Schaeffer PR Buzz

President Combines Old-school, Social Media for Effective PR

All week, members of the media and political pundits have been chirping about how well or how poorly President Barack Obama has conveyed his key messages. Are he and his cabinet and advisers giving mixed messages about the economy? When did they know about the outrageous AIG bonuses and why didn't they do something earlier?

Whether or not one thinks the President has done a good job of getting his message out clearly, one thing is certain: our President and his communications team are setting new standards for combining old-school and social media tactics to create a multi-faceted PR campaign. That topic -- how to strategically integrate social media into tried-and-true communications campaigns -- is under constant debate among public relations practitioners. The key word is "strategically." Racing to start a blog or set up a Facebook page for any organization seeking publicity may or may not make sense, but that hasn't stopped some PR people from making a knee-jerk recommendation to do so.

In the past couple days, the President has demonstrated how to combine the old with the new. A sampling of his communications activities includes:

Two town hall meetings in California to tell large numbers of people -- in person -- about the proposed U.S. budget and encourage them to tell their representatives in Congress to support it. A town hall meeting is about as old-school as it gets, as today's town hall meetings harken back to New England in the early days of our nation.

Social media calls to action to educate the President's enormous number of supporters. The President's blog and various social media pages carried his latest messages. Definitely new school.

Appearing on the Tonight Show to talk about the economy -- and, yes THE DOG and his March Madness picks -- to promote likeability and confidence in him as our leader. Considered cutting-edge for a sitting President to appear on the Tonight Show, this is really about as old-school as you can get: appear on late-night TV to pitch your position or project. It's impressive that the President can put a new twist on an old publicity tactic. That's what all good PR people should be doing, every day.

Placing a video on Iranian TV. On one hand, one could consider this a classic propaganda technique. Much-despised leaders such as Fidel Castro and Osama bin Ladin have created videos and broadcast and distributed them to audiences they are trying to influence. Yet, here is President Obama appearing on a video distributed in Iran -- with Farsi subtitles -- wishing the people of Iran a happy new year. And, the video is described on the President's White House blog, and circulating globally over all mainstream and online media outlets.

Whether or not one agrees with the President's politics, he sure presents a good lesson for PR people about how to combine new and old communications tactics.

Separating the Girls from the Women

On my birthday the other day, my husband gave me a very sweet and beautiful birthday card. It tells a romantic story of a couple meeting, marrying and living happily ever after. The story is about a "guy" and a "girl." Fortunately for me, my very-evolved husband edited each of the invocations of "girl" by striking it out and writing "woman" above it.

THAT'S one of the reasons I love him. He, too, knows and respects the fact that girls are non-adult female persons younger than the age of 16 and women are adults who are older than 16. Yet, it still galls me to see that Hallmark doesn't know the difference. Perhaps the card should have been written about a "girl" and a "boy." Oh, wait, that's right, "boys" don't get married. But "girls" do?

I've been on a personal crusade since my college years to not refer to women as "girls" and to educate others about the importance of calling grown up female humans women. I actually felt as if I was making progress in the '70s, '80s and '90s, and it seemed American culture was somewhat careful about the distinction. But I have to say that as a culture, I think we have fallen behind in this first decade of the 21st century.

Aside from my husband's edited card, several other examples illustrate this backsliding:

• A National Public Radio story last year about Paris models showing the latest fashions included Susan Stamberg talking about the "girls on the runway." I e-mailed NPR expressing my concern. I never heard back and my comment didn't make it on the air. And, I have heard the word used to describe a female human older than 16 since then.
• The popular TV show Gossip Girl, about privileged high school students, adds to the glamour of the word "girl."
• Many 20-somethings I know routinely use the word to describe themselves and their friends. When I check out the Facebook pages of young women I know, I see that they use the word all over the place.
• For more than a decade my best friends (all accomplished, successful, smart, grown-up women) and I have gotten together once a month to cook dinner together. When we were trying to come up with a name for the group, "Girls' Night Out" was suggested. Of course, I delivered my "we're not girls, we're women" and "we aren't minors and we don't have to ask for permission for a rare night out, do we?" speech. Our collective creativity won the day and we came up with a name that blasted out the "Girls' Night Out" moniker and we cleverly turned the phrase into our own made-up word that has become the name of our gathering.

