In a slight shift from my posts where I have been talking about starting my career in PR, I wanted in light of recent events to talk a bit about Public Relations as an industry. Specifically, headlines such as Sunday’s Toronto Star; “Spinning in the First Week of Michael Bryant’s New Life” and today’s Globe and Mail article; “Michael Bryant’s political strategy: PR 2.0”.

Both articles discuss PR in relation to Michael Bryant’s case, and from my reading of it and as someone working in PR I was a bit put off.  To pull a few quotes from the Star article; “It helps to have friends in PR”, “Look, the headline of this story should be: ‘Navigator, changing your perceptions without you even knowing it” and “He refers, of course, to Navigator Limited, the smooth public relations firm hired by Bryant (when exactly is unclear) to massage the message”. The article then continues to a full page analysis of the inner working of the messaging surrounding this tragic incident. The Globe article takes a look at Navigator’s use of social media (Twitter, Blog and Facebook) in relation to their client.

Personally, I resent the fact that PR is often tied to “spin”, deception and manipulation. I do not feel that reflects the work that I do, or the many other professionals who are passionate about communication and social media. However I did find it very interesting that the article pulls into the spotlight a PR firm, whereas usually the agency stays in the background.

I want to make it very clear that I am not choosing sides and making statements about Michael Bryant’s guilt or innocence.  I feel this is a very tragic situation for both sides. Lives have been changed forever. But facing these serious charges and the media onslaught, I can sympathize with Michael Bryant for enlisting the services of Navigator just as I respect the work they are doing on behalf of someone who will be forever affected by this moment in time. PR does not change “the facts”.  A strong team of media savvy professionals helping in the face of any crisis can provide advice, support and direction.

What do you think of the role PR plays in image management issues when a crime or tragedy has occurred?

As you may have noticed, Twitter is VERY “twendy” right now.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Twitter (the micro-blogging site where users can send and read other users 140 character updates known as tweets) has been ALL over the media lately. This was due in large part to the fact that Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) was the first Twitter account to reach 1 million followers. If you want to learn more, my colleague Dave Fleet did an interview with CityOnline on the subject and also wrote a blog post about it.

Twitter has been around since 2006, but only in the past couple months has it really reached its tipping point. I started on Twitter last September when it was still in its growth stage, and it has been very interesting to watch it develop into what it is today.

I like Twitter. I get a little sneak peak into the lives of the people I am interested in. I follow everyone from friends, to coworkers, to news sources, to people who tweet about subjects I’m interested in, to celebrities. And people even follow me too! There are a lot of great things about Twitter, but many people seem to think it’s just a fad.

I think the future of Twitter really depends on how people continue to use it. There are a lot of people who use it to foster an instantaneous and mass-audience type of communication that can’t be achieved elsewhere and also those who simply post really neat information and tidbits about their lives. However, there are others who unfortunately use it to spam or try to get the most followers.

Personally, I think Twitter is an amazing tool for communication and I can’t wait to see where we take it.

What is your opinion on Twitter? A useful tool for communication or just a fad?

Happy Tweeting

My morning started with a bang. Literally. A squirrel decided to eat some electrical wires coming out of the transformer across the street from my house. Needless to say, at 6:20 a.m., I was not impressed.

Today, I am going to do a roundup of stuff — stuff that I find interesting and that is somewhat germaine to what it is the PR Girlz do.

• In today’s Toronto Star, Bruce Campion-Smith reports how the Harper government controls its communication policies. It is the first report in the Secret Capital series from the newspaper. Harper’s communications policies are anything but open and stand in stark contrast to the federal rules for open access to information.
• Festival de Cannes ends today. Norm Wilner from NOW has been blogging the event from the French sea-side town. Check out the reviews now — you might be able to save yourself from wasting time at TIFF. [For the life of me, I don't know what Lindsay Lohan was doing there, though. Beyond Mean Girls (brilliant writing) and Altman's swan song (she was cast well), has she done anything deserving of Cannes recognition?]
• I want to play a bit with a Google lab release called Google Friend Connect. The server keeps crashing on me.
• Grant Robertson at the Globe and Mail reports on Wikipedia’s business plan and its desire to remain not-for-profit.
• Tim O’Reilly had a funny post on the weekend about Microsoft’s obsession with search.

