April 22, 2013
Why is Quantas eliminating its media-relations Twitter feed?

prweek:

Qantas Airways is shutting down its PR Twitter account @QantasMedia and is directing customers over to its new online newsroom for information and updates. The Twitter handle, which is run by the Qantas PR staff and has 27,000 followers, is being shut down to streamline information the company shares on social media.

On the one hand, I get this. Sort of. For brands, social media should be a conversational and audience engagement tool, and using a Twitter feed to disseminate press releases is very one-way.

On the other hand, I don’t get this. At all. It seems like a very ill-conceived decision, one I would counsel strongly against had I the opportunity.

One of the most basic and foundational tenets of good PR is to cater to the needs of your audience. Many, many reporters, editors and media people use Twitter, especially as a de facto RSS reader where they can pull in news and updates from companies and brands they cover in one place. Removing your brand from that arena can make it more difficult for media sources to get news, updates and insights from you. Why would you want to take that chance? And if the answer is because you want them to instead visit your snazzy new media page on your website, well, your answer is not a good one. Why does it have to be mutually exclusive? Why can’t you have both?

PRNews says Quantas also explained the move by saying there was a lot of overlap between this account and its consumer-facing account. But that’s hard to see - these tend to be two very separate audiences, especially in terms of what they look for and expect in a brand’s social media channel.

It just seems very shortsighted to cut off what could be a valuable source of information on your brand for your target audience just to drive them to a new page. In PR, we accommodate much more than we dictate - or we should, at least. This seems to go in the opposite direction.

Or, as PR News puts it in the same article more succinctly and effectively, Making journalists proactively root around on a Web page seems like a retreat to passivity, and misses an opportunity to push important PR-related information out into the community to whom it would be most relevant.

1:34pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-ZyjI8goq
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: media relations public relations Twitter PR News 
March 29, 2013
Annals of bad public apologies

“I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect.”

Bad news, Don Young: If anything, this makes things worse, not better. Claiming you meant no disrespect after uttering such a universally disrespectful phrase only showcases how inherent, how ingrained your racism is. If you came out and said, “yes, I know this is a bad and completely disrespectful term and that by using it a caused many people to feel disrespected”, that’s a bit better and certainly more genuine.

But to say you meant no disrespect communicates either a kind of racism that is completely ingrained into your DNA or a kind of ignorance that is unbecoming a member of Congress. Neither of which is a good thing at all.

11:02am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-ZyhPIZfL
Filed under: crisis communications crisis management public apologies public relations 
March 25, 2013
"‘Google Alerts was once a very important and efficient tool to monitor mentions of your brand on the web. It is now so unreliable that it has been rendered effectively useless.’"

— This is a big friggin’ deal. In a matter of weeks, two Google services of incalculable value to PR pros - Reader and Alerts - have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. What’s worse is that Google making these services free for so long effectively muscled out any competition, meaning viable alternatives to either service is practically nonexistent.

This is a big friggin’ deal.

12:03pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-Zyh561ma
(Notes: 11)
  
Filed under: google public relations PR 
March 13, 2013
Adventures in press releases

Congratulations to whomever wrote this product release - you managed to  make “irritable bowel syndrom” only the second-worst thing in the headline!

“Synergistic” is not a word. Or maybe it is, but even if it is it’s the worst so don’t use it in a press release at all let alone the headline especially when talking about irritable bowel syndrome okay? Thanks.

11:11am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-ZygAHpkl
Filed under: PR public relations press releases media relations 
January 31, 2013
"Sitrick, meanwhile, said Schnatter’s comments have been ‘completely distorted’ by some bloggers and that his firm has been on the lookout for blogs that relay the misconstrued quotes since last year."

—

Why, Papa John’s? Why?

Why do this? We get that you want to get the record straight and clear up any inaccuracies or incorrect statement you may believe are out there attributed to your guy. But the time to that was several months ago, not now.

This is one of those situations - we’ve all been in them - where an agency takes part in activity it knows isn’t in the best interests of its clients. Or, it should know, at least. But a client is angry, and wants justice, and wants action, and even though we know laying low is the best strategy here, we move.

