Chick Filleted

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As if the Atlanta-based chicken chain hasn't endured its share of public condemnation for management's much-publicized anti-gay stance, today we learn -- in Gizmodo of all places -- about an apparent effort by a PR person, posing as a Facebook fan, to e̶n̶g̶a̶g̶e̶ astroturf the real reason why Jim Henson pulled its toys from the QSR.

"Only Chick-fil-A claimed the toys were pulled because of a 'possible safety issue'. That, of course, is a complete lie. A lie that the company may be propagating with fake Facebook accounts of Chick-fil-a sympathists."

In the PR biz, we've witnessed far too many incidents featuring PR peeps as poseurs advocating for their paying clients or employers. You'd think we learned something by now.  Gizmodo:

"Just check out this back and forth on Chick-fil-A's Facebook page between real, breathing people and "Abby Farle", a Facebook account that was made 8 hours ago by a chicken PR flack with a stock image of a teenage girl as her profile picture."

Invariably they all end badly for the perpetrators.

There's an even bigger issue that transcends PR people behaving badly. It has to do with how a company's stance on social issues can so easily spur undesired consumer actions. There's no question that Chick-fil-A's business has been hurt -- in certain parts of the country including NYC where former Governor Eliot Spitzer, no stranger to controversy, weighed in with a Slate piece titled "Should You Boycott Chick-fil-A?"

"If you really don't think gays and lesbians should have the same rights as everyone else, and you oppose same-sex marriage, stop by Chick-fil-A. If you truly believe gays and lesbians should be second-class citizens, and if you sincerely don't want them to marry the people they love, stop by Chick-fil-A.

But the same goes for those of us who support same-sex marriage and have what we consider to be a broader view of civil rights. We should boycott Chick-fil-A. These are our consumer dollars—and they're part of our voice. We should use them for products we like—to support companies we like and to back causes we like."

Now if only Eliot's wisdom can be effectively applied to those consumer-facing brands bankrolling some of the more notorious, opaque and specious right wing attacks. Here's a quick look at 23 of them:

In an era when social media empowers individuals to instantly rally around issues of importance to them -- from either end of the political spectrum -- consumer-facing companies should take extra caution in picking their battles or risk facing material consequences.  Most importantly, they should never ever take the avatar route when advocating for or against a POV. It will make matters much worse, as Chick-fil-A is seeing now, Santorum and Hucakbee notwithstanding.

A "Newsroom" for the Future

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I'll always remember my first job move in PR -- from a small NY-based shop specializing in motion pictures, theater and music to Hill and Knowlton with its blue chip clientele of Fortune 500 companies. I went from leveraging the power of celebrity to leveraging business and hard news to gain reporter favor - from the "back of the book" to the "front of the book" in newsweekly parlance. This was fine by me since the outlets remained mostly the same and the new subject matter was much more substantive and cerebrally satisfying.

Back then, few "hits" were more valued in PR circles than landing a segment on one of the TV network evening newscasts with Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings. It was the holy grail of a PR "placement," albeit in an admittedly easier to ply media ecosystem as compared to today's journalistic shit show.

These nightly news programs were at the pinnacle of quality broadcast journalism, and as such, had the capacity to drive consumer, regulatory and even legislative action. The network news divisions soon bowed longer-form, magazine-format shows like "60 Minutes," "20/20," and "48 Hours," from which only one continues to catalyze day-after watercooler buzz, i.e., real-time Twitter noise today.

With the onset of cable, TV splintered to a point where today a program exists for every taste and on any topic, no matter how pedestrian. (Kim and Kanye, anyone?)

For its part, cable news eventually morphed into bloviating talking heads that succeeded in dividing our self-selecting viewing nation. One radio news network even (dumbly) promoted its partisan approach to journalism, which ultimately proved fatal. At least the Fox News Channel declared itself fair & balanced - as disingenuous as that is.

The caustic culture of cable news gave rise to the next generation of TV news. Jon Stewart and his Comedy Central cohort Stephen Colbert took a no holds barred look at the day's headlines, added a comic sensibility, and in so doing, drew huge numbers especially among the important 18-35 demo.

Stewart and Colbert validated SNL News's irreverent delivery of the nightly news. The Onion's former digital director Baratunde Thurston and The New Yorker's latest hire Andy Borowitz took the genre to even greater satirical heights. All the while, quality TV journalism suffered as the once-dominant broadcast evening news programs continued to lose audience share and influence, while cable news fell far short of the promise of Murrow. (Thank goodness for PBS NewsHour.)

