In Another Life

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Martin Heller today shared his underwhelming impressions of his first experience visiting Second Life.

Under the headline, "PR in Second Life? Are They Kidding?," his musings appear on the website of IDG's soon-to-be Web-only Infoworld Magazine. Here are a few snippets from the tech-savvy reporter:

• "It still wasn't a wonderful experience. "


• "My avatar was surrounded by other avatars in various stages of dress and undress generally acting lost and typing stimulating things like 'Where are you from?'"


• "I had a quick look at the list of the most popular places in the system by traffic, and they were pretty much all porn."

I wonder whether Second Life has outspent its usefulness from a PR perspective? Gone are the days when the opening of an office or commercial enterprise merits media attention. Perhaps some philanthropic endeavor might be the new frontier. More on that in a subsequent post. Here are Mr. Heller's closing thoughts:

"As far as I can tell, Second Life isn't really work-safe, or even home-safe if you have children. I can't imagine why IBM, Sun, and others are doing PR or developer communities in Second Life. I remember Jon Udell discussing PR in Second Life in his column last fall, and he made it sound credible. Am I missing something here?"

No, Martin, you're not.

In the Bunker

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I guess our friends in Bentonville missed out again this year on making the list of 100 best places to work. No wonder, if you consider this morning's front page New York Times piece on the giant retailer's "bare-knuckled" tactics to ferret out any ethical transgression within the ranks of its sprawling global operation.

Still some members of the company's C-suite probably enjoyed reading Michael Barbaro's portrait of the pure and simple life inside the world's largest retailer. The same, however, can't be said about the portrayal of the company's prodigious public relations operation of which we had a bare-knuckled guided tour from Jeff Goldberg in this week's New Yorker:

"The Edelman team assigned to Wal-Mart, I learned, is divided into three groups: 'promote,' 'response,' and 'pressure.' The Jobs and Opportunity Zones notion came from the promotions team. The response-team members—veterans of political campaigns—are supposed to quickly counter criticism in the press or on the Web. The pressure group works on opposition research, focusing on the unions and the press."

In his decidedly critical piece, Mr. Goldberg rehashed the company's economic deprivation of its employees, especially part-timers, and shared in detail the often disingenuous efforts to paint the retailer as a great benefactor (a la Kim Jong II) offering lower prices to customers and economic opportunity to the un-or-underemployed. The truth even emerged about the $4 prescription gambit:

"The program has been a success, even though, so far, a relatively small number of drugs—about three hundred—are on the four-dollar list. The program is being marketed as a way for Wal-Mart to 'give back to the community'...a 'classic bait-and-switch,' adding that most of the drugs on the list are older, less prescribed drugs...By applying the Wal-Mart model to the generic-drug industry—pressuring manufacturers to sell to Wal-Mart for less—Simon said, the company has been able to make 'more money' in pharmaceuticals 'than we made last year.'"

This is a very complex company that clearly is internally conflicted by a desire to do good and do well. Some days the good prevails, but mostly the wells have it. While it's admirable for such a public enterprise to seek transparency, i.e., by inviting a New Yorker reporter to peak under the kimono, I'm mystified by the decision to publicize, of all things, the PR operation.

What possible benefit can Wal-Mart have derived from shining a spotlight on what it receives for its "$10 million" PR fee? This was one story request that should have been declined -- unless you can give me an example, outside of a trade publication, where the machinations of a PR team were portrayed in a positive light, let alone one embroiled in a highly contentious business and labor environment.

Trained Journalist

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A confluence of postings brings me to the subject of today's piece. The idea was sparked by a rant from a Silicon Valley product manager who bemoaned how inaccurate and lazy mainstream and citizen journalists can be:

"It’s a totally different world out there, assumptions I had about the knowledge level of the people I would be dealing with were completely wrong."

Then there was Dave Winer's recommendations last week to prepare for the dissolution of "centralized" journalism and rise of the distributed model:

"First, reform journalism school. It's too late to be training new journalists in the classic mode. Instead, journalism should become a required course, one or two semesters for every graduate. Why? Because journalism like everything else that used to be centralized is in the process of being distributed. In the future, every educated person will be a journalist, as today we are all travel agents and stock brokers. The reporters have been acting as middlemen, connecting sources with readers, who in many cases are sources themselves. As with all middlemen, something is lost in translation, an inefficiency is added. So what we're doing now, in journalism, as with all other intermediated professions, is decentralizing. So it pays to make an investment now and teach the educated people of the future the basic principles of journalism."

Finally, the third piece of the puzzle surfaced with a mention of a Porter-Novelli/Cymfony study from last year on corporate blogging. Adweek's Cathy Taylor cited it in her piece on the challenges for widespread adoption of the practice:

According to a study conducted late last year by Omnicom Group's Porter Novelli and social networking analysis company TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony, companies of more than 100 people were the least likely to have a CEO blogging, with public relations and product management executives being the most likely to post. As of last October, according to a Wiki tracking Fortune 500 bloggers, only eight percent of the Fortune 500 was blogging. "A lot of companies are really fearful of having blogs," says Charlene Li, an analyst with Forrester Research. They have to, she adds, "overcome this huge perception of risk."

OK. So we have three variations on the same theme:

1. A product manager complaining about how journalists of all stripes don't take the time to understand his product.


2. A social media pundit calling for universal training in the fundamentals of journalism as we move toward a distributed media model.


3. A study that offers a candid assessment of how the largest corporations remain reticent to embrace blogging (at least in this early stage).

