Mack the Flack

There’s an old PR saying that “perception is reality”; how better to explain why three struggling organizations facing possible bankruptcy poured salt on their fiscal wounds with bad PR decisions.

Mack isn’t saying these companies face oblivion because of bad PR; rather these bad moves are symptoms of failure. Poorly run organizations are often PR disasters waiting to happen.

The Bad PR three:

· Kodak – the 131 year-old photo firm failed to adapt to a digital world. Spent tons of cash it couldn’t afford promoting itself on “Real Housewives”. Expected to file for bankruptcy this month.

· Sears – failed to adjust its retail model. Will close 120 stores and has seen its share price drop 73% since being bought by Sears Holdings in 2005. Pushed the state of Illinois to pay it to keep its head office in Chicago.

· Research in Motion – lost out to other mobile technologies. Product delays, layoffs and a share drop of 75% in 2011. Its PlayBook tablet launch was a textbook PR disaster.

Learn the correlation between perception and reality. Register for the SFU Public Relations Program

The holidays are past, the extra pounds have arrived, and it’s time to hit the gym. Well-intentioned, you’ll face throngs of fellow gym recruits. Gym membership in North America has increased 25% in the past decade. But by late March the line for the treadmill will thin as 30% of fitness club members stop coming.

As Mack heads back to his gym this month, here are four things the fitness club folks don’t want you to know:

· “Everything you touch is covered with bacteria.” Sweaty gyms are great for catching everything from athlete’s foot to the flu. Wipe equipment down, wear flip flops in the change room.

· “Our trainers don’t know what they’re doing.” Being buff doesn’t make a trainer. Hire someone who’s certified by a recognized program.

· “Our equipment can be dangerous.” Poorly serviced equipment can injure. Pick a gym with maintained equipment.

· “We won’t let you quit.” Cancelling gym memberships are frequent complaints. Read the fine print.

Learn the facts of crisis communications. Register for SFU’s Public Relations Certificate Program.

Back in the mid-1990s Mack bought himself a Palm Pilot personal data assistant (PDA) and bragged to all interested (and many who weren’t) that the device was “like having a mini computer in my hand”. He lost the thing, with all his data, less than a month later.

Mack’s Palm Pilot loss is minor compared with Western Union’s decision, in 1876, not to buy the patent for the telephone. And there have been some other amazing tech whoppers since:

• 1970s – Business tycoon Ross Perot turns down a chance to buy Microsoft for a paltry $60 million (today Microsoft is worth more than $224 billion)
• 1980s – Apple fires Steve Jobs
• 1990s – Search engine company Excite passes on buying Google for just $750,000 (Google is currently worth more than $300 billion)

Learn how to use today’s tech wonders to deliver awesome PR. The SFU PR Certificate Program.

Social media has been both good and bad news for PR. On one hand social media provides PR with an inexpensive killer way to communicate directly to people the world over. Conversely social media has forced old school PR types to adapt or die.

Mack, an ever-adapting PR guy, offers 5 reasons why PR still rocks in the social media age:

1. It’s the message stupid. Social media provides PR with a great means of communicating key messages.

2. Crisis still happen. Crisis management skills, a PR mainstay, are vital in the fast happening online world.

3. Social media isn’t just marketing. It’s about crafting a relationship with others, a focus of PR.

4. It’s cheaper. Many businesses, non-profits and groups can’t afford marketing and advertising campaigns. A social media PR campaign affords a bigger bang for the buck.

5. PR does media relations. As traditional news media shrinks and migrates online it remains a key source of information and a major influencer of public opinion.

Learn how PR rocks. The SFU PR Certificate Program.

Sometimes PR folks try so hard to attract attention that it begs the question; what the heck were they thinking?

Mack offers two such recent campaigns that scream fail!

A Vancouver spa was beat up big time on social media after offering a free message to anyone who could prove they participated in the chaos and looting of the city’s Stanley Cup riot. The blow back from the public was swift and damaging, proving there is such a thing as bad publicity.

An Iowa-based convenience store chain launched a “morale-boosting” contest called “Guess the Next Cashier Who Will Be Fired”. Employees were told “secret shoppers” would be looking for employees out of uniform or providing lousy customer service and then recommending such employees be fired.

The prize for correctly guessing the next fired cashier was $10. The result – four employees immediately quit and the contest was cancelled.

Learn how to launch successful PR campaigns in the SFU PR Certificate Program.

The potential link between cellphones and brain cancer is back in the news. The cancer research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported a possible, but still unproven, link between cell use and brain tumors.

