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How Afghanistan must get its message across to U.S.

I was invited to attend a small gathering of Afghanistan officials in the U.S. to explore the working relationship between our government and news media.   We were struck by what one senior member of the delegation said was his group's biggest surprise:

"We thought that the United States had in-depth information, that there was great knowledge among the American population about Afghanistan.  But we find the opposite is true, that people of the U.S. seem to have no information about Afghanistan and its people."

He's right.  Research shows that Americans – including many political leaders – know very little about foreign affairs.  Despite fighting there for ten years, Afghanistan for most Americans is an abstractly convoluted mess of wars and radicals, confusing policies and political posturing. 

The Afghan official's observation underscores an important question.  What's the bigger dilemma: That Americans are largely oblivious about a country in which they spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives?  Or that many leaders in that country think Americans know far more about their people and problems than they actually do?

Obviously neither situation is acceptable.  In the short term, however, it seems critical for Afghanistan's official communicators – the people who must make their government a credible source of truth – to get the idea across that America's citizenry does not operate from a position of universal, much less accurate, understanding. 

It is up to America to understand Afghanistan's strategic relevance to the nation's future.  Our ignorance is costing lives.  We know that.

But it is up to Afghanistan to earn that relevance.  This is the message that its leadership and pro-democracy media must communicate.  They must convey to their people that only the credibility of action will rise above the deafening clutter of American mass media, to deliver the message that Afghanistan is committed to become a nation of rights, and that it has the resources to pay its own way if given the ability.

Show, don't tell.  This is how you get the attention of ignorant Americans.
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(Photo: Afghanistan's Ministry of Information and Culture behind barbed wire.)

 

Government PR contract controversy: An open letter to PRSA CEO Rosanna Fiske

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)chair/CEO Rosanna M. Fiske sent a letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, which is investigating the General Service Administration's use of PR firms, specifically a Kansas City crisis firm hired to help with an environmental issue on a nearby federal property. Fiske's letter urges the Subcommittee to "consider the substantial public interest served by public relations and public affairs on behalf of the federal government."

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Dear President Fisk:

 Like many PR people, I've done work for public entities and government offices. I understand how public  contracts can get people riled up. So it makes sense for you as head of the Public Relations Society of America to argue our profession's relevance in your letter to the Senate Subcommittee of Contracting Oversight. Thanks for that.

But I have to take serious exception with the tone of your letter because you paint a picture that in the long run is far more pejorative than politicians calling us flacks and spin doctors.

Your letter emphasizes that the role of public relations is effective communications based on really good intentions. You imply that taxpayers and their watchdogs have no reason to be anything but thankful for government PR contracts, because our industry's only purpose is to provide information so that we may create mutual understanding and serve the public good by getting people to stop smoking and other nice things.

But this description is spin. Unadulterated, accentuate-the-positive-eliminate-the-negative public relations spin. And everyone knows it.

The truth is that we are in the business of influence.

Sure, we should do things ethically and with a mind toward the greater good. But that's the means, not the end. PR people get hired to achieve someone else's bottom line: sell product, win votes, improve share value, create support, make an embarrassing controversy go away.

The father of modern PR, Edward Bernays, came up with the first true description of our profession when he coined the term, "The Engineering of Consent." He didn't call it "The Informing of the Public About Pressing Social Issues."

Yet over the last two decades this notion has become the great disconnect between PRSA and the working world of PR, especially the consulting side. Out here we get clients by showing we can get results. We only hope our competitors are saying they should be hired because their singular mission is to "advance the free flow of accurate and truthful information."

Not that it's true anyway. Yes, there are many PR people who represent good causes and all things beneficial to children and other living things. But there are also as many PR people – and PRSA members – who represent questionable candidates, fatty (but mighty tasty) cheeseburgers, corporations being sued by the EPA and more than a few controversial public works projects. In almost all of these situations, good and bad, public relations people are packaging and managing information to advance the interests they work for. You're doing the same thing right now.

The point is that public relations people are not journalists. It has never done us any good to pretend we are.

The sooner our profession acknowledges the realities of what we do and why we're hired, the sooner we can deal straight-up with legitimate questions about government paying for our kind of expertise.

Regards,

Steven Silvers (APR)
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Through the looking glass: The lesson of corporate immigration investigations

Guest post by Michele Ames

In Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, Alice faces a host of inexplicable anomalies: two-sided mirrors, time running forward and backward, the need to read jabberwocky and ambulatory chess pieces that cause no end of havoc.