All I really want is parity. If all men were called "boys" I'd be fine with "girls." But, men are called men and women should be called women. Ladies and gentlemen -- if used in tandem -- is OK, but I always chuckle about the time I heard a very distinguished woman ask, "Who are you calling a lady?"

The point about what one calls oneself was vividly brought home to me about 20 years ago by a very close friend who is African-American. He said he'd been getting on his friends' cases for using the N-word to describe themselves. The friends thought it was OK if they used it among themselves, although they all agreed the word was atrocious if someone else used it to describe them. "How do you expect other people to understand not to use the word to describe you if you use it to describe yourselves?" he asked incredulously. He was right.

I sometimes ask those women who would call themselves "girls" the same question.

To see how this woman, a grown-up girl, makes her living in Public Relations, check out the Web site of my City of Chicago Certified Woman-Owned business, Kathy Schaeffer and Associates, Inc..

Using PR to Build Corporate Confidence

Last night I had the pleasure of moderating a panel for the Publicity Club of Chicago on how to use PR strategies to build corporate confidence. The panelists -- all seasoned public relations practitioners in Chicago -- shared case studies for overcoming public skepticism, mistrust and cynicism. The panelists and audience members engaged in lively discussions on topics ranging from tollway and electricity rate hikes, to tainted food products and noisy industry in upscale neighborhoods, to a public company's need to restate its income projections.

Several key points emerged:

The old crisis PR adage, "tell the truth, tell it yourself, and tell it quickly" continues to be valid in building public confidence when there's a difficult situation to manage. Jon Harmon, VP, Communications and Reputation at Navistar, Inc., talked about the importance of clearly and cleanly telling negative news yourself. He relayed how Navistar in 2007 managed the process of telling analysts and the media about profit projections that had to be restated -- downward. He believes the proof of success of Navistar's up-front, come-clean approach was the minuscule dip in the company's stock price on the day of the announcement, compared to a competitor in the industry that suffered a greater loss that day.

It's essential to build community support and generate positive publicity for your organization long before you ever need it. Just as Stephen Covey recommends building up goodwill with others, so that when a relationship is strained it will stretch and not break, Kathleen Cantillon, Director, External Communications at Exelon Corporation, believes it's important for a company to bank goodwill with its community long before the inevitable crises occur. She related examples of how Exelon and its subsidiary, ComEd, are active in community organizations, coalitions, philanthropy and civic activities in the communities where customers live.

It is possible to change a community's attitude about a company. Jim Terman, President and CFO of Jasculca/Terman and Associates, talked about how his firm has helped a scrap iron processor in an upscale Chicago neighborhood build relations with those who live in million-dollar-plus homes nearby. The company offers tours to neighbors, joins local community organizations, gets to know its elected officials and is willing to change some of its operational rules to co-exist more peacefully in the neighborhood. Additionally, company officials have learned to talk regularly about the benefits the company brings to the greater community.

Participants and guests gleaned many other many other valuable nuggets from the 90-minute conversation. To learn more, please contact me at my company, Kathy Schaeffer & Associates, Inc..

Pirates: Brand Identity vs. Reality

A 6-year-old boy I know loves pirates: the sword, the hat, the eye-patch, the adventures, the action figures, the movies, the parrot, the hook, the lore. For years now, his birthday party theme has been pirates, pirates and more pirates (that's when it wasn't Star Wars, but that's a different blog post). How cute. I never really thought much more about this pirate obsession than whether he'd accidentally poke someone with the plastic sword.

Then, in recent weeks Somali pirates -- REAL pirates, the hardened criminals who've used automatic weapons, grenade launchers and explosives to hijack more than 100 ships worldwide in 2008 -- began to draw bigger headlines as they boarded arms-laden ships and civilian cruise vessels. Ships that traverse the ocean trade routes between Europe, South America, Africa and Asia (particularly off the African coast) have become easy prey to fearless criminals who are not afraid to kidnap, steal, extort and murder, with one goal in mind: money.

The horrific, real-life crimes of these audacious thugs make it almost impossible to reconcile the American pop culture brand identity of pirates as almost-cute, adventuresome and admirable characters. This romantic image of pirates has endured for generations, fueled by Disney and other entertainment and toy companies that create the stories, the movies, the gear and the toys that appeal to children and adults looking to try on a counter-culture identity.

