a sandy beach next to a sea where a no-name storm or hurricane can rip it apart? 

But people do all these things against the advice of authorities and experts.  They do them because they don't want to know the risks, or they feel they are exempt from laws of nature.  Are they foolhardy?  Yes.  Are they much different than others?  No.  Millions build in fire, flood and storm zones on the East and West Coasts.  When the inevitable happens, they beg the Federal Government to help them rebuild. 

But the disaster was a man-made disaster.  It didn't have to happen, if  people were listening.

Unfortunately, there is nothing a PR program can do to pierce the resistance of individuals with fixed minds.  One must let them suffer the consequences and then, most importantly, leave them to their devices.  This last point is a mistake governments have made for decades.  Politicians rush aid to scenes of man-made disasters when they should let homeowners pay for folly.  It happens because politicians lack courage to say what should be said, and that is,  "We told you so."

What will those who lost houses do? Most of them will rebuild using government and insurance money right in the same spot -- and the cycle continues. 

10/28

Spam Uber Alles:  Recently, Dan Gillmor,  the well-known blogger on the San Jose Mercury News, blasted PR people for sending him pitches on his blog comments section.  Fortunately for those of us in PR, one of his friends wrote in to tell him that it isn't PR people doing that, it is spammers.

Sure enough, spammers have found out how to leave messages in the comment boxes of  blogs, and they are beginning to flood blogs with the same crap we delete in the morning and throughout the work day.  They are using "spambots."  And apparently, the spammers are not hoping for click-throughs to some come-on site.  They are trying to trick search engines into thinking blogs are talking about Viagra, diet pills and other junk spammers merchandise in order to get higher placements in search engine rankings.

I am experiencing the same thing in this blog although I rely on the e-mail of this Web site.  Believe it or not, I found a solicitation to exchange links with an anti-smoking remedy tonight.  Did the fellow even bother to look at the site before he made that request?  It is annoying. 

I don't earn money from running online-pr.com or this blog, so I don't appreciate anyone clogging my box and wasting my time.  Yet, spammers don't care.  It is just a button-push to them.

There is an old argument about the right of Free Speech.  I don't begrudge a spammer the right of Free Speech, but what about my right to turn off Free Speech, if I don't want to listen to it?  I am not always in favor of government regulation because the government is a blunt hammer,  but spam is wildly out of control and invasion of privacy outweighs Free Speech.  We have a right to be left alone that supercedes Free Speech.  We don't have to stand in the square while a wild-eyed preacher harangues us about the hereafter.  We have the freedom to move on.  I shouldn't have to find 100 spams a morning in my e-mail box. 

I support any reasonable bill to control spam within US borders.  I know spam cannot be controlled outside of our borders, but we need to start somewhere.
 

10/27

Reading out loud is an excellent way to practice presentation.  That is something many PR people don't do as often as they should.   We tend to assume we won't give many presentations: We just write them.  Or, if we are going to present, we assume we'll have enough time to work on delivery and inflection.  Of course, neither of these assumptions are true. 

It turns out that having a youngster around the house to whom one reads is as good a way as any to practice delivery.  And, because parents should read to children nightly, it is a consistent way to practice as well.  

With reading, the hardest part is pacing.  It is uncomfortable to read at a slow pace, but hearing a voice is more difficult than reading with one's own eyes.  How many speakers have you advised to slow down in your years as a practitioner?  People rarely understand that they speak too fast when delivering remarks. 

A second skill reading out loud teaches is to read without seeming to be reading.  One has to learn to express text, to make words come alive rather than sending them in dull tones from page to listener. Many CEOs never learn how to deliver written speeches.  They are so bad at it that they would rather wing remarks with bullet points to help them along.   While this isn't a bad way to speak, it is also not optimum.  A written speech can hone language in a way that impromptu remarks rarely achieve -- unless one is Winston Churchill.

A final gift that reading out loud provides is a chance to test the limits of one's voice.  You do this by acting out characters with voices for each.  Harry Potter is particularly good for multiple voices.  There are many characters, and they have distinct tonalities.  Acting out characters forces one to shape the voice more or less consistently between a narrator and characters.  It lets one think about what the voice can do and to see if one can make the throat do it. 

Reading out loud is not a chore.  It is training -- and fun training too. 

Don't tell me the ending of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  We're not there yet.