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Hey, PR Master Web 5.0 or Die

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It’s the year of public relations, or so I’ve heard. In my more-than-quarter-century in this profession, every year is the year of public relations, IMHO (in my humble opinion). I’ve relished this industry because it suits my thirst for the next new trove of knowledge to quench my intense curiosity to know more about everything.

Which leads me to Web 5.0 (isn’t that the version we’ve gravitated to without anyone really stating it?)…there is so much (too much) to learn, grasp, master. Anyone trying is going to fail miserably unless they’re being awarded a grant to master every app in the cloud, how each smart phone works, what new technology helps computers run more efficiently, etc.

I had a grand chat Friday with Michelle Quillin at New England Multimedia. It’s been my goal to connect via voice with my tweeps so I can close the gap of written word and still images on Twitter and Facebook. She shared with me the successes she and her business partner husband, Scott, have had adding social media to their growing web design, WordPress, and video business.

We spoke about where I need to move next; she said monetize and head directly to vlogging, and I said, “GASP!!” [Two of my public relations peers do this very well — Jontus Media, Inc. and Arment Dietrich.]

Any public relations person who’s any public relations person must continually re-invent. That puts us squarely behind the eight ball to walk the talk. Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to, can’t find the time, have no time, or the kids’ evening events are getting in the way – those of us interested in mastering a teeny piece of the pie must engage.

Why?

Because our clients and companies need us to know how to do this; they’re turning to the leaders to put the trough of water right in front of a nose, conveniently, and without the learning curve. That’s why our learning curve is both painful and exciting. Look at it this way, the world would be pretty darn flat if everyone worked the same way without twists and turns.

I’m groaning up the hill with the rest, but my outlook for 2011 sees the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m hoping there will be a “just say no” time when I can turn the other cheek to the latest gadgetry and widget. But, when my house is not in order and when there are way too many cool new things to glean, then I’m in – with 20 toes and 30 fingers.

How about you?

AirTran New Year’s Day PR Debacle

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Disney Epcot 2011 New Year's Celebration by Soulati Media, Inc.

On New Year’s Day 2011, I arrived at the Orlando Airport anticipating a smooth travel day after a five-day vacation at Disney World; we were tired and ready to be home. To my chagrin, our flight to Baltimore via AirTran was delayed, not cancelled, due to the absence of one flight attendant. We were told flight crews had been partying as it was New Year’s Eve, and they didn’t want to come to work. (REALLY? What an unprofessional and poor public relations message to passengers.)

After two hours waiting, scurrying to get on standby for the direct flight and then resolved to spend the night in the airport with my child (it’ll be an adventure, honey, really), the terminal erupted in W00Ts; the errant flight attendant showed up to work (or some replacement).

When we arrived in Baltimore and experienced yet another delay on the next leg of the journey, we learned there were, unofficially, 40 Airtran pilots and 200 flight attendants who had walked out on New Year’s Day. Flights nation-wide were disrupted – either cancelled or delayed. Passengers in terminals since 4 a.m. were on the fringe of a nervous breakdown.

The Baltimore-Boston folks received $100 travel vouchers (as if they’d ever travel the airline again) and had to wait for the Montego Bay pilots to arrive internationally, transfer to domestic, and fly them home. Luckily for me, we only arrived one hour late to our destination, but the in between was stressful.

To make sense of this public relations debacle, I asked two of my best pals, Flight Attendant Kimberly Sutherland and Tim Adams, a high-end pipefitter for a local union, to help me understand the perspective from the airline employees:

  • Kimberly was shocked when I informed her AirTran personnel suggested its crews were hung over. Then she explained it was probably a walkout due to contract negotiations. AirTran is allegedly merging with Southwest airlines, although that merger has not been finalized. I searched around for news bulletins of the New Year’s Day walkout and was surprised to find nothing I could tap.
  • Tim shared his passion for his union and echoed my thoughts on the bad public relations move by AirTran. He said unions don’t create bad public relations; in fact, they try to uphold a professional image. Tim’s communicated his appreciation for his brotherhood loudly and clearly along with pride for his expertise and profession. While all unions are different, he said, the pipefitters local strives to uphold its credibility.

