Category Archives: PR

Social Media Lessons from the Losers

With baseball’s opening day upon us, I thought it time to take a look at how my favorite sports teams handle social media.

Due to several flukes of childhood, I’m a fan of New York’s major losing franchises: the Jets and the Mets. I know the Red Sox fans like to think of themselves as long-suffering, but you people have nothing on the hapless franchise that is the New York Jets.

How bad are my teams? Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal devoted a front-page story to the Mets’ long-time head of PR Jay Horowitz calling him the King of the Butt Dial. In the first paragraph Brian Costa managed to insult both of my teams at once:

During their disappointing 2012 season, the Jets became known for the butt fumble, caused by quarterback Mark Sanchez‘s unfortunate collision with teammate Brandon Moore’s rear end. Across town, the Mets are countering with a derrière distinction of their own: the butt dialer.

Sure, the teams have their on-the-field problems, and as Todd rightly points out, no amount of “PR” can fix their core “business problems.” Nevertheless, the Jets can certainly do better with the social media efforts. In fact, the Jets could take a lesson from the Mets.

OK, so Jay isn’t the greatest with technology. Costa notes how a few of Jay’s Tweets are rather… um… odd:

…just before the start of spring training, he tweeted a photo of himself shirtless in a swimming pool, buoyed by a tube and a pair of floaties, with goggles over his eyes and a snorkel lodged in his mouth. Other tweets have included such updates as “Hy” and “Congrats to $.” On March 2, he simply tweeted the letter O.

But frankly, Jay’s Twitter feed is awesome. He brings you behind the scenes of the Mets world with quick snippits and pictures that you’re not going to find in the mainstream media. Like, now I know that Al Leiter drinks a TON of Starbucks Coffee.

Al Leiter is here with @mlbnetwork Shown drinking his 10,000th cup of @starbucks this spring. twitter.com/Jay_HorwitzPR/…

— Jay Horwitz (@Jay_HorwitzPR) March 26, 2013

The Jets, meanwhile, put out a Tweet on the week before free agency began saying ”Free agency begins tomorrow. The Jets priority should be _________.” (sic)

Free agency begins tomorrow. The Jets priority should be _________.

— New York Jets (@nyjets) March 11, 2013

No, seriously, they said that. Never mind the grammatical issues, but it gave everyone–fans and non-fans alike–the chance to just beat on the Jets. Buzzfeed went so far as to collect the 25 best responses. One of my favorites? Caitlin Kelly of the New Yorker answered “A new social media coordinator.”

Now, if the Jets had done this in a self-deprecating manner, sure, it could work. This isn’t the first time the social media team has pulled this kind of move. Toward the end of the season, after the “butt fumble” and while the team was going down in flames, the Jets Facebook page continued to be populated with standard-issue rah-rah team images asking fans to “caption this!”

Um… yeah guys… not what you want to do at that moment.

One of the greatest examples of a site that “gets it” is The 7 Line, a site by fans and for fans of the Mets. They get the love/ hate aspect of rooting for a losing team. I love the Born to Believe shirts. They also had a baby shirt a few years ago saying “I was born into this mess.”

So, how can the Jets improve things a bit? Well, besides getting rid of their social media coordinator, maybe they can take a different attitude.

Show us life behind the scenes — How about using Instagram or just a cell phone camera to introduce us to the support staff? What about the coaches most of us never see? I’d also like to know about the players. Well, maybe not as much of Brett Favre, but what is everyone else doing?
Bring us to the game — TV is great at showing the field, but the game is more about the people around me. It’s about the tailgating parties, it’s about the parking lot. Whenever I walked up to Giants Stadium there was a line of buses and vans that people use almost exclusively for games. Show me some of that.
Acknowledge the failings — Nothing is perfect, certainly not the Jets. Acknowledge that, and not just in official quotes from the the press conference. Show us that you’re upset too. That no, the team isn’t performing the way it should, that you’re frustrated by interceptions, commiserate with me! Be a FAN!