In short, she went through the looking glass. And so are many companies having to deal with immigration investigations.

No doubt you’ve seen the headlines about companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill (disclosure: a long-time GBSM client) being subjected to “employment compliance inspections” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security.  In contrast to Bush-era bum’s rush raids on factories and business offices, the new modus operandi is what they call a “silent audit.”  This is where ICE selects a good-size target company and then – without revealing why that company was singled out -- requires it to produce thousands of documents.

ICE reviews all of the I-9 employment eligibility verification forms, then alerts the company to any workers who do or may not have proper documentation.  Typically, the company has no choice but to quickly fire those employees to put itself in compliance with standards it thought it was meeting, and to establish at least minimum position to begin negotiating with ICE toward resolving the situation. 

Even so, the government fines the company for having employed people whose paperwork may not have been legit.  And all during this process, ICE holds at least the threat of escalating its actions to even bring the company’s leadership up on charges.

There are a million issues with this approach to enforcing America’s immigration laws, starting with the fact that the employers are being investigated by a public agency as transparent as a wall of cinder blocks.

These companies are caught in a untenable double bind. They must check for illegal workers with each hire, and do so thoroughly enough to root out falsified documents.  But whatever system they use must be applied uniformly across the board, or they will be sued for discrimination by the very potential employees they are required to investigate.

Almost none of the corporations that get the silent audit treatment have broken any law.  Far from it.  Federal laws only require companies to make a good faith effort in trying to not hire undocumented workers.  But you wouldn’t think that from what these companies pay in hard dollars and damage to their brand reputations.  Meanwhile, the governmental entity behind the chaos has no obligation to disclose why they started the investigation, what they find or even when the investigation is closed.

They are at liberty, however, to announce just about anything they want in relation to the investigation at any time they choose.

These ICE actions leave a lot of companies asking themselves if they have, in fact, gone through the looking glass into a world where infractions real, perceived or with no basis at all are taken as definitive.  Where the people asking questions give no answers.

There’s a name for this kind of environment.   If a company finds itself navigating through a world where logic doesn’t apply and two plus two equals purple, they are no longer playing in corporate governance and public relations.

They’re playing politics.

For many companies, their otherwise excellent legal, communications and investor relations teams aren’t enough.  Now they will have to spend considerable resources on high-powered government relations executives – meaning lobbyists -- and a flotilla of lawyers who specialize in this byzantine parallel universe.

The only way out is back through the looking glass.  It’s a process that resolves itself on a political timetable governed by the next election cycle and the sessions of Congress, not a quest for justice governed by the rule of law. This is a playing field where the chess pieces move themselves, where both the opponent and the referees speak an strange jabberwocky.

It an expense that creates no value, no brand equity.  In the end it doesn’t really fix anything.  But for companies that find themselves arbitrarily targeted, it is an unfortunately reality that has to be reconciled as quickly as possible.

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Former award-winning political journalist Michele Ames is a senior associate at GBSM, Inc.  Scatterbox author Steven Silvers contributed to this post.

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Another reason you’re always on the record. And always on alert.

People who believe reporters should be licensed and regulated have a new outrage: So-called "polemical journalist" Ian Murphy's call to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in which he pretended to be billionaire right-wing activist David Koch.

We'll be hearing about this for months, maybe years. Was it a prank call or guerilla journalism? Does the end – important insight into an elected leader's intentions and personality – justify the means? Is there even such a thing as ethics in journalism when the public interest is at stake? Is transparency the only thing that matters? Is media accountable like politicians should be?

These are important questions. And they don't mean squat.

Because in the real world, Murphy's explosive success at simultaneously creating headlines and celebrity status means his way of doing business has value. It is going to be copied many times.

If you are a public figure or chief executive – especially one in the middle of a controversy – pay attention. Protect your access. Let unrecognized mobile calls go to voice mail. Train your people to screen inquiries and verify credentials. If someone calls you out of the blue claiming to be a 60 Minutes producer or a high-profile billionaire, think to check caller ID. Not sure? Ask to call him or her back. If they are who they say they are, they'll understand.

You don't succeed by avoiding legitimate interest in what makes you newsworthy. But don't think you're dealing with mass media on a level playing field.

