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.
. . . . . . . . . .

• O'Dwyer's PR Blog  |  PRSA's Meaningless Condemnation

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

Rhetoric strains forced bond between government and corporate community

The nation's media reports that the corporate world is peeved about what it considers President Obama's devisive anti-corporate rhetoric. As U.S. News and World Report observes, "Another week, another assault on business-as-usual by President Obama. Or is it, as some critics are starting to wonder, an assault on business, as usual?"

Reports Associated Press:

"Relations between President Barack Obama and U.S. corporate leaders have grown tense in recent weeks, with business groups bristling over his sharp rebukes of lenders and multinational companies in particular.

Executives and trade groups that praised Obama's outreach during his post-election transition period say they have felt less welcome since he took office in January. More troubling, they say, are his populist-tinged, sometimes acid critiques of certain sectors, including large companies that keep some profits overseas to reduce their U.S. tax burden."

A U.S. Chamber spokesman called the President's talking points "an oversimplification of the real world." Another trade lobbyist called it the same old cynical, political class warfare.

The White House is throwing out its own doublespeak, explaining that the business community is just freaked out by how shockingly supportive the President really is. Said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke in the U.S. News report:

"President Obama has a very good relationship with the business community. He's working extra hard on creating more jobs and stabilizing the financial crisis.... In many ways, he's perhaps surprised the business community with just how moderate he has been and how much he is willing to work with them."

The posturing between Obama and corporate America has always been convoluted. As a candidate, Obama ran anti-corporate campaign ads criticizing CEO compensation. Yet he still raised enormous sums of money from corporate backers including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, National Amusements and Google.

A few months before the election, a Chief Executive poll found that more than 70 percent of all CEOs thought an Obama presidency would be a "disaster."  Yet Business Week reported that corporate leaders gave President Obama "relatively good grades" after his first 100 days. People were still wary on the details, but as the Business Roundtable's president told the magazine: "We're happy with the general outlines of what he's done; things are starting to take hold."

Today's ambivalence between government and business represents tensions that exist within a shotgun marrage unlike anything in history. Taxpayers are now direct stakeholders in the financial and auto industries, and are rapidly becoming the safety net by which the nation's housing, healthcare, energy and even news media industries will be supported while they are transformed. That makes the President of the United States both Commander in Chief and CEO.

We're at the point now, writes Wall Street Journal columnist Gerland Seib, that "it seems almost anachronistic to talk about a divide between government and business."

Perhaps the publicized angst about Obama being anti-business means the honeymoon that never really was is over.  What certain is that corporate PR is going to be more complicated than when all the talk about public-private partnership was mostly just talk.
. . . . . . . . . .

Send comments and links to scatterbox@stevensilvers.com

Get on President Obama's email update list

Drop a note to WhiteHouse.Gov and you'll be added to President Obama's email blast list.

The White House is using official letter-looking emails -- like this one about health care reform -- "as a way to directly communicate about important issues and opportunities." 

The email letters include links to other White House web sites designed to educate and build support for various administration initiatives.

You can get on the official Obama email updates list by clicking here.
. . . . . . . . . .

Trouble is our business

Advertising and marketing blog The Denver Egotist names GBSM, Inc. as Colorado's best crisis PR firm.  The Egotist's "recommended talent" listing goes on to read:

The firm is stacked heavy at the top (i.e. experienced) rather than at the junior level.  They have been through it all at least a few times.  Steven Silvers, in particular, has an incredible Rolodex.  They are the quiet firm in town that handles a lot of the crisis stuff you don't hear about.

I'm blushing.  But the truth is that my colleagues at GBSM are the incredible ones.  Whether it's executive consulting, strategic communications, public affairs or crisis management -- you simply won't find a more talented and personable bunch in this business.

Drop me a note or give GBSM a call at (303) 825-6100.
. . . . . . . . .

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.
. . . . . . . . . .

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.
. . . . . . . . . .

Repeating an ugly negative to save the brand

A crisis in your industry can become a PR problem for your company too.

This is particularly true in food-borne illness situations.  Media coverage of government warnings and companies pulling products of grocery shelves all add to the public's fears about what they eat.  Every product in a category becomes suspect, if not guilty by association.

When the FDA recalled deadly spinach from one area of California, consumers stopped using the vegetable almost completely.  That followed with a virtual boycott in 2008's tomatoes scare, though the government never proved a link.  The investigation later fingered cilantro and peppers.

The salmonella outbreak and food recall caused by Peanut Corporation of America has generated similar panic.  Though the company's production is only a small percentage of an $800 million industry, national sales of peanut butter have dropped 25 percent.

In response, big brands like Jif and Peter Pan are taking the typically unthinkable position of repeating a very nasty negative.  They're using newspaper ads, media publicity, coupons, web sites -- anything to convince consumers that they're the good guys.

Search "peanut butter" and you might see this astonishing banner ad:

Forget wholesomeness and great taste.  Today's marketing message is that our product won't turn your insides into a festering cesspool.

With 1,000 tainted peanut products already identified, this crisis could set a recall record for human foods.

And for some companies, that makes the ugly hard sell necessary to keep their innocent brands from being seriously maimed.
. . . . . . . . . .

Playing to beat the recession

"Defense wins championships. But, in a tough economy, offense is what sells those luxury suites."

... Denver Post columnist Mark Kizla, on the logic behind Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen's decision to hire 32-year-old rookie head coach Josh McDaniels. The former offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots takes over a Broncos team with the fourth-worst defense in the entire NFL.

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.
. . . . . . . . .