What it always boils down to is the almighty dollar when it comes to union negotiations. Regardless, consumers, and passengers in this case, will always suffer so someone gets paid more.

As for public relations and the AirTran image, well, I think you can form your own idea of what a poor move that was on New Year’s Day 2011 for future business.

Thoughts on Public Relations

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On occasion I read O’Dwyers, a public relations trade magazine with regular features and listings of specialty public relations and firms. The November 2010 technology issue provided interesting blog fodder about the future of public relations.

Jack O’Dwyer, editor-in-chief, reported on comings and goings at the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Assembly Oct. 16, 2010 during which delegates debated the future of public relations in 2015. His editorial is disjointed and not easily understood unless one had attended the assembly, apparently (this, of course, is my opinion after reading his column).

To get to the crux of the matter, various issues were addressed during the assembly, which I’ll recap here for the sake of our own discussion:

APR Designation

It seems PRSA itself is divided about the profession and voted in favor of keeping those professionals without the accredited public relations (APR) designation off the board. The vote, 173 against/104 in favor, was the first in 30 years.

  • I elected not to go after APR, yet there are many who have. It requires investment of time, professional dues, volunteerism, and finances – many things a budding professional in the agency world cannot afford. Instead, I became president of the Publicity Club of Chicago and sat on its board for more than six years. I gave my time willingly to publish the annual media directory (countless hours) and innovated the Let’s Do Lunch Live Auction where we invited media to auction themselves to the highest bidder for lunch (was an excellent and fun fund-raiser for the club).
  • No one I knew back in the day willingly shared the APR designation with their name unless they were trying to keep up with the Joneses ala physicians or nurses (notorious for adding every credential to a signature).
  • How does this vote affect the future of public relations? It doesn’t. Those folks running PRSA inclined to keep only APRs on their board will not have the fortune and privilege of knowing professionals the likes of me and my peers. (Feels much like the “men-only” country clubs, doesn’t it?)

The Press

Mr. O’Dwyer shares copy from several slides in his editorial; however, there is no attribution. I have no idea who said:

  • “The concept of news and its corresponding news value…is being diluted if not dissolved.”
  • “New media is creating healthy skepticism about the truthfulness of media.”
  •  “The de-professionalism of traditional media and arguably, PR.”
  • “PR people must embrace integrated marketing communications to reach highly distracted publics in a competitive communications environment.”

Hmm, not sure why that section was called “the press;” should’ve been called “the lament.”

In particular, I’m agog in re “practitioners must embrace integrated marketing communications.” Really? What PR person doesn’t already know they need to work all sides of the aisle and embrace our sisters in marketing, advertising, digital, new media, and anyone else vying for the illusive marketing dollar?  

No longer is public relations pure. (That’s where I launched my career — as a purist, conducting media relations daily and becoming a pitch pro selling news to media. It was how I defined my career, but no longer.) Public relations professionals who elect to remain pure and execute traditional media relations, special events, thought leadership, and influencer relations without integrating practices of marketing, new media, and advertising cannot survive.

There are a few more choice remarks in the column referenced here, and I’m going to save them for my next post. Meanwhile, what thoughts might you have to add to mine?

Frito-Lay Sun Chips Social Media Biodegradable Bag Fail

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(Frito-lay/Associated Press/Washington Post)

My first reaction after purchasing Sun Chips in its new, snazzy biodegradable packaging (because I recycle EVERYTHING) upon trying to open it was “dang, that’s noisy!”

Lo, Frito-Lay, owned by PepsiCo Inc. and maker of Sun Chips, has pulled its snazzy biodegradable packaging from shelves (available since January) wasting exorbitant amounts of money in so doing because it failed at consumer test marketing (IMHO).

I’m amazed companies the likes of Pampers with its Dry-Max debacle I wrote about here and now Sun Chips have launched products (after cycling through the usual market research, focus groups, product development et al I assume) only to pull them or engage in defensive posturing due to consumer outcry AFTER the fact.

