Will Washington’s Sequestration Sequester Our PR Budgets?

It’s time to add “sequester” to the list of words we could do without. In case you don’t already know, dictionary.com defines it as “to remove or withdraw into solitude or retirement; seclude?” You know, terms like, “fiscal cliff,” “kick the can down the road,” “move the needle,” and my election-year favorite, “47%.” I’m starting to think so.

Maybe it was because the mainstream media already began referring to Wednesday’s Mid-Atlantic snowstorm, which was supposed to “retire” DC for a day, as “Snowquester.” Then again, maybe I’m just wondering what communications wiz chose “sequester” as the clunky, if euphemistic, word describing $85 billion in mandatory government spending cuts that went into March 1.

Whether Uncle Sam calls it sequestration or the “Sh*% Hits the Fan Act,” make no mistake, these cuts, if implemented fully, are predicted to have far-ranging negative consequences. They range from an estimated 1%-1.5% drop in GDP, (resulting in nearly zero annual US economic growth) to reduced satellite coverage and lower resolution (read: accuracy) predicting the weather.

But a recent AdAge article brings up another good point that hits very close to our PR home. Government ad spending is one of the first expenses on the sequestering chopping block. The army, for instance, spent $47 million in the US in advertising in 2011. And government PR is essentially a DC cottage industry, ripe for additional reductions.

Sequestration sucks for PR in other ways too. As a profession that cares deeply about the implied messages of things, draconian communications spending cuts by Washington might send a powerful signal to private industry that they too, can do without in-house or outsourced public relations. The sequester might sequester spirits as much as it does budgets.

It’s what’s known as the proverbial “chilling effect.”

I truly hope this will not be the case. Yet with congressional gridlock at historic highs and approval ratings hovering near an all-time low of 15%, there’s growing fear that the full weight of the spending cuts will take hold across the entire advertising, PR and marketing sectors.

After that, the chilling effect gets downright cold. If government stumbles under its own bloated fiscal weight, you can be sure the private sector will follow as the two are inexorably linked. The fact that the Dow Jones achieved two days of record closes and February’s jobs report (which comes out Friday) is predicted to add a respectable 175,000 jobs might not be enough to offset DC’s disarray.

The irony is that, were such a scenario to unfold, each political party would be working overtime to spin the causes of these problems as the other party’s fault, requiring some fancy communication skills in the process. Our services would again be deemed “needed.” Unlike the sequester, now is not the time for the PR industry to “withdraw into solitude.”

Effective communications is essential in good times and bad. So what can we do as an industry to lobby Washington in reconsidering its actions? I guarantee 100% of Americans are in favor of that (not 47%) with no needle moving or can kicking required.

‘Going Rogue’ Again? Keeping Client Communications In Check

With a title like the above, you might think we’ve returned to the days of Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life. 

But this time I’m not talking about a “mavericky” Alaskan -- who, along with a very talented PR machine, masterminded a brilliant and profitable 15 minutes of fame. I’m talking about the client-PR agency relationship and how, despite living in an age of instant communication, some maverick-prone clients fail to keep their PR agencies abreast of what they are planning to say, how they plan to say it, which media outlets they’re talking to and who’s writing what. It’s as if we’re being undervalued -- a topic I discussed in a recent blog, Proving PR’s Business Value Easier Said than Done, But Not Impossible.

A recent AdAge article also addresses this growing advertising agency concern, citing data from The Bedford Group that finds the average client-agency relationship length has fallen to under 3 years versus 7.2 years in 1984 -- a drop of almost 60% over three decades.

What has changed and why is this happening?

Even my agency has not been immune to so-called rogue clients. A press release gets drafted without our knowledge. A media interview is conducted without our review and the client is caught off guard. Each scenario is a potential PR minefield.

Notice in the preceding paragraph that I was very selective in my language, as all PR execs should be. At no point did I say “without our consent” or “without our green light” -- and I think that’s the problem right there. Turf wars between agency management/oversight and client control. Considering that client-agency relationship lengths are so short, we must do everything in our power not to step on clients’ toes, or we may be perceived as know-it-alls.

