StevenSilvers.com

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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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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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

When the past becomes today's crisis

History is one of the trickiest areas of crisis management. Even with the most sincere intentions, an organization's presentation of the past can explode in emotionally charged controversy.

Here's a perfect example:

Many veterans are fighting the Indianapolis Veteran Administration hospital's decision to remove an old newspaper from a historical display because it contained the headline, "Japs Surrender."  The hospital replaced the newspaper with one simply headlined, "Peace."

The newspaper had been on display for ten years until a new employee complained that it was offensive.  The VA Ethics Office agreed that the hospital did the right thing to avoid creating a hostile work environment.

Supporters of the decision to yank the newspaper remind people that Congress passed a resolution in 1986 acknowledging that the term "Jap" is racially derogatory and offensive.

That doesn't fly with angry veterans and others who have inundated the hospital, media and government offices with protests.

"Any Marine will tell you that, in this day and age, they damn well know the term 'Jap' is a rude and insulting remark -- that is not the issue," a decorated Vietnam vet told one news outlet.  "But you've got people here who are trying to change history."

It's a classic damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't controversy.

And it's a reminder.  Your crisis plan must not only consider how you respond to events that might happen in the future, but also how you represent events that did happen long ago.
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Bottom photo: Historic newspaper display at Indianapolis VA hospital (Courtesy Indy.Com )

Goodbye, Rocky Mountain News.

And just like that, it's gone.

Colorado's first newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News, closes today just shy of its 150th birthday.  That leaves the Denver Post as the only daily newspaper for a region that the Brookings Institution calls one of the top five emerging economic and political centers of the central U.S.

Many folks around here lament that Denver lost the better newspaper.  The Rocky won four Pulitzers in the last decade.  It ranked high among the nation's best best business sections, sports sections and photojournalism teams.  The Rocky's business newsroom in particular had a remarkable consistency, with veteran reporters who knew far more about the industries they covered than the PR people who called to shill press releases.

You don't see that much in cities our size.  Not any more.

Most importantly, the Rocky's demise means less journalism that matters.  As my friend and Rocky business editor Rob Reuteman writes in his last column:

"There will be many nooks and crannies around this town that won't see the light of day any more.  It will be somewhat easier for all manner of crooks to prosper. Corruption at all levels of government will grow some.  Politicians will escape embarrassment.  Businesses will will hoodwink their employees and shareholders. More taxpayer money will be wasted.  And far fewer people will be looking out for you.  I'm talking about trained, dedicated, experienced journalists who know what to look for and know how to get it bin front of you to read in digestible form."

We can't say when or even if anything will fill the void created by the Rocky's loss. 

In the meantime, we should look back on one of the nation's best newspapers with thanks and admiration.
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Best of Scatterbox - 2009 Edition

Based on comments, links and other highly unscientific measurements, here are the top ten Scatterbox posts from the last year:

Five things you didn't realize you learned from Obama's victory

Good intentions aren't good crisis management

Best worst excuse to avoid jury duty: Your studly hotness

Big brand doody from the toilet paper wars

What's missing from your communications plan

The low risk, high rise of phony grassroots groups

Hate mail and other comments from our readers

Blah Blah Nation: PR people promote the value of blogging by boring readers to death

John Edwards scandal shows conflicting truths about mainstream media

How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

... Have an idea or link to suggest? Send to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

Ten big-picture predictions for 2009

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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How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

It's a tough time to be in the public relations business.

It's going to get a lot worse.

Recessions always thin out the marketing and influence industries.  This downturn will prove particularly brutal.  Companies and agencies are laying off PR people as budgets and revenues dry up.  Many struggling companies are eliminating their communications departments altogether.

When the smoke clears, there will be considerably fewer jobs for communications specialists and marketing publicists.  And there will be many more qualified people who are desperate to have them.

Here are three reasons why the market for PR people will never be the same:

The commoditization of information ... What used to take a staff can be done by one talented person with a laptop and Blackberry.  The need for general-purpose PR worker bees is dwindling faster than doing a Google search.  Companies forced to cut the fat aren't going to bring those jobs back.

Shrinking media outlets ... Newsrooms are getting much smaller.  Even National Public Radio had layoffs.  The financial crisis is exacerbating what the Project for Excellence in Journalism called "the new paradox of journalism... more outlets covering fewer stories."   That means employers and agencies have too many publicists pitching the same decreasing numbers of reporters.

Reporters at the gate ... The market is being flooded by laid-off reporters, columnists and TV anchors.  Many have excellent skills, great contacts and deep understanding of the industries they covered.  Whether they can make the transition to being PR people -- what many called flacks before they needed jobs -- is always a question.  Even so, unemployed journalists will take many of the positions that would otherwise have gone to corporate and marketing communications people.  Count on it.

How you survive the years ahead depends on how you respond to these new realities.

If you're a generalist PR staffer, hone your writing skills and become expert in something relevant. Fast.

If you're a PR student, consider changing your major.  Seriously.

Many of you are in for a big disappointment.
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Watering down employee and customer relations.

Here's a quick way to create a PR problem for your already struggling company: Expect employees to break bad news on customers and then apologize for you.

That's what US Airways did when it decided to charge passengers two bucks for water.

The Wall Street Journal travel blog quotes a US Airways gate attendant in Las Vegas who made this bitter little speech as the plane was boarding for Dallas:

"It is my very special duty to inform you that today is inauguration day at US Airways and what we are inaugurating is our new onboard beverage policy. You now have to pay $2 for that coke, $2 for water."

Meanwhile, a company spokesman said that individual flight attendants would likely give water to passengers if they were really thirsty but couldn't pay for it -- which makes US Airways' new policy a self-destructive shot in the foot from all angles.  News coverage is negative, flight attendants are embarrassed and customers feel exploited.

And more people will buy bottled water before getting on the plane, negating much of the anticipated sales income.

Somebody wasn't thinking all the way downstream on this one.
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• The Middle Seat Terminal blog | Starting today, no more free water on US Air
• Newsday | US Air to charge for soda, coffee to offset fuel costs