Forget ‘Unfriended,’ Try ‘Unjobbed’ A Facebook and Twitter Posting Refresher. STOP OVERSHARING!

Every time I write a blog post like this I mutter to myself, “this will be the last time I’ll need to reinforce this message.” But each time I’m reminded of our collective short memories.

Whether it’s a cruise ship disaster off the Italian coast that generates a frigid corporate response, a “communications guru” for Groupon that tries to quell investor concerns by saying “Every three months, Groupon is a different company,” (wtf?) or the recent demotion of a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue captain for bigoted comments he posted on Facebook regarding the Trayvon Martin shooting, people in positions of power – or anyone for that matter – fail to remember some simple communications truths when it comes to expressing thoughts and ideas in a public space.

And it’s especially true when that public space is Facebook and Twitter.

But before I dig deeper into the recent Wall Street Journal article that inspired this post, let’s set down a few definitions and lay the groundwork for some ideas. People tend to take a schizoid approach to their handling of social media. Many consider Facebook and Twitter one part public forum to voice concerns and express joy over life’s great events and its trivialities, and part personal-echo chamber-cum-sounding-board. In other words, they use it as their personal diary – either through lengthy posts or 140-characters.

Readers, the time has come to seriously reconsider that approach.

Last week, Gene Morphis, the Chief Financial Officer at Francesca’s Holdings Corp., a Houston-based women’s clothing company, was fired after a series of what were deemed offensive postings. While it’s unclear if the article’s pull quote from Morphis’ Twitter page was Francesca’s final straw, it read:

“Dinner w/Board tonite. Used to be fun. Now one must be on guard every second.”

When it came to his job security, he wasn’t kidding. Morphis should have been on guard – and kept his opinions a lot more guarded and certainly to himself.

A Generation of Oversharers

Of course, privacy settings can to some extent ensure that Facebook and Twitter remain private mediums, meant to be within narrow circles of approved friends. But regardless, they are not or should not be viewed strictly as digital diaries. Dictionary.com defines “diary” as the following: “a daily record, usually private, especially of the writer’s own experiences, observations, feeling, attitudes, etc.” When it comes to the web, the phrase “usually private” could afford to lose one term.

Morphis had been the company’s CFO since October 2010. And for two years he really raked in the dough, earning $1.2 million in 2010 and $565,720 in 2011, according to the article. Why the half million drop is another story.  But earnings figures like that suggest that paychecks – even large ones – are no guarantee that a person is irreplaceable.

Social Media Ettitequte Lesson # 24: Don’t S@#! In Your Own Nest

The incident also serves as a reminder to PR professionals that as much as we help manage a company’s public message, it is not our responsibility to be everywhere and anywhere without a filter. Besides, policing people’s Facebook and Twitter accounts would be an invasion of privacy – even if social media has proven itself anything but private.

The lesson: People need the self-control and discipline to police themselves. So keep writing Facebook posts, keep Tweeting to your heart’s content, but be mindful of what you say. We may suffer from collectively truncated memories these days, but in the age of wireless information overload, news about sinking ships, racist commentary, and the musings of paranoid executives gets around pretty fast.

Speaking of short-term memory lapses, a quick check on Morphis’ Facebook page shows that as of Friday May 18, his employment status still reads: “Cfo · Oct 2010 to present · Houston, Texas.”

Didn’t he get the memo?

The rest of us sure did.

Slow-Jamming Prez Is Height Of Cool

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 05/03/2012.

The first American president to appear on television was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Speaking at the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, he declared the event “open to all mankind.” But for all Roosevelt’s TV-friendly oratory, it wasn’t until 1960 with the election of John F. Kennedy, historians argue, that television fully matured. Used with expert precision, Kennedy became our first “TV president.”

The same technological evolution can be seen with former president Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton may have been the first president to send an email, but it is Barack Obama, with his social media-savvy Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, that have allowed him to take top honors as the nation’s first “multimedia president.”