Trust me, we’re not. And in the power struggle that communications can become, clients have the final say.

That said, there is a reason why we call the client-agency arrangement a relationship and not a doctor-patient review. Clients come to us for creative ways to improve their brand, not reinvent it. They’re not sick. They’re not dying. Agencies are integral to this team effort. And that collaboration, as I addressed in another blog, begins with thinking about clients less as machine-like conglomerates, and more like individuals with communication needs that must be met, not serviced.

So what we have here are two partners failing to communicate -- one that is perceived to be micromanaging (the agency) and one that’s looking to preserve its own voice. As AdAge rightly points out, technology ironically hampers our communication efforts as excessive emails and meetings trump genuine correspondence and conversations, watering down the quality of our time together.

And since this article began with a political reference, I’ll begin my wrap-up like this: agencies and the clients they represent need to press the “reset button,” remembering to be transparent about what each side plans to do and when they plan to do it, within reason. It’s a building block of trust and mutual respect. PR agencies are there to help, not hurt. And we can only do that when clients are honest with us and we are aware of their intentions. Likewise, agencies must involve their clients actively in the communications and PR outreach process.

Of course, this advice won’t stop all instances of going rogue, nor will it consign the occurrence solely to our industry. Sometimes, for very deliberate reasons, clients employ elements of surprise to their communications advantage, keeping everyone but their innermost circle in the dark. The recent shocking resignation of Pope Benedict XVI demonstrates that even inner, inner circles aren’t always privy to the thoughts of one individual.

In most cases, as seems to be the case with Alaska’s former governor, going rogue helps no one, not even the so-called “maverick.” Fittingly, like the drop in client-agency relationship length, Palin’s Amazon book price has fallen 60% too.

Does your agency have a going rogue problem? Inspired by the data gathered from The Bedford Group, I’d like to begin collating my own research on the client-agency “going rogue” phenomenon and report our findings in a follow-up article. Beyond the suggestions I have offered, how does your agency address the problem? Are there examples of a contentious client-agency relationship being healed by an attitude adjustment? Any particularly jarring “rogue moment” that caused your agency to put its foot down and change communications course? Lastly, like a heart attack, are there any warning signs that rogue has arrived? I would love to hear about your experiences with clients “going rogue.” 

This article originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 03/06/13. 

Brand Backlash: When Product Pitchpeople Endorse Politicians

Most Americans will recognize Mike Rowe as the genial, joke-cracking host of the Discovery Channel’s hit show Dirty Jobs, where he’s shown joining blue-collar workers doing the kinds of gag-inducing tasks that, as he puts it, “make life possible for the rest of us.”

We also know the former opera singer (who knew?) as a pitchman for Ford Motor Company’s F-Series of pickup trucks, and the star of a series of spots that capitalize on his image as a champion of blue-collar workers to sell trucks often used by those very workers.

And now we know Mike Rowe as a supporter of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. At least that is what it looks like to a lot of fans – who may now be former fans.

Rowe recently took to the stage with Romney during a campaign event in Bedford Heights, Ohio, speaking about the importance of supporting the kinds of workers – you know, the workers who clean toilets, who mine coal, who pump out septic tanks – whose occupations frequently feature on Dirty Jobs. According to a spokesperson, Rowe was not politically endorsing Romney – who has made his contempt for those of us who don’t inhabit his privileged circle quite clear – and that his contract with Ford doesn’t allow for endorsing candidates.

But that’s a technicality lost on many of us who saw Rowe onstage with Romney at a campaign event and, naturally, assumed it was a political endorsement for a candidate with, ironically, well-known anti-labor views. Many of them took to Dirty Jobs’ Facebook page to vent their anger and here’s one of many such comments:

“Republican, eh?? Bummer. You lose, Ford loses and your stupid dirty job, pig show is banned in my home. Bad move.”

