I want to explore a bit of a “hot topic” right before the long weekend.

Adam Giambrone was once a promising Toronto mayoral candidate, but now has been caught in a career altering predicament. The “indiscretion” of Adam Giambrone is now front page news, and while I’m not going to go into the morals of his situation the fact is that this is just one in a string of other such high profile “indiscretions”. Tiger Woods, David Letterman, John Edwards, Bill Clinton – the names have changed but the predicament was largely the same across the board. I should start by saying that this is not meant to focus solely on men/gender and for the sake of balance I’ll mention Iris Robinson, a member of the Irish parliament and wife of Ireland’s first minister – who was caught having an affair with a 19 year old male. (Her last name being “Robinson” was a coincidence not overlooked by the headlines.)

I’m not really interested in the sensationalism or the “fall of the mighty”, but what I am really interested in are the questions situations like these raise. How far should the personal lives of public figures affect their careers? And more than that, what lessons can all of us take away from those who have been through public backlash and scrutiny?

The one line from the media release that I couldn’t get out of my head after Tiger Woods’ own dirty laundry was aired publicly was; “personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions”.  This struck me as a very powerful and loaded statement.

In certain situations I can see where decisions that reflect the moral character of a person should come to bear on the public’s “right to know”. But should this or any similar situation negate all of the work and reputation of a person? It’s not an easy question.

The reality is that all of us need to be aware that we are our own “brand”. Tiger Woods was a brand for being the PGA’s squeaky-clean golden boy. While his affairs do not affect his sports performance, they do affect his “marketability”. But then do politicians – elected to represent the interests of voters, fail the same credibility test?

For me the one thing that matters in all of this is accountability. When mistakes are made, I think the best decision public figures can make is to accept responsibility with tact, sensitivity and humility. Because when the truth does come out, as it always does, I am much more apt to feel sympathy and respect for a humble figure.

What do you think? Do the personal lives of public figures deserve to impact their careers? What is the best way you feel they should handle any resulting scrutiny?

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

If you’re not up to speed on the whole ‘Whopper Sacrifice’ dealio, here’s a brief synopsis:

Last week Burger King launched a Facebook application called the Whopper Sacrifice. Basically, if you downloaded the app, you would be asked to delete 10 Facebook friends and in return receive a free Whopper. (It was apparently only valid in the US though).

I first saw mention of this on Twitter. I thought this pretty creative, so I re-tweeted it (for non-Twitter users, this is the term used when you repeat what someone else wrote, and give them credit). When my colleague Dave Fleet saw it, he re-tweeted me and in return, I provided the link to a National Post story about it.

Fast forward to today. I again, noticed a Tweet about the Whopper Sacrifice, but this time saying that Facebook had pulled the application. According to this AdAge story, over 23, 400 people followed through with deleting 10 friends each. In addition, the application actually sent notifications to all of the dumped friends’ networks, telling everyone they had been deleted for a burger. Apparently that’s not really in the spirit of Facebook.

So again, I re-tweeted the information, with a link to the story. An hour later, I received notice that BK Lounge is following me on Twitter. Awesome.

As much as I actually hate Whoppers, I love that companies are effectively using social media to engage with the public – and in a timely manner. I’ve got to say, they do it well. This is another one of their campaigns I came across last summer, and I still think it’s hilarious.

On the other hand, BK Lounge also just tweeted “I am the King of Burgers and the King of Social Media” – now that’s a bit extreme.