Too Cool for School? Not This Prez

It’s that media/tech-savvy distinction that allows Obama to connect with young voters –- better than even the saxophone-playing-Clinton once did. Obama’s presidential “cool” allows him license to use Kennedy’s favorite communications medium in new ways too. On April 24, Obama was the guest-in-chief on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” — where he joined the host in a bit called “Slow-Jam the News,” where current events are put to a relaxed R&B beat.

But humor was only part of Obama’s continuing call to cool. His presence was a superb lesson in public relations.

Obama took the opportunity to connect with Fallon’s college-aged and 20-something viewers to address an issue that is central to their futures -– student loans and mounting debt. The five-minute opener (with nearly 5 million YouTube views when I wrote this post) featured a smiling and hand-waving president who morphed into mocking seriousness. With a bluesy backbeat, the chief jammer began:

“On July 1st of this year the interest rates on Stafford student loans — the same loans that many of you use to help pay for college — are set to double,” he said. …“What we said [to congress] is simple. Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people.”

The camera returned to a smile-suppressing Fallon, where he delivered the follow-up line in a raspy, deep voice. “Ooooh yeah. You should listen to the president.”

Public Relations 101: Stay On Message

With performances like that, who needs costly political ads or even stump speeches? Obama chose the student loan topic deliberately. Hours before the live taping, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney began backpedaling when it came to his opinions on the “student loan crisis,” first tacitly endorsing the July 1 deadline and then breaking with Republican colleagues to support the president’s call to keep student loan interest rates in check.

Perhaps the Romney campaign would like to blame it on the leap year.

On February 29, at a campaign stop in Ohio, Romney answered a question from a law student that illuminated his position regarding student loans and the need for market forces — not public handouts — to determine the fair cost of financial aid.

“The right course for America is for businesses and universities and colleges to compete, and for us to make sure that we provide loans to the extent we possibly can at an interest rate that doesn’t have the taxpayers having to subsidize people who want to go to school,” he said.

That’s an opinion that speaks to the Republican base. But throw in his campaign advisor Eric Fehrnstrom’s Etch a Sketch comment about being able to rewrite political narratives once the general election gets underway and you’re left with a politician edging toward a John Kerry-style flip-flopper.

We still have a long horse race ahead in the game of presidential politics. But Obama’s smooth, humorous and televised quasi-Romney dig will continue to serve him well. Not only does the president rely on a host of media outlets to disseminate his message, he’s skilled at shifting his tone throughout events.

Obama understands that shifting tone is different than shifting message. We’ll have to wait and see if Romney has been properly schooled and if Obama can remember his own lessons come fall.

But for now, I’ll still agree with the Roots rapper Black Thought, who at the end of President Obama’s slow jam session called him the “POTUS (President of the United States) with the mostest.”

Indeed.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 05/03/2012.

Daily Deal Dilemma: Does Groupon Need a Refund, a Reboot, a Stern Reprimand or Just a Little Maturing?

The answer depends on whom you ask. If you ask Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, 31, he’s likely to say the latter.

But before we get to Mason, let’s recap.

Back in February 2012, I wrote about how Groupon, the daily deals “Mecca” was launching a PR blitz to help rewrite its then recently soiled reputation after a slew of communication missteps:  a fumbled Super Bowl ad and a case of fuzzy earnings math just prior to its November 2011 IPO.  It revamped its website and added the public relations might of Paul Taaffe, the former chairman and CEO of Hill & Knowlton. (For history buffs, that’s the 85-year-old Manhattan-headquartered PR agency once known for its support of Big Tobacco and its infamous “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers,” 1954 newspaper ad, that claimed the “statistics purporting to link cigarette smoking with [lung cancer] could apply with equal force to any one of many other aspects of modern life.”  Gotta love this industry!)

In that earlier post I puffed on about the tough job that Taaffe had ahead of him, referring to the journey as a “rocky road” while going on to say that, “taming the daily deal beast just doesn’t seem like a job anyone should embrace,” and that “public relations leaders can only craft a message so far. Too much spin and a message – and a company – can spin out of control. Let’s see what happens next.”

And (nearly) spin out of control it has.

