StevenSilvers.com

GBSM has opening for entry level PR staffer

My firm GBSM, Inc. has posted this job opening:

GBSM, Inc. seeks an exceptional professional to serve as senior executive assistant for our  growing corporate communications, public relations and crisis management practice.  The position requires one or two years experience in a PR agency, consulting firm or communications department.  You must have absolutely superb organizational, administrative, research and project management skills.

Responsibilities include all facets of principal support, scheduling, research and assessment, materials creation, contact management, social networking, conferences and events, distribution, community outreach, media relations, reporting and other areas.

For consideration, send resume with cover letter directly to Steven Silvers, Principal, at stevensilvers@gbsm.com.  Please put “Attn: New Staff Position” in the email subject line.

Denver-based GBSM has a 23-year track record in providing management consulting, strategic communications and public affairs services to help clients through the increasingly complex nexus of business, media, government and community. Learn more at www.gbsm.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

Latest finger-wagging brings PRSA closer to irrelevance

As it has done before, Public Relations Society of America issued another pretentious missive condemning unscrupulous flackery:

Over the last few months, there have been several news accounts of promotional tactics that signal a common thread of malpractice under the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) Code of Ethics and PRSA Professional Standards Advisories (PSA). … PRSA states categorically that misrepresenting the nature of editorial content or intentionally failing to clearly reveal the source of message contents is unethical.

PRSA’s latest reprimand won’t change a thing. That’s because it doesn’t name, much less admonish, the companies and agencies whose bad behavior was made public in news reports.

PRSA sent out a similarly mealymouthed email last year, warning all members to “avoid misleading practices” like the front groups it was referring to but wouldn’t actually divulge.  That was followed by an open letter to presidential candidates Obama and McCain demanding they agree to follow PRSA’s code of ethics. Both campaigns ignored it.

You have to wonder why PRSA even bothers.

For all its authoritative posturing -- the phrase “malpractice under the PRSA code” is downright laughable – statements like this only reinforce the association's growing irrelevance within the multi-faceted, multi-billion dollar influence industry.

Pretty much nobody cares what PRSA has to say about it. Not the pros, and certainly not the charlatans.

And things will stay that way until PRSA becomes more than just another big-talk trade group without the courage to act on its convictions.
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• O'Dwyer's PR Blog  |  PRSA's Meaningless Condemnation

Send comments and links to scatterbox@stevensilvers.com or post here.

Trend-spotters say the darndest things

The conviction of politico Tony Rezko and criminal charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have again made "Chicago-machine style politics" synonymous with corruption.

Which makes you wonder what prompted the  PRSA Tactics newspaper to include this happy 2009 prediction from "trendspotter" Marian Salzman:

"Barack Obama's hometown of Chicago has become the focus of intense global interest.  Its combination of heartland values and big-city, multiethnicity vibrancy could make it the epicenter of a more resourceful and responsible era."

Since 1971, some one thousand thousand Illinois politicians and business people have been convicted of public corruption.  This includes 30 Chicago aldermen, three Illinois governors, several city clerks and treasurers, suburban mayors, appointed government officials, judges, lawyers, insurance executives and trucking company owners.
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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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Crisis? What crisis?

My post How the PR business is changed forever (and why you might be in it) got a variety of strong reactions from Flackville.

Robert French, a veteran PR guy and faculty member at Auburn University, took serious issue with my opinion that this recession will result in far fewer communications jobs and many more qualified people eager to take them. Where, he demanded, are the case histories proving that "What used to take a floor full of staff can be accomplished by one talented person with a laptop and Blackberry"?

Writing at length in his PROpenMic network, he added:

"Look, you may be right. But, when someone wants to scream, "The sky is falling", I'd really like to see some evidence. Is the economy in the tank? Yes. Is the future of PR in flux? Yes. Is much of traditional journalism on weak knees as a business model? Yes. All that is true. But, can you point out solid examples that say you're right (on a broad national scale)? I doubt it."

Others agreed with my take on the industry's future and how PR people should respond.

"Take Silvers' advice and find a niche, become an expert," wrote public affairs officer Kristina Summers in her blog. "This is no time to be a generalist. Hopefully there is something you love that you can grab onto tightly and become THE "go-to" person for that subject... The point is to become indispensable."
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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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Why McCain and Obama aren't answering to PRSA

Neither the McCain or Obama campaign has responded to the Public Relations Society of America's request that each sign a pledge "obligating them to abide by the PRSA Code of Ethics in their campaign communications."

That's because presidential candidates have no reason to treat PRSA as the voice or moral authority of the influence industry. The truth is that PRSA -- and I've been a member longer than I can remember -- is none of these things.

PRSA's board of directors doesn't include a single representative from the nation's largest PR agencies.

Nor has PRSA shown the courage of its convictions. Many agencies and communications departments, including PRSA members, act unethically. They talk to reporters and write editorials without revealing their interests. They design video news releases to make TV viewers think they're watching journalism. They do push-polls and sell it as real research. They create anonymous front groups and publish fake blogs. They attack critics and marginalize legitimate issues about their clients or employers.

And PRSA doesn't do much about it. In 2006, the association sent an email warning members to "avoid misleading practices" including front groups. The big PR agencies that prompted the advisory because they'd been outed in the national press weren't mentioned, much less admonished.

At the end of the day, PRSA acts like just another trade association that expects high status not for its bold advocacy, but for its good intentions.

This may be a sincere desire. But it's certainly not being true to the cause.
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• Related: PRSA: One good exaggeration deserves another.