The fact is this: you’re not going to sell more tickets through social media, the best you can do is keep fans engaged while the business puts a sub-par product on the field. You’re not going to sell more items with the product logo, you’re not going to sell out more games, you’re not going to improve the TV ratings.

But maybe, just maybe, you can sell a few self-deprecating t-shirts. Or a bobble head similar to the one CBS Sports proposed that the Mets make for Bobby Bonilla.

It’s Time to Reclaim “PR”

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Gallup Poll Results from November, 2012

The term “PR” is used too often as a catchall for problems that run much deeper. Words alone are about as good at fixing companies’ problems as they are at fixing the toilets on stranded cruise ships.

If PR and advertising get thrown together in most people’s minds, then lawyers officially have a better reputation than PR people. In fact, the only professions with a worst reputation than advertisers in a November Gallup poll are politicians and car salespeople.

The very profession dedicated almost exclusively to helping companies improve their reputations in fact suffers from one of the worst reputations of any profession.

What, then, gives PR professionals the right to dictate how companies might improve their reputations while their own sits in the crapper? If a political candidate or public office holder had an 11% approval rate (click on the chart on the right to see the full results, which include a couple other columns and more explanation), the press secretary’s head might be on the chopping block, but there would be plenty of heads ahead of his or hers before that happens.

The PR (and advertising) profession ought to get its own house in order if it hopes to move up on this list. Here are a few things that must be understood.

It’s Not a “PR” Problem, It’s a Management Problem

“/disapprove” by striatic

Lawyers (who, for the record, rank eight percentage points ahead of advertising professionals in Gallup’s survey, if you’re counting) will be the first to remind us that brand names must be defended or they risk falling into generic status–look at what happened to Kleenex, Hoover, Band-Aid, and even words like escalator, aspirin and linoleum. The words and phrases get tossed around a little too carelessly, and PR is no exception. One of the signs of generic status is the “verbification” of the word. In the U.K., you hoover your living room floor. Where does PR sit? Well, the usage is still colloquial, but around the world, you can, for example, “PR” your way out of a crisis. PR, dear readers, is certainly a process, but it’s not a verb.

Let’s look at a couple of current news items where the “PR” term is applied a little too loosely. Does Carnival Cruise Lines have a PR problem, or does it have a business (and more specifically, an operations) problem? Does JP Morgan have a PR problem, or a reputation problem that stems from poor management decisions? Neither of these management problems can be fixed by “PR.”

Take the quotes out of “PR”

“Greg Rewis Speaking at An Event Apart Minneapolis 2010″ by SuperPope

The PR profession is to blame for the quotes around “PR.” It has not adequately defended the true role and value of the public relations role, which is not to distribute press releases and call up media to pitch the good news and spin the bad. The true role of public relations is to advise companies on the impact that their business is having on the public, to offer suggestions on how future business developments may change perceptions, and to find not spin, but stories, that best communicate the intentions of the management team.

Fellow PR practitioners, we all must band together if we’re to fight the “genericization” of our profession. The next time someone calls a company or industry crisis a “PR problem,” correct them. Remind them of the strategic role that PR can and should play. I am not a corporate mouthpiece, nor am I a spin doctor. I cannot fix problems by emails, phone calls, tweets and blog posts. I can only fix problems if you bring me in at the earliest stages and give me, or the senior PR practitioner I offer my services to, a seat at the table and a voice that is heeded by the management team.

Getting the seat at that table is the subject of another blog post, but I think Alan Towers offers one approach to securing that spot — and reinforces PR’s critical role in reputation management.

I Want it Now! The Long Path to Overnight Success

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“Your Name in Lights” by Almond Butterscotch

“I’ve been working with you for a couple of months, why am I not famous?”

A client once said that to me. Well, more than one client. The fact is, he wasn’t famous because these things take time.

Very often prospects come to us and say “we’re launching in two weeks and we want big media, can you do it?”

