It's never too early for PR

It’s never too early to start incorporating public relations into your business plan…as illustrated recently by the high stakes race between paint retailers Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore to attract new customers.

Both companies released slick i-Phone applications this summer that allow users to snap a picture- whether it be of a flower, an upholstered chair or seashell - and instantly match it to one of the thousands of hues in the paint companies’ system, while at the same time harmonizing and coordinating palettes. The apps even provided directions to the nearest store.

Actually Sherwin Williams was first out of the box with the new application. But that turned out to be largely irrelevant, because Benjamin Moore was first with its public relations campaign. In fact, Benjamin Moore’s PR campaign was in full swing months before its “ben Color Capture” application was even available to the general public. That meant Benjamin Moore scooped the free publicity and was featured in blogs and lifestyle stories in numerous media outlets including the New York Times.

The Benjamin Moore media blitz left Sherwin Williams in the unenviable position of having to pitch reporters and bloggers with an “us-too” story line. But once the story is done - it’s done. By the time Sherwin Williams launched its PR campaign, the cool “new” i-Phone paint app was simply old news.

Benjamin Moore’s product development director Carl Minchew, speaking at the Ad Age/ Appilicious Apps Brand Conference, said the application has received over 50,000 downloads and generated a surge in businesses that is still accelerating. “We got a lot of media coverage. We were seen as being first, much to the chagrin of our larger competitor. We beat them to the punch on getting the word out about our application and that seems to be more important thing than being first,” said Minchew

Getting their public relations underway early in the research and development phases gave Benjamin Moore a focused, multi-tiered campaign implemented for maximum effectiveness. Did it matter that Benjamin Moore wasn’t first with the new product launch? Clearly not. What mattered was the ability to get out early (first) with a coordinated PR campaign that defined the company as the industry leader.


Posted by Dyana Koelsch

Don't Try This at Home II

A while back we posted some thoughts about the dangers of going "off the record". Recently, President Obama ran into trouble wading through this uncharted territory, which is defined by the question: what, exactly, does "off-the-record" mean. This episode highlights a new question: does technology change those meanings?

The issue came up when the President called hip hop artist Kanye West a "jack-ass," in what Obama thought was an off-the-record conversation. (West, you may recall, stormed the stage and gave a foolish, self-centered speech in his native gibberish at this year’s VMAs, upstaging another artist who had actually won an award.) But the reporter in the interview from ABC Twittered it, and so it got "out there", much to the chagrin of the White House.

(This raises another question: Maybe I’m old school, but who, exactly, sits in the Oval Office fiddling with their Blackberry while conducting an interview with the President of the United States?)

The good news for the president? Well, his language wasn’t "too" salty, and he said something that most folks who cared actually agreed with.

Some of the discussion about "off-the-record" seemed to center around whether or not Twitter is a media outlet that would be covered by an off-the-record agreement. This strikes me as being besides the point, and ABC apparently agreed, apologizing for breaking their agreement with the President. But the real issue is the degree to which technology moved so fast that ABC’s editorial process couldn’t keep up. One more thing for reporters, Presidents and the rest of us in the business to be mindful of.

Also of note: if you listen to the recording, you can hear the President say, "Cut the President some slack," after his comments about West. This sheds light on my view that your ability to enforce an off-the-record agreement often depends, in part, on how much leverage you have. Sometimes you don’t have any leverage. If you’re the president, you would think that you and your press office have a great deal of leverage with covering media. Nevertheless, the president was out there; technology had let the cat was out of the bag and no amount of presidential leverage could get the cat back in. I just wouldn’t want to be that reporter going forward as I tried to cover the White House. ("Excuse me, Mr. Emmanuel would like a word with you.")

This episode highlights how dangerous the "off-the-record" waters can be, and offers an interesting window into how the speed of the new media can nullify old ways of managing the relationship between covering and covered.

Nevertheless, my advice to clients remains the same: be very, very careful out there.

