The Elephant in the Room

I hesitate to jump on this bandwagon like everyone else ~ surely we're all beyond tired of hearing about it ~ but unfortunately the recent AIG executive bonus mess presents a perfect case study in bad PR. This is all the more baffling when one realizes that the very god of crisis communications, Burson Marsteller, is said to be guiding AIG through its perilous situation. Certainly it's not heretical to suggest that this one is a disaster that will have PR professionals shaking their heads for decades to come.

Can this possibly be the same Burson Marsteller who counseled the absolutely spot-on crisis PR response to the Mother of All PR Crises, the Tylenol poisoning tragedy of 1982? How can the response be so different? In the Tylenol case, the client stepped forward immediately, publicly and with tremendous humility and compassion. It called for an immediate recall and virtually oozed responsiveness, engendering trust. Had it acted differently, Johnson & Johnson ~ not just the Tylenol brand ~ might very well have been sunk by the sheer horror of the case. Because of its unquestionably responsible approach, Tylenol remains one of the most trusted brands in over-the-counter pain relief.

AIG's response to the bonus crisis could not be more different. Instead of acceptance of responsibility and public humility, we see defensiveness grounded in legalese and an apparent cluelessness to the pointedly visceral reaction of Jane Q Public to the news. From the beginning, one has been tempted to ask, What color is the sky in your world? Surely only aliens from another galaxy could be so thoroughly and blithely unaware of the disbelief and rage of the average citizen.

Is AIG a more difficult client than Johnson & Johnson? Has Burson Marsteller changed? Is the agency giving sound advice that is not being followed by client execs? Or does Burson not "get it" either? Does anyone believe that, simply because no one died in the AIG crisis the corporate response can be more self-aggrandizing? How to explain this seemingly inexplicable sea change?

Several days ago, Advertising Age published an excellent assessment of the situation, "No Easy Fix for AIG's Bonus Blowback" by Michael Bush. In it, he says, "Even PR pros are shaking their heads at the blundering giant insurer, which is fast becoming not only the poster boy for financial-industry greed, but also a company seen as too arrogant or stupid to keep out of its own way." Dramatic words, but hard to argue with. Both the industry pros he quotes in the piece and the many reader comments make it an informative read.

The immense size of the dollar amounts in this discussion defy comprehension. Even in the PR/marketing world, where big salaries and bonuses are well understood, surely we can see how utterly indefensible AIG's position in this matter looks from the outside ... Or can we?

Thanks for participating.

Jan Thomas
The Communication Heretic

Theories of evolution

Earlier this month the world observed the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth — coincidentally, or ironically, the same day as Abraham Lincoln's. As a communication wonk, I of course immediately began thinking about the evolution of language.

A website that I enjoy visiting when I have the time is Pain in the English, where users submit questions about usage or grammar issues to receive input, suggestions, answers and comments from others. However straightforward a question may seem, it is always illuminating to see how many different perspectives various respondents post. The most common — and certainly the most popular, or controversial — threads tend to surround changing usage of the language. Everyone has an opinion, and the opinions are strongly held, sharply articulated and fiercely defended. The discussions are interesting, enlightening, sometimes amusing and often engaging. It is difficult to sit on the sidelines as passionate people debate the pros and cons of common evolution — some would say devolution — of the language.

I'm certainly no stick-in-the-mud. I grew up in the '60s so change, even dramatic change, comes naturally to me. In communication, I am enthralled by the new possibilities supported by technology. And I welcome changes that simplify and clarify communication. But I also see a great many lazy shortcuts that diminish, rather than enhance, the message. I see slang and crude-speak making their way out of personal chats and onto the main pages of cnn.com and other mainstream news sites, and I don't see the benefit. I see our societal vocabulary shrinking and cannot help but imagine that the eventual result will reduce the clarity of our communications.

Of course, the sky is not falling. But bits of it do seem to be eroding, a piece here and a chip there. Can't we find a way to move forward — to evolve — in our language without diminishing it?

I wonder what Darwin would think...?

Thanks for participating.

Jan Thomas
The Communication Heretic

Is it truth or is it marketing?

While multitasking on Inauguration day — flipping among three TV networks' live event coverage, rotating among several news websites' coverage, turning to Google to supplement the occasional "I wonder if ..." or "I wonder what ..." trigger arising from the coverage, and working on a consulting project — one of those paths led me to an interesting guest commentary by Wynton Marsalis at cnn.com.

In general, the post concerns the role of culture in our society. But it is one comment in the midst of the piece that I'd like to talk about today. He says —

"At the root of our current national dilemmas is an accepted lack of integrity. We are assaulted on all sides by corruption of such magnitude that it's hard to fathom. ... Almost everything and everyone seems to be for sale. Value is assessed solely in terms of dollars. Quality is sacrificed to commerce and truthful communication is supplanted by marketing."

That phrase — "truthful communication is supplanted by marketing" — is a stinger that should disturb everyone who communicates on behalf of any corporation, product, service, organization or cause. Here, in an articulate discussion of America's cultural roots (literature, poetry, music, dance, art), one of our nation's most respected cultural icons applies a comparison that, outside the marketing arena, requires no explanation.

All readers knew exactly what Marsalis meant. Professional marketers who read the piece almost certainly bristled. I wonder whether they recognized anything of themselves in the comment; many of them probably should have. I've been doing PR and marketing writing and campaigns for (gasp) more than 30 years, and I know that in more than a few instances truth was supplanted by marketing in my own work. As I've grown and become more seasoned, this dissonance gradually began to inform my work, and I now subject all my promotions to the "oh really?" challenge — does this proposition, claim, description really stand up to scrutiny? Is it defensible? Is it authentic?

