Mack the Flack

PR folks love facts.

We love interesting facts (rubber duck races raise millions of dollars for charity), we love did-you-know facts (the world’s largest rubber duck race, the Great British Race, involves 250,000 ducks), and we love fun facts (all the ducks from the Great British race would fill a local stadium so many times).

PR folks love facts for one reason. Journalists, bloggers and tweeters love them. It’s a great way to get the media’s, the online world’s and the public’s attention.

Mack rarely comes across a fun fact he doesn’t like but the other day he noticed a news story with a big fake fact – a fact one of Mack’s PR colleague’s calls “Things that make you go hmm.”

The fake fact – this summer’s Pride Parade in Toronto drew one million attendees. That’s 1,000,000 people crammed into a 2 km parade route in downtown Toronto. That’s one-fifth of the population of Greater Toronto.

A smart reader of Macleans.ca points out that fitting one million people into a 2 km route would require 25 people for each square metre of space, “…which four to five times as many as would physically fit”. In reality you can fit a maximum of seven people per square metre, and it’s very cozy.

So what’s the real fact? A maximum of 280,000 people crowded the very popular Toronto Pride Parade based on the parade route’s total surface area.

Learn about the use of facts, fun and serious, in the SFU PR Certificate program. wppcert@sfu.ca

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

Nine out of 10 Canadians still trust traditional news media but only 1 in four think social media is a reliable source of information, according to the Canadian Media Research Consortium (www.mediaresearch.com).

Seems we like social media for “news alerts and alternative perspectives” but we still turn to newspapers, radio and TV (and their websites) for verification of news. The Consortium survey of the 1,682 randomly surveyed adults found 90% of respondents think traditional media should continue to expose “abuses of power by government and other powerful institutions”.

As an old print reporter Mack the Flack couldn’t agree more but he cautions the distrust of social media will decrease as a younger generation, raised on social media, begin to take over our traditional media.

The survey sort of backs up the old hack, uh, flack’s gut feeling.

“Young adults have more confidence in social networking sites and blogs than average, but they still rank them far behind established news sources,” says the report.

Learn how PR embraces both the traditional and social media as a communications one-two punch in the SFU PR Certificate program. wppcert@sfu.ca

Reports predicting the death of the typewriter are exaggerated. Seems the rise of computers has not sounded the death knell for the clack, clack, clack of typewriters.

Mack the Flack learned that the false story (imagine!) started making the world news media rounds last month when one of the world’s last typewriter manufacturers – an Indian company named Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company – stopped production of the machines, which prompted a typewriter death watch.

Turns out there is an American company, Swintec, is still turning out the machines, including clear ones for the US prison system, in manufacturing plants in China, Japan and Indonesia.

The clear typewriters are popular with correctional facilities because the inmates “can’t hide contraband inside them” says Swintec’s general manager Ed Michael.

Typewriters are still used in the US by defense agencies (keep the secrets secret), courts and government agencies, including the NYPD.

Invented in 1873 by the E. Remington and Sons Company, typewriters will, eventually fade away. Until then typists will continue to learn to type “the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog”.

Learn why PR embraces all technology, including social media, 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

Mack the Flack came across a new term the other day – “Churnalism” which refers to PR-generated news releases that are run virtually untouched by the news media. At a recent meeting of PR types an editor said her local newspaper used PR release as is “if it’s well written”.

UK-based website www.churnalism.com calls out the BBC and several British newspapers for cranking out stories that differ very little from the news releases that sparked the stories. The site graphically shows the actual percentage of media release material that ends up in news stories.

So what’s wrong with Churnalism?

Lazy reporting aside, it isn’t good for PR. We PR folks push hard to get news media coverage because we know that, even in this social media dominated world of ours, traditional news media remains instantly recognizable, credible and commands huge audiences – thanks to its own social media efforts.

If PR is too successful in getting its promotional stuff reproduced verbatim in traditional media the media loses its third party credibility and the public, which knows when it’s being manipulated, loses interest.