At the risk of disintermediating the corporate PR function, we, as PR pros, should encourage product managers, lawyers and others who have expertise in their respective areas to play lead roles in the creation of content (oops, Dave, I mean journalism) -- news/info that's directly discoverable by the desired end audiences. Consider Sun's Jonathan Schwartz (pictured above).

While I don't think it's realistic to put everyone through journalism classes, I do think that those with the most knowledge at an enterprise merit such training, and eventually a first-person voice in the PR mix. We, as professional communicators, should reassert our value as catalysts/facilitators/evangelists for making this filter-bypass a reality...if only for the reason that I'm tired of hearing clients complain that the reporter "got it wrong."

College Choices

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During the I. Lewis Libby trial, the office of the Veep revealed its strategy for selecting media for interviews, i.e., those most susceptible to echoing the White House's messaging.

Surprisingly, NBC's true political insider Tim Russert headed the list. (I would have thought Larry King, but what do I know about Beltway spin?)

Anyone who reads Frank Rich's column with any regularity or who paged through his book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, will know that "command and control" reigns supreme with the Bushies, at the expense, of course, of transparency and openness. Hence we come to a little item that will be buried tomorrow -- overshadowed by the Gonzalez extended family's maneuverings to avoid self-incrimination.

The White House today revealed the names of the three universities where the U.S. President will deliver this year's commencement addresses. They are...drum roll please...Harvard, Yale and Columbia. Can you believe it???

Well, no. Not really. Instead, Mr. Bush plans to address the colleges he rightfully should have attended had it not been for his family legacy: Miami Dade College (Kendall Campus), St. Vincent College (in Latrobe, PA) and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, prep for the military branch presently embroiled in a financial travesty over a botched order for swifter boats.

I can understand the choice of St. Vincent, which is run by the head of Mr. Bush's faith-based initiative. It sits in the district represented by Congressman (and war veteran) John Murtha, one of the Iraq War's fiercest critics. The Coast Guard Academy also makes sense from a rah rah, photo-op perspective. But Miami Dade. Hmmm. I guess the University of Florida wasn't an option given that university's big-time diss of the taller, smarter son of George H.W. Bush.

Hey, I got it! Here are Miami Dade's incoming freshman enrollment stats:

• Admission 20,445 applied, 20,445 admitted, 10,409 enrolled


• Test scores SAT verbal scores over 500 18%, SAT math scores over 500 18%, SAT verbal scores over 600 2%, SAT math scores over 600 2%

Now here's a student body that will actually understand what the President is talking about. Hey, the school does have an Ivy League-caliber chess team.

Content to be Content

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Between spectating at high school sailing regattas and 9th grade and college lacrosse games, my weekends are pretty much shot.

Even so, it's over the weekends when I come across some of the more compelling content (I mean journalism) in the digital domain. Perhaps the weekend's added leisure time allows the blood to flow back into brains of the online punditry.

I've been following one discussion on the fate of newspapers posted on Saturday on Doc Searls' weblog. It opens with Tim O'Reilly ruminating on the sad state of affairs at the San Francisco Chronicle, then goes on to cite Dave Winer's remedy for what ails the vital vestiges of an ailing (changing) industry. I was taken by Mr. Winer's objection to the use of the word "content:"

"Stop calling everything 'content'. It's a bullshit word that the dot-commers started using back in the '90s as a wrapper for everything that could be digitized and put online. It's handy, but it masks and insults the true natures* of writing, journalism, photography, and the rest of what we still, blessedly (if adjectivally) call 'editorial.' Your job is journalism, not container cargo."

Of course, just as my brain got its synapses around a Utopian world of newspapering (think distributed editorial), I had a Monday morning wake-up call from The Times's Kit Seelye who offered this sobering assessment:

Revenue from advertising was in striking decline last month, compared with February a year ago, and were generally weaker than analysts had expected."

She went on to quote a Jupiter analyst:

"There is absolutely no question that the next 10 years are going to be really bad for the newspaper business. This is a time of wrenching change and chaos. All of our assumptions about newspapers are going to be changed. The format, the business model, the organization of newspapers have outlived their usefulness."

Still, online revenue growth -- admittedly a small part of total revenue -- is booming. Could this be the impetus for those who clamor for newspaper ownership or is it simply an ego-driven power grab? Take Sam Zell. According to today's Journal, he has the beat on The Tribune Company, and is more bullish than others. The Times reports:

"He called himself 'an opportunist' last week in an interview with The Associated Press, adding, 'I probably am not as pessimistic about the future of the newspaper business as others might be.'"

David Carr, in recounting last week's missteps at the LA Times, astutely points out:

Still, to deal with the problems the industry faces, newspapers do need to innovate and experiment, and experiments come with built-in risk. Newspapers are a fundamentally conservative industry, one that will innovate only at the point of a gun. But even with a big gun pointed at the business, most of the weapons at The Times seemed to be pointed inside.

To Dave Winer's quip, perhaps we should refrain from calling them "content providers." How's content revivers? Newspaper neophytes? Journalist juggernauts? Media masochists?

Conference Cornucopia

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Who missed David Pogue and Steven Levy's gushing coverage of the TED Conference in Monterey the week before last? Talk about a hot ticket!

Then there was January's Always On Confab in New York, and its sibling AO Hollywood skedded for the first week of May. I just attended the first Community 2.0 Conference in Vegas, which fell on the heals of the New Communications Forum, also held in Elvis land.

Not to be counted out, Rafat, Staci and the gang at the digital cognoscenti-revered Paid Content, have jumped on the pundit wagon with their first conference on the economics of social media next month in Beverly Hills.

Who can keep track of the digital conference revolution? I don't remember the dot-com era spawning so many talk-a-thons!