Posted by David Preston

Capturing the News Grazers

Did you read the newspaper today? Or perhaps instead you caught the headlines online, or on your mobile phone. You might have plugged into the daily radio talk show or shared your impressions on Twitter or Facebook and ended the day with a televised newscast. If that sounds familiar you’re what the Pew Research Center for People and the Press calls a news grazer - an integrator who is constantly shopping for news tidbits throughout the day and from a variety of sources. Representing a growing segment of the news audience, Pew notes integrators are more affluent, highly educated and younger than those who consume their news in the traditional manner- i.e. newspapers and nightly television newscasts.

The big loser in this ongoing trend is the newspaper industry that continues to see a decline in readers and struggles to redefine itself into an economically sustainable model.


While the decline of the American newspaper industry has been happening for several years, (as noted in the table above) it is becoming more evident as new generations mature. At the opening fall semester at the Naval War College, (where I’ve taught media relations for the past nine years) I noted for the first time- not one student in the class was a daily newspaper reader. As an aside, this week the Phoenix’s David Scharfenberg has an insightful look at the Providence Journal’s attempts to adapt.

It may come as no surprise that the audience migration to the internet for news has accelerated in recent years. The real questions now is - Where on the internet are news consumers going? Having a web based communication strategy means more than just plunking up a website and hoping your audience finds you.

In fact, standard news organizations are still valuable credible ways to connect information with audiences. The biggest growth in 2008 was at sites offering legacy news. The Project for Excellence in Journalism in its 2009 report notes, “The old norms of traditional journalism continue to have value. Virtually all of the most popular news websites are those associated with traditional news organizations, whose legacy platforms are paying for the news gathering, or are aggregators, which collect content from traditional newsrooms and wire services rather than produce their own.”

The challenge now is for media outlets to figure out how they’ll raise enough revenue to continue paying for quality reporters who generate content both for traditional news sources and new media sources. With diminished reporting staffs, there is added value to well rounded public relations efforts that provide factual, efficiently packaged information that can be disseminated to news grazers on multiple levels. An effective multi-pronged new media strategy includes e-newsletters, traditional news sources, legacy news websites, blogging, and finally creating and maintaining your own interactive and interesting channels of communication.


Posted by Dyana Koelsch

Crisis Communications, Big Papi Style

Come clean. Do it quickly. Don’t fuel the fire.

The Red Sox’ David Ortiz used all those crisis communications techniques recently in a mostly successful effort to address his alleged failure to pass a 2003 doping test administered by Major League Baseball.

Big Papi’s PR at bat was made even more difficult by this curve ball: He hasn’t been able to see the actual test results, which are under a court seal. This made the “come clean” part of the equation very difficult, since Papi wasn’t completely certain what may have triggered the positive test result. Further, taking the time to find out would have violated Rule #2: Do it quickly. So he balanced the two by finding out what he could in a reasonable amount of time (meaning quickly enough so that it didn’t look like he was ducking allegations and not giving harmful speculation time to gain credence), then offering up the best possible response given the lack of information available to him. He believes he was “careless” with over-the-counter supplements.

There are a number of useful PR lessons that can be gleaned from Papi’s performance:

• Stay in control. Always maintain your composure. Even though the release of information that was supposed to be confidential made the “victim card” available, Papi – to his credit -- didn’t play it.
• Be candid and accurate. Get as much information as you can about what you’re up against, and make your points with as much candor and clarity as you can. Then, don’t push your luck. Don’t speculate, don’t protest (see: “victim card,” above) and of course, never lie. Just stay focused and say what you know to be true.
• When it’s over, stop talking. After you’ve presented your side of things clearly and succinctly, there is no reason to keep fueling the conversation. Leave the spotlight as soon as you can. Too often, those accused of scandals or corruption get carried away defending themselves (we’re talking about you, Roger Clemens), and it often only serves to raise suspicion or create vulnerabilities that didn’t exist. Once you’ve said your piece, fade from public view with as much dignity and grace as you can muster.
  

Bottom Line: Big Papi’s reputation for candor and being one of the Good Guys sustained little damage, and the matter has faded from the public consciousness – for now.


Posted by David Preston

Click here to Listen to David discuss this topic on WPRO