Context & Continuity

Is Windows Getting More Expensive?

.... That's the headline on a featured story on c|net.  According the to the reporter, the answer is "complicated."  I just finished working through an entirely different proposition. 

Recently, I upgraded the OS on a couple of the family computers and this required me to buy Windows XP, and while I was at it, but threw in a store-bought copy of Linux.  No complaints about XP.  I got what I paid for and upgraded all the computers the license would allow.  Then, my nine-year-old daughter, for reasons I'm still not sure I understand, "needed" a computer.  So, still having an ancient notebook computer stashed in a bin in my lab, I bought a copy of Xandros (which was the Linux of the moment when I bought it) and decided to see what would happen.  I just couldn't face paying more money on an OS, especially if I wasn't even sure it would work on the computer I'm installing it on. It installed very easy.  All the apps installed very easy.  I even found some age / grade level appropriate educational apps that are useful.  It recognized the wireless card and joined the home network ... very easy.  The user interface is ... very easy, easy enough for a nine-year-old to navigate.  I am quite pleased and would do it again.  And I paid what's considered a premium price ($65.00) for a free OS.  I bought a "free" OS because I wasn't confident enough I could make a boot disk on my own and didn't have the time to waste learning how. 

So, now I the family is running three operating systems -- for the time being.  If I ever had to build another "wintel" machine, I would have to seriously question the "win" part. 

It's an issue of transparancy and guts...

Today, I read with interest, the following story in the Boston Post... 

Political bloggers fear publicists will infiltrate sites

By Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Correspondent  |  February 23, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Erick Erickson  has been running the popular blog Redstate.com long enough to know what his readers' postings sound like: red-meat conservative rhetoric served up with a little dash of populist anger.

So when postings from an unknown writer on the site showed up praising Senator John McCain -- one of the site's least-popular Republicans for his deviations from hard-core conservative orthodoxy -- Erickson thought he smelled a rat.

Or maybe a sock puppet, shill, or a troll -- Web slang for bloggers who pretend to be grass-roots political commentators but instead are paid public relations agents.

The author of the pro-McCain articles on  Redstate.com, Erickson determined after a Google search, was a Michigan political operative whose firm worked for McCain's political action committee.

With big corporations now hiring public relations firms to pay fake bloggers to plant favorable opinions of the businesses online, many political bloggers are concerned that candidates, too, will hire people to pretend to be grass-roots citizens expressing views.  [more]

The troubling part is that the political operative decided to use deception / anonymity as part of his suite of tactics.  Of course this isn't anything new and, in fact even the media have been caught in the act.  Be that as it may, my point is this:  If you have the courage of your convictions, then you will post your position and who you are.  Take for example, James Carville.  He has a particular point of view -- that's been paid for -- and he is able to argue eloquently his point-of-view.  And he has the courage (or sheer ego) to put his own face and reputation on the line.

I don't think there's anything wrong with posting to a competitor's website or blog, but there is something wrong about not putting your own name to the post.  I've spoken in public and for attribution for many, many clients.  Never once have I resorted to being an anonymous source and if I ever post to someone's website stating my own or my client's point-of-view, then I'll do it in a way people will know who I am.   And if my identity subtracts from either the credibility or substance of my argument, then shame on me.  Public Relations people need to be involved in the dialog wherever it takes place -- weblogs included --  and have the guts to say it, mean it and sign it.

Gratuitous Weekend Post...

What happens when "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language" puts a color picture of Penelope Cruz on it's cover?

 

Today's clue:  If you don't have a subscription to the New York Review Of Books, you need / ought to get one now. 

The McKinsey Quarterly: The CEO's role in leading transformation

The McKinsey Quarterly offers a free email subscription and access to a few, select articles.  Free.  Great value.  Its latest update includes an article entitled The CEO's Role in Leading Transformation.  Here's the sub-head: "The CEO helps a transformation succeed by communicating its significance, modeling the desired changes, building a strong top team, and getting personally involved."  Highly recommended. 

