StevenSilvers.com

Reporters becoming PR people: Why it works. Why it doesn't.

More than a year ago I suggested that unemployed journalists will take many of the jobs that would have gone to communicators without newsroom experience.

That was an understatement.

In less than ten years, the nation’s news business has lost more than 14,000 jobs, some 25 percent of the entire industry.  Things have yet to hit bottom, especially for newspapers and magazines.

The result, as the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg calls it, is the The Great Journalism Exodus.  Every PR agency, communications department and public affairs office in the country is hearing from reporters who are either unemployed or desperate to get out.  

Goldberg wonders if all these hacks make good flacks, but the volume of job candidates makes this a non-issue.  Many reporters don’t transition from the newsroom because they can't let go of their often sanctimonious cynicism about the business world.  But just as many are damn good at it.  They write better, learn faster and have better connections.  That’s why they’re getting so many of the good jobs.

What's important is how this hacks-to-flacks migration represents a tectonic shift in the relationship between sponsored message and third-party credibility.  For every public affairs officer and publicist with newsroom experience, there are many times that number of news beats and media outlets that simply no longer exist. 

The changing landscape means the best communications people will be those with skills far deeper than writing press releases and pitching stories.  They’ll need to know research, integrated marketing, community engagement, public affairs, issues management and yes, blogging and social media.

It’s worth keeping in mind whether you’re hiring a flack or a hack.  Or one in the same.
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A business primer on the new FTC transparency rules

Representing its most sweeping action in 30 years, the Federal Trade Commission’s new rules governing endorsements and testimonials will change how marketing is done.

Here’s what the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising say:

ACCOUNTABLE FOR BLOGS AND SOCIAL MEDIA.

The FTC already directs online reviewers to disclose if they’re being paid by advertisers. Under the new rules, however, every blogger, Twitter user or social network member must disclose any “material connection” with a company, product or service.

Taken literally, this connection could result in fines for bloggers who fail to disclose anything from getting a sample can of chili in the mail to having a spouse who owns company stock. While consumer advocates support the guidelines, some prominent bloggers argue that the rules in effect force them to disclose every business relationship they’ve ever had.

Enforcement is another matter. The FTC says it will primarily go after the advertisers rather than individual bloggers, though it will take into account how companies encourage transparency in their paid reviews and freebies. Beyond that, the agency will decide matters on a case-by-case basis – which basically means they’ll know deceptive advertising when they see it. What makes things even more convoluted is that the agency doesn’t say by what means it will handle these situations.

Given that the new transparency standards for bloggers are higher than what’s required of commercial news media and politicians, the FTC rules are generating considerable debate among marketers and social media proponents alike. Stay tuned.

ACCOUNTABLE FOR TYPICAL RESULTS.

Ads that feature individual consumer experiences with a product will have to state clearly what kind of results everybody else can expect. Soon to be history are those ubiquitous ads that whisper “results not typical” while showing some guy who lost 300 pounds drinking vitamin shakes.

ACCOUNTABLE FOR EMPLOYEES.

Employees that promote their company or its products online must “clearly and conspicuously” disclose who they work for.

The FTC urges that companies have social media policies as one way to avoid fines or other actions when employees pretend to be someone else – say, a happy customer or invigorated shareholder.

Keep in mind, however, that a recent Deloitte study found that a third of all employees don’t even consider what their boss might think before posting something online.

ACCOUNTABLE FOR CELEBRITIES AND RESEARCH.

A warning to every company that uses movie stars, retired quarterbacks and 70’s sitcom actors for promotional tours. Under the new FTC guidelines, both advertisers and their celebrity spokespeople can be held liable for making false claims as part of a commercial endorsement.

The ramifications are huge. Celebrities making the rounds of late-night talk shows, state fairs and Twitter feeds must disclose their business relationship with any company or agency that’s paying them to pump movies, books, products or even charities.

Companies that quote research must also disclose if they paid for the studies, or if they have any business relationship with the organization that did the research.