All organizational communications — internal and external — is filtered by those who receive it based on their own experience and expectations, often cynical. And it's no wonder — we ourselves as professional communicators have driven people away, have too often made it impossible to believe that what we say can possibly have a thread of truth. Of course we're all proud of our companies, our products and services, our causes, and of course we reflect this in our communications.

However, if we don't filter our enthusiastic communication with a "oh really" or similar filter, it simply perpetuates the notion that "marketing" and "truthful communication" cannot possibly be the same. Surely this is not the legacy we want for our profession. And only we can change the perception.

Thanks for participating.

Jan Thomas
The Communication Heretic

A disturbing analogy

It occurred to me during one of my recent daily walks — while listening to the excellent audio book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (available at Amazon or downloadable at the iTunes store) by Seth Godin — that my primary rant about communication has direct application in our personal lives as well as in business. That rant, in case you've somehow missed it, is that communication — both internal and external — demands that you actually BE what you SAY you are.

Here's an example that may seem painfully familiar to many of my readers: online dating. How many of us have developed an online relationship with someone whose description of either their physical attributes or other characteristics turned out, after meeting them in person or even simply talking on the telephone, turned out to be shockingly misleading?

I'd guess that nearly anyone who's single and tech-savvy in the 21st century has had this experience — and I'm also guessing that you didn't like it. You felt disappointed at the very least and possibly even betrayed, angry, vengeful. Countless folks who perpetrated such false identities have been flamed across the internet in the past decade, demonstrating the power of the reaction felt by those who have been misled.

Even if it hasn't happened to you, I'm certain you're familiar with and can empathize with the experience.

So it shouldn't require a tremendous leap of imagination to transfer this illustration to the business environment. Does your organization promise more than it delivers? Once your customers have actually worked with you, would they still agree with the glowing phrases you used to characterized your organization while building the initial relationship? Does your website present you in one way while the reality is different in ways that would distress a prospective customer? Do you profess values you do not live?

This is the crux of my core belief: If you're painting yourself as handsome, tall, fit, 40, successful and interesting, but you show up at the first date disheveled, inarticulate, humorless, egocentric, unclean, and woefully out of shape and out of touch, will you get a second chance? What about your business image? Does it match reality?

If not, I earnestly suggest it's time to bring them into harmony. Why? Only by truly being what you say you are can you ever hope to succeed, either personally or professionally.

Thanks for participating.

Jan Thomas
The Communication Heretic

Winnie the Pooh Communications

This week brings an extremely short post. Take a few moments — make that a single moment — to check out this brief post at B.L. Ochman's What's Next blog.

Ms Ochman's "favorite thing a PR person ever told her", it turns out, is a simply awful example of what happens when we have someone either insufficiently educated or woefully incautious communicate on our behalf.

(Note that I'm affording the benefit of the doubt here, assuming that no truly professional communicator would make such an error, so the message must surely have been sent by someone in the modern version of what used to be called the typing pool.)

As she so succinctly reports, she received a PR pitch concerning a topic she simply does not cover — there's the first mistake — and then, when she pointed out this error, she received the gloriously amusing second error — a return eMail from the PR rep saying,

"I apologize for the incontinence and will make the changes in our media list."

For those of you who might miss the headline reference, Winnie the Pooh is referred to as "the bear of very little brain." I'm personally relieved that I do not know the identity of the individual whose incontinence is now being discussed widely across the internet.

Thanks for participating —

Jan Thomas
The Communication Heretic

Why is PR writing so atrocious?

I've just read a terrific post by Mark Ragan at the Ragan Report by the title above. Briefly, Ragan decries the dependence on a simplistic "template" for writing news releases that has — for a whole array of reasons — become the norm. The original article (dated Nov 24 08) is compelling enough, but the 50+ comments it has attracted so far add breadth, depth and texture to the issue.

Ragan and the discussion he triggered are right, of course, that news releases are seldom news and for the most part atrociously presented. The writers either know too little about the true objective of public relations, too little about what publications want, too little about their clients, and too little about how to balance all those elements. PR agencies are too dependent on the income provided by each client to educate those clients when they demand news releases with no news value or jammed with jargon and corporate narcissism. They assign junior writers to crank out releases because they have stopped realizing the potential power of a truly well thought-out and well crafted release and so have come to think of this is as an appropriate task for agency newbies. Even on the rare occasion when someone more closely involved with the account (and with more experience and understanding of the targeted media), the results may be equally flat as "just get it done" seems more important than "do it well."

Like many of those who commented on the Ragan post, I too was at one time an editor, which has always colored my approach to news releases. It's even why I don't call them "press releases" — which to me smacks of the old-line publicist cum snake oil salesman; besides, when we call them "news releases" I believe we're more likely to remember that the point is "news" — if it's not news, it shouldn't become a release at all.

Yes, I've had to wrestle the issue with many a client, but with a reminder of the big-picture goals and emphasis on the pure waste of resources that a vacuous release represents, I usually get my point across. The conversation usually ends with the client and me discovering something with actual newsworthiness that we can write and pitch in a way that will actually mean something to the client's audience and, therefore, to the editors who will receive it. They, after all, want to provide information to their readers that means something.

So why don't we always do that? Why don't we stop and think before we write and distribute a "template" release that says nothing better than —

name of company, the leading solutions provider for the name of industry announces the appointment, purchase of, merger, etc of name of another company, the leading provider of name of product or service

I doubt many of us communication professionals came into the business to create junk. Let's pledge today to get back to writing news releases that mean something to the audience. Let's find genuinely interesting information, present it in a reader-friendly way, and stop spamming editors with junk.

Ultimately we'll enjoy better relationships with those editors — and that will get our clients more ink (and better ink) now and in the future.

Thanks for participating.

Jan Thomas
The Communication Heretic