I’m sure that’s the kind of “support” that neither the Discovery Channel or Ford are looking for.  A similar situation played out in mid-September when news outlets reported that, while the Most Interesting Man in the World may not always host political fundraisers, when he does, they’re for President Obama.

Jonathan Goldsmith, the actor who plays the distinguished gentleman in a series of ads for Dos Equis beer, endorsed Obama as a private citizen. But his association with the Dos Equis brand brought many Republican fans of the beer to Facebook to say they’d never buy it again:

“He's not a TRUE Patriot. No more beer for you, and I won't buy any Heineken products or allow them in my house after seeing the endorsement of Obama. BOYCOTT.”

Heineken USA, which imports Dos Equis, quickly distanced itself from Goldsmith’s actions, telling Advertising Age: "Mr. Goldsmith's opinions and views are strictly his own, and do not represent those of Dos Equis."

It’s clear that this type of personal endorsement of political figures is a very sticky wicket for brands and their ad campaigns. What comes first, their responsibility to the brands they pitch or their right to their personal political views? Wearing my marketing hat, I would say that it’s the former.

If you are paid by a brand to promote its products, it’s highly irresponsible to alienate the brands’ customers by publicly endorsing, or even appearing to endorse, political candidates. And particularly during such a highly-polarized election cycle. Pitchpeople, who have freely chosen to be products’ public faces, still have the right to quietly support candidates through donations and, of course, through their votes.

So why bite the hand that signs your paycheck? That’s something I’ll never quite understand.

Ralph Lauren’s Olympic Uniform Controversy: The Right Way to Handle a PR Foul-Up

Ever since the media flap that erupted when ABC News reported on Ralph Lauren outfitting the US Olympic team with uniforms made in China, I’ve been scrutinizing everything in our office to see where it’s been made.

The keyboard I’m typing on and the mouse I’m using? Made in China. The mousepad? China. The phone on my desk, the chair I’m sitting on and much of the stuff in our office-supply closet: China. China. And, yes, you guessed it, China.

According to Mark Arena of PR Verdict, Ralph Lauren, the go-to designer for US Olympic uniforms since the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, has been outsourcing these functions to China all along – in fact, most of the objects that surround us every day are made there – but no one really bothers about it.

So why now? Politics.

It’s a presidential election year, and President Obama’s re-election campaign has been relentlessly hammering the presumptive Republican nominee, one-percenter and car-elevator owner Mitt Romney, over his record of outsourcing jobs to other countries while at the helm of private equity firm Bain Capital and as Massachusetts’ governor. All of a sudden, the heated debate over outsourcing of American jobs has created a PR landmine for Ralph Lauren.

Would people have cared if it wasn’t for the Olympics? Probably not. Or if they did, it wouldn’t have landed as lead story on network news.

An All-American identity is the keystone in RL’s branding arch, so to speak. Its main emblem, apart from the horse-and-rider Polo logo, is the American flag. It is Americana at the very core. On the flagship website, you see the waving Stars and Stripes in the words RALPH LAUREN, just above a photo of the much-discussed uniforms, which the company says it is proud to create. Ralph Lauren went wrong because it forgot that when you’re in the business of selling Americana, it helps to be perceived as 100% red-white-and blue. (Still) Red China garments just don’t feel right. And in an election year, politics, like the Olympics, is a game that attracts many spectators. This time Ralph Lauren got mixed up in a pre-game tussle that didn’t need to happen.

That said, if you build up your brand as a paragon of American-ness while outsourcing the making of Team USA uniforms to China during an election year - where outsourcing is a major issue - your PR team shouldn’t be shocked when the proverbial **** hits the fan.

I half-agree with Mark Arena’s verdict that RL handled this well. Yes, it didn’t ignore the issue. It acknowledged the problem and promised to rectify it in time for 2014’s Winter Olympics.