Following the implosion -- yes, that implosion -- the tech conferences soon became a dying breed. CES almost succumbed to E3 Expo, PC Expo disappeared, and CeBIT's U.S. debut was distinctly underwhelming. The Jupiter Forums...ahhh, the Jupiter Forums.

But today we're again experiencing a tech/social media-driven conference renaissance (despite Valley Wag's diss of Red Herring's pay-for-play plan). WOMMA, Search Engine Strategies and many of their ilk are bustling with bodies...and enough bombast to benefit the bewildered.

It's impossible to keep tabs on all. Here's one that's not especially tech-driven, but whose prospective pundits will certainly give the social media set a run for its money.

L.A. Confidential

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In the PR biz, especially among the media relations set, prospective clients and employers frequently judge one's potential prowess by the girth of his or her Rolodex.

For the youthful readers of this space, a Rolodex is a physical apparatus containing rigid, but flippable cards on which one registers, with pen or pencil, contact info for your social network of friends and business associates. It typically sits on one's desk (versus desktop). See image at right.

Not one, but two Rolodexes came into play for a story that appears on the business pages of today's Los Angeles Times. It revolves around the Rolodexes of Hollywood player Brian Grazer and his publicist.

Someone at The Times decided to have Brian mine his Rolodex for "a stable of writers" to contribute to the Times's Sunday "Current" section.

So far, so good until...it was learned that the publicist may have tapped a prominent member of her Rolodex -- her boyfriend -- to green light the deal. That person happens to be the paper's editorial page editor.

"I believe my personal relationships are a private matter," the publicist noted. "That said, I have a great respect and a keen understanding of journalism and journalistic ethics. I have never let my personal relationships interfere with my work and any suggestion to the contrary is insulting and untrue."

While this supposed scandal doesn't compare to the Staples Center fiasco of some years ago, the reaction by several noble members of the newsroom speaks volumes about how the PR profession is perceived.

"We're concerned that even the appearance of a conflict is enough to discredit the hard work of reporters and editors in the newsroom," said Charles Ornstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. "This newspaper has worked very hard, even during these trying times, to consistently improve our coverage and remain upbeat about our future. To face a potential scandal is really discouraging."

The publicist-in-question's boss, Allan Mayer, who apparently orchestrated the deal, weighed in with some bridge-burning words:

"If this thing was killed over this, I think it would be an indication of the moral bankruptcy of the Los Angeles Times," Mayer said. "If the newspaper is so fearful of what uninformed people think that it would allow itself to be stampeded in that way … I think it would be a very sad day."

I guess, for some journos, a perfectly legitimate editorial idea made by a publicist rises to the level of "scandal." At least the personal e-mail exchanges between the publicist and the editor, if they even exist, were not insidiously revealed to advance a PR (or legal) agenda.

Update: Editorial Page Editor Quits; Grazer pieces canned.

Socially Optimized or Optimally Socialized?

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Ahhhh. The news release. That poor, beleaguered PR tool that has died a thousand deaths, only to be reborn -- optimally and socially speaking.

This morning I was greeted with a text message from media maven Lisa Kovitz who tipped me to our friend and mediabistro.com doyenne Laurel Touby's answer to the myriad unsolicited (and misguided) press releases that clutter her inbox.

Laurel has debuted "Release Me: The Press Release Blog" (Richard and Kevin, are you listening?) Here's her explanation:

"I get so many press releases every day, I don't know what to do with them. But, I know that someone out there cares. So, I've decided to create an entire blog comprised of nothing more than press releases. Select PR people will be invited to post there. I'm calling this experiment, Release Me."

Laurel, I hope you realize that this is NOT the best way to manage your overloaded inbox. In fact, quite the contrary. Good luck with it.

Segueing over to a Business Wire breakfast this morning featuring the SEM/SEO specialist (and my former Ziff-Davis client) Greg Jarboe, ClickZ and Search Engine Watch editor Rebecca Lieb (who appeared anonymously in a previous post concerning the drowning of one MacBook Pro), Web 1.0 vet and co-founder of the Social Media Club Howard Greenstein, and Melanie Mitchell, AOL's optimizer queen who heads SEM/SEO for the reinvented web portal. Laura Sturaitis, BW's VP, new media development, introed the panel.

Hmmm. No PR people? Well, I guess Greg will always be a PR person at heart.

Notable quotables:

Jarboe: "News releases have leapfrogged the trade pubs for reaching the knowledge worker and influencing purchase decisions."

Lieb: "We're not only competing against other publications [to break stories], but we're competing against you."

Jarboe: "We generated more client site traffic from a post on tree.hugger.com that we did from one on CBSnews.com...more from HuffingtonPost.com than ABCnews.com.

Lieb: I not only subscribe to the RSS feeds of Business Wire and its competitors, but also to those of the companies I follow...like Google.

Jarboe: There is nothing automated about optimizing a press release. Nothing will replace sound business judgement.

Greenstein: "Social Media are the forms of media where people come to share their ideas, interests, passions and opinions, and give people the ability to share the message with others."

Too Much Credit

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I stumbled upon a press release from one Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League, which alleges that White House's PR operatives have killed a number of news stories across a range of MSM outlets. (Actually, it was Mr. Chapman's name and the name of his organization that mostly were spiked.)

At issue is a brewing scandal involving the alleged diversion of Small Business Administration funds from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies like Wal-Mart and Boeing. The head of the organization says:

"White House PR firms have been working overtime to kill stories on Bush administration policies that have diverted over $300 billion in federal small business contracts to the top 2 percent of U.S. firms," Chapman said.