How could Sun Chips not know that bag was noisy? Have you ever heard it?

Tumbling sales and consumer-created videos on social media sites contributed to the decision by these corporate giants to return five of the six flavors back to non-compostable packaging. So much for saving the environment from potato chip bags, eh?

Here’s the fail – because social media is at the fingertips of all consumers and corporations if they regard it as more than a passing fad, all Sun Chips would’ve had to do was the following:

  • During market research, it would’ve been simple and inexpensive to produce and launch a YouTube video asking for a nation-wide vote about which bag consumers prefer – the current (non-noisy) bag or the new, biodegradable (noisy) bag. I can assure you, Frito-Lay, that video would’ve garnered tremendous word-of-mouth attention and off we go to the races.
  • On your lame attempt at a Facebook page  where one consumer calls the new Sun Chips bags “great idea, freakishly loud,” you could’ve asked for votes on which bag is preferred and then point to the YouTube video to secure hits there, too.
  • On Twitter (are you @Fritolay or @Frito-Lay?) with your confusing identity with the same avatar where one of you currently apologizes for the noisy bag and asks for another chance, you could’ve launched a campaign to engage the tier-one social media pros to ask for a Twitter strategy (because obviously your in-house public relations department or unsavvy agency did not help you in this regard).

Well, hindsight is always 20-20, right? And, no one asked me, so I’ll just keep my 26-years-in-public-relations-counsel to myself.

Social Media, PR and Greenpeace

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Credit: Greenpeace

Here’s a brand everyone loves to hate or loves to love. Regardless of your perspective, you’ve got to admire how is using social media and grassroots marketing for its cause.

Earlier this year, I wrote several times and about the palm oil debacle. The world watched as a video went viral (in this case I prefer to use “viral” versus “word-of-mouth”). It included the bloody end of an orangutan finger posing as a Nestle Kit Kat chocolate bar (bitten by an unsuspecting actor).

My posts captured the situation as it unfolded – the non-profit taking on the likes of global behemoths (along with Unilever, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC, and the list goes on and on) about of the rain forest by palm-oil manufacturer Sinar Mas. I read coverage in the Wall Street Journal that announced a third-party audit by Sinar Mas to clear its name only to have a comment on my blog inform me the report was fraudulent.

For as long as I can remember, Greenpeace has capitalized on every marketing and public relations tactic available to push its message to the masses and take on corporate America. Last week in the Denver airport, I was greeted on the main concourse by two Greenpeace volunteers. These kids were early 20s, and the woman I spoke with was buoyant and engaging with piercings in various facial places and spiky black hair (just sayin’).

She and her buddy were doing grassroots marketing in a high-traffic location to engage folks in the their cause – to save the rain forest by “outing” corporate America’s massive use of palm oil. I informed her I had blogged twice when the group took on Nestle and Unilever; I also opined the Greenpeace  viral video was vile. (At that she looked a bit sheepish.)

She asked if I had visited its Web site to see what they were doing, and she asked me to join its cause.

I respectfully declined saying I intended to stay neutral until I was more informed, although I was likely the most-informed passerby that whole day. Had I made a donation to Greenpeace then or registered to join its cause, I knew I would need to also alter purchasing from the corporate giants Greenpeace disdains. I wasn’t ready to make that change nor did I want to be a hypocrite.

I am suitably impressed by the audacious, activist, committed, aggressive public relations by Greenpeace. I’ve watched it unfold since the beginning of my PR career more than two decades ago.  Look at the Greenpeace model:

  • It adopts a cause and uses every tier and tactic of marketing communications powered now by social media.
  • By adopting social media, Greenpeace has hit more than just pockets of activist- oriented and like-minded consumers; it has filtered its message through the masses on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and My Space.
  • It has not ignored tried-and-true grassroots marketing – the face-to-face interpersonal communication at airports in which its headquarters resides, for example. It collects names, commentary, memberships, registrations, subscriptions, and donations one by one, just like a political campaign.

For any company and not-for-profit seeking tips how to implement marketing tactics with the aplomb of Greenpeace, head to the Denver Airport for a reminder.