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.

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.

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.