I'm sure it has occurred to deep-thinkers that romanticizing old-style pirates is outrageous, given that pirates of earlier days were the most notorious criminals of their day. But somehow, yesteryear's pirates have become lovable heroes. I offer Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" as exhibit A and "Peter Pan" as exhibit B.

Think about it: would anyone really condone it if their children regularly dressed up as and pretended to act like modern-day serial killers, rapists and kidnappers? The thought is appalling.

I broached this topic with my 6-year-old pirate friend's mother. She is a deep thinker and confessed that the whole pirate infatuation has bothered her for a long time. "Believe me, I've read about every pirate book that's out there," she said. "And, let's not even talk about how they treated women. Where were the women pirates?"

With a 6-year-old pirate wannabe you can hope he grows out of the pirate stage quickly and later in life realizes that pirates were not and are not nice people to be emulated. But how do you stop the powerful pirate brand in American society? Whatever the current state of our economy, America has shown the world its infinite power to build consumer brands. Today's terrorism at the hands of modern-day pirate criminals should make us think twice about the falsehood of good-guy pirates and how we portray them to children.

It's not only what you say that can make you look like a turkey

A video clip circulating today shows Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin visiting a turkey farm to pardon a turkey. The Governor's publicity appearance is her rendition of a time-honored photo opportunity used by governors and presidents to generate positive, even playful, media coverage before Thanksgiving.

For a public relations professional, staging such a photo opportunity is almost a "no brainer." Governor. Turkeys. Proclamation. Pleasant talking points. Media. Thank you very much. Post the great coverage on the Governor's Web site.

However, someone goofed this time. As Gov. Palin talks with reporters -- carryout coffee cup in hand -- about a range of topics, a man in blood-stained pants slaughters turkeys behind her. You can't hear the turkeys squawk, but you can see the man shoving the turkeys one by one, beaks down, into a stainless steel cone suspended above a trough to catch the blood. Next, the man removes the now-dead turkey, takes it away, and returns with another.

At one point, Gov. Palin actually comments to media about how the photo opportunity is a light-hearted, fun event. The only problem is that as she speaks those words, directly behind her the turkey slaughter man is wrestling a with a contentious turkey fighting to escape the death cone. He strong-arms the bird, wing akimbo, to its bloody fate. Light-hearted? Fun?

More like unbelievably FUNNY, I'd say. The best "Saturday Night Live" writer couldn't have come up with a better sketch. A pro-life, pro-death-penalty governor trying to make a positive impression by "pardoning" a turkey while behind her the massacre ensues despite her alleged pardon.

Gov. Palin, your PR folks messed up, big time. And you run the risk of looking like a turkey.

How Do You Communicate "Advocacy?"

In separate meetings today, both the CEO of a Chicago-based national advocacy organization and the president of the board of directors of a foundation shared the same lament: members of their organizations find it nearly impossible to explain to prospective donors what "advocacy" means and why donors should support it financially. These two executives understand how important public affairs communications is to their missions.

Advocacy is one of those seemingly intangible pursuits that is often misunderstood until it bears fruit. It's easy to understand hands-on direct service: soup kitchens feed hungry people; community health centers heal sick people; preschools teach children. But advocates work to right injustices, study societal problems and beseech government to change laws and public policies. Often they are ahead of the societal curve or fighting for the rights of a tiny minority of people. To a person on the street, the description of advocacy can sound like "blah, blah, blah," or like futile tilting at windmills.

What's wonderful for the work of advocacy, but detrimental to clear, simple communications is that advocacy organizations attract extremely dedicated, highly motivated individuals who live, breathe, eat and sleep the issues that matter most to them. They become policy wonks and evangelists for the causes they champion, and can become so immersed in the details of an issue that they have difficulty defining what they do simply in a sentence or two. To use an old adage, you ask them what time it is and they tell you how to build a clock.

So, in an increasingly competitive world, how do advocates succinctly and effectively convey the power and benefits of their work? How do you boil down a multi-faceted legislative campaign into a sound bite without "dumbing down" the cause or causing disrespect to the movement? It's not easy, but it is possible. Think about President-elect Barack Obama's "Change" and "Yes we can."