Now, I'm not one to put it past this administration for currying favor with its biggest corporate donors. After all, we only need to look at the nation's energy policy to understand the culture of corporate patronage that exists in the White House. It's Mr. Chapman's assertion that PR firms have the ability to spike MSM stories -- barring a threat of legal action -- that fell short in my mind.

The release cites a 2006 Office of Government Accountability report that found the Bush administration had spent "$1.6 billion over 30 months on public relations campaigns and advertising." Mr. Chapman asserts that:

"...publications have suddenly dropped their stories on this issue after being pressured by White House public relations firms, including the Associated Press, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News, BusinessWeek, Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, Fortune, Fortune Small Business and dozens of other smaller newspapers and magazines around the country."

Mr. Chapman, you give us too much credit. Sure, we can balance a piece by offering up new facts, and we may even be able to kill a story should we overwhelm a reporter with enough information to render obsolete the story's underlying premise. But, even the most influential PR operatives won't lay claim to being able to kill a reasonably legitimate piece.

(Come to think of it, I do recall one legitimate Bush (ear)piece that I wish hadn't been spiked.)

The Future of Journalism

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No. I don't have the chutzpah (I mean prescience) of a Jay Rosen or Jeff Jarvis to portend what that future holds. Nonetheless, Jeff's observations posted yesterday (and captured in part on video by Rafat) from an OPA (a former client) event in London, coupled with Jay's Surowiecki-esque approach to news reporting are worthy reads for those following the trends in the fourth estate, (i.e., anyone in our profession).

Jeff embraces the acronym WWGD (What Would Google Do) in advocating (a la John Battelle) for a decentralized media architecture wherein the public is at the center and, effectively sets when, where and how it consumes or produces news, info (and advertising). From Jarvis:

"I talked about Yahoo as the last old media company to look at the world this way (along with all the older media companies): 'We control content. We market to get you to come to us. Then we feed you as much advertising as we can, until you leave.' That’s the centralized model of media. I contrasted this with the decentralized, distributed model embodied by nobody better than Google: 'We go to where you are and put service and advertising there. Your pageview is then our pageview. And we have enabled you to do what you want to do. And we can all do more of it.' I argued that media companies should ask WWGD — ‘what would Google do?’ (and, yes, Google is the new God).

Jarvis then questioned New York Times digital chief Martin Nisenholtz's assertion:

"...that some media brands — yes, the Times — are worth coming to. He supports the outside-in model and sees The Times as ‘in.’

In making his case for a distributed (versus centralized) media model, Jarvis agreed with Rafat who annointed him as occupying the middle ground:

"Yes, I do think mine is the middleground for it’s about working together in new ways that were never possible before to do more than we ever could before. (And, yes, I just ignored the blogger slaps. I say on the tape that I dream of the day when I can go to a conference and not have that old spat; it’s so tired.)"

He actually didn't ignore the blogger slaps, or at least not the camera phone-captured remark made by Nisenholtz whom blogger Howard Owens insinuates is a Luddite when it comes to acknowledging bloggers' journo creds. (I guess Jeff's consulting contract with The Times has lapsed. And Martin is anything but a Luddite.)

Jarvis then goes on to defend his new calling as bona fide journalism by citing a compendium of the original stories he's generating while in London. He leaves with this message:

"...Nisenholtz needs to hear from that is that bloggers keep each other honest, too. In distributed media, there is no us and them; it’s all we."

Another media pontificator Jay Rosen gets a high-profile gift today from the irrepressible and always enjoyable New York Times carpetbagging media columnist David Carr for Rosen's much-touted Assignment Zero, a collaboration between Wired magazine and NewAssignment.Net, the experimental journalism site Rosen established at NYU where he's a professor.

Like a project with which I was recently involved called We Are Smarter than Me in which Wharton, MIT Sloan and Pearson Publishing partnered to craft a business book written and edited wiki-style, Rosen's mission is to tap and organize the wisdom of the crowds to produce quality journalism. In a lengthy piece (Jay's rarely at a loss for words), penned last week on his wired partner's website, Rosen concludes:

"One day, stories with a thousand people on the masthead might become routine, and we'll know how to do them. Right now we're seeking hundreds, who can help us take apart and put together a single sprawling story that matters to Wired and the world beyond."

We'll see.

Runaway Brands

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For the smattering of readers who follow this space, you will know that I started off the week in Vegas at the first "community 2.0" conference specifically created for the enterprise to explore how social networks and online collaboration can contribute to business success.

One of the conference's more compelling presentations came from Ben McConnell who co-wrote the books Creating Customer Evangelists and its recently published sequel Citizen Marketers.

In his presentation, Ben laid out a number of real-life scenarios that will surely send shutters down the spine of any brand manager who puts the accent on the "manager" part of his job title. The cases demonstrated how growing access to broadband and simple-to-use content creation tools have empowered those (motivated) consumers to extol the products, services and companies they love...or castigate those they hate -- in effect wresting control away from a marketer's carefully laid out (and expensive) plans to garner brand glory.

He classifies these citizen content creators into one of the following categories: "filters," "fanatics," "facilitators" or "firecrackers." On Monday, I posted about one group of "fanatics" who created and maintain the iSociety website for enthusiasts of IBM's mid-range computing platform. It operates completely outside the aegis, but with the endorsement of Big Blue (as if the computer maker had a choice in the matter).

My friend (and career consigliere) Penelope pointed me to a case of one "firecracker" who decided to blow the lid off her former employer, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, by posting "9 Confessions From A Former Enterprise Rental Salesman" on the Consumerist blog. The list starts out like this:

1. Enterprise doesn't have any set prices.
2. By now everyone knows that you don't need that extra rental insurance...
3. If you want to secure a really low daily rate but stay on that employee's good site (i.e. so you can get the same deal again and again), take your rental by any Enterprise in the region the next day and remove the extra coverage...
4. This is the big money tip: Most of Enterprise's business comes from insurance replacement rentals.
5. Enterprise runs the "weekend specials" because there are loads of spare cars on weekends.