Enter "The Newsroom" - a hybrid docu-dramatic offering from HBO and the very hot Aaron Sorkin that may usher an entirely new genre of news delivery. It's ostensibly an entertainment show that, not unlike Sorkin's The West Wing, draws its plot from recognizable people and events. In the Newsroom, however, Sorkin has taken a page from Jon Stewart by showing actual newsclips and calling out newsmakers by name.

The premise is simple: a behind the scenes look inside a national cable news program that has declared an end to histrionics and partisan commentary to gin up ratings. The newsroom in question, modelled after CNN and its Time-Warner parent, seeks a return to the glory days of Murrow, Cronkite, Brokaw, Rather, etc. when TV journalism was not considered an oxymoron. In fact, Dan Rather penned a fawning review of "Newsroom" for Gawker (of all places).

Judging from the Twitterstream, HBO "The Newsroom" is destined for greatness. Sure, there are some youthful online scribes who panned the show and its creator - mostly because they lack an historical appreciation for the glory days of TV news or have a personal thing against Mr. Sorkin's rat-a-tat dialogue and perceived Hollywood sensibility.

Others criticize the show for its political courage in taking a page from Costas-Sandusky when ferreting out distortion and lies in an interview -- something sorely lacking in the likes of CNN's Candy Crowley or NBC News's David Gregory who sit strangely silent as highly dubious political talking points pollute their airwaves unchallenged.

I love this program, but also have mixed feelings. Sure it's must-watch television. But it's also sad to think that it has taken the programming department for a premium cable entertainment network to accomplish something the broadcast and cable networks' news divisions have thus far failed to do either out of commercial considerations or some warped sense of feigning balance.

Meanwhile the on-air talent at real TV news organizations continue to get schooled daily by well-oiled (and funded) political s̶u̶r̶r̶o̶g̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶ propagandists. Mike Wallace, we miss you already.

Made in New York

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My #2 son was the first to accompany me to a New York Tech Meetup. He gave the thumbs up to his younger brother who joined my a few months later. And the other night, my #1 son finally caught the startup bug as evidenced by his joining this, the largest of the thousands of Meetup groups.

NYTM's Jessica Lawrence

This month's gathering opened with a beaming and thankful Jessica Lawrence, NYTM's managing director, announcing a milestone. Formed in 2004 by Dawn Barber and Meetup.org founder Scott Heiferman, this diverse community of coders, academics, VCs, lawyers, entrepreneurs, PR types and overall tech enthusiasts had just surpassed the 25,000-member mark. Whoa! 


(No wonder tickets are so hard to come by. Sure glad to have that livestream.)

Playing hooky in the mountains of VT

Jessica (sans baseball cap) took the moderating reins from Nate Westheimer who was climbing Mt. Abraham in VT that afternoon, if one is to believe his Foursquare check-in (and photo --->).  Jessica opened by asking the sold-out audience of 800 how many were there for the first time. Hundreds of hands shot up! A good omen for sure.

Consmr Rates

Dashlane's Daniela Perdomo

Rather than run down the ten presentations, I thought I'd focus on the three that struck a resonant chord with this blogger, a longtime PR pro who tends to look for newsworthy differentiation. I guess all those years plying the media filter built an appreciation for what it takes to earn/gain editorial traction. (See last post.)

The three consumer-facing startups I especially liked -- Consmr, Dashlane and Social Bicycles (Sobi) -- all took a novel and technology-driven approach to addressing issues we face individually or as a community. 


Ryan Charles's cleverly named Consmr app allows CPG shoppers to use their mobile devices to scan product bar codes via a proprietary reader. It returns both essential pre-purchase information and includes a searchable social layer that provides consumer ratings of the scanned products, tens of thousands of them. One review for a condom brand: "Well, she didn't get pregnant."

The second startup that caught my fancy was Dashlane. Who knew that your Chrome form auto-fill extension fell short more than half the time? Wouldn't it be great to have your "IDs, addresses, payment info, notes and passwords" appear instantly and 95% accurately when checking out on English and French-language e-commerce sites? 


Well, this is what Daniela Perdomo and Nishant Mani shared with the NYTM audience. The secret sauce: very sophisticated semantic analysis that recognizes virtually any form.

