Monday Morning Media Minute

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans.  But you already knew that — unless you’ve been on vacation and ignoring the news or in a coma.

The anniversary — along with stories examining where New Orleans stands with its recovery — was well covered in the media.  No surprise there.

And Harry Shearer has made great use of the anniversary to publicize a new documentary about Katrina called The Big Uneasy that will be shown tonight in about 200 theaters across the U.S.

Shearer was all over the media last week talking about why he believes the devastation from Katrina was a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster — and why he believes the mistakes that led to that damage are being repeated.  The movie was the hook, but his warning about the future of New Orleans was the message.

Shearer will be on hand in person tonight for a screening in New Orleans, which will give him another round of media visibility for his movie and his message.

Shearer’s publicity campaign is a perfect example of how to use an anniversary to generate news.  He’s gotten far more attention for his message through the media coverage he’s generated over the past week than he’s likely to get from the movie itself.

As far as I can tell, the movie will show one time in one theater in the Denver area.  And that apparently is typical of what’s happening in other cities as well.

Anniversaries of events that made news often make news, too.  If there’s an upcoming anniversary of a news making event that fits your story, is there a way you can turn it into an opportunity to publicize your message?

That’s my’ two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Forget what you learned in writing class:  Cliches are your friend.

So are jingles, slogans, catch phrases, soundbites and any other rhetorical tricks that make what you say stick in the minds of your audience.  They make your message easier to remember.

Jonathan Alter, a senior editor of Newsweek and political analyst for MSNBC, suggested last week that one reason for President Obama’s growing unpopularity with his own progressive political base is that his administration “has not done a good enough job of framing its message in memorable terms.”  I agree.

Obama has a “disdain for soundbites,” Alter claimed during an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball. “He thinks it’s somehow beneath him in some way to use catch phrases and slogans that linger in the mind.”

“When he went out (in front of TV cameras last week) after he won on financial regulation, what’s the takeaway?,” Alter asked.  “What’s the soundbite, if you will, that comes out of that that people can sink their teeth into?  He’s only said one memorable thing politically this whole year which is they, the Republicans, drove us into the ditch.  Don’t give them back the keys.  That’s a good line.  If he could keep saying that kind of thing and focus it as a choice, he could make some progress.”

I haven’t been keeping score.  So, I can’t say whether Alter’s right about his ditch/keys example being the only memorable political line Obama’s used this year.  Actually, I suspect he’s wrong.  And I suspect some of you have already thought of another example or two.

But, details aside, Alter makes a good point.  There’s some irony in the fact that a man who used his ability to deliver a rousing speech to get elected isn’t very good at soundbites.

He’s not alone.  One of the hardest challenges of my job is getting clients to deliver their message clearly enough to be heard, understood and remembered.  Soundbites, catch phrases, slogans — and cliches — will make your message more memorable.

I encourage you to use them.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Sometimes the best response to a story you don’t like is no response.

The problem with responding to a negative story — even if you feel it’s wrong — is that your response may keep a bad story alive longer than it would live on its own.

Attacking a negative story that’s clearly true?  That’s just drawing more attention to the story while picking a fight you can’t win.  That’s a losing strategy.

Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-backed Republican running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, has threatened to sue Reid for posting an old version of her campaign website that includes some of her more controversial opinions on Social Security, health care and other topics.  Angle’s campaign had replaced the old version with one designed to be less controversial.

She’s not challenging the authenticity of the posting by Reid’s campaign.  Instead, she’s accusing Reid of copyright and intellectual property violations.

The result has been a lot of media coverage of the controversy in Nevada and elsewhere, negating the Angle campaign’s effort to tame down her website.

I’m not a lawyer, but my guess is Reid will win the legal fight if the issue ever gets to court.  Even if he doesn’t win in court, every round of any legal battle will simply draw more attention to the very information Angle scrubbed from her website in the first place.  So, it doesn’t matter whether she wins in court.  She’s picked a fight that’s fueling a story she wants to go away.

Here’s my question for you next time you find yourself tempted to respond to a story you don’t like:  Will your response really make your point?  Or will you just keep a bad story alive for another news cycle?

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

I love oxymorons.  My current favorite:  Facebook privacy.

If you follow these things at all, you know Facebook recently changed its privacy policies.  And they kicked up quite a ruckus doing it.

I know almost nothing about the details of what they did, why they did it — or what changes they made because of the ruckus.  I don’t know much about it because, frankly, I don’t care what their privacy policy is.  I assume anything I post on Facebook, Twitter or anywhere else on the Internet is public — no matter how hard I try to lock it up and call it private.

For many years, I’ve been one of those public relations practitioners who advises clients to treat all documents, including emails, as potentially public no matter how “secret” they are.  That doesn’t mean you won’t ever put secret information in your documents or in your emails.  Confidential information frequently ends up on paper or a hard drive.

But, confidential or not, it’s a good idea to avoid putting things in writing or pictures that would be embarrassing or incriminating if they ended up in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, your local newspaper (if you still have one) — or in the hands of an employer or potential employer.