Our answer is always, “no, we can’t.” Getting attention takes time, not just for the initial launch, which is a good start, but for long-term growth. No one story or one blog post or one tweet will set the world on fire. You need a plan, a full program, aimed at an ultimate goal. Any PR program, whether it is focused on media or social, takes consistent, sustained effort to truly develop and grow.

While I’m writing about PR programs, this is also true of careers. In a great blog post on the Harvard Business Review, Daniel Gulati points out that fast-tracking your career isn’t always the best move. Whether it’s pop music stars or Amazon, time matters. Spending the time to build means long-term success, but rushing to get things done can lead to failure.

As an example, let’s take a look at two recent viral video examples, both of which took a lot of time to become “overnight sensations.” The first is the “47 Percent” video that is credited with helping paint Governor Mitt Romney as out of touch with the electorate.

Scott Prouty, the man behind the video, discussed taking it and making it public this week, but what’s most interesting to me is the work he put in to getting publicity.

According to a Buzzfeed timeline, the video first surfaced online on May 31. Then on June 10, Prouty worked to get some buzz on it. According to the Huffington Post, Prouty spent the next few months going into comments sections of various sites and writing about it, sending it to journalists and even sending it to the Romney campaign.

Finally he reached out to James Carter using tried and true media relations techniques: research and outreach. The Huffington Post started chasing the story in late August, but it wasn’t until early September that the story finally hit anything resembling a mainstream media target. The same day Mother Jones posted the video and it took off from there.

So from the moment the video was first posted online to the moment it began its true rise took about four months.

Now let’s look at a more recent video, one that graphically and clearly demonstrates wealth inequality in America. It’s a great video, I first saw it on Facebook and many of my (liberal) friends are sharing it.

Marketplace points out that the video had a long road from production to mass viewership. It first went live in November, but as you can see from the stats, its viewership didn’t take off until the very end of February, nearly three months. And most of that came thanks to mentions by both Mashable and uber-meme-leader George Takei.

The viewership stats for the Wealth Inequity in America video show a long time of inactivity before virality.

Now to be fair, three to six months isn’t a lot of time. But to many tech companies who expect results immediately, it can seem like an eternity.

However, hidden in both of these examples are the stories you didn’t see and the luck involved in creating viral success. What videos of politicians did we not see because the people posting weren’t as committed to getting the word out? What if Mashable just didn’t find the inequities video all that interesting? Or if they weren’t searching YouTube in the first place?

Also to consider: what defines “success” for these videos? In the first case it was about broad exposure, but for the second I’m not sure the producer ever had much of a goal in mind. For other videos, if the goal is to reach a small audience or explain something to a specific group, then the measurement is much different.

The bottom line is that true fame (and any fortune ensuing from that) takes time and effort. Overnight successes are rarely overnight successes, even in the fast-paced world of social media.

Google Glass and PR Superpowers

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“Super Boy” by Lunchbox Photography

I often lie awake at night thinking, “What one superpower would make us PR practitioners better at what we do?”

What if we could fly between a meeting in New York City to one in San Francisco in minutes, or even better, predict every single story a reporter was going to write?

Sure, these abilities would be fun, but let’s be realistic! Mainstream jetpacks are at least a few decades off, and who knows when we’ll get around to developing technology that perfectly predicts the future.

But Google is about to bring one PR superpower closer to a reality with the upcoming launch of Google Glass: The ability to gather information without taking our eyes off the person, object or scene right in front of us.

I know this doesn’t sound as sexy as flying or omniscience, but Google Glass could help turn PR pros into PR superheroes, or at the very least make us all a bit more effective at the one thing we do best: connecting.

Getting technology out of the way

In The Verge’s interview last month with Google Glass Product Director Steve Lee, Lee said something very interesting to Reporter Joshua Topolsky about why Glass is important:

“We wondered, what if we brought technology closer to your senses? Would that allow you to more quickly get information and connect with other people but do so in a way — with a design — that gets out of your way when you’re not interacting with technology?”