While in Vegas, I asked Corante president and conference chairman Francois Gossieaux about the impending loss of control over brand message. He said that the age of "interrupt marketing" may be coming to an end, and that marketers need to recognize that communities will eventually drive brands. He did say, however, that online communities are not immune to being influenced. I'm paraphrasing, so here's the audio clip (TRT: 11:14).

Also, here is a link to the conference blog that raises more eyebrows on the "future of communities."

"Soon Be 7"

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With instant global recognition and reverence, any news from Potterville (no not that one) merits media attention. In this case, it's the unveiling of...(drum roll please) the PR and marketing campaign to hype the release of the final chapter in the Harry Potter series.

Starting next month, news of Harry and his cohorts will begin to seep, I mean soar into the public consciousness -- a full three months before fans can get their hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The folks from Scholastic yesterday revealed how they intend to tease, tempt and tantalize fans in order to traffic the record first printing of 12 million books.

The branded marketing campaign includes a bi-weekly release of a provocative question, a 10-city, Knight-filled bus tour kicking off June 2 from New York City (!), and generous doses of advertising, retail and online promotions.

All this guarantees household name status before the book hits stores at 12:01 a.m. on July 21st. The anticipation and hyperbole are so strong that even the marketing campaign itself merited its own slogan: "THERE WILL SOON BE 7."

Geesh. Couldn't the literates at Scholastic come up with a better name than that? How about these?

• "The Harry Potter Die Another Day Tour," or conversely
• "The Harry Potter Live and Let Die Tour"
• "The Harry Potter Uncut and Uncensored Tour"
• "The J.K. Rowling Calls It A Wrap, Enters Rehab Tour"
• "The Choose Your Passion Tour: 12 Million Books or 12 Million iPhones"

Stay tuned.

The PR Store: Coming to a Mall Near You

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I wasn't sure if I was reading this story correctly. A Charlotte, NC company called PRS Franchise Systems LLC has opened 13 PR retail stores and has plans for many more.

"And while it's the first PRstore in Oregon, it might not be the last. The company plans to have 350 stores in operation in the next five years. There were 13 PRstore franchises nationwide in 2006, up from six in 2005, according to Entrepreneur.com."

Of course, much of this is a misguided (and misleading) misnomer since most of the merchandise appears to fall in the realm of off-the-shelf sales and marketing collateral (with a press release and press conference thrown in for good measure).

"Prices range from rock bottom to mid-level. A company logo can cost as little as $600, a screaming deal compared with the near-five-figures top designers charge. Similarly, entrepreneurs can score a basic four-page Web site for $950. All orders can be expedited, adding to the convenience factor."

No wonder. A visit to the company's website reveals that its founder never actually worked in our profession.

"Daniel S. Fragen has...managed branch and regional sales and operations teams, and a national distribution division...Other positions include a variety of sales and sales management roles and most recently as Sr. Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Elcotel Telecommunications, Inc."

I guess it was inevitable that someone would try to capitalize on the PR industry's rising cache among the marketing cognoscenti.

"'It's an idea whose time has come,' says Laura Ries, president of Ries & Ries marketing strategists in Atlanta. 'A lot of small businesses can't go to the big guys because their accounts just aren't large enough, but there's no doubt that small businesses, in order to grow and become big businesses, need PR," she says. "It's like H&R Block with taxes. Most people don't need a big firm or a fancy accountant -- just a little bit of help.'"

Huh? Why not just choose a smaller, specialized agency or consultant? Hey, there's even a Scottish PR firm called The PR Store.

Oh well. I guess I had hoped that PR's mass merchandising emergence would have followed in the mode of a McKinsey and Bain versus a Wal-Mart and Dunkin Donuts. How does one package intellectual capital for the masses, anyway?

Community Organizers

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Both Barry Libert and Francois Gossieaux (pictured left and right) were pleased by the turnout and enthusiasm for the inaugural Community 2.0 Conference held here in Las Vegas since Sunday.

Barry, the CEO of Shared Insights, which organized the conference, and Francois, the founder of Corante and chairman of C20, shared their impressions of why online communities will play an increasingly larger role in a company's brand DNA and across all its business functions. Both feel the movement is presently at an early adopter stage.

Here's some audio of what each had to say: Barry Libert (TRT 3:10) and Francois Gossieaux (TRT: 11:14).

Craig and Scott's Communities

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While most of the Community 2.0 Conference is focused on the business enterprise, there's much to be gleaned from consumer-driven communities. The panel that featured Craig's List founder Craig Newmark, About.com CEO Scott Meyer and Social Signal's Alexandra Samuel explored this. Giovanni Rodriguez, a Valley-based PR/marketing consultant, moderated.

I'm sure you can find a more substantive recounting on Corante's special Community 2.0 blog site.

One of the take-aways for me revolved around the mistake of over-investing in the engineering of one's online community platform at the expense of nurturing authenticity. Scott recognized Craig's List, with its minimalist interface, as a good example of a site where community (not bells & whistles) drives its success.

Craig, for his part, absolved his company for what ails the newspaper (classified) industry. He suggested that perhaps newspapers lost their consumer-driven focus in favor of profit margins (through the marginalization of investigative journalism, etc).

Alexandra made a good point about starting communities with a small, but passionate group of members versus building a boffo site and with the hope people will come. One way is to find a topic about which a company's demographic is passionate and build it from there.