Although the article doesn't go into tremendous detail about the "communication" aspect of leading transformation, but of course it's interesting  to me that it leads with this.  The article also includes this: "Sharing success stories helps crystallize the meaning of the transformation and gives people confidence that it will actually work." 

A lot of the work I've focused on during the past ten years has focused on "executive communications" and, truth is, it has steadily become the most demanded service I offer.   So, a friend of mine recently called me up and  to quiz me on executive communications -- and I was quite pleased I passed the test.  The gist of the quiz is based on Moses and his brother, Aaron.  When asked to lead the Jews, Moses tells God that he might not be up to the challenge as he doesn't speak well.  "Lord, open my breast, and do Thou ease for me my task, Unloose the knot upon my tongue, that they may understand my words."   Midrash says that Aaron's role was to help the people understand Moses.

Anyway, I encourage you to enroll for the free emails from McKinsey and, to help you see the value, I'm gifting you the free .pdf that was distributed to members this week. 

Download the .pdf of The CEO's Role in Leading Transformation

There are certain issues I still have...

... with the notion of Wikipedia even though I use it more than ever before and find it more useful than I ever imagined.  (I also have an online subscription to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in order to allay my concern for me and my school-age daughters -- and we find that very valuable.)  I've "joined" Wikipedia and have been impressed by the process I see "under the hood."  But beyond the reliability of the tool is the interesting model that created this work.

In a recent article published by Wharton, there is a report on a recent presentation at the school by Anthony D. Williams, co-author of Wikinomics:  How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.  As a public relations professional, I've been very interested in this model and have enven pointed to some potential issues with it before on this blog.  Afterall, if the general public can participate, then I can too and I can make a pretty good case for my authority (but not my objectivity) to contribute to an article on Wikipedia on behalf of my clients.  And then there's the story out of Los Angeles Times that the recent Doritos contest for amateur television contests was almost taken over by advertising professionals. 

Consider this a fair warning and probably completely obvious.  (I have a flair for the obvious.)  Some folks are much, much better at manipulating social and communication venues on behalf of themselves and as an agent for others.  And we really, really will.  And some of us will even do it in a  transparent and fair way.   

This is not a political post

In today's media, Vice President Dick Cheney is quoted as saying, ''a policy of retreat.''  His audience was an aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier at Yokosuka Navy Base near Tokyo.  I'm sure he received a very enthusiastic reception.  --Let's not review the politics, just the rhetoric because this administration seems to have an issue keeping some essential points of rhetoric straight. 

We'll establish the starting point for this as the administration's "war on terror."  Media starlets ranging from Jon Stewart to Maureen Dowd have criticized the administration for mixing up the concepts of strategies and tactics.  Terror is a tactic.  War is a strategy.  Nation building is a strategy.  More democracy is a goal.  Better health care is a goal.  --This is not an easy rhetorical framework to manage.  I've written many public relations plans and learned how to do this from a master of the art and craft.  Most public relations plans are structured under sub-heads like "objectives," "strategies," "tactics" and "measurement." 

But back to today's example:  Cheney's rhetoric is that  retreat is a policy.  I believe that retreat is a tactic and would prefer to leave the tactics of how to win a war to the Pentagon and other military experts.  If I were in a battle and the officer in charge said it was time to retreat, I would absolutely believe and trust him (or her).  So, rhetorically speaking, Cheney believes these military tactics are actually elements of policy and does anyone really care? 

Well, I do, obviously.  I believe language is sacred, literally.  In the political and business realms, language is not all but it plays an important and vital role.  And when --  either by accident or design -- our rhetoric is sloppy, then we can't expect much in return.  In Cheney's case, history will assay the results in the kiln of time.  In the meantime, I will leave you, gentle reader, with a quote from the 1985 NYTimes obituary of Robert Fitzgerald, a professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard.who translated many of the classics of the Western Canon.  I've carried this with me for more than twenty years now.  It's something Fitzgerald wrote for the fiftieth anniversary report of the Harvard class of 1933:   

So hard at best is the lot of man, and so great is the beauty he can apprehend, that only a religious conception of things can take in the extremes and meet the case.  Our lifetimes have seen the opening of abysses before which the mind quails.  But is seems to me there are a few things everyone can humbly try to hold onto:  love and mercy (and humor) in everyday living; the quest for exact truth in language and affairs of the intellect; self-recollection or prayer; and the peace, the composed energy of art.   

