Welcome back from the holidays. Here are 10 predictions that might influence what you'll be communicating about in 2009. Or not:
1. A dean of Russia's foreign ministry academy predicts that the United States will explode in civil war in 2010, leading to the nation's collapse and disintegration. (Colorado will be part of a new Canadian-controlled republic. But we're not playing Kanuck football. That's where we draw the line.)
2. James Carville says the Republican Party will be confronted with a "near catastrophic ideological rift."
3. "America's #1 Psychic" Sylvia Brown predicts that trained psychologists will start offering hypnotic past-life regression, which will be common practice by 2011. (She doesn't predict what the insurance co-pay will be, however.)
4. Business Week thinks Chrysler will merge into General Motors. They also think Americans will start buying a lot of boxed wine.
5. Wired.com's senior editor says we'll see hundreds of new on-line magazine start-ups as entrepreneurs take advantage of low competitive barriers and journalists willing to work cheap.
6. Technology industry guru Mark Anderson predicts China will be rocked by huge and deadly riots, causing its GDP to plummet as the West recognizes the country as a "polluted place, rife with economic turmoil and starving people."
7. Personal finance columnist Jeffery Strain says the credit crisis will cause many beloved small, locally owned businesses to disappear forever. (This will also include many small advertising and PR businesses.)
8. Industry analyst Yankee Group is confident that free microblogging service Twitter is the new Facebook. (Except for the minor fact that it generates zero revenue and limits messages to 140 characters. Hype on, Internet phenom.).
9. WSJ columnist Evan Newmark predicts Wall Street will cut jobs, people and bonuses by another 25 percent -- forcing many Masters of the Universe to seek their fortunes in consulting. Or government jobs.
10. A former Mafia boss says top-level tennis matches will be a prime target for gambling corruption.
Send any other predictions worth noting to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.
Go get 'um, my friends.
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Kudos to Bob the Journalist | Bob Schieffer's job in running the third presidential debate won back much of the credibility that CBS lost during the Dan Rather meltdown. Mr. Rather is suing his former employer for $70 million while complaining that presidential debates have become worthless.
Material flackery | Should investors get excited because your company just hired a PR agency? Some companies think so.
Prospering during economic downturns | When the going gets tough, the tough get more publicity.
Worth bookmarking | PR industry pundit Paul Holmes has returned to blogging at The Holmes Report.
Gotta serve somebody | A district judge threw out a Nebraska legislator's lawsuit against God, writing in his ruling that "Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant, this action will be dismissed with prejudice."
(Photo: Bob the Journalist, courtesy CBS)
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Does fear of being outed deter companies and interest groups from hiding behind fake grassroots organizations?
Not so much.
Fueled by the Internet, counterfeit citizen groups are spreading like mushrooms in the soggy shadows of special interests. Every once in a while some high-profile deception will make headlines, like when Wal-Mart got caught blogging about an average American couple traveling cross-country in their RV. Wal-Mart's PR agency shrugged it off as an inconsequential publicity stunt that wasn't as "transparent" as it should have been.
Some faux grassroots groups are more brazen. Take for example AngryRenters.com, an amateur-looking web site representing "renters and responsible homeowners against a government mortgage bailout." Tens of thousands of people have signed its petition. But what the site doesn't explain is that it's the work of a conservative advocacy group led by publisher Steve Forbes and former House majority leader Dick Armey.
When news media revealed that the group pays Armey more than $500,000 dollars a year, AngryRenters.com proclaimed that "You know a web site is making a difference when the Wall Street Journal publishes a hit piece on the front page!"
The victimized underdog theme is common to many so-called "astroturfing" campaigns. So is the belief that gaining a PR advantage is worth the risk of getting a PR black eye.
"There's not a big penalty associated with doing this and being caught," said Harvard professor of government Herman B. Leonard in a recent Associated Press story. "There's a potentially substantial benefit from being able to get out there with something that seems like a well-informed and active and energetic view that does not seem to be self-interested. So if you get away with it, it's a plus. If you don't, they say, 'Well, it's not too surprising.'"
This can't be good. To the principals of free speech, astroturfing is the unseen voice yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. Americans are being pushed with increasing sophistication into reacting to messages from sponsors who are intentially misleading, if not hidden completely.
The thing about the information age, however, is that the whole truth eventually finds daylight. And regular people will become absolutely cynical of even legitimate efforts to inform and persuade them.
Then it won't matter if you hide your true identity or not.
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There's an old PR saying that you should never repeat a negative. I personally think it's an outdated idea.
But it's why many organizations respond to a crisis without actually acknowledging the events or allegations they're responding to.
In the information age this omission strategy just makes things worse. Take for example the flare-up that followed after a Veterans Administration supervisor in Texas sent an email suggesting that staff reduce costs by not diagnosing returning war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. VA Affairs Secretary James Peake made a live video speech for VA employees around the country in which he praised them for their good work. Then he told them to be careful what they put in their emails, saying they never know who might see them. He made no mention of the controversial email or its contents.
As the story broke nationally, thousands of VA staffers wondered what their boss had been trying to tell them. Was he saying that the VA is not cutting costs by limiting PTSD cases? Or was he saying he didn't want any more of them to get caught talking about it?
Peake issued a statement later saying that Texas email was "inappropriate" and did not reflect VA policy. But with politicians and editorial pages screaming for investigations, the damage to credibility from inside the VA was already done.
There are many ways to look guilty in the court of public opinion. Answering controversies with generalities is one of the most certain.
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