Last week, I saw an article in AdAge that suggested that one of the world’s most famous ‘touch up’ artists, Pascal Dangin, had a hand in making the women in the Real Beauty campaign look gorgeous. Even though Unilever and Dangin have made statements denying the reports, AdAge maintains that it will still “go down as a footnote in advertising history or rate among its biggest scandals, alongside Campbell’s marbles in the soup.”

Really.

Since the success of their Evolution campaign, Dove has been the viral video darling of the marketing world. Everyone wants their online efforts to come out smelling like 1/4 moisturizing lotion. But that sort of success can’t be plucked out of the cosmetics aisle and let’s face it – everybody’s a bit jealous. And my feeling is that, last week when this rumour emerged, a lot of people would have gladly seen Dove go on trial for their alleged mistake.

Even if they did do skin tone touch ups or got rid of minor blemishes on the Real Beauty models … would that really make their campaign somehow bogus? For me the idea is the most beautiful thing about the Dove brand and their recent marketing efforts. Some readers of AdAge’s coverage of the ’scandal’ agreed:

Several readers commenting on Ad Age’s Thursday story saw the controversy as a tempest in a teapot. “The issue is being massively blown out of proportion,” said one. “Retouching to adjust skin tones, remove shadows, or combine two or more photos from the same session for the sake of shot composition is commonplace and completely ethical.”

“I think we are losing sight of what this campaign is really about — loving your own body,” said another reader. “Even if the photo was retouched a bit, it still conveys the fact that all women are beautiful, no matter what size or shape.”

Another great follow up story that looks at how Dove/Oglivy/Unilever could have dealt with the situation can be found here.

Report by Kyra Aylsworth, Special Correspondant, PRGirlz.com

I found my notebooks and camera at the MaRS centre this morning. It was with great relief that I started my day. Now that I have my notes, though, I feel like I have too much material. I’ll try to keep it simple.

Today has been especially exciting here at mesh. The first keynote featured Richard Edelman, Global CEO of Edelman Public Relations, the world’s largest independent public relations agency. The second keynote of the day featured Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster.

Rather than try to sum up everything that was said during those first few hours, I’m going to post my favourite topics and related answers from these two influential thinkers:

Richard Edelman

How do you define success in public relations today?

Public relations is about telling a story. It is not the black arts. Public relations people need higher standards than before. Ad equivalency is not adequate – it’s fallacious. The power of free media is more valuable than purchased media … Some people are prepared (to enter into Web 2.0) and some are reticent. They’ll pitch to CBS and ABC and think ‘I’ve done my job’. We’re not salesmen. It’s better to have 3 to 4 quality interactions [than to 'hit' everyone with the same pitch and vehicle].

Would you ever counsel a client against using social media? What happens if you/your client loses control?

Even in a situation where a client might be walking into an arena of ridicule, the organization will still need to communicate their messages and to tell their side of a story. In the case of Chevy Tahoe, they benefitted by letting the humour run its course. You have to think ahead – about what sort of situation you’re getting into – but if something goes wrong, it’s important to let it happen. If Chevy had ‘put their fist down’ and tried to stop the conversation, it would have been much worse.

Three things to take away:
1. Make your stories visual.
2. Don’t be defeated by setbacks.
3. Don’t let clients say ‘here’s your little box’ (here are your set of conditions). Be bold.

Jim Buckmaster

My 7 favourite quotes:
1. We’re making enough money for all of our needs.
2. The way we do things is actually more fun than worrying about making more money.
3. That’s the benefit of not going public.
4. We only do things that our users want us to do.
5. Craigslist is a site where people connect through basic human needs.
6. We don’t have business meetings.
7. We’ve never lost a tech person in twelve years.

This weekend I headed up north for a friend’s birthday celebration. This is a friend from Humber, so we’re both in the industry and end up doing a lot of shop-talk, comparing experiences and sharing stories. Another friend was at her house and was doing a fairly good job at keeping up with our PR lives, and when my friend got up to change, he started asking more specific questions about my work. First and foremost, the age-old question. “So, what exactly is PR? How do you define it?” I don’t mind this question (good thing!), as I mentioned in a previous post, I see this as part of my job as a PR practitioner, however it does give me pause; I want to give the person a good idea of what PR involves but I also want to make it clear that everyone seems to have their own variation of the definition.