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Good move for American Humane Association

You’re going to be hearing a lot about American Humane Association in the months and years ahead. 

One big reason: The 113-year-old champion for the protection of children and animals has rightly moved its national headquarters from the quiet of Denver’s southern outskirts to the buzz of Washington D.C’s central business district.

Most Americans don’t realize they see American Humane’s work every day, from its influence behind federal child abuse prevention policy to being the Hollywood-sanctioned organization that adds “No Animals Were Harmed" to a movie's end credits.  They pull pets from disaster areas and rescue starving horses from hoarders.  They also have a huge head start in the emerging humane labeling marketplace with American Humane Certified, by far the largest and most industry supported farm animal welfare training and auditing program.

With leadership from new CEO and former Pew Charitable Trust executive Robin Ganzert, the now DC-based American Humane Association is on a path to recognition that will no doubt make it one of the nation’s prominent mainstream philanthropic institutions. 

Stay tuned and give them your support. They're good people.

(Disclosure: American Humane Association has been a client of my firm, GBSM Inc.)

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What Wal-Mart's healthy foods initiative says about corporate issues management

I’m quoted in a Chicago Tribune story about Wal-Mart’s healthy foods initiative, which includes lowering prices on fresh foods, offering healthier private-label products and pushing suppliers to do likewise.  Wal-Mart launched its “Nutrition Charter” at a press conference with first lady Michelle Obama, who leads the fed's anti-obesity campaign.

As with everything Wal-Mart, there’s plenty of pro and con.  Let me suggest three things that it all proves about managing corporate controversies:

Politics are facile.  Profits are foundational.   |  Candidate Obama attacked Wal-Mart for destroying the middle class and other crimes.  It got activists jazzed and made good headlines.  But changing U.S. consumer habits won’t happen without leveraging the buying power and influence of the retailer where more Americans get their food than anywhere else.  Wal-Mart isn’t exclusive to this issue, but without it the road to healthy is less a superhighway and more a crumbly uphill sidewalk.

These are events that separate dreamers from doers.  |  The same thing happened with sustainability and will happen with humane labeling.  Advocates split into two camps: those who acknowledge the pragmatism of working with Wal-Mart and those who dismiss any collaboration with the megacorporate enemy.  A typically myopic sentiment: “What Mrs. Obama with her name recognition ought to be doing,” writes Salt Lake anchorman Robert Maxwell, “is working solely through non-profits, schools and volunteer agencies to further her noble cause. And I don’t think Wal-Mart despite all the corporate charity it offers, needs the freebie endorsement.”

At the same time, a blogger from Mother Nature Network questions her notions of good guys and bad guys.  “It’s time for me to think about the level of evilness that I have attributed to the company,” writes Robin Shreeves.  “And, while I don’t have any plans to step foot in a Wal-Mart anytime soon, perhaps I can be more understanding of the people who do — at least to grocery shop.”

Doing good in one social issue doesn’t get you off the hook in another.  |  The arrogant or just clueless corporation overestimates the extent to which one social responsibility initiative will lift it above the turmoil of other issues.  That’s not the case.  State-of-the-art factories still get hit with OSHA suits.  Progressive retailers still get investigated by ICE.  Happens all the time.

In a fine analysis of Wal-Mart’s healthy food initiative, The Atlantic’s Corb Kummer writes that despite the partnership with Michele Obama, “no one at the White House can be unaware of ongoing controversy over Wal-Mart’s labor practices.” 

Bottom line:  One hand does know what the other is doing, but that doesn’t mean government won’t use both to squeeze what they want out of your company.
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Post comments or send to scatterbox@stevensilvers.com

Health care reform: Blaming bad communications doesn't fix bad attitudes

In the spin following the GOP’s game-changing Senate win in Massachusetts, the White House defended its beleaguered health care legislation with an old standard: What we have here is a failure to communicate.

"We lost some of that sense,” President Obama told ABC News, “…of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.”

That talking point has been played down since then.  Good thing, too.  Because it’s terrible PR.

Think of health care reform as a high-profile but controversial consumer product being introduced into a marketplace of extreme fans and critics (like New Coke or Windows Vista).  Blaming a flat-out rejection on poor communications might seem a safe strategy. You hold yourself accountable but without faulting your intentions.

It’s not that your product’s bad. It’s the stupid packaging.