One of the questions I get most about my job, after “what is PR?,” is “how did you get into that?” Well, here’s how. When I was in my third year at U of T, a friend mentioned that she was making decent money doing promotions and suggested I try it out. I started working for a marketing company promoting movies at bars and clubs around Toronto. As far as part-time jobs went, it was pretty good. I worked a couple weekends a month from 9pm-2am. We were a team of 3-5, plus our fearless leader who drove to 4 or 5 bars a night promoting the newest film from Warner Brothers. I got to know the bar scene in Toronto (which helped me bypass the line on more than one occasion when I was out with friends), met some fun people, made use of the fact that I’m a major night owl and made some decent cash. From there, I got into a larger marketing company who promoted more than movies and I did many, many programs with them. That’s how I discovered PR. Some of the programs were fantastic, a lot of fun and very successful. The ones that were bad, were really really bad. So I wondered who came up with these inane ways to push a product? Wouldn’t it be more effective to promote it this way? Or this way? Or that way? I told my ideas to my manager who laughed and said I should work in PR, that’s essentially what I was doing: thinking of creative and efficient ways to push a product. So I did. I went to Humber, did my internship and got a job. And here I am.

And last week, I found my way back to my roots. We decided to take advantage of the throngs in town for The Film Festival and took one of our clients’ mascots down to enjoy the festivities; we went up to people in the street and in line for movies and took pictures of people with the mascot. It was a huge success and I had a lot of fun doing it. At first it was hard to get back into the ‘promotion mindset’- it’s not as easy as one might think to walk up to perfect strangers and ask them to pose for a picture. I have friends who say they are way too self-conscious to do the job. You have to remind yourself that you don’t know these people and will likely never see them again. So why not be outgoing and silly and make them smile? They’re likely to remember it as a result, which is really the whole point of the exercise in the first place.

So there I was two years later and doing the job that got me into PR in the first place. I thought I had come a long way, but in reality, we don’t really get all that far from where we started, do we?

What about you? Come a long way? How did you get started in PR? I’d love to hear your stories!

Text100 has opened a PR agency in Second Life.

I don’t really know what to say about that. When I read about Second Life I get an image of a big game of Sims gone awry, and I find it lends credence to the stereotype (or is it?) of online geeky folks living their lives via a mouse and desktop in the basement. Measuring out their lives with pixels instead of coffee spoons, I suppose.

Apparently the legion of “virtual” people is growing – BusinessWeek reported that 170,000 such devotees were online back in May, so I imagine there must be gazillions now. (Update: There are 595,000 “residents” now.) All spending real money (real money!) to buy fake money to buy fake things, like fake land. Or fake PR services, I guess. (As an aside, that’s one of the sadder things about SL – it’s a brand new world, no physical limits and endless resources. And what do people do? Shop.)

I can see why marketers have glommed on – obviously you have a large group of uh… motivated people with disposable income all in one place (kind of). It lets the digital marketing department have some fun, ‘cuz there’s a ceiling on the fun to be had buying real estate for web ads and subverting MySpace. And, well, it will garner you some ink in meatspace – see MTV, BBC Radio 1, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers Records, American Apparel and Major League Baseball.

I can see SL as having the potential to add new dimensions to distance learning, at least in parts of the world where broadband is becoming a utility. (For the rest of the world - I guess you could call them the un-online – they are probably poor people in a poor place so we can’t sell them anything anyway. Pity. Oh well…)

I can even, maybe, see why regular people might choose to spend their valuable, limited time pretending to be animated. We live in a taxing era - lots of people have limited, stressful or difficult lives (maybe even all of the above) so the fantasy that they can recreate themselves and live a totally different, unlimited life (albeit one which requires them to sit in a chair and stare at a monitor, natch) could have appeal. Some people, god love ‘em, are simply cashing in. In the real world, I mean – trading those Linden Dollars for currency. (Now that I can understand.) Linden Lab, of course, has created something that defies any easy label – let’s just call it clever – and I imagine they will monetize it in even more elaborate and creative ways. Understood.

But what will Text100 do there? They’ve explained they will make their best trainers available there for internal usage and offer up their “space” for client press conferences. Press conferences? I bear in mind that Text100 is a tech PR outfit so their target journos are likely to be much more tech savvy than your average daily beat reporter, but I’m interested to hear how (and if) that works. Anyone know?