Finally, for the second time in a couple of weeks, I had a chance to hear Ryan Rzepecki's vision for how bike-sharing can work in cities or on college or corporate campuses. Rzepecki, who has a Masters Degree from Hunter College in urban planning and who worked at the NYC DOT, had presented at a NYTM-sponsored event as part of Consumer Electronics Week in New York where I served as a judge alongside Union Square Ventures' GM Gary Chou and Shelby.TV's Reece Pacheco.  

Social Bicycle's Ryan Rzepecki 

Anyway, Ryan's cost-savings epiphany was the bike itself - a fortified, 45-lb versatile unit on wheels with no chain, a sturdy lock and all the electronics and GPS built in. Rather than having to return the bike to a central location, the removable lock enables the user to leave the bike anywhere within the riding area. Conversely, the GPS allows prospective users to find a bike nearby, all via their mobile devices. 

Crowdfunding Future Coders

Finally, I was glad to see my pal Toby Daniels, Social Media Week founder and impresario, share details of his Nokia-matched IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to send 25 underprivileged kids to Camp Interactive Technology Summer Camp.  Please visit here to donate.  

Earning Media Coverage

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I know. I know. I've been truant in my blogging duties. Maybe if July 4 fell on a Friday or Flatiron's business wasn't as brisk, I'd have more time to devote to this space.

Whatever the reason, I wanted to expand upon my last post in which I posited that even today's most digitally savvy PR firms continue to earn their bread and butter by generating editorial coverage for their clients' products, services and POVs.

The PR pitch is alive and well, or is it? I can't remember in all my years in the game a more challenging time for gaining reporters' mindshare than the one in which we now find ourselves. Here are the three primary reasons:

Badly Pitched 

The quality of the underlying story idea and/or the way the idea is presented leaves much to be desired. In what may be an annual rite, Business Insider's startup reporter Alyson Shontell outlined why most PR pitches go awry:

Dear PR Lady: Here's Why I Didn't Open Any Of Your 3 Email Pitches (Although I Wish I Had)

10 Dead-Honest Reasons Reporters Delete Your Emails

Misguided

The journalists receiving these story pitches simply don't cover the topic. As Amber Mac reported in her Fast Company piece "Social Media Makes Bad Pitches Go Viral--And Can Save PR From Itself:"

"Every day I immediately delete about 20 percent of the messages in my inbox. Historically, the emails I trashed were mostly relegated to Nigerian scams and requests for cash from someone "unable to access" his pending inheritance. Fortunately, Gmail spam filters have helped to abolish most of these. Unfortunately, these same filters can do nothing for the endless stream of PR pitches that assault my inbox that are often irrelevant, impersonal, and, dare I say it, lazy."

Overwhelmed

The sheer volume of PR pitches stifling reporters' inboxes, plus the myriad other sources for story ideas now at their disposal, have made the prospect of breaking through the clutter a near-impossible task for most PR pros. Over the weekend, New York Times lead "Bits" blogger Nick Bilton reported on his frustration with email in his post "Disruptions: Life’s Too Short for So Much E-Mail:"

"This month alone, I received more than 6,000 e-mails. That doesn’t include spam, notifications or daily deals, either. With all those messages, I have no desire to respond to even a fraction of them. I can just picture my tombstone: Here lies Nick Bilton, who responded to thousands of e-mails a month. May he rest in peace."

Every six weeks or so, as president of the Publicity Club of New York, I preside over a luncheon at which top-tier journalists attempt to make sense of the changed PR-reporter relationship.  In May, we hosted key reporters on the mobile beat from some of the most sought-after news outlets including Mashable, TechCrunch, GigaOM, Business Insider and Ad Age.  (Audio here.)

The panelists were generous in the advice they shared with the 130 PR pros in the room.  One might even have come away thinking that they looked forward to hearing from us. Not so fast! Don't think for a a moment that you can forego doing some homework before hitting the send button.

• Does the pitch cut directly and succinctly to the chase? 
• Is the reporter the exact right person at the exact right outlet for the story? 
• Is there any other major breaking news happening that day related to the journalist's beat?   

In my next post, I plan to take a look at several new tools designed to help with the second leg of the media engagement stool: how to identify the right influencers. In the interim, if you're in the city on Wednesday, August 8, our next PCNY luncheon panel will cover the "lifestyle" beat and feature editorial decisionmakers from The NY Daily News, The Huffington Post, "Good Day New York," WPLJ Radio and Buzzfeed. Please join us.