There are reasons for me to believe that the current administration either doesn't, or can't, appreciate Fitzgerald's framework.

Arf. Arf. Arf.

Normally, I don't pay too much attention to the headlines I read in my emailed edition of The Daily Dog.  Don't get me wrong, I think it's a fine product from a fine company, it's just that my pulse doesn't quicken when public relations people discuss public relations issues to other public relations people.  (I probably picked up this attitude at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism where it's understood there's a certain discipline and set of skills involved in journalism, but nothing so complicated that it can't be learned in less that two years.)

Anyway, the headline that caught my eye was about press releases, specifically, The Dark Side of Social Media: Press Releases Are Not a PR Strategy.  This interested me due to the number of discussions I've recently had with clients, friends, and entrepreneurs about the changing role of the press release.  And it has certainly changed from when I started off in the business.  I won't bore you here with the history of the press release, but we will notice that it has changed from a tool used to inform the media to a tool that can be used to directly inform the public and, if one is on top of one's game, actively leveraged as a sales tool, customer communications tool, employee relations tool, etc.  --And, by the way, the SEC still considers it an act of disclosure. 

But back to the article in The Daily Dog...   I agree with the author on many points:

• A press release is a tool (tactic) not a strategy (duh).
• There are lots of other tactics to use.
• Many more "amateurs" than ever before are actively involved in the creation of press releases.

But what strikes me as odd is that the author still believes that a  press release is a media relations tool -- at all.  My experience is that it is rare, very rare indeed that a press release has media impact.  Here's the last example from my work that I can cite:  Here's the media coverage.  Here's the press release.    I wrote the press release with the sales force in mind, but I also wrote it with one media outlet in particular in mind, the Saint John Telegraph Journal.  I had a reason to believe that the newspaper would take the story.  (Not quite as .... thoroughly ... as it did, but still...)  And then I made sure that the newspaper received the press release two days before it wired, a tactic afforded to me by working for a private company. 

But back to The Daily Dog... the author seems to be making the point that the press release tool is being diluted by the participation of amateurs and we should somehow better control this.  She draws a parallel between the uncontrolled use of press releases and the uncontrolled real estate development in her home town due to lack of zoning regulations.  I suggest this instead:  It is incumbent on public relations professionals to figure out ways to add value beyond the read of the general public.  The toothpaste is out of the tube, dear.  Businesswire and PR Newswire are very OK with the idea that more people have more access to their primary service and can afford it and are willing to use it.  (I've met people who believe that PR is an acronym for press release rather than public relations.) 

But is also rubs me the wrong way when public relations staff argue with their clients about whether or not a press release should be written.  I've seen public relations staff object to writing and wiring a press release because it won't help them win media coverage -- and they're correct.  And the client's point is that they need a press release because it's probably the most concise, essential marketing communication that might ever be created for their  product / service -- and they're correct.  --But if it takes a public relations professional more than a couple of hours to write and win approval on a press release, even at a public company, then something is amiss and it would appear that some skills need to be sharpened. 

Come on.  Let's be real public relations professionals and make it a win / win / win for the client, the media and our own work. 

As it has been...

This has been a repository of media coverage and other articles of my work.  As I've turned in this made-up career, I'm receiving encouragement from friends to post here more frequently on issues pertaining to public relations and not just the work of my own hands. 

I have a mental list of Important Thing's I've Learned and one is about opinions.  The setting for this lesson was after a couple of beers in the hallway of a dormitory at the University of  Missouri and my teacher was a peer, Rob Horn (aka "Tooter").  The lesson was based on a riddle.  Why are opinions like (a certain anatomical part)?  Because everyone has one and they all smell bad.  And I've carried that lesson close to me for several years now and it's influenced what I've posted here perhaps too much.  So, now you can expect to see more opinion and commentary here, for better or worse. 

And I would deeply appreciate any guidance you have to offer me.