I certainly encourage everyone who’s interested to use Facebook and the other social media.  And have fun doing it.  But if you’re posting potentially embarrassing information you think is private or confidential, you’re asking for trouble.  Facebook privacy is an oxymoron.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Dedicated public servant who has “pursued justice fearlessly.”  Or a “high-handed” jurist leading a court that ignores the state’s constitution?

Mary Mullarkey, who announced last week that she will retire as chief justice of Colorado’s Supreme Court, is described both ways in an interesting trio of articles that appeared yesterday and today in the Denver Post.

Mullarkey was appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court in 1987 by Gov. Roy Romer and was elected chief justice by her fellow justices in 1998.  She’s the state’s first woman chief justice.  And she’s held the job longer than anyone else.

She’s highly regarded by many, but has become increasingly vilified by critics on the right who have come to resent her rulings on a number of issues they care about.

Colorado judges face periodic yes-no retention votes and Mullarkey’s opponents planned an all-out effort this fall to have her ousted from the court by encouraging Colorado voters to vote against her retention — a fight she short-circuited by announcing her retirement.

The fight over Mullarkey’s legacy as a judge belongs in another forum.  And I think most of us would agree that our politics have become increasingly polarized.

But there’s a good rule to follow when it comes to most public arguments:  Play to the middle.

In most fights, you’ll have a certain number of people who will be with you no matter what and a certain number of people who will be against you no matter what.  Don’t ignore your friends, but don’t waste time trying to convince your inconvincible enemies, either.

Most of the time you should focus on trying to convince the persuadable people in the middle.  More often than not, they’re the ones who decide the outcome of public debates.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

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Here are the links to the three articles about Mullarkey, if you want to check them out:

There’s a positive piece in Sunday’s paper by columnist Susan Greene.  “As state’s chief justice, Mullarkey wielded law with quiet precision,” reads the headline.  And the column includes this quote from a lawyer who once clerked for Mullarkey:  “I’ve never met somebody who’s so smart and so committed to public service, yet at the same time so humble.”

A decidedly negative one by editorial writer Vincent Carroll that appeared Sunday under the headline “Mary Mullarkey’s troubling legacy.”  Carroll’s view is that Mullarkey “presided over a Colorado Supreme Court that in recent years has grown increasingly high-handed.”

And an editorial in today’s paper that appears under the headline “A force behind Colorado’s bench” that reads:  “For more than two decades, Mary Mullarkey has been a force to reckon with on the Colorado Supreme Court.  The barrier-breaking chief justice has drawn opposition from some who contend she led a political court with a liberal bent, and she has drawn praise from those who think she pursued justice fearlessly.”

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Do you feel warm and fuzzy about the people running Wall Street?  Are you confident they’re stepping up to make the reforms needed to prevent a repeat of the economic meltdown that triggered all those bailouts?

Me, neither.

Goldman Sachs launched a public relations campaign last month to clear its name following the announcement that the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting a criminal investigation of the company and in advance of the highly publicized hearing by a Senate subcommittee headed by Sen. Carl Levin — the one involving the now infamous exchange about the rhymes-with-gritty deal Goldman promoted to its clients.

Goldman’s PR campaign, including Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s hour-long interview last week with Charlie Rose, is pretty much the sum total of Wall’s Street’s effort to play nice with the American public in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown that put a lot of people out of work and made our collective 401(k) accounts so much smaller.

But Goldman’s PR campaign is too little too late.  Collectively, the folks who run Wall Street have shown no remorse or humility about bringing the national economy to the brink of collapse.  And they’ve shown no real interest in reforms that would keep it from happening again.

Is that a mistake?  That depends on your point of view.  From a PR point of view — winning the hearts and minds of the public — Wall Street’s stance has been a disaster.  But when it comes to looking only at the bottom line, they may be doing exactly the right thing.  That’s out of my pay grade.  So, I’ll leave it to others to figure that one out.

But here’s my point for the rest of us.  Until you convince your audience you care about how what you’re doing affects them, they won’t support you.  Wall Street doesn’t appear to care about our support.  If you care about the support of your audience, make sure you help them understand that you care about them.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

One of my grandfathers was a country doctor in the little town of Grady, Arkansas.  He occasionally received chickens or something else besides cash in return for his services.

That was because in his day country doctors didn’t turn away patients, whether they could pay or not.  And some folks were too proud to accept something for nothing.  So, if they didn’t have cash, they paid with whatever they had to offer — including chickens.

But that’s not why I noticed when U.S. Senate candidate Sue Lowden of Nevada suggested recently that patients could use chickens to pay for their medical care.  That story caught my attention because I knew as soon as I heard it she was about to receive a lot of media attention she didn’t want.

Lowden quickly became the butt of jokes from comedians and opposing politicians.  The chicken-joke story hit its peak, as far as I can tell, with a Las Vegas TV story that’s since found its way onto YouTube.