Except a lot of people will instead think you’re saying, “It’s the packaging, stupid.”

Your competitors will do everything they can to promote that interpretation.  As MSNBC points out, administration opponents are literally institutionalizing the word “arrogance” in reference to what Massachusetts voters were complaining about and how the White House has responded to it.

At the core of almost every public’s fear and loathing are legitimate issues.  You may think your smarts in creating a value-added product trumps all that.  They don’t. 

You can’t win people who think you’re dismissing them.  Even if you suspect they don’t have a clue what you’re really selling.
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Getting caught is the new transparency and other realities of the coming year

Five truths for 2010:

The age of transparency is mostly about getting caught.

Ten years into the new media era, the institutions we love to hate – government, banks, big business, media – aren’t any more willing to tell us what they’d rather keep to themselves. The constant outing of reality TV frauds, tax-supported executive bonuses, front groups and scumbag celebrities is still a function of how Americans use the Internet to inform and entertain themselves.  Not the other way around.

Social media is getting less social.

Over time, millions of people will stop using social media sites because 1) their bosses lock them out during working hours, 2) they tire of all the commercial clutter or 3) they learn how those revenue-hungry companies are sharing their profiles, posts and friends lists.

The Rocky Mountain News is still dead.

For all the outraged hang-wringing and new ventures, media consumers in Denver and many other American cities are still only willing to support one local daily newspaper.  Barely.

Journalism, however, isn’t dead.  It’s just changing.

So-called “advocacy” media will flourish as more formerly ad-supported news outlets – or individual journalists and commentators -- become funded by interest groups, politically leaning foundations, single corporations and even government.  Whether you think it’s biased or not will depend on your point of view.

No company will ever hide its identity again.  Har.  Kidding.

Getting nabbed isn’t as certain as, say, driving through a DWI checkpoint with an open bottle of cream de menthe in your lap.  But some well-known brand out there is going to have a major PR problem when it draws the first high-profile enforcement of the Federal Trade Commission’s new transparency in marketing rules.
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Bad News Friday usually makes things worse

Even in the always-on Internet era, many companies and government offices still rely on the old trick of waiting until late Friday afternoon to release bad news.

In most cases they're just making things worse come Monday. Here's why:

You stop nothing.  People who care most have news alerts, stock tickers and other Internet tracking gizmos to get your stuff the second it hits the fan. Your stock will still move in after-hours trading guided by speculation and negative expectations.  Media outlets will still run breaking news, except this time you’ll be covered either by reporters who know to dig for whatever you’re trying to hide or by inexperienced weekend reporters who don’t know the situation.

You create a new credibility issue.   Maybe ten people on the planet won’t perceive that you tried to bury bad news on Friday afternoon. You risk creating a whole new PR problem with stakeholders and media for thinking they don’t see you trying to sneak out the back.

You dig a deeper hole.    Friday-night announcements don’t make bad news go away.  They create a 48-hour vacuum for people to assume the worst. Some will interpret your move as a signal that there’s still another shoe to drop. You could be in a worse defensive position on Monday morning as you reopen the doors to angry shareholders, anxious employees and reporters working on follow-up pieces about your company mishandled a crisis.

You still announce on Monday anyway.  Assuming you’re somewhat successful in burying your bad news over the weekend, you’ll have to deal with the response on Monday from people seeing the news for the first time. Now you’re dealing with two sets of responses: the people who are just hearing it, and the people who saw and reacted to it over the weekend.

Bad News Friday isn’t a secret, it’s bad public relations.

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The State of Colorado says you should gamble because your life is pathetic.

The latest TV ad for Colorado Lottery drops the pretense of fun in favor of selling hope.

As in, you’re hopelessly stuck in your pointless little existence unless you “Break free” by winning Powerball. 

The “Don’t Forget to Play” tag adds to the loathing, implying that if you don’t win it’s because you screwed up.

The ad follows a sad-looking white-collar worker trudging through another dreary day, a huge chain shackled to his ankle.  Before eating his little peanut butter sandwich alone he buys a Powerball ticket.  That night a big red ball falls from the sky onto his little weed-infested lawn, breaking him free.  He smiles.

Hey.  Loser.  Don’t forget to play.

We all benefit from lottery revenues.  But it’s cruel for a state with as much recession-induced bleakness as Colorado to tell working people that gambling on a multi-million-to-one shot is their way out of it.
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