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

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.

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

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

Mack the Flack got grabbed on the way to work the other day. A self-important movie crew dude in a baseball cap and headset grabbed Mack’s arm. “Hey! You’re in the shot!”

Mack was about to apologize when movie guy’s phone pinged and he turned his attention to his screen. Someone was tweeting him.

Mack left the twit with his tweet and headed for work. He reflected on the fact that Twitter, invented five years ago by three guys at a then-struggling San Francisco podcasting company now occupies the attention of nearly 200 million users worldwide.

Every week one billion tweets or “short bursts of inconsequential information” (140 characters maximum) are sent. Communications and spelling as we know it has changed forever (4evr).

But Twitter makes it just as easy to spread the word about important things – a tsunami, a Middle Eastern revolution – as it is to talk about your favourite colour. Tweets have changed the way the news media works. Now anyone anywhere can report the news.

It has also revolutionized the way the PR operates. Communications is now direct to the public, without the media filter and it’s a two-way conversation. And it’s instant.

Learn about PR social media and microblogging like Twitter in the SFU PR Certificate program. 778.782.5093 or pr-staff@sfu.ca