My experience has taught me that the best place to start is with a careful messaging session. Get the right people in the room to discuss and agree about the top three to five messages. In some cases, there are multiple important audiences, so the messages need to be tweaked for each audience. Start by defining results: "Because of our work, over the past 10 years, 10,000 women have found new jobs."

Then, figure out which people in the organization are most gifted at expressing the goals and passion of the organization. Train them to use the key messages to describe the advocacy work the group is doing and turn them loose. Better yet, make a plan to send them out to speak to groups of people who matter most. How to make that plan is another blog entry for another day.

 

Gone Fishin'

I won't be posting to this blog over the next two weeks, because I'm going to be playing and relaxing in Michigan. Go to www.michigan.org to hear the hauntingly seductive music and words of the Michigan tourism ads. It's all true and I'll be steeping myself in it.

The state of the technology we'll enjoy includes an 18-inch television with three stations, a 10-year-old boom box and a cell phone which will get spotty reception where we'll be. Heaven.

Choose Your Word Order Carefully

"State Police Enforcing Reckless Motorcycle Driving." That is the headline flashing on the lighted sign above the lanes of the Kennedy Expressway heading into downtown Chicago.

Does the headline writer really mean that police will be making sure that motorcyclists drive recklessly in the 55+ mph traffic? Or, is this Jay Leno Tonight Show-worthy headline yet another in a series of comical word order choices by people who are proof reading-challenged?
One of the most entertaining aspects of loving words and paying attention to their use is that scarcely a week goes by when I don't see a public relations issue arise because of careless word order or words that might have been better left unsaid. My job as a public relations consultant specializing in public affairs in Chicago gives me the opportunity to help clients avoid such mishaps.
The state police motorcycle headline reminds me of the infamous quote by the legendary Richard J. Daley, Mayor of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention. He is widely quoted as having said, "The police are not here to create disorder. The police are here to preserve disorder." brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/richard_j_daley.html
When I was a newspaper reporter for The Daily Herald, dailyherald.com  covering the Cook County Board of Commissioners in the late 1980s, a commissioner made a similar gaffe. Railing at what he saw as a lack of emergency preparedness for the county (this is 15 years BEFORE 9-11, so maybe he was prescient), Commissioner Carl Hansen of Mount Prospect said that when American Airlines Flight 191 had crashed near O'Hare International Airport a few years earlier, emergency response teams were woefully inadequate. "Fortunately, everyone died," he said of the plane crash.
How many times do we chuckle each day as someone speaks words in an order that is unintentionally humorous? How many silly signs and goofy headlines will we see this week? Which elected officials will think they are saying what they mean, but not mean to say what they really do? While all of this is funny, I prefer that people laugh with my clients, not at them.

Boomers and Millennials: A Lot in Common

A video made by a cultural anthropology class at Kansas State University is making the rounds in the global dialogue about the differences and needs of the generations in the workplace.This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o  represents a recent installment shared among those who participate in Vistage, the world’s largest organization of CEOs.vistage.com 

Today’s employers of all generations need to be aware of the experiences and expectations of employees of all generations, including those of the Millennial generation, who are the stars of the Kansas State video. While the world and workplace today certainly are different than they were in any other decade, the Millennials are not so exotic that they don’t share characteristics with other generations that have gone before them.

I’ve noted many times the many similarities between the Millennials www.millennialgeneration.org/ and Baby Boomers, www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/006105.html  the generation to which I belong. Members of both generations love to learn, grew up multi-tasking (although it wasn’t called that yet in the 1960s and 1970s), saw huge changes in technology (albeit faster now than for the Boomers), and for a variety of reasons have been considered and have considered themselves “special.”

Most striking, however has been the shared commitment to cause. Boomers followed John F. Kennedy and “asked what they could do for their country” when the Peace Corps started. Today’s Millennials are looking for ways to make a difference and are marching in droves in Sen. Barack Obama’s Hope campaign.

In the Kansas State video, the students flash hand-made signs and computer screen messages before the camera, expressing the facts, experiences and expectations of their generation.

Interspersed are quotes from scholars and leaders of past decades and centuries, which still are true. On the most basic level, I don’t see all that much new here. There is a reason the antique quotes in the video are still relevant today. The old cliché is correct: The more things change, the more things stay the same.

