The Bailey Blog

Psst…Do you know what they are saying?

My wife is a hobbyist photographer who follows several photoblogs, one being a local SE Michigan photographer that she has taken classes from, Rebecca Redman . She blogged one day that she needed to borrow a Fuji Finepix F50FD camera for about 30 days . It seems Ms. Redman decided to challenge herself and take a good picture every day for a year, Project 366 (2008 is a leap year).

The extra challenge was to take great pictures with point-and-shoot camera, her Fuji Finepix. A malfunction occurred, her camera was under warranty and would be fixed by Fuji, but in order to continue her quest to only use a Fuji point and shoot she needed to have one, FAST!

What an opportunity! A professional photographer, providing free positive publicity to a point and shoot camera. Had Fuji been monitoring the online world for their products and what people were saying, they could have caught that and overnighted her a camera to use to continue her project.

The positive publicity she is currently providing Fuji is reason enough to have done just that, let alone the goodwill that it would have likely built among her and the readers of her blog.

There are conversations being had online about everything, your product and company included. Do you know what they are saying, good bad or indifferent? Are you involved in “the conversation”? Maybe you should be, the opportunities for promoting your brand are there.

Photo by Andy Ramdin

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism is at it again, releasing its latest study . Oh, and the corporate spinners are at it again, trying to make everything sound wonderful when it doesn’t seem believable.

A couple of key findings:

In the past three years, 85% of large daily newspapers and 52% of smaller ones have cut their staffs.

Loss of institutional memory was the number one concern among surveyed editors. Forty-one percent offered comments about losing veteran staff, followed by 37% about the general loss of staff, and 6% were concerned about loss of space.

Forty-eight percent of those surveyed say the tension between the speed, depth and interactivity of the Web compared to the reduction in journalistic standards and accuracy is a concern.

And then, at the end of the laundry list of worries and “wow, that’s why my local newspaper isn’t what it used to be” entries, comes this beauty: 56% believe their product is better than three years ago.

Um, huh?

The staffing levels are down. The news hole is smaller. The news they are covering doesn’t touch on in-depth investigating reporting the way it used to. There is a concern over decreases in journalistic standards and accuracy.

And, let’s face it, the general public doesn’t think too highly of the media either in terms of ability to get the story right or report on the right story in the first place.

But more than half of the editors think their product is better than three years ago?

Now that’s a story – or should I say a tall tale?

If you really want to protect excellence in journalism, stop surveying the editors. Get to the heart of the matter and talk to reporters and their readers. Because that’s a survey you could learn something from.

Photo by Ville Miettinen

Okay, fuel economy, sales, customers, leases and new models are seemingly foreign concepts to the current owners of Chrysler.

But, apparently, communications may be making a comeback.

Well, for a limited engagement.

The company in the last couple weeks has had to employ an old technique that used to serve it pretty well - that little thing called PR and communications.

Chrysler was a benchmark in the car industry and beyond for executive access and openness in the 90’s. Well, right up until the company was purchased by a private equity firm a year ago.

Going private, executives then said, meant financial info could be secret since they no longer would be issuing statements for shareholders.

Now, with rumors of bankruptcy and billions in financial muck stuck to the Pentastarred tower off I-75, the top brass have realized the power of communicating to try and end "a lot of speculation, false speculation" that is "rumbling around about" the company. So Jim Press - company president and vice chairman, went out on the stump to talk financials and set the record straight. I don’t know if anyone is buying the words so much - with U.S. sales still in the car crapper, down 23 percent this year; however, that isn’t the point.

The Chrysler crux is two-fold:

1. See? Communications is vitally important to an organization. Those "rumors" and "speculation" come from one side of the story being told - if you don’t take control of the message, someone will. And, they may not have your best interest in mind. It is critical to be proactive, willing and available to discuss key messages and issues with the target audience - find that channel, use it often, openly and honestly.
2. Now, here’s the problem that Chrysler has discovered…or will very shortly … and, unfortunately, they aren’t alone: Communications isn’t a light switch.You can’t use it just when you want to "fix" a waxy negative build up. There is a bank of goodwill that can be formed through regular, ongoing communications with the targeted audience. It’s like calling someone you haven’t seen in 10 years and your first call to them is to borrow money. Build the relationship, work it, listen to the audience as part of communications and respond quickly, often and honestly to it.

Don’t believe the PR putz? Listen to the smart dude quoted in today’s Detroit Free Press (so it must be true):

"They (Chrysler) made it very clear a year ago that they weren’t going to do the things that normal businesses do and that this was a privately held company and the press was going to have to go away because they aren’t going to disclose what’s going on in the company," said Gerald Meyers, a University of Michigan business professor. "This is a break in that. What’s surprising is that this sets a tone and precedent. Once they do that, they’re going to have to do it again."