Earlier this month it was reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission had begun a preliminary investigation into Groupon’s questionable financial accounting practices after the company announced that it was revising its 2011Q4 earnings, cutting it by $14.3 million to $492.2 million from $506.5 million. The announcement left many Groupon naysayers crying, “I told you so,” while investors are jumping ship in search of…. better deals.

Fast forward a few weeks since the troubling news and Groupon’s stock slide continues. On Thursday April 26, 2012, Groupon’s stock price was nearing bargain-basement levels, trading at $12.06 a share, after its $20 a share opening in November and its 52-week high of $31.44. The reason for the downward revision? Groupon hadn’t set enough money aside for customer refunds.

So in light of all this communications turmoil, one would expect that Paul Taaffe and his team would be out in full force defense and crisis mitigation mode.  To date, however, Taaffe’s strongest defense was when he told reporters: “Every three months Groupon is a different company.”

Somehow I don’t think that’s what investors wanted to hear.

But to give credit where it’s due, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason at an informal town hall meeting on Wednesday admitted his company no longer has “any margin for error,” adding that Groupon is “still this toddler in a grown man’s body in many ways.” In helping the company grow up, the company has announced plans to bring on board additional senior management, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, at least two new board members – all designed to show that the company can mature, mature quickly and rebuild investor confidence.

As a public relations professional, one of the most important pieces of advice I can give is telling clients to be up front about their actions and intentions and if there’s no substance behind a marketing campaign, then there’s no point selling the message.

Frank town hall meetings that get section-front coverage in the Wall Street Journal (check out Marketplace in the print edition) is probably not enough to quell all investor fears. But as Groupon closes out another challenging month and is only two and a half weeks away from its next quarterly earnings report, it’s nice to see a maturing response.

Perhaps then – and in an ironic way – Paul Taaffe was on to something after all. Just maybe, Groupon is beginning to change. And just maybe this change is here to stay and the company will not be something different three months from now.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Checking Their Guns (And Their Brains) At The Door: The Secret Services No Longer Secret Shenanigans

Talk about public relations disasters in degrees. When Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney criticizes a Pittsburgh cookie it’s one thing.  But when half a dozen secret service agents and 11 military personnel lose their jobs after seeking the “secret services” of women who could have gone by the street name “Cookie” it’s an entirely different matter and enough to make me lose my dessert.

In short: this is not good at all.

If anything, the unfolding Secret Service and military personnel prostitute scandal is a glaring example that sometimes no matter how much spin is added to the curve ball of professional news speak and public relations, you can still strike out. The exploits of these men are indefensible which has left the political punditsphere returning to humor. One of my favorites comes from Steven Cody, the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Peppercorn, a public relations firm. His idea, expressed in his most recent post: “Let’s re-brand it the not-so Secret Service.”

And while crass humor may serve as a temporary public antidote for the serious standards and security breach that was uncovered in Colombia, it will do nothing in the longer term court of public opinion.

To a large extent, Lawrence Berger, the lawyer for two Secret Service supervisors who lost their jobs was right. The actions of these individuals did not compromise the security of the President. But if that’s the best defense that can be mustered, I think one would be hard pressed to call that a stunning PR reversal.

The President may not have been harmed physically, but his image certainly was, giving political red meat to the likes of Sarah Palin who commented on Fox news recently, “It’s like, who’s minding the store around here?”

The Secret Service, founded in 1865, and charged with presidential protection since 1901, has a long and largely successful history. While there’s no denying this public relations disaster is a big one, it’s also likely that an agency that presumably takes its mission and duty so seriously will work exceedingly hard at doing their jobs that much better so that time really will smooth out this unfortunate – kink. (Yes, pun intended)

“Waiting it out” is usually a PR professional’s least favorite advice to a client. But in this case it may be the only way the embattled agency can regain its stripes. “I’m sorrys” have been made. Jobs have been lost.

It’s quite possible the less they say going forward might be the most prudent course of action.  Until, of course, one of them releases a kiss and tell all tome, which will be only a matter of time.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot, Close Mouth-Mitt… PR Lessons Learned From a Crumbled Cookie?