The way I describe it varies by party- if the person asking seems to know a little about the media and how it works, I’ll get a little more in depth. If I’m talking to my Grandfather, for example, I tend keep it simple, usually by giving an example of something I worked on that was particularly successful. Often, I tell people that PR is like free advertising with more credibility. If you read about a product in an article by a third party or see the president of the company on TV talking about it, you’re more apt to take it seriously and try the product, as opposed to seeing it advertised in the paper. People tend to get this- it makes sense to them. This explanation worked well this weekend and led to further, intelligent questions, so I deemed it a success. The problem is that this “definition” really only skims the surface of what we do but I fear getting into too much detail will both bore them and further confuse them.

How do you define PR? What explanations have you found to be the most effective?

It occurs to me on occasion just how cynical I have become since I got involved in PR. Before I started learning about and working in this industry, I didn’t give much thought to news programs and morning shows and how they are put together. Now, I’m always on the lookout for which company got their client a mention on the top news story of the day, who got a product placement or a B-roll on the 6 o’clock news and whose client it is being interviewed on Breakfast Television in the morning. If it’s a competitor of one of my clients, I (sometimes silently) curse and think about how I can get my people on the next time around.

Working in PR truly changes how you read and view the news and I often wonder if it does me any good. I can no longer enjoy an editorial story about a new product without wondering which PR firm is taking credit. Am I doomed to be a cynical news observer forever? Or do you learn to switch into passive mode and simply enjoy the Saturday paper with your coffee in one hand instead of a highlighter?

 (For the record, I don’t tend to read the paper with highlighter in hand, I’m just trying to make a point.)

I’ve been having an interesting ongoing debate with Shel Holtz, sprouting from a post from last week. You can check out the original volley of comments here but I thought I’d respond via post instead of another comment in hopes someone else will have their say on the topic. (FYI, many thanks to Shel for a kind mention on the For Immediate Release podcast last week, episode 151.)

Basically, we’ve been debating about… well, quite a few things actually. But I think the main point of contention is the relative weight and merit of mainstream media (or MSM) vs. blogs in terms of influence. Shel’s last comment related to my assertion that, generally, what happens in the blogosphere isn’t news until a mainstream media outlet reports on it. Shel sez:

I would suggest that tens of thousands of people, if not more, were influenced to NOT buy Dell Computers by the spread of the Jarvis posts and would have been so influenced whether or not the mainstream media turned it into “news.” And that’s the point. It doesn’t have to be “news” as defined by MSM in order to be influential. And that’s why PR needs to get over the notion that its first avenue of communciation is always with the media.

Now, Dell might be an exception here – if your customers are obviously computer-users, then you can probably assume they’re online and can be reached and influenced that way. But, in general, the media is still the first avenue of communication for many, if not most, PR goals - I don’t think social media is threatening the influence of mainstream media yet. Now, it’s a poor PR person for whom media relations is the only tool in their toolbox. Media is obviously not the appropriate avenue to reach many kinds of stakeholders. But if an organization needs to reach a broad base of consumers, then MSM is still king. Rightly or wrongly, this will probably continue to be the case as long as PR folks – and their clients, even - are still measured by the heft of the clippings book.

What say you?

I think this a great comment in the National  Post by Gordon K. McIvor who is V.P of public affairs and governement affairs for Canada Lands Company. It is wonderful to see the evolution of our profession in the paper. 

PR professionals: They’re happy!

Gordon K. McIvor, Financial Post

Published: Thursday, June 29, 2006

Recently, Canada’s communications professionals gathered in Niagara Falls, Ont., for an annual self-examination and assessment of their profession. Hundreds of men and women from all across the country believe these kind of annual gatherings are extremely important so best practices can be shared, as with any other professional group, and networking opportunities can be capitalized on to the benefit of both their organizations and themselves as individuals.

To see the article in its entirety, please click here