But the damage has been done. “Sorry” doesn’t cut it. And let’s face it, in our mile-a-minute, tweet-a-micro-second culture, is anyone going to remember this little PR snag – or its lesson – on Friday February 7, 2014, at the opening of the next Winter Olympics, a whopping 817,000+ minutes away? My Magic 8 Ball says ‘no.’ More than likely it will leave another company open to similar slipups. Even so, companies need to remember that nothing they do happens in a vacuum and often products and promotions that bear no obvious linkage to other events, be it politics or world news, somehow becomes relevant. It also doesn’t hurt to remember election year rally-around-the-flag sensationalism.

As for our office? At least our desks and chairs come from Sweden-based Ikea. Even here, some 22% of the brand’s inventory is made in China. But unlike RL and petty politicians, I doubt any of our clients will mind which nations constructed our furniture – Olympic and election year or not. 

Business as Charity: The Ever-Evolving World of Social Impact

As someone who takes social-impact work very seriously, I’ve found the Stanford Social Innovation Review to be an invaluable window into the world of social and economic justice.

I recently came across an interesting SSIR blog post which touches on what I think is a very constructive development in the world of charity: business as charity.

In our current economic climate, where job creation is a keystone in every political campaign, Jim Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company (they make Samuel Adams beer), decided that instead of giving money to charity he would become, essentially, a microlender. His new program, called Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream, gives small loans to small food, beverage and hospitality businesses in South Boston.  It also provides free coaching and mentoring from members of Koch’s team. The point? Trying to create new jobs by supporting small business rather than non-profits.

This is an excellent idea. Even a small loan can determine whether a micro-entrepreneur’s business succeeds or fails; I’ve seen this firsthand in my own business.

At ThinkInk we recently launched a PR and thought leadership campaign for a Miami-based microfinance company, OUR Microlending. To date, the company has disbursed about $6.2 million in loans to over 600 small businesses across South Florida, including a Colombian souvenir store, a printing and vinyl signage shop, a cell phone accessories wholesaler and a nutritional consulting and supplement store. These are hardworking entrepreneurs whose loan applications were rejected by the big banks. Because of OUR Microlending’s services – which are sorely needed all over the United States, not just in the developing world – these self-starters have been able to grow their businesses and create jobs to help stimulate their neighborhood economies.

Of course, this is not to say that I don’t think we should support nonprofits. In fact, we are in the process of restructuring The ThinkTank, a division of ThinkInk that is devoted to helping nonprofits grow their organizations through visibility and intelligent PR. We’re recreating the company into a for-profit/nonprofit hybrid that would allow us to significantly expand to this unit to help more nonprofits throughout South Florida.

In his SSIR post, author Aaron Hurst, founder of the Taproot Foundation and a well-known leader in the world of non-profits and social-impact, asks: is business the new charity?

I’d have to say no. Charitable giving is still crucial to nonprofits’ ability to fulfill their missions. However, considering how difficult it is today for the owners of very small businesses to access traditional banking services, I hope to see many more programs like this spring up to help create much-needed jobs and re-energize our still-shaky economy.

An Organization With Terminal Cancer

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 2/10/12.

Here’s something that almost anyone from any side of the political spectrum can agree upon: the past week has been heinous for Susan G. Komen. And it has shown that the organization most known for its staunch (some, like me, would say steamrolling) support for finding a cure and raising awareness for a single type of cancer -- breast cancer -- above any other has a cancer all its own. It’s a cancer common to any group that has become bloated with a false sense of self-righteousness and one whose arrogance and hubris causes it to stray from its stated (if overzealous) mission and become embroiled in a politicized mess.

What I'm talking about, of course, is this week's announcement that Karen Handel, Susan G. Komen’s vice president of public policy, jumped before she was pushed. A speedy resignation with no severance package, Handel excised herself from the organization before mounting pressure within the group would have forced her imminent departure.

Her resignation caps a week of intense public backlash over Susan G. Komen's decision to first cut and then hurriedly restore about $680,000 in funding to Planned Parenthood, a provider of reproductive health services, including