These standards go way beyond front groups and hidden clients. From now on, any failure to disclose corporate affiliations could be considered deceptive advertising. That’s going to hit a lot of marketing PR campaigns.
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Download a PDF of the revised FTC rules here.

More CEOs serving as TV pitch-people

I’m quoted in a Chicago Tribune story about the increasing numbers of CEOs who star in their own advertising.  General Motors, Sprint and Walgreen are among the companies trying the boss-in-front strategy.

In most cases it doesn’t work.  There were several unique reasons why Lee Iacocca clicked as an advertising spokesperson.  There are a million reasons why today’s chief executives won’t.

At least most companies aren’t treating their CEOs like zany sitcom characters.  That’s worth something.
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Industry expert asks if Toyota's image is getting a free ride

Auto industry veteran Frank Sherosky asks if Toyota’s stellar reputation for quality is more a result of good image management than what really happens on the road.

CBS News reported that a former Toyota lawyer has filed a federal racketeering suit against the company for “ruthlessly” conspiring to hide evidence about hundreds of roll-over accidents in which the roof caved in.  The potentially damming case was filed in late July but took more than two months to make the news.

“In that respect,” Sherosky writes in the Detroit Auto Examiner, “it's hard not to at least question the media for bias. Does Toyota own a free-pass card in the press, when American companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler get slammed all the time?”

Toyota denies the allegations and says its former in-house counsel violated attorney-client privilege with his lawsuit and in the consulting work he did after leaving his job with a $3.7 million severance package.

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Scattered links of interest

Twitter’s ROI (Forbes.com)
There is a potential danger in that too many people will employ Twitter as a short-cut for customer service.”

Prepare now for “resume tsunami” (Ogilvy Impact)
“With a variety of signs pointing, if somewhat tentatively, toward an economic recovery, it’s not too soon for companies to begin thinking about how they’ll keep their top performers.”

We need a swine flu newsroom (Newsvetter)
“In matters concerning life and death I don't want to be forced to rely (solely) on a news media obsessed with body counts and hot zones.”

PRSA’s meaningless condemnation (O’Dwyer’s Blog)
“…How about revealing the source of your anger? Who in the world are you talking about?”
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Submit links to scatterbox@stevensilvers.com

Six standards for employee use of social media

PR lawyer Michael Lasky summarizes four key principals to include in company policies for how employees may use blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media:

• Respect for intellectual property … Avoiding plagiarism and copyright infringement.
  
• Standards of truth … Attributing information, knowing the difference between fact and opinion.
  
• Confidentiality … Knowing what can be made public via the Internet, and what should be protected.
  
• Common sense … Using the same rules that apply to memos, emails, press releases, web sites and other company communication.

While these are broad enough to cover most concerns, I would also make sure that your social media standards address these two important areas:

• Transparency … That official communications will not be misleading, disguised or anonymous.
  
• Accountability … That the company will protect stakeholder interests by tracking social media use and content, and that employees will be held responsible for misrepresenting or maligning the company on the Internet, even if they do so on their own time.

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Proof that you're damned if you do, damned if you don't

Anyone who’s been a boss knows this already, but new research from NYU Stern confirms that executives who choose between two rotten choices – like eliminating healthcare or firing people to avoid going out of business -- are likely to be blamed no matter what choice they make.
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Why most companies should just ignore all those anonymous rate-your-employer sites

Internet Evolution blogger Chris Poley points to another aspect of employees using the Internet to ridicule the companies they work for. [Read Scatterbox: Managing the Unmanageable.]

One way they do this is through Internet sites that rate companies based on anonymous input from current and former employees, and even people who only tried getting jobs with a company. 

But the impact these user-generated sites have on a company’s reputation is debatable.  Glassdoor.com, for example, touts its “inside look” at more than 26,000 companies.  Large companies like Wal-Mart list hundreds of anonymous comments, which in reading lead you to the not-so-shocking revelation that some people like their employers and some people don’t.  Many other companies garner only one or two comments, most of them rants about stupid bosses and rotten culture.

Basically it’s like listening to strangers on the bus to work.