Because clients don’t pay agencies - especially “crisis communications firms” - to lay low. They pay agencies to attack, to harangue, to browbeat, to conquer. To amass scalps. Never mind that doing so ends up drawing more (overwhelmingly negative) attention to your brand than laying low every would - the famed Streisand Effect

An important and yet overlooked part of managing a crisis is recognizing when it’s more beneficial to be quiet than to speak.

11:27am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-Zyd4Qz0L
Filed under: public relations crisis communications PR media relations 
January 21, 2013
"Unfortunately, while Wisconsin has moved on from Bielema – Alvarez hired former Utah State coach Gary Andersen in December, and seems very excited about the team’s future – Bielema can’t seem to do the same."

— Basic PR axiom for you, coach: Never punch down.

3:43pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-ZycJbcAq
Filed under: public relations media relations USA Today 
January 17, 2013
The Manti Mess

If I’m advising ND right now, there’s no way Manti does an interview today. Or tomorrow, or most of next week, for that matter. (Nor should ND have held that press conference last night, by the way. But that’s another post altogether.)

There are several reasons why Manti maintains silence for the time being. Here are the most important:

  1. There’s still too much unknown about the situation, which means there are still many, many questions to be answered. The place for those questions to be asked is not in a high-profile, highly anticipated TV interview.
  2. If Manti is, as he and ND claim, naive enough to be duped in such a tremendous fashion, then he is naive enough to get manhandled or painted into a corner by a national reporter in a sit-down interview. I get that the strategy behind the interview is to position him as sympathetic, naive and, ultimately, an innocent victim, but he’ll be subjected to lots of uncomfortable, black-and-white questions about the chronological order of events that will hard, if not impossible, for him to gracefully deflect with messaging and talking points. If I’m not confident he can handle himself with sophistication and savvy to answer tough questions, he’s not doing the interview.
  3. Lastly, it’s just simple timing. Today’s Thursday. Lance and Oprah will re-enter the national conversation tonight and tomorrow after the interview begins airing tonight. Sunday is NFL playoffs, followed by the first wave of Super Bowl previews and hype. Let this thing quiet down externally while you continue to get answers to questions and strategize messaging internally. Have a more comprehensive plan of attack to start rolling out Monday/Tuesday. You can’t entirely wait out a story of this magnitude, of course, but you can lay low - under the auspices of continuing to get the answers internally to all those questions mentioned above - and allow the story to recede a bit while other stories move up in prominence at the same time.

In crisis situations like this, you sit down for a high-profile interview only when you are fairly certain you can articulate exactly what you want to say AND you can shift or reinforce positive perception to your side. If you are uncertain of either of those - or, as in this case, BOTH - then you stay quiet and work back channels more discreetly instead.

12:08pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-Zyb_3LFk
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: crisis management crisis communications public relations manti teo 
October 17, 2012
Crisis Management 101

Today’s lesson, courtesy Lance Armstrong:

The cover-up is always worse than the crime.

We Americans a forgiving lot, generally. And we love our second acts and redemption stories. Come clean up front, Lance, and odds are we’ll forgive you and celebrate your efforts at rehabilitation. But lie to us - especially for as long and with as much vehemence as you did - and you change the dynamic completely. You tell us that we’re not smart. You tell us that we can’t handle the truth. We don’t like being told that we’re not smart or we can’t handle the truth. Generally, we just don’t like being told something about ourselves other that what we know. And that’s what you did, over and over again.  

8:54am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-ZyVSsglA
Filed under: Lance Armstrong Livestrong crisis management public relations 
September 24, 2012
PR - tactical tips

Including more than one photo with your press release or story pitch? Make sure none get lost in the shuffle by giving each in the group a similar naming convention, i.e., “ClientNamePhoto_1, ClientNamePhoto_2, etc.”

Those on the receiving end often take all photos/attachments with an email and dump them into a working folder to be dealt with in more detail at a later time - and often by a different person. Giving each photo a similar name means they appear next to each other in the list automatically on the computer, and gives notification to whomever is handling them that they have everything that was sent - that nothing’s missing.

Yes, this is very basic. But also important to make sure all assets you send reach their intended target - your client’s key audience(s).

5:13pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-ZyU0HiQc
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: public relations PR PR tips media relations Fort Wayne 
September 10, 2012
"PR is more strategic than ever."

— WORD.

4:00pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zy4-ZyT8j80m
Filed under: PR public relations strategic planning media relations 
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