36 posts tagged “pr”

Domino's latest direct marketing campaign in the Kensington area trashed San Diego streets, walks, driveways and lawns. At least the guys doing this for lawn maintenance understand you need to adequately weight the piece because of our prevalent winds. Here you go - Domino's folly that has pissed off the 'hood:

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There are many more examples and I did not go back far enough to get the ones that had blown entirely into the streets.

Way to go Domino's, way to go and win new customers by trashing their neighborhood.

Don't get me wrong, I like AAA and recently needed a tow of about three miles. The pick up was very fast - they got to my car before I did - and the service and tow operator absolutely first rate. So, what was the problem? AAA has contracted out a telephone survey and the voice is absolutely so upbeat and Disneylandishly perky it is offensive. It gets to the point where you want to respond as soon as the next question is started rather than put up with that voice to hear the entire question. In fact, it is so offensive, I actually considered using a different service rather than hear that voice again.

Over at Branding & Marketing they have a short piece on writing press releases. The solution: five paragraphs, the five "Ws" and "how." "Why" and "how" do not belong in the first graph. Get a quote on your bang for the buck. And nowhere to be seen is providing the reader ANY contact information at all. Pity, had me going there for a moment. Otherwise, not bad. Good advice can also be found at (LINK) or at any of dozens of other links. I like the five paragraph advice, though.  

A couple of weeks ago I ran into a PR "case" that concerned an Indian casino, a band and a radio station. The responses were relatively few. The blog appears to appeal to PR pros, students or interested lay people. Here's the rub, until I responded virtually all of the responses laid the onus of the situation and the correction of it on the Indian casino, yet they were a victim of the situation.

Here's what I am working on:

1. If pros blew the analysis of the situation, then what the hell are they doing in the field and their clients had best be looking for competent counsel.

2. If students blew it, they might deserve some slack, but why hasn't their instruction allowed them the ability to look below the surface (not that they had to look very deep at all).

3. If lay people blew it, what has happened with the Indian casino's image that the general public is so willing to ignore any facts and lay the blame on them? What PR problem are the casinos having with the general public?

Is it the money they make, the economic and political power the Indians have gained? What should the Indian tribes learn from this brief scenario and the response to it that they need to address in terms of their image?

I realize it is a SMALL case with limited response, but it you are into competitive intelligence, these minor glitches should be looked at to see if they are advance weak signals of a far more serious problem.

Following the lead written in More with Les about the PR lessons of VT, here is a capsule summary and some comment.

Be proficient in crisis communication planning and management.
Here Les talks about anticipating the main types of crisis events any individual business may face, having a crisis management team in place that is well trained and ready to meet the media, and supporting the spokesperson at all levels of the crisis. My note: it is not possible to anticipate every type of event that may occur. What is important is setting up to handle the most probable. That preparation should then be modifiable for a specific circumstance that has not been anticipated. It is about the underlaying system more than the specific details.

Handling communication effectively during and after the crisis.
Here Les talks about handling communications with all the key stakeholders both during and after the crisis and also about learning from events that take place elsewhere. He points out that a lack of proper and timely communication creates an informational vacuum during which only the worst is thought and rumors generated. My note: this communication delay also encourages media to climb into the fray and generate their own versions of the facts and create the news themselves - a particularly dangerous situation.

Media savvy.
Know your media and their needs including social media. My note: especially for the local media that will be first on the scene and who may be reporting on behalf of national entities.

Reputation management.
This is about doing your PR work well upfront of any crisis so you generate good will and reputation. Les points out that this will help you get through the current situation. No comment needed.

Coordinating with other agencies.
Knowing your place in the greater scheme of things and working with agencies that will take over the primary information flow once they are on scene.  My note: conflict in information released creates doubt about the truth of what is being disseminated and creates situations where numbers become unreliable because both the left and right hands are counting the same thing and not realizing it happened.