You can click on the video to see what the Kansas State students think and want to share about their generation. I’ll share here some similarities to those of my Baby Boomer generation:

• The world was as scary and uncertain to Boomers as it is to Millennials. When I was in junior high, older friends were out protesting the Vietnam War and every night on TV we watched the body bags of dead soldiers return. My first boyfriend in high school had a draft lottery number and we worried about whether he’d get sent to war and die. When I was in college, a recession loomed, there were daily protests about the Shah of Iran and against Apartheid, and the year I graduated the Three Mile Island nuclear power disaster happened.
• Technology changed rapidly for Boomers, too, although since then the definition of “rapid” has changed. In the first two years of my first job, my main tool at work changed from a manual typewriter to an IBM Selectric typewriter to a DEC computer.
• Millennials aren’t the only over-stimulated generation to have turned away from what it considered irrelevant, too slow or too “old school.” While the Millennials spend time on Facebook and using e-mail or text messaging, we diverted our attention in our preferred ways. We skipped class, watched TV for many hours, went to movies, goofed around, talked to people in bars, in coffee shops, on the phone and on the Quad, slept through class, passed notes to friends, and multi-tasked when we should have perhaps been reading books in school. Were we more or less engaged in education than the current students? Hard to say.
• Young Boomers shared the hard-wired need to learn, learn, learn. We were brought up in the post-Sputnik education run-up and the global race to the moon. 
• Both generations think they’re “special.” Much has been made of Millennials who have grown up in a world where everyone on the little league team gets a trophy and “helicopter parents” hover. As a generation, we Boomers were “special,” too, mostly because there were so darn many of us. We were “special” because we were a marketer’s gold mine. Businesses at all stages of our life have worked to figure out how to make money off of us. We were the generation that the Barbie doll first enticed, after all.

Maybe some Millennials and Boomers don’t want to believe it, but I believe our two generations have a lot in common and can do great things together. Bring it on.

Is "the nod" Public Relations?

I’ve long been intrigued by “the nod,” the slight downward or upward bob of the head exchanged by two persons passing one another. It’s a versatile form of non-verbal communication that can convey respect, admiration, thanks, simple greeting or a shared understanding of a separate, third-party action both have witnessed.

Maybe it’s an urban thing. It regularly happens between pedestrians who don’t know one another on busy Chicago streets.

Often, the nod occurs between strangers. Sometimes, friends across a large crowded room acknowledge one another’s presence with the nod, even if they don’t exchange words at an event.

My unscientific research and observations over 20 years working in downtown Chicago reveals the following characteristics of the nod:

• The nod requires focused eye contact, as a prelude to and during the motion. So, if you are walking down the street and don’t look anyone in the eye, you probably haven’t experienced the nod with a stranger.
• The nod is reminiscent of the almost-extinct tipping of a hat by a man. Real cowboys still do this and it’s delightful.
• The nod almost never happens between two women. Two women passing on a busy Chicago street are more likely to say "hello" to one another or smile as they pass one another.
• Men in their 20s and 30s who know one another are the most likely to acknowledge one another’s presence with an up nod, in which they establish eye contact and bob their heads up and slightly angled to one side. Often, the eyebrows raise as the head nods up.
• Women and men of a certain age can safely share a nod with a stranger of the other gender, because the nod requires no speaking, no touching, and no stopping as they pass on the street. Of course, I imagine the nod has also been the initial lob in a volley of flirting, but that’s a different kind of nod, requiring much more intense eye contact.

What does this have to do with public relations or communications? Well, organizational leaders and spokespersons can enhance their reputations by mastering the art of the nod. How?

• Using the nod means you are paying attention to others, and they notice.
• When you initiate a nod, you are perceived as friendly, and if you exchange a nod with someone who looks up to you, they feel respected.
• If you attend a venue with a large crowd, the nod allows you to establish a connection (albeit momentary) with individuals you may not have a chance to engage in conversation, because you are unable to move across the room. You get more mileage out of your public appearance.
• When a well-known, recognizable person – such as a business leader or elected official – invests a moment to share a nod with a stranger on the street, the other person is likely to characterize the recognizable person positively to others.