I had a chance to chat briefing with Craig and Scott following the session. Here's what each had to say: Craig Newmark (RT: 1:57) and Scott Meyer Part I and II (RT: 2:38 and 1:37).

iSociety

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On the shuttle back to the hotel from the Bellagio last night, I eavesdropped a conversation in which a marketing manager at IBM talked effusively about an online business community called iSociety. Since I fell short of making it into high society, this sounded like a worthwhile endeavor to explore.

I'm at the Community 2.0 Conference today and tomorrow where IT types and other are spreading the gospel about social networks and online communities across the enterprise. I made a point to find the IBM'er this morning to learn more about iSociety.

Her name is Toni Taylor and she is the IBM marketing manager who serves as the liaison between her company and this completely independent and flourishing online community of IBM platform enthusiasts/evangelists. Here's what she told me. (TRT: 4:37)

The Business Social

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Social networks are everywhere. Just consider the amount of media attention they're commanding. It seems that just about every consumer marketer has plans to digitally embrace and engage their demographically distinct consumer.

More recently, however, we're beginning to hear more about businesses getting their feet wet with online communities and socially networked environments. Some hope to better connect with vendors or suppliers. Others to bridge employees. Still others to mine customers.

Cisco, IBM, Pearson Publishing and the CIA(!) are just a few off the top of my head, but there are countless more.

So with that intro, I'm off tomorrow to Vegas for what may be the first conference focused exclusively on how online communities make good business sense for businesses. One of the organizers, Shared Insights (my client), specializes in...guess what? Building communities and social networks for the enterprise. You may remember the company as one of the enabling partners in the collaboration between Pearson, Wharton and MIT Sloan to write a business book (We Are Smarter Than Me) entirely as a wiki.

Anyway, lots of bold-faced names in the community building and proselytizing business will be at the inaugural Community 2.0 Conference including Lenovo's David Churbuck, Yahoo!'s Elizabeth Churchill, LiveWorld's Peter Friedman, Corante's Francois Gossieaux, MySpace's Shawn Gold, HBS's John Hagel, Shared Insights's Barry Libert, About.com's Scott Meyer, Wharton Publishing's Tim Moore, Craig Newmark, Patricia Seybold, Google Inc's Rajen Sheth, The Conference Board's incoming prexy Jon Spector, SAP's Mark Yolton and others.

I hope to pop out some posts from there early next week, so stay tuned.

Corrective Action

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So your client is dismayed by the tenor of a reporter's portrayal of his company (or him). What course of action do you, the proverbial good client-service person, recommend he follow?

A) Call the lawyers and seek legal action
B) Demand a correction (via the reporter's editor)
C) Submit a letter-to-the-editor
D) None of the above

Actually, the correct answer is D) None of the above. Reason: taking issue with a story's tenor is not a valid reason for A, B or C. (Though nowadays, there is one more option: blog about it.)

The last option aside, if the journalist's facts are wrong, you're on terra firma with option B at almost any bona fide news organization. And it's even more noteworthy when a journalist of the citizen variety agees to issue a correction.

Take, for example, blogger Sramana Mitra. This week, Ms. Mitra echoed a Wall Street Journal story in which Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel's compensation was inaccurately reported. (Specifically, it was a line about his "2006 bonus of $25.7 million in stock" that apparently raised eyebrows.)

Demonstrating that Yahoo!'s PR folks, and its agency, Outcast PR, are actually listening to the online conversation (and reading The Journal), Ms. Mitra quickly received an e-mail from the PR person with the correct details about the stock option grant. The e-mail ended with:

"Would it be possible to issue a correction as the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and others have done that clarify that Terry’s stock value is not $25.7 million, rather he was given an option to purchase 800,000 Yahoo! shares? Please let me know if this doesn't make sense."

To her credit, Ms. Mitra corrected the information, the act of which was reported by the Seeking Alpha blog. Yahoo!'s cause also was helped by The Journal's online re-write:

"Corrections & Amplifications: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Yahoo CEO Terry Semel received a bonus of $25.7 million in Yahoo stock. He received options to purchase 800,000 Yahoo shares."

Good catch...though I'm curious to know just how many corrective e-mails Outcast PR ended up sending out, and where they drew the line on the long tail of bloggers?

Wikinonymous

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News from wiki-land: the free and pervasive consumer-generated Internet encyclopedia plans to ask expert contributors to prove their credentials. How exactly? Beats me.

Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales spoke via IM with The AP from Japan last night to confirm the plans, which were prompted by the revelations that a senior wiki board person, posing and posting as a professor of religion, is actually a college dropout. Wales wrote:

"We always prefer to give a positive incentive rather than absolute prohibition, so that people can contribute without a lot of hassle."

Hey look: pseudonymous postings, professions and personalities are part and parcel of the social media phenomenon. Just think back to the nascent days of AOL chat rooms, then flash forward to Second Life. (We won't even talk about all the gray goods on eBay or predators on MySpace.) I wonder if it's human nature to deceive when shielded by the cloak of anonymity?

But back to Wikipedia. This citizen-created online global encyclopedia has some serious Google juice. A search query for almost any proper noun invariably produces a wikipedia listing on the first page of the Google's organic search results rankings.

As such, the constitution and veracity of the world's default encyclopedia has undergone its share of scrutiny. The history department of Middlebury College recently banned its use by students. Other academic institutions are sure to follow.

Since this is a PR blog, my beef has more to do with Wales' contempt for the PR profession than anything else. Constantin raised this issue last summer after a German PR firm attempted to game the encyclopedia for one of its clients. Wales felt that being paid to influence Wikipedia content "is a serious serious no-no because of the obvious conflict-of-interest issues."