Working in tech PR, I interact with people at networking events, meetings or conferences on a daily basis. During almost any of these events the majority of people, including myself, are more often than not looking at our phones or computers instead of each other.

Theoretically, Glass will allow people to access information seamlessly while continuing to engage with our surroundings, and this ability could help PR people immensely.

What Glass means for PR practitioners

Full disclosure – we’re about to cross into Big Brotherish territory. There are a couple of ways I see Glass making us PR practitioners better at what we do:

First, Glass will be perfect for those situations when we want to take out our phones to take note of something, but the situation doesn’t allow for it. After all, how rude is it taking a photo during a packed presentation when getting out the phone requires shoving over the person sitting next to you? With Glass, we’ll never again miss taking a photo of a great slide, a video of a fascinating presentation, or a voice recording of a client interaction.

Having the ability to collect information more efficiently will certainly help PR pros, but the one thing I’m most looking forward to is instantly gathering information about the people I’m looking at.

Suppose I’m in a room and there is a reporter I really want to speak with, but embarrassingly I have no idea what the reporter has covered over the last month. I don’t want to waste five minutes searching through the reporter’s most recently articles on my phone – she might disappear before I even open to Safari! With Glass, I hope to look at the reporter and instantly see Google News summaries of the last five pieces she’s written while walking over to say hello.

Second, when talking to a prospective client, especially in a big room where the opportunity to talk is fleeting, PR peeps (and other savvy networkers) will benefit from a quick snapshot of the person’s LinkedIn to pop up on my Glass to give me a better idea of who I’m talking to.

We all know that the more information we have about someone, the more ways we might be able to connect with him or her in conversation. Glass could help us gather this information, and do so quickly and without the distraction of a phone or computer.

Glass is expected to ship by end of year, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about this product in the coming months. With the right features, Glass could help PR pros capture information more efficiently while engaging journalists, prospective clients and anyone else we speak with more effectively.

At the very least, being an early Glass adopter will make for great conversation at tech conferences. I can’t wait to have mine on for the Boston New Tech Meetups this time next year.

1906 vs 2013

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

This is not a secret press bureau. All our work is done in the open. We aim to supply news.

This is not an advertising agency; if you think any of our matter ought properly to go to your business office, do not use it.

Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated will be supplied promptly, and any editor will be assisted most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact.

Upon inquiry, full information will be given to any editor concerning those on whose behalf an article is sent out.

In brief, our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply to the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about.

Corporations and public institutions give out much information in which the news point is lost to view. Nevertheless, it is quite as important to the public to have this news as it is to the establishments themselves to give it currency.

I send out only matter every detail of which I am willing to assist any editor in verifying for himself.

I am always at your service for the purpose of enabling you to obtain more complete information concerning any of the subjects brought forward in my copy.

Ivy Lee’s first press release, printed verbatim in The New York Times: Every PR person’s dream.

This is Ivy Lee’s Declaration of Principles, written in 1906 (but bulletized by me). When I was studying PR in college in the late 80s and early 90s, it still rang true. Today, with a few changes, it could serve as a damn good foundation for any agency’s engagement in social media and public relations programs for a client.

So, um, what went wrong? How did we get from these relatively enlightened principles to the smoky backroom deals that later characterized PR’s poor reputation?

The truth is, these words were written in response to the first complaints about PR, which came about just a few short months after founding the first PR agency. And just a few months after the first press release, which I explore in more detail on the Publicity Club blog, and which appeared as printed here verbatim in of all places, The New York Times.

So Ivy went from the ultimate PR success — verbatim copy in a tier one media outlet — to journalistic derision (at least among some) within the matter of a few months (by around 1914, Upton Sinclair was calling him “Poison Ivy”). What are we to do?

Don’t draw the curtains. Keep the air clear. Keep the door open. And return to Ivy’s original principles.