To be sure, some companies use search engine optimization – also hyped as “online reputation management” – to push negative comments deeper into the Internet clutter.  Other companies have their flacks post anonymous positive comments to counter the anonymous criticisms (the ethics of which are for another post).

Most employers, however, simply ignore the sites.  And in most cases that’s the best approach.

Why?  Because without attribution, scientific basis or mass context these opinion boards have as much information value as random graffiti.

It’s no surprise that a relatively few unhappy, unnamed employees are more likely to gripe online.  And that creates representations way out of sync with more credible reputation measurements.  Look up insurance giant Aflac on Glassdoor.com, for example, and you get a 5,000-employee company with a “neutral company rating” because half of the 26 comments that make up the score are from people like the agent who wrote that “they have no morals and they don't know what their [SIC] doing there.”

Meanwhile, Aflac was named 2009’s most reputable and ethical insurance company by Reputation Institute's Global Reputation Pulse, an annual public survey of the nation's 153 largest corporations.  Second year in a row, too.

It doesn’t take a PR expert to know which image matters most.
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So is the president anti-business?

Freelancer Susan Morgan quotes American Standard editor Fred Barnes and others regarding the administration’s alleged disconnect with American business.

Previously in Scatterbox: Obama anti-business rhetoric puts strain on forced bond between government and corporate community.
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Managing the unmanageable: Employees talking about your company on the Internet

Here's one of the questions I hear most:

"How are we supposed to manage what our employees say about us when they're on Twitter and Facebook all the time?"

Executives worry about social media in relation to two things: risk to the company and loss of productivity.  Both are legitimate concerns. Yet many of those same executives are downright tepid about bringing up the productivity issue. It's as if they're worried about sounding ridiculous, like the old dolt who doesn't get this World Wide Web hullabaloo.

Or perhaps they've seen studies like the one claiming that employees who use the Internet for personal reasons are nine percent more productive. Researchers in Australia report that "workplace Internet leisure browsing, or WILB, helped to sharpened workers' concentration."

There you go. Can't argue with an acronym.

But even CEOs who buy it are concerned about how social-networking employees might be representing the company. And they dang well should be.

Deloitte's 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey found that 75 percent of working Americans think it's easy to damage a brand's reputation via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media services. Yet a third of all employees say they never even consider what their boss might think before posting something online.

This is scary stuff.  It means that a good chunk of any company's workforce could include people with the same kind of mental disposition as the two Domino's employees, aged 31 and 32, who posted a video of themselves spitting on food and stuffing cheese up their nose -- all while laughing that "somebody will be eating them, yes eating them... Now that's how we roll at Domino's!"

In the first 48 hours, more than a million people watched the gross-out video just on YouTube.  Internet exposure and news coverage hit like a hurricane. And in only four days of tracking, consumer perceptions toward one of the nation's most popular brands went from great to rotten.

Domino's responded comprehensively and is even being credited with being the "Tylenol crisis" of the new media era.  But winning a PR trophy doesn't come close to accounting for what that little video prank cost the company in lost sales, bad publicity and ridicule, penalties paid for health-code violations, costs associated with managing the crisis and the expenses of investigations and litigation.

And unlike the Tylenol crisis, the image of a smirking Domino's employee sticking cheese up his nose will keep showing up on the Internet forever.

In a New York Times story, a Domino's spokesman underscored the real bottom-line risk of social media:

"We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea. Even people who've been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years, people are second-guessing their relationship with Domino's, and that's not fair."

Companies must have comprehensive social media policies in place, and many do. But rules alone won't change how many people behave online. In a world where so many employees (and bosses) could give your brand a black eye, it will take considerable internal culture-building and communications programs to ensure they don't.

Technology savvy or not, that gives every CEO good reason to wonder how much time their people are spending on social media.  And what exactly they're doing there.
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Links & Resources

• Deloitte | 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey Results
• New York Times | Video prank at Domino's taints brand
• USA Today  | Domino's nightmare holds lessons for marketers
• Domino's | CEO YouTube response: "Disgusting Dominos people"
  
• Scatterbox | Transparent generation realizes downside to growing up online