Mack the Flack

We are one of the most governed nations on earth. Federal, provincial, regional and municipal governments spend millions every year on Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that offend the average person’s intelligence. This winter, governments offered such “nanny state” advice as:

· “When shoveling snow, push, don’t lift”

· “Exposed skin will freeze in seconds at -20C.”

· “High mountain pass; use snow tires in winter.”

On March 20^th, at 5:14 am spring arrived in Canada. Called the March equinox in order to remove the Northern Hemisphere bias about spring, the event marks the arrival of a whole new crop of expensive PSAs:

· “This is how you wash your hands…”

· “Don’t dive head first into unknown waters!”

· “Avoid climbing high voltage electricity transmission towers!”

Mack understands the idea behind such PSAs – to save lives, reduce illness and injuries. But really, wouldn’t it more effective to focus scarce public dollars on school health programs rather than a national hand-washing campaign in a first world country?

Learn about effective public service advice and announcements.

Apply to 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.

By Diane Stewart, Office Manager at Peak Communicators

In my role as office manager, I review requests for internship
opportunities and employment. People want to work at Peak because they
are outgoing, influential, great communicators, have an eye for detail,
have had experience in media relations – all the things we’re looking
for. Surprisingly the majority of applications we receive are sent by
email with short cover notes. Very few candidates contact us directly.

As PR professionals, we pitch ideas and stories to media. We also
promote and sell our services to clients. We are the best at it because
we talk to people and persuade them to cover our story or give us their
business. We never just send an email.

If you seek a career with a top public relations firm, pitch yourself.
Demonstrate the skills you’ve put on your resume. Sell us.

Strong research skills: prove it

Spend time on the company website; know who you’re applying to, the key
players.

Attention to detail: prove it

Proofread your resume for spelling, grammatical or formatting error.
Don’t have your resume stand out for all the wrong reasons.

Strong communication skills: prove it

Putting together an impressive resume and cover letter is a good start.
List only the experience that is relevant to working with us, or reword
your past experience so that it’s clear it will transfer to the new
role. Write an impressive cover letter. Call to arrange an informational
interview or better yet a meeting with someone in the firm who makes the
hiring decisions.

The interview, well that’s a topic for another day.

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.

Ms. Felding, Mack’s grade 10 English teacher, carefully read every one of his assignments. He knows because she used a red pen to correct every mistake. Turns out she didn’t do him any favour.

She was paid to read his stuff, but outside school most people don’t have the time or interest to read what you write. In the real world you have to fight to be read.

With that brutal reality in mind, here’re three tips on how to write to be read:

· Don’t start at the beginning. Teachers gave you an “A” for a beginning, middle and end. Start instead with the most important information. Write what you have to get the answer or action you want.

· Don’t pad, cut. Get right to the point. Cut to the bare essentials.

· Cut jargon, fancy and unnecessary words. Corporate-speak, pretentious phrases and big words should get red penned.

Learn how to write like a PR pro. 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.

Mack’s colleague, who just signed up for Twitter and has two followers, faces a common Twitter dilemma – now what to tweet about? Mack’s advice? Just babble.

That, according to Twitter Facts and Figures Report, is what most of the more than 200 million people using Twitter do. Less than 40% of users send conversational tweets and only 9% of all worldwide tweets are passed along.

Five years after the introduction of Twitter we know that of all Twitter users:

• Almost half are between 18 and 34
• More than half don’t have kids
• They occupy all income levels
• About 4% tweet about news
• About 6% use tweets for self-promotion

So, what’s all this pointless, one-sided, 140-character, babble worth? Twitter has a current estimated market value of between $8 -10 billion.

Learn all about Twitter and other social media techniques in the SFU PR Certificate Program.

Barbecues and ice cold bottles of beer are about to give way to emails, staff meetings and spread sheets as summer winds down and many of us return to work.

Mack did some interesting summer reading in one public restroom. No, not the scribbling on walls about good times, he read an item by the Employee Benefit News (http://ebn.benefitnews.com/news/okay-stall-employees-2685027-1.html) that suggests workplace bathrooms offer a unique employee communication opportunity.

The group suggests such employee notices should:

1. be posted at eye level for those seated in a stall
2. be kept to one page
3. include content appropriate images
4. be changed every two weeks
5. be printed on differently coloured paper to signal updated information

After reading Mack placed this advice in the appropriate receptacle, washed his hands with soap while humming happy birthday twice, and left.

Learn more effective communications methods in the SFU PR Certificate Program.

“Summertime and the livin’ is easy” – so wrote Ira Gershwin. It’s that time of the year and Mack is taking some time off. Here’s why you should too:

1. Loved ones will love to see you more
2. Everyone needs time to do something silly like swing on a rope and jump into a crisp, cool lake
3. Your mind needs at least one week away from tweets, status updates, emails, texts, calls, voice messages and other modern forms of communications
4. Time away makes your boss, clients, co-workers appreciate you more
5. Escaping to a place that makes you smile – be it a winding road in Tuscany, a restaurant in Paris, or your deck chair in the sun – is healthy
6. Work life will go on without you – no one is irreplaceable, so you may as well enjoy your time away

Forget about the PR Program for a week and learn just how good Gershwin’s song sounds. Go to YouTube to search “Ella Fitzgerald – Summertime”. It’s footage of the great lady in concert in Berlin a time ago. It is sublime.  Now take some time off.

Ella Fitzgerald – Summertime

Kai Nagata, a 24-year-old TV News reporter, has discovered TV News is a superficial world inhabited by Ken and Barbie lookalike news readers and reporters.

Furthermore, these TV pretty boys and girls often ignore important news in favour of saturation coverage of such trivial events as Kate and Will’s visit to Canada.

Shocking!

Nagata wrote a scathing 3,000 word blog entitled “Why I quit my job” in which the former CBC and CTV TV reporter describes his disillusionment with TV news. Seems he wasn’t ready for an industry that “so casually sexualizes its workforce.”

“Every hiring decision is scrutinized using a skewed, unspoken ratio of talent to attractiveness, where attractiveness often compensates for a glaring lack of other qualifications.”

Now, as an ex-PR and former print reporter who was never hired for his looks, Mack knows it isn’t exactly a news flash that TV News is more about big hair and white teeth than in-depth coverage of world events.

Kai Nagata might consider a career in print journalism; become a commentator, or even a media spokesperson for a deserving organization. He should also recognize TV News as it is – usually pretty people telling often petty stories with pictures.

Learn how the media, including TV News, works in the SFU PR Certificate program. wppcert@sfu.ca