The WHO PR campaign’s less than helpful message; best limit your use of the world’s most used communication device.

The BC government has floated the idea of banning tanning beds to anyone under the age of 17 due to the increased risk of skin cancer. The important health message; that an all-over glow may not be so healthy.

PR often uses fear as an easy way to sell a message, campaign, point of view, organization or product. Unfortunately the indiscriminate and sometimes phony use of fear has created an entire fear industry. Parents fear playgrounds, children fear dogs, travellers fear plane crashes and swimmers fear sharks.

Trevor Butterworth, a New York based journalist who specializes in risk analysis, says we should fear less likely risks (jets crashing and shark attacks) and focus on legitimate risks such as a heart attack while mowing the lawn or a car accident on our way to the airport.

Learn all about the proper use of PR techniques, including fear, in the SFU PR Certificate program. wppcert@sfu.ca

So it’s Friday the 13^th and Mack the Flack read an interesting bit of news the other day. Public Relations is rated the 2^nd most stressful job according to the human resources folks at careercast.com (careercast.com/jobs-rated/10-most-stressful-jobs-2011).

PR’s is uber stressful because it is a “highly competitive” profession, according to careercast.com’s annual rating of jobs. PR is fraught with “tight deadlines that keep stress at high levels” for most flacks.

Now Mack is not about to disagree with this assessment of the trials and tribulations of PR. He knows he and his tribe must work with tight deadlines, high pressure public speaking, potentially disastrous media interviews and nerve- jangling crisis management situations.

But this stress is also what makes PR so much fun. PR is way more interesting than being a corporate executive, photojournalist, newscaster, ad executive, architect, stockbroker, paramedic or realtor. All of whom were ranked below PR in terms of job stress.

Airline pilots, who were ranked as having the most stressful job, only have one advantage over PR as Mack sees it: free flights. Then again, they have to eat the food.

Learn why PR is never boring in the SFU PR Certificate program. wppcert@sfu.ca

Most News (Press) release headlines are too long for Google News, greatly reducing their effectiveness and chances of ever being read online. According to a study by Schwartz Communications (www.schwartzcomm.com) the shorter the headline the better. Search engine optimization (SEO) experts recommend headline lengths of 65-70 characters in order to get included in Google News.

But 77% of the more than 16,000 news releases reviewed by the folks at Swartz exceeded the suggested headline length. The study of headlines found that:

• 23% were ideal with 65-70 characters
• 49% were too long with 70 – 150 characters
• 28% were way, way too long with more than 150 characters

The fact that only 23% of working PR types wrote optimized news release headlines shows we have a long way to go to figure out new media.

Learn more about new media and social networking in the SFU PR Certificate program. 778.782.5093 or pr-staff@sfu.ca (more…)

Wikileaks‘ release of classified military documents about the grinding and ultimately futile nine-year war in Afghanistan, while interesting, is hardly earth-shattering. Who honestly thought the war was going well and the Taliban were soon-to-be defeated?

Apart being a PR nightmare for the US military, the document dump on the WikiLeaks website is extraordinary in that the website is the world’s first stateless news organization. It can’t be censured, sued or stopped because it exists in cyberspace. It’s a game changer because whistle blowers don’t need traditional media outlets when they can just upload the information to WikiLeaks.

To be fair the secret document release was a bigger story because WikiLeaks shared the information with solid media outlets such as the New York Times, Guardian and Der Spiegel. Their news stories were published on the same day the documents were released on the website. It was the first such media collaboration in history.

Welcome to the brave new media world.

To learn more about this new check out the PR Special Topics and PR Trends & Issues courses of SFU’s PR program at www.sfu.ca/cstudies/pr or call 778-782-5093 or email pr-staff@sfu.ca

The PR world is littered with unprepared, unguarded and unaware newsmakers who speak first and think later when conducting interviews, meetings or being close to a live microphone.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson recently described speakers at a council meeting as “f–kin’ hacks,” unaware the city’s audio system was recording his comment.

A month earlier NDP MP Libby Davies faced calls to resign as her party’s deputy leader when she suggested in a YouTube interview that Israel has been occupying territory since the country came into existence. Both politicians quickly apologised for their comments.

The SFU Public Relations program includes a Crisis Communications course taught by noted journalist and instructor Don Whiteley. He’ll cover how to prepare a crisis communications plan, anticipate public reaction, develop messages for key audiences, and manage media attention.

More details www.sfu.ca/cstudies/pr or call 778-782-5093 or email pr-staff@sfu.ca