There is an interesting article with this title at Valley PR Blog. Danwool says these eight are what separate the elite practitioners from the rest of the herd (edited, my comments in parens):

(1) Knowledge of business operations - If you don’t know how a business works and especially, how it makes money, you cannot succeed in PR. (Good consultants of any kind need to know the client's business as well as do the businesses' execs).

(3) Knowledge of consumer behavior — No consumers, no business. Wrong consumers, no business. Who target consumers are, how they think and how to reach them — especially on the Internet — is the lynchpin (sic) of PR. (No wonder venture capitalists turn to a business plan's marketing section first).

(4) Strategy – “Every battle is won before it is fought” — Sun Tzu “The Art of War”. (Well, given the situation in the Middle East, this is debatable, you have to be willing to stay the course).

(5) A great attitude. A great attitude builds confidence and trust, even if the end result is a loss. You always get hired on attitude, not skill. (However, it does not offset continued losses).

(6) Journalism skills – PR pros are essentially corporate journalists with sales responsibilities. You have to think and write lik (sic) journalists in order to out-think them and write stories they want to write themselves. (I would say, write for the editors and do not worry about out-thinking journalists).

(7) Rhetoric and negotiation skills — You need to know how to argue well and properly break down an argument into premises and conclusions. You need to know how to negotiate (fight) beyond one round. (And know when to fold 'em).

(8) Focus — PR is a non-linear, fast paced business with an ever-changing environment. (Back to Schwartzkopf's, the one who can sort through the chaos fastest will win).

Dan Santow's Word Wise has a post about the best way to use subject lines in a business context. He gives a good list, about half of which I agree with out of the box. But, there are some I have a different view about. The link goes to the comments page where I posted my reply to him. Hopefully, by the time you go there, my comment will be up and in play.

Here's a question for you - what is your initial reaction whenever you see an email message with "URGENT" leading off the subject line? Mine is "SPAM!" How about you? Do you filter messages with "urgent" in the subject line?

Online public relations thoughts tells us most companies find themselves in one of two situations when crisis appear. First is the it is a momentary thing approach and the other is the firm that uses the crisis as an opportunity to learn from the situation and take steps to prevent another incident. "Organizations can be on both sides of the issue because there are external events and issues over which an organization has no immediate control. The error arises when an organization assumes the same crisis won't occur again. PR is told to "fix it," and the organization continues on as before. This is particularly dangerous when crisis is self-induced -- that is, when the organization's actions caused the failure."

Here is my addition to what they have said: both of these scenarios are reactive in nature. There is a third scenario and that is one that has planned for the most likely crises scenarios and use that as a springboard in situations that they have not specifically planned for. It is by far the best of the three.

Well, if I read City Beat correctly, that may be the case. In a nutshell a waitress physically touched an autistic child and yelled at him when she went ballistic because he was having some difficulty ordering for himself. You can read about the Pokez travesty here. I think Mr. Glass should look into filing assault and battery charges against the waitress and discrimination charges against the snake pit, the manager and the waitress. This place has been a little too full of itself recently and perhaps the city or a couple of attorneys should trim their sails. I will no longer recommend this pit to anyone - friend or foe. 

ADD: Turns out this matter is going all over the San Diego area. I've heard from several of people who know either the family or the restaurant people or both about this. Probably most noteworthy, one customer that knows the owners of the place has sent a strongly worded letter to them about this incident and, as she is an excellent online restaurant reviewer who favored this place (it WAS my favorite greasy spoon place), will no longer be recommending Pokez nor trading there. I have not yet located the father's Live Journal blog. Also, deleted the multiple posts of this, especially the softer titled pieces.

Branding & Marketing has a short article on making good PR photos. Most of the advice concerns people photos and one of the things I learned well back that goes to their advice on how to stage people is to make sure all the people's eyes are at different levels as well as directing the direction of the look. Additionally, some PR photos do not have people in them at all and my advice is to "police" the area to make sure it looks clean and neat, especially in such areas as construction sites.