Learn about PR, effective news releases and pitching stories to the media in the SFU PR Certificate program. 778.782.5093 or pr-staff@sfu.ca

Every day lousy, pointless and lifeless quotations doom news releases, newsletters, websites, publications and blogs postings. “Mundane, meandering quotations spoil PR writing fast,” says Mack the Flack.

Here are three ways to avoid bad quotes:

1. Be Active – every quote should be in the active voice. A recognized person should do something concrete. “The VP Finance detailed the restructuring plan to shareholders this morning.”
2. Be Understandable – keep your quotes short, concise and interesting. Avoid jargon, buzzwords and unnecessary acronyms.
3. Be Informative – tell your reader something, add information. Avoid clichés, stating the obvious, verbose and meaningless quotes.

Learn about PR and perfecting the perfect quote in the SFU PR Certificate program. 778.782.5093 or pr-staff@sfu.ca

Pitching a story idea to the news media on behalf of a client or organization is the “worst dental visit ever” sort of task of PR. Few practitioners enjoy it and even fewer are good at it. Mack the Flack knows a thick a skin is a must for such pitches. He’s also learned a few tricks over the, uh, decades.

1. Be specific – tell the media/blog the information – who, what, when, where, why and how – they need. Making the reporter/blogger’s job easier will make the task easier for you.
2. Be targeted – tailor your information to suit the interest or expertise of the reporter/blogger.
3. Be quick – get your information (see above) to the reporter/blogger as quickly as possible.
4. Be visual – give the reporter/blogger compelling visuals. It helps to sell the story.
5. Be sure you have a spokesperson – someone who knows the details, can sell the story and is available.
6. Be social media aware – don’t clog the reporter’s/blogger’s email with attachments they will never open.
7. Be persistent – follow up your pitch with the reporter/blogger.

Learn about PR and pitching to the news media in the SFU PR Certificate program. 778.782.5093 or pr-staff@sfu.ca

Mack the Flack knows he’s out of date because he sometimes shoots photos on film, watches the odd movie on VCR and has been known to listen to music on a vinyl “album”. But what really dates him is his use of email.

You see, social network chatting, instant messaging (IM), texting and tweeting have already surpassed phone calls as the communication methods of choice in our new media world and these methods will soon supersede email as well.

Facebook currently handles four billion messages daily and the number is growing. Meanwhile unique visits to email sites such as Yahoo and Hotmail are in steady decline.

Under 25 year olds prefer the informal, fast communications of texts, tweets and IMs to the slower, more formal email that requires an account sign in, a subject line and the use of “sincerely”, “thanks” or “best wishes” at the end of messages. To them email is slow and lame.

As Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s director of engineering puts it: “The medium isn’t the message. The message is the message.”

But Mack the Flack knows young people will have to keep checking their email because their teachers, bosses and parents still use it. At least for now.

Learn about PR, social networking and email in the SFU PR Certificate program. 778.782.5093 or pr-staff@sfu.ca

Mack the Flack knew it was going to be a busy day when his cell announced the first received text just before 7 am – something about a meeting change.

By the end of the day he had tapped out dozens of texts, check his email constantly, spend hours in front of his laptop, watched the latest news on HD TVs mounted in the café where he had lunch, made calls to friends and text family as he walked home.

Our digital devices make the tiniest windows of time productive. But according to a study by the University of California, San Francisco (http://keck.ucsf.edu/neurograd/faculty/frank.html#research), there is an unanticipated side effect: keeping our brains constantly stimulated with digital input robs us of important downtime, which we need for learning, remember information and coming up with new ideas.

Another study by the University of Michigan (http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6892) found we learn better after a stroll in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment full of information. Seems too much of digital information leaves us tired and dumber.

So Mack the Flack, leaving the cell and the laptop behind, has gone for a walk along the Stanley Park seawall. It’s a nice day and who knows, maybe he might learn, or remember, something.

Learn lots about PR in the SFU PR Certificate program. 778.782.5093 or pr-staff@sfu.ca