Mack the Flack

After 244 years the Encyclopedia Britannica, the 32-volume, gold-lettered reference has gone out of print. The reality of the digital world and competition from the free Wikipedia website killed off the $1,395 US print version.

Mack grew up in a household where Britannica was proudly displayed. All 29 pounds of his family’s prized reference was sold at a garage sale a few decades later. Britannica only sold 8,000 copies of its last printed edition and print encyclopaedias account for less than 1% of Britannica’s revenue.

Perhaps a little sadly, Britannica is the latest of fading print publications – from reference books to catalogues – that are out already out of date the moment they’re printed and have, perhaps, outlived their purpose in a digital world.

Learn more about online references, research and the changing digital landscape.

Apply for SFU’s Public Relations Program

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

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.

“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

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

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