To me, it makes no difference if you're paid to post or not. If you have timely and accurate information that improves Wikipedia's content, then you should be allowed to post. And guess what? More often than not, the PR department at a company with a presence in the online encyclopedia actually knows better than some motivated NGO or disgruntled customer.

On the other hand, I believe that this latest effort to prove one's credentials is a positive step. The identity of the source often speaks louder than the submission itself.

The Beet on AP's Video Dreams

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Did anyone notice the video post on Beet.TV yesterday? If you didn't, take a look. My buddy Andy Plesser, whose Walter Mittyesque existence waivers between PR man and vlogging crusader, caught up with The AP's head of global broadcast strategy Jim Kathman.

Kathman (exclusively) outlined the partnership between the world's largest news organization and Microsoft in the development and current beta testing of an online video platform that enables thousands of U.S. newspapers, television and radio stations to upload, publish and monetize locally-created video. Some excerpts:

"The new system is in beta tests with some 30 newspaper publishers and broadcasters including The Miami Herald, the Houston Chronicle and the Rocky Mountain News. The program will go live in about 30 days."

"The program currently...involves a much bigger pie: it's the 7,000 newspapers, television and radio stations that are affiliated with the Associated Press and who will create their own content, locally. The clips will be staff and user-generated video."

"Beet.TV has learned that the AP will stream about 7.5 million clips this month. CPM (cost per thousand views) is above $20. MSN has sold pre-roll ad inventory on the network to national brand advertisers including GMC, GE, Proctor & Gamble and Netflix."

Wow! 7.5 million clips?

"The AP projects that as many as 50 percent of affiliates, or some 3,500 local news organizations, will eventually participate in the new video program."

Talk about taking APTN to the next level! Gee, I remember being surprised by the news of The AP's acquisition of Worldwide Television News (WTN) to form APTN. In so doing, AP declared that it was taking video news production and distribution (via satellite) seriously. (No significant broadband penetration back in 1998.)

So what does this mean for us lowly PR types? All I can say is that if digital video is destined to dominate, The AP's ubiquitous network of subscribers makes the once staid wire service a force to be reckoned with.

(Also, it's nice to know that much of the video content appearing in our local news outlets will have the journalistic imprimatur of The Associated Press, albeit, as some gripe, with IE Explorer required.

Blackout PR's Blackeye

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Last summer, Con Edison, New York City's electric monopoly, had a big problem, that seemed to go on...and on....and on. It concerned a massive power failure in the NYC Borough of Queens affecting some 350,000 customers.

(For my two readers in Jakarta, don't confuse Queens with New York's other boroughs of The Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn or Manhattan. Think of it this way: Queens is home to the New York Mets, whereas The Bronx is home to the Yankees. Queens has LaGuardia Airport, Brooklyn and Kennedy.)

The blackout somehow lasted over a week's time (during a nasty New York heat wave), allowing the local politicians to ingratiate themselves with their constituents at the expense of the big bad utility. With the power finally restored, Con Ed decided that it needed to mend the broken bridges since the news media filter pretty much filtered out Con Ed's perspective.

The company smartly resorted to advertorials, the knd of which we witnessed recently from JetBlue, which also is headquartered in Queens. This brings us to the present. On Sunday, a popular day for politicos to posture for the press, one New York State Assemblyman from Queens, not wise to the ways of corporate reputation, castigated the utility for the "Blackout P.R. Overload." Democrat Michael Gianaris, said:

"It's the ultimate outrage . . . that they're running a slick p.r. campaign . . . instead of helping businesses get up on their feet."

Gee. Couldn't this esteemed politician have chosen a different adjective to describe the campaign? A Con Ed spokeswoman replied:

"...the utility has spent about $90 million for its emergency response, permanent repairs and 'ongoing improvements' in the area since the blackout. She added that Con Ed paid out a total of $14.3 million in claims. And she defended the p.r. campaign, saying, 'Advertising in local papers . . . is an important means of communicating our commitment...We have an ongoing commitment to communicate to our customers.'"

Right. And by the way, Mike, "advertising in newspapers" is not exactly PR, though most full-service PR firms offer clients the advertorial option. Ironically, it's this Queens politician who's actually using PR (and taxpayer dollars) for his own aggrandizement.

Tap Tap Tap

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Dear Leslie,

No one said it would be easy. Lucrative? Yes. High profile? For sure. Exciting? Well...it is Bentonville, after all.

But changing an intransigent corporate culture is damned hard work. A dose of social media certainly didn't do it. Quite the opposite.

The last thing you needed today is an HP-like scandal followed by inadequate answers that raise even more questions.

Good luck with this one. It's going to get worse before it gets better.

Regards,

Peter

The Committee to Unprotect Journalists

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If you think American journalists are under government siege, their plight pales in comparison to the way Russia deals with its investigative scribes (or any other malcontent).

They just murder them, or so it appears, based on today's news emanating from that increasingly despotic regime.

AP Moscow reported moments ago that Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday after falling from a fifth-story window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, officials said.

"Safronov, who had served as a colonel in the Russian Space Forces before joining Kommersant in 1997, frequently angered the authorities with his critical reporting."

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which tracks such things , reported in January that:

"...13 Russian journalists have been murdered in contract-style killings since 2006, making Russia the third-deadliest country for journalists after Iraq and Algeria in the past 15 years."

The threat of jail time certainly sounds preferable to death. Ironically, the changed news industry itself -- with its 24/7 news feed and ever-shorter consumer attention spans -- works in favor of those wishing to put evil deeds behind them. A story breaks, and before long it fades into consumers' collective rear view mirrors.