Based on their recent history, bet you a Dodge Ram-sized tank of gas they won’t.

Duct tape. It’s sticky, heavy-duty and it’s most recent characteristic, FASHIONABLE!

I was recently sifting through my Google alerts that help me track client activity and found an article “Avon Duct Tape Festival offers sticky fun” touting Henkel, one of our clients, for their unique scholarship contest “Stuck at Prom.” The program was created to encourage high school students to be creative and have a chance to win college scholarships.

After reading through the story and chuckling, I was intrigued and decided to check out the Web site to see some of these outfits. All I could imagine as I typed in the URL is how creative can these people really be with a roll, or in some cases multiple rolls, of grey duct tape?

To my surprise I didn’t just see dull grey suits and dresses; rather I stared in amazement at my computer screen and reached for my sunglasses to avert the eclectic array of colors I was met with. The Henkel Duck® brand duct tape used in this competition illuminated my computer screen with 20 patterns and colors and created a new high school fad that is actually quite fashionable.

As my curiosity and interest grew, I decided to take a gander at the Previous Playas page on the site. To my delight I saw some amazing creations. I clicked through a couple of the pages and was absolutely amazed to see detail that some were able to perform, check it out yourself! I mean come on, boutonnières, corsages and even Brett Favre…

Looking through the photos I couldn’t help but think of the penguin-esque tuxedo that I recently donned on my wedding day and said “I saw this just a little too late.” So, I did what any sensible newlywed would do, I shot an email to my wife to see if she would have been interested in creating something similar for the wedding.

I proposed the cost saving ideas, uniqueness and other redeeming qualities of using the most useful creations in this world. And to the surprise of many husbands out there, the ideas were shot down one-by-one.

Despite my unsuccessful attempts to make my wedding unique, this program adopted by Henkel eight years ago is excellent, and I’m sure if I would have seen this back in high school I would have been able to dupe one of my friends into creating a duct tape suit and wearing it to the prom!

Photo by Jason Eppink

Living on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing for the past two years has taught me two things:

1. If you see a crowd of rioters, get away. Fast.

2. Don’t count on a new, locally owned business to last more than a year.

On Grand River, the dividing street between Michigan State University’s campus and downtown East Lansing, the business turnover rate is incredibly high, especially for the mom and pop shops.

Who’s lasting? The ones who know how to reach the students.

I work with some of these businesses to help create advertising plans with The (MSU) State News , and many of them have no idea where to begin when it comes to creating a communications plan. They look to me to help them not only with their newspaper advertising, but also as counsel on how to reach college students like me.

Another factor is the powerhouse chain businesses that have local and national funding to support communication activities. Students hear their messages in newspapers, on television and, lately, on the Web.

But what about the local businesses? Right now they are surviving because people like me support local more often than the chain. I don’t know how much longer our kind will last, unfortunately.

PR is all about partnerships and when you’re not connected to anyone, especially in today’s Web 2.0 world, you’re toast.

The point is simple: public relations doesn’t need to be just the standard media pitching and company promotion, but it does need to effectively reach and connect with the audience.

Every company is different, but good PR is a necessity. We’ll see who catches on.

It’s the latest version of David vs. Goliath and David’s going to win this one, too. Why? Because David is offering a service as good as or better than Goliath and he’s doing it for free.

It seems Peter Shankman, the irreverent but often self-deprecating founder of Help A Reporter Out , is giving ProfNet a run for its money, or more accurately stated, a run for ours.

You see, as public relations professionals and journalists grapple with how to most effectively connect for our mutual well-being, we have had to pay a significant price for the professional services of ProfNet – until now.

As Shankman writes on his site, “I built this list because a lot of my friends are reporters, and they call me all the time for sources. Rather than go through my contact lists each time, I figured I could push the requests out to people who actually have something to say.”

The pushing is done via his Web site, Twitter, Facebook, a (free) subscription e-mail list and, I’m pretty sure, by Peter talking about it to every person he meets regardless of the circumstances.

“I’ll have the #2 combo with a large Coke and, say, have you heard of Help A Reporter Out?”

What Peter and his list of followers (well over 16,000 now and growing every day) represent isn’t just a cool, free service. They represent anarchy at its finest. They represent the good that can be accomplished with a tool as powerful and ubiquitous as the Internet.

But they also represent the American dream that has been replaced of late with the American entitlement. Thomas Jefferson reportedly once said, “I’m a firm believer in luck and I find the harder I work the luckier I am.”

Hear, hear.

Success is within everyone’s grasp. All they need is the foresight to wonder why someone hasn’t done something already, the means to reach their customers, and the chutzpah to jump in the deep end and paddle like crazy.