Lowden made at least three mistakes:

• Her first mention of paying doctors with chickens appears to have been off the cuff.  She went off message.  Always have a clear message before you talk to reporters and stick to it.
• Once the story blew up, she didn’t take steps to contain the damage.  Check out the link to the Las Vegas TV story.  Lowden still looks like a deer in the headlights several days after this story went south on her.
• She doesn’t appear to have a strategy for putting the story behind her.  Lowden’s not the first public figure and won’t be the last to say something she shouldn’t have in public.  Such gaffes can be hard to fix   Just ask British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who quickly apologized last week after calling a woman he talked to while campaigning a bigot.  Brown was in his car when he made the “bigot” comment and thought he was speaking in private.  Unfortunately for him, he was still wearing a TV microphone.  The comment may have ended his chances of staying in office — despite his hasty effort to undo the damage.  Lowden hasn’t really tried to contain the damage.  She needs media training.  And help with her messaging.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Are Ronald McDonald’s days numbered?  Will the day come when he’s promoting fruits and veggies instead of burgers and fries?

In last week’s MMMM, I wrote about the group that killed Joe Camel going after Ronald McDonald as “the product of a well-orchestrated and shrewd marketing strategy” that’s helping make kids fat and contributing to “a deadly epidemic of diet-related diseases.”

I concluded by saying I don’t know where the Ronald McDonald retirement campaign will go or how successful it will be.  But I said McDonald’s would do well to open up lines of communication with the group promoting the “retirement” campaign.

Business Wire founder Lorry Lokey, now retired, offers a starker view:

“Actually, Jerry, McDonald’s only route to saving the clown is to make radical adjustments to its menu.  That doesn’t mean doing away with fries and burgers. But why not add a parallel menu of the good stuff — fruits, veggies, yoghurt shakes and so on offered with any purchase?

“Maybe offering a free salad tray of small carrots, beets, tomatoes, celery, etc., would be an inducement, and all of those are pennies in price compared to the same volume as a hamburger.

“As for fries, some fast food outlets are dumping the high cholesterol oils in favor of other, less damaging stuff.  As for burgers, use 90% fat free beef. Problem is that it costs more.  And as for full flavor carbonated drinks, switch to diet only.  Boy, that’ll be the day!  And with all this have Ronald McDonald pushing acceptance of it.”

You might quibble with the details of what Lorry says simply because it’s impossible to know what the future holds.  But conceptually, I think he’s probably right on.  Unless McDonald’s finds a way to address the complaints underlying the Ronald McDonald “retirement” effort, the clown’s likely to become a growing liability for the company that created him.

Symbols are important storytelling tools.  But for the same reasons that Ronald McDonald is so good at selling the McDonald’s brand he could easily become a symbol for what’s wrong with the McDonald’s brand in the hands of a group using him to fight childhood obesity.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  And Lorry Lokey’s.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

I find grocery lists useful when I’m buying groceries.  But they’re a disaster when talking to reporters.

A common mistake people make when talking to reporters is talking about too many things.

In his book, Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith describes it as the “grocery list problem.” I call it being unfocused.

Here’s what Beckwith says:

• “Saying many things usually communicates nothing.”
• “If you deliver two messages, most people will process just one of them — if that.  Say one thing.”
• “After you say one thing, repeat it again and again.”

That’s good advice. All I would add is this:  Be able to say that one thing in 10 to 15 seconds. If it takes you longer than that, the reporter may get it wrong. And the rest of us won’t remember it.

Does that mean you limit your media interviews to 10 to 15 seconds?  Of course not.

But be able to state your “headline” for any interview – the one thing you want to be sure gets into the story and you want people who see the story to remember – in 10 to 15 seconds.

And repeat it every chance you get.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Do you know what you’re selling?  Sometimes it pays to give that a second thought.

I went for a ride in a Tesla sports car last week.  I described it on my blog BrownonGreen.Net as the most fun I’ve had in a car since high school.

The car’s a lot of fun.  But the most interesting thing to me is how smart Tesla has been in figuring out what they’re selling.

The Tesla, for those of you who aren’t car buffs, is an all-electric sports car that will go from 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds.  It’ll pin you to your seat while you do it.  And it’ll lighten your wallet if you decide take one home.  The base price is $109,000.

Tesla’s creators started from the premise that no one was buying electric cars because no one was building electric cars people want to buy.  They’re selling performance and sex appeal, not green-ery.  And they’ve made an electric car people want to buy.

The verdict’s still out on whether Tesla will succeed long term, of course.  But they’ve got a shot at it.  And they’ve gone a long way toward changing the conversation about what an electric car should be.

What this all comes down to for the rest of us is messaging.  When you describe what you do is it clear why the rest of us would want to buy what your selling?

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A couple bonus items this week.

• There’s an interesting article on CNET about the power of public feedback on the Internet. It involves an attack on Nestle that uses the company’s own Facebook Fan Page against it.  I encourage you to read it.  Nestle’s response to the Facebook attack is also a good case study on the dangers of going on the attack in a public forum where you’re outnumbered, fighting a popular cause and have no control over what the other side says.
• A blog item by Denver PR executive Steven Silvers questioning the value of Twitter as a business tool.  I agree with his point.  And it’s a good read.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?