Even more ironical is that today's much-maligned breed of journalist, e.g., the citizen variety, may in fact serve as the savior for redemptive action. Bloggers often give fading stories the "legs" required to force legislative, regulatory or corporate action.

Fashion Statement

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For every major, and many minor media events -- from the Super Bowl to the Grammys to the Olympics -- corporate marketing chiefs task their PR operatives to "leverage" (how I hate that word) the captive journalists for their company's product or service.

PR often extends an event sponsor's costly marketing spend (i.e., on-site signage, hospitality, advertising time) with add-on programs that hopefully produce "earned media" (how I hate that term). Sometimes it's easy, as is the case of the Super Bowl when you know that the entire ad/marketing beat and others queue up to pounce on the advertising story.

Other times it's a little dicier, as when Harry Winston or Cartier or Elizabeth Taylor donates millions of dollars of baubles to the Oscars' red carpet strollers with the hope that ET or Access or Extra will notice. (Just don't be fooled by Mary Hart's initial astonishment and eventual commercial plug for some fabulously gaudy piece of jewelry. It's sponsored saccharine.)

We once represented the Men's Formal Wear Association, which was looking to gain some attention for...guess what. Our idea was to enlist the association's hundreds of members to instantly vote on the most resplendent male thespians walking the red carpet on Oscar night. We devised fun categories, some on par with Mr. Blackwell, tallied the results and proceeded to (literally) ride the media's coattails into newspapers, magazines and on TV in the days following the telecast.

Flash forward to the latest fashion dust-up. As you may know, glossy magazine publishers also charge their publicists with capitalizing on high profile, demographically appropriate events. Think Vanity Fair party. It seems that VF's sister publication, the biblical fashion book Vogue, played a leading role in selecting Oscar winner (and its cover girl) Jennifer Hudson's ensemble for the night. Great PR, right? Welllll, not exactly.

The magazine's larger than life editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley personally accompanied Ms. Hudson in search for the perfect dress. What he didn't anticipate was the derision said dress would produce, on a level not seen since Gwyneth's little number raised eyebrows several years ago. To make matters worse, Ms. Hudson, a newbie for this kind of thing, dissed her Vogue fashion consigliere on "The Today Show." Here's the essence of the faux pas:

"I can't believe she said that on national TV," says one friend of Talley's. "She's so green. That was really ill-advised and probably a costly mistake." Another interested party says Talley deserves a drubbing: "What was he thinking? Why would he choose something so hideous for her on the biggest night of her life. It's really odd. Talk about being out of Vogue!"

I guess the publicists at Vogue are in "crisis mode." Hey look: "what makes a crisis most" varies from industry to industry. Have a good weekend.

Flaming the Fans

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March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. On this first day of the month that ushers in spring, we're seeing some lion-like behavior aimed at two vital critics at arguably the most influential newspaper in the nation.

The first incident involved the braggadocio restaurateur whose too-real reality show didn't help in the reputation or reservation department. I'm talking, of course, about Jeffrey Chodorow (pictured) and his ill-fated adventure with chef/restaurant namesake Rocco Dispirito. Lawsuits and a failed NYC eatery served as the project's just desserts.

The latest kerfuffle involves Mr. Chodorow's reaction to Times food critic Frank Bruni's annointment of zero stars to Chodorow's new Kobe beef steak house. The gruff, flamboyant and rich restaurateur reached into one of his deep-pockets to come up with a reported $40,000 for a full-page ad and Grade A prime placement opposite Mr. Bruni's Wednesday restaurant review. (Bruni did reply, btw.)

The acerbic letter-as-ad written to Mr. Bruni's editor questioned Mr. Bruni's qualifications as a critic:

"Mr. Bruni comes to us from Rome where he was not the local expert on Italian cuisine....In fact, there hasn't been a real food critic with food background...at The Times...since Ruth Reichl..."

Chodorow then extended his new restaurant's fresh notoriety by publicly offering any of his employees an all-expense paid trip for two to the Caribbean if they recognize Mr. Bruni at any of his 20+ eating establishments.

Today we're treated to a similar PR ploy by Bud Konheim, CEO of Nicole Miller, directed against The Times's fashion critic Cathy Horyn. WWD reports the clash, which first broke in New York magazine's Intel column:

"In the piece, Konheim said Horyn 'has a lack of real education in the fashion business — she doesn't even know how to pronounce Lanvin.'

The WWD item was pegged to rumors that Vera Wang, also the subject of a some misgivings from from Horyn's keyboard, was considering blackballing the critic from her shows. Konheim recounted the conversation:

"Vera called and said, 'Aren't you afraid?,' he told WWD. I said, 'Afraid of what?…That she's going to get a front-page story in The New York Times saying Bud Konheim's an a--hole?'" Though that response may seem harsh, Konheim said that result could be the 'best publicity' he could get."

"The best publicity?" I suppose...if you think that Paris Hilton facing jail time for driving with a suspended license while on probation is a good thing.

The bigger question for our brethren in the biz: does a public calling-out of an influential fashion, book, film or food critic -- from The Times or elsewhere -- serve as a business catalyst or the kiss of death? Aren't Jeffrey, Bud and Norman, for that matter, flaming the fans who might otherwise have missed these one-time only reviews? Food for thought.

Perhaps the afflicted should consider the aplomb of Broadway impresario David Merrick who solved his critic problem by eliciting glowing quotes from seven people with the same names as the day's popular theatre critics. Their words and names appeared in ads promoting Merrick's latest production. Now that's "the best publicity."