Pop icon and singer Britney Spears’ second album may have been called “Oops!…I Did It Again” but it seems the 12 year-old phrase is getting a new lease of life in Republican hopeful Mitt Romney’s continuing saga of campaign trail gaffes.

Yes, oops he did it again! But at least his latest remark helps underscore some base public relations principals and makes for good blog post fodder.  Thank you Mr Romney.

The latest tongue-tie comes out of the Bethel Park community, a southern suburb of Pittsburgh, where at a recent a campaign rally/picnic, Romney hinted that the event’s sub-par cookies were coming from a 7-Eleven chain bakery. His humorous, though mildly condescending tone suggested local bakers bake better, more “authentic tasting cookies.”

Anyone following the story (which went viral as CookieGate) knows that Romney’s comments were a not-so-subtle nod to Republican Party basics: espousing the vitality and vibrancy of small business.

But that’s not how the cookie crumbled for “open-mouth-insert-foot-close-mouth-Mitt.” His jibe to the quality of 7-Eleven baked goods backfired in several ways:

1)      The offending cookies were made by a 57-year-old local bakery, which had been hired for the event.

2)      7-Eleven is not a bakery, a remark that has again sparked concern that Romney is out of touch with everyday Americans, who, while they make struggle through the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner, know exactly what their “local” 7-Eleven offers.

For Romney, this latest gaffe, like his Etch A Sketch comment a month ago, can’t easily be shaken off.

It also reinforces that effective public relations isn’t just about writing press releases – far from it. In fact we are constantly reminding clients that press release generation is in some ways, the least critical part of what we do. Managing a client’s message – in print, online, in person on Twitter and Facebook, and everywhere else their name and their brand are promoted.

Hindsight is, after all, 20/20, but isn’t it possible that a particularly on-the-ball communications whiz could have anticipated that their boss would try to inspire the small town business spark knowing that cookies would be served at the event? And if so, Romney could have turned that info into his advantage instead of spoiled dough.

By now, “CookieGate,” a week old and it’s entirely possible the Romney campaign will find humor after al. 7-Eleven’s PR team has already done that while the bakery is cashing in on its Internet notoriety by offering a “CookieGate” special: buy a dozen, get a half-dozen free.

Kudos….eerrrr…..cookies to them!

Considering that Romney gaffes are nearing bakers dozen regularity, it’s likely he’ll have plenty of time to improve his PR game before the big PR game heats up this fall.  And then we can talk about how the cookie crumbled.

The Cure For the Common Mind Virus: Fewer “Bored” Meetings And Less Pop-Cultural Poo

I beg your pardon? For those of you who are unaware, the title of this post was inspired by a friend – and brilliant branding specialist Bruce Turkel and his Monday musings on what he calls, “mind viruses” – not a sadistic reference to Alzheimer’s or other brain disorders. In everyday speak “mind-viruses” are the modern iteration of water cooler talk or the pop cultural nonsense increasingly crowding out valuable real estate within our collective cerebrums.

Turkel’s post raises the question, how do the words and terms (and TV shows and styles of board room attire and eats and…and…and…) we mindlessly discuss reach that critical mass where they become discussion points? As a marketing professional, Turkel is right in addressing the issue. In other words, he asks, where is the pop cultural discussion “tipping point” and when does something become a “hot topic?”

But as evidenced by his observations gathered from what sounds like far too many of the mindless meetings that I attend – the answer to his question may be less fascinating and more frightening.

So where does this cultural discussion point threshold lie? I’m not sure where in the brain the processing occurs, but I can tell you, it’s not a high standard, and it’s getting disastrously lower by the day.

The fact that many of Turkel’s meetings are littered with so much verbal rubbish suggests that more should be done to keep references to the Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan, and Beebs out of what should be productive meetings. I’ve had to sit through meetings where the latest episode of Glee or the demise of Lost garnered more discussion than the topic we had travelled some 3,000 miles for did.  Now that is brutal.

The fact is, thanks to marketers’ already near-constant bombardment via a host of mediums like smartphones and tablets, but also through the “diehards” like television, radio, and print, we are constantly being distracted and programmed to think “this is important,” when in actuality it’s really not.

Earlier this month the New York Times wrote about how office technology is getting in the way of productivity. While true, the bigger problem is all technology and not just office technology. But as a public relations professional and one who’s often on the side of praising marketing genius, can it be that we’re all victims of our own success?

Maybe.

Recognizing this, perhaps it’s time we work to make board meetings less boring and stick to the agenda so we can all be more productive – and get out of the boardroom and to the bar, where it’s okay to talk about the cover of People, or who watched The View, or what Kelly Rippa was wearing yesterday.

Besides, they’ll be plenty of time to gossip about Gossip Girl –and whatever else – later. Now I’ve got a meeting to attend and don’t want to be late. I’m sure it will be mind blowing – one way or another.

Ink and Paper: So Long and Farewell

If you’re of a certain age, born anytime during the age of television and right up until the early 1990s, then it’s likely you’ll remember the iconic educational commercials: kiddies’ faces would light up at the sight of their first encyclopedia collection and parents who would be seen, usually at a kitchen table, considering and calculating the financial investment – which for many, was no small undertaking. Nevertheless, the multi-volume collections stood proud on bookshelves in living rooms and home libraries across the globe. In an age before the Internet, the information superhighway was paved with ink and paper, not gigabytes and downloads.

As a public relations professional who has mailed, faxed and emailed her fair share of press releases and press kits (yes I’m that old) to journalists and clients, I was a bit saddened – but not surprised – by the news that Encyclopedia Britannica, a 244-year-old institution of somewhat portable knowledge would cease production of its print edition. The company, which releases updates every two years, announced that 2010’s 32-volume set was its last, already about two years out of date.

In the Case of Hard Copies vs. Hard Drives Where Do You Stand?

While Britannica publisher Jorge Cauz tried to soften the nostalgic blow to print fans, rightly pointing out the need to fully adapt to the digital age and that print sales of Britannica’s encyclopedia were less than 1 percent of the company’s total sales, my sadness isn’t based on nostalgia alone.

Rather, the printed end of Britannica is but another sign that the ink and paper world many of us grew up in continues to weaken. While some lament the emotional connections rooted with older paper products – it’s musty, humidity-induced smell, it’s aged, crinkled look, that, like the lines on an elderly person’s face, suggest wisdom as much as years, the print world’s shuttering raises very real concerns over data storage and information preservation, and what people in the broadly defined information industry (including Public Relations) should do about it and how we should advise our clients.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting the first thing we do is advise clients to invest in off-property climate-controlled storage facilities with copies of all their work. Nor am I suggesting a return to the stone tablet and chisel. I’m suggesting that before we all embrace the paperless office connected with our laptops and iPads and smartphones (and any other digital devices that are coming down the pipeline, we should recognize some of that traditional medium’s advantages over digital. And in some instances, there’s still nothing better than a paper back up.  It may be cumbersome, it may feel antiquated, but it’s tangible – you can touch it, smell it, hold it.  Combined, ink and paper can do a number on almost all of your senses.

Paper’s greatest strength, perhaps, is its ability to degrade slowly. If untouched and kept in a cool, low humidity location that prevents the formation of paper-eating microbial life, the written pages of history can last hundreds of years. And while it wasn’t paper, but rather a mix of parchment and papyrus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered from 1947 to 1956, survived in that undisturbed state in caves for more than 2,000 years. I’d give you the odds of my laptop’s hard drive lasting that long, but it’d be impossible. Why? Without near-constant backups, and simply retrieving digitally stored data, the magnetic material that encodes the data will fail. What’s more, digital data needs to be kept in a format that future devices will be able to read and translate into useful information. For the most part all that’s required for a paper “translator” is a human brain and a pair of eyes. Last time I checked there’s a nearly 7 billion stockpile of those resources lying around.

To be sure, at a certain level, print material suffers similar shortcomings as digital. Imagine for instance, that in the distant future, there’s no written translation for English. That means that even if the data is stored properly, there’s no one left who can decipher it – no matter how many billions of brains or eyes are trained on the problem.

But paper also has contemporary benefits when it comes to the environment – and a businesses budget. While today’s gadget makers love to taught the environmentally-friendly and cost-effective nature of digital data storage, the fact remains that paper, made from trees, is considered a renewable resource and can be further recycled. Digital, however, requires a significant amount of raw materials, its parts are often hard to reuse, data recovery, if possible at all, can be costly, and digital’s energy demands are continuous. For businesses, that means even more cost.

While the truly paperless office is probably decades or more away, and data shows the global print industry still grew 1 percent in 2010 and likely will continue growing at a 1 to 1.5 percent rate through 2016 – even without Britannica’s help – it’s a good idea to remind ourselves and our clients that the print medium isn’t necessarily the dinosaur it’s portrayed to be.

In 2,000 years, it’s probable that at least something of the original 244-year printed history of the Encyclopedia Britannica will survive. Maybe a vintage copy of Britannica’s final edition will be read on its 2,000^th birthday in the year 4010? As for what will exist of it’s now all-digital content, remains to be seen. In fact, print out this blog post today, put it somewhere safe and read it to yourself in the future as a 2012 “I told you so.”

To our clients and everyone else: happy reading and happier data storage – in whichever analog or digital format you prefer.

Why ‘Good’ Press Releases = ‘Bad’ Journalism

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 3/15/12. 

When writing news stories, editors advise young reporters to do the following: stick to facts, don’t opine, place important/newest information high, answer the five Ws, have a solid lead and conclusion, spell names correctly, use conversational language, meet deadlines and hit the word count.

It’s a formula for success that reporters of all ages rely on. More than that, however, the tips speak to the professional evolution of storytelling found to be most effective at getting points across, with a 150+year history.

Seems like a simple formula, right?

Then why do so many press releases I read —  and some I am required to write — fail to meet these standards? What’s changed in the communications industry that allows for the writing and distribution of such abysmal drivel? And why don’t the rules governing quality storytelling apply to many of today’s releases?

PR is NOT the Dark Side of Journalism – But Some Clients Might Work for the Death Star

Whoa. Three questions in one paragraph — and a possible clichéd Star Wars reference subhead. That, too, may violate a writing essential — that a story can be about one thing and should avoid clichés like the plague (cliché intended). Coming from a public relations angle, I can tell you that it’s not as simple as pitting agenda-pushing poor-writing PR professionals against reporters.

Too often the challenge lies with our clients and their expectations. Yes, as their communications team, it’s our job to direct conversation, to craft proper messages and distribute that message through the media in a concise, accurate and compelling manner. But like journalists, we too can’t always claim the moral high road. Clients pay our salaries, just as advertisers pay (or used to pay) journalists. Sometimes we just have to do what we’re told. Most times, we just have to “make it work.”

Press Release Dos and Don’ts

Of course, “making copy work” is not like making copy sing —  a nod to the lyrical and rhythmic flow of quality writing. An off pitch release (Not the PR pitch) “creates” news rather than telling something newsworthy. Ask yourself — if you didn’t work for company X, would you read it? If the answer is ‘no,’ then you’re already in trouble. The solution: clients need to be honest about their announcements. Writing a release about something that may happen in six months is not newsworthy. That’s about as useful as someone planning to be rich by summer.

At most, that’s the kind of company “news” that meets Twitter post standards or a short email blast to client investors. It does not require an 800-word release that causes journalists’ eyeballs to glaze over or public relations professionals to struggle through 17 drafts of a document that has failed to capture the “essence of the company story.” Sometimes what clients say just isn’t that important. Clients need to have the humility and presence of mind to know when to shut up — or at least respect when their PR staff tells them to.

Press releases also fail because of their language. If you’re writing a release in English, then write in English — not gibberish. Is some jargon necessary? Yes. But too much and a press release can bury its own newsworthiness.

Print This: PR Professionals and Journalists Play the Same Game on Different Teams

How’s that for a newsworthy press release? But even if we play on different teams — journalists dig for the news while PR professionals push what they’d like to be considered news — the rules of the writing game should not change.

Modern journalistic writing evolved from the rigors of changing technology – the telegraph. At a penny a character, brevity was far more important than expressive prose. Combined with the fear of technology failure, reporters were taught to write and report news as if readers only read the headlines and first paragraph. (Sound familiar?)

Today’s hyperactive news cycle and extreme mobile connectivity is the outgrowth of these technological realities. PR professionals, emerging some 50 years after Samuel Morse’s invention, really do know what good writing and storytelling is about.

If only we can teach clients that same lesson, perhaps the PR vs. journalism professional stalemate will be broken –- and great press releases will equal great journalism.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 3/15/12. 

An Organization With Terminal Cancer

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 2/10/12. 

Here’s something that almost anyone from any side of the political spectrum can agree upon: the past week has been heinous for Susan G. Komen. And it has shown that the organization most known for its staunch (some, like me, would say steamrolling) support for finding a cure and raising awareness for a single type of cancer — breast cancer — above any other has a cancer all its own. It’s a cancer common to any group that has become bloated with a false sense of self-righteousness and one whose arrogance and hubris causes it to stray from its stated (if overzealous) mission and become embroiled in a politicized mess.

What I’m talking about, of course, is this week’s announcement that Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen’s vice president of public policy, jumped before she was pushed. A speedy resignation with no severance package, Handel excised herself from the organization before mounting pressure within the group would have forced her imminent departure.

Her resignation caps a week of intense public backlash over Susan G. Komen’s decision to first cut and then hurriedly restore about $680,000 in funding to Planned Parenthood, a provider of reproductive health services, including contraception and abortions.

In her resignation letter, which has been posted on Forbes, Handel goes to great lengths to explain how the situation got so out of control. Her defense? Komen is in the business of saving lives. Anything that distracts from that goal is a disservice — thus the decision to pull funding and divorce itself from a controversial organization that might be spending money illegally, like funding abortions.

In October 2011, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I wrote about how the “pinking” of America was diluting the message of curing cancer and replacing it with corporate capitalism and too much consumption. I also took issue with Susan G.’s near-bullying tactics as they related to how the fundraising and marketing gargantuan has left smaller cancer-fighting organizations to fend for themselves, and how they aggressively muscle out any group that seeks to challenge breast cancer as the only cancer worth raising money for.

This latest misstep only adds to my great concern that Susan G. Komen, for all the good it has admittedly done for breast cancer awareness, has become a monopolistic and politically compromised organization. If she were alive today, I wonder what Susan Goodman Komen — whom the organization gets its name from — would think. After what must have been a grueling fight for her life, finding a cure and staying true to the organization’s mission and goals would be more important to her then whether or not grant money was going to another group similarly charged with helping save the lives of young, often poor women — an organization that happens to provide abortions.

Letters of resignation aside, let’s not forget that Karen Handel is a former Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate, whose campaign promises included cutting funding for Planned Parenthood, and was Georgia’s 26th Secretary of the State.

On Sunday, the Huffington Post reported that it had obtained an email exchange between Komen leadership confirming that Handel had the sole authority in crafting and implementing the Planned Parenthood policy.

Does this not have all the makings of a woman hell-bent on achieving a personal goal and using a behemoth organization which itself had become too politically connected, as cover to achieve her aims?

Yes — the organization did reverse course in barely 72 hours, and restored the funds. It also made changes to its grant awarding guidelines that say only organizations under criminal investigation would be denied funding. But like a true cancer, this organizational one has already done much damage — to those who truly believed in the structure of non-profits being “doers of good,” to those who held Komen as saviors of women, and to the brands who’ve invested heavily to be part of Komen’s shiny pink halo.

The upside to all this? Susan G. Komen’s misdeeds have opened up an enormous pathway for all the non-profits around the country, breast-cancer-related or not — to start reclaiming their place in consumers’ hearts, minds and wallets.

And as for the PR advice, first administered by Ari Fleisher and now Ogilvy, all I can say is that it will take a lot more than some clever PR tactics and new positioning to rebuild this country’s trust in the Susan G. Komen brand and its “values.”

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 2/10/12. 

When a Sinking Ship Gives that Sinking Feeling: Costa Concordia and Its PR Disaster

Where do I begin with this one?  How about the basics?

Why is it that big names seem to go with big doings? And I’m not talking about positive “big doings,” I’m talking about the ironic, disastrous kind. Perhaps if we didn’t christen giant cruise ships with bloated titles like Titanic, whose name means enormous size, strength or power and Costa Concordia, meaning harmony in Latin, these types of human and public relations tragedies wouldn’t happen?

Somehow, though, with 320+ days left to go in 2012, I’m sure this won’t be the last global PR nightmare, nor do I believe a simple name change could inspire a change of outcome. Maybe we even need these types of ironic names to help jolt us out of our collective lunacy and help avoid making repeat mistakes. At least the Costa Concordia, the Carnival Corp.-owned luxury cruise liner that ran aground off the Italian coast earlier in late January, didn’t ram an iceberg, or fail to have enough lifeboats on board. Oh hang on a sec, it didn’t.

But if that’s the best we can say about the tragic maritime crisis, we’re not doing very well. And as public relations professionals, charged with handling, directing and shaping a client’s message, somewhere, somehow, someone, could have, should have done better.

While media attention was first focused on the negligible and cowardly actions of Captain Francesco Schettino, who abandoned ship by accidentally falling into a lifeboat, then refusing coast guard orders to “do your duty” and return to ship, there’s been increasing anger and outright disbelief thrown at Carnival, the parent company of Costa Cruises, which ran and built the ship.

And rightly so.  Carnival and Costa are responsible for ensuring the safety of their passengers and translates into having the right equipment and people.  The Wall Street Journal’s  recent article “Carnival CEO Lies Low After Wreck,” was as blunt as the company should have been at the start of the crisis. “Where is Micky Arison?” was the article’s four-word sentence opener.

Good question. Where was he indeed?

The golden rule in any public relations disaster is to get ahead of the story and go into immediate damage control. From the moment the scope of the disaster was learned, Carnival and Costa should have been unwavering in their public openness. Instead what we got was a delayed, reactionary-type response that paints Arison as “a delegator” and one who is working tirelessly from afar at Carnival’s Miami headquarters. While that may be all well and good, once again, it’s important to remember that very often it’s not reality that matters so much as the perception of reality.

Reality vs. Perceived Reality

Take for example last winter when after repeated snowstorms, Newark, New Jersey Mayor, Cory Booker, after hearing complaints from city residents over unplowed streets,  began tweeting his whereabouts as he physically joined the city’s snow removal crews. Residents tweeted their street and roadway conditions and Booker responded in live time when a plow would get through.

He even helped shovel snow and directed the plows to the most congested areas.

Whether it’s a snowstorm or a near-sinking luxury liner, that’s the kind of honesty, transparency and take-no-bullsh*t response that speaks volumes to people everywhere, whether they’re snowed in on Broad Street, Newark, or capsized off the island of Giglio in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

For a golden rule, it’s rather incredible just how often this golden standing gets tarnished. Besides, when it comes to gold, Carnival seems more interested in counting its post-sinking pennies than doing what is right. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the company expects the wreck will lower the company’s net income by $155 million, but that according to a company statement, “the incident will not have a significant long-term impact on our business.”

But isn’t that the very point? The “incident” – that lovely euphemism that translates to mean “an occurrence of seemingly minor importance,” should have a significant long-term impact on the Carnival brand and its business.  It certainly has on the passengers onboard the vessel, and the on the families of those who died.

With uninspiring statements like that coming from a company with the PR-prowess of Carnival you can be sure that 2012’s harmony will be upset by further titanic missteps.

At least big doings will continue to be big fodder for my future blog posts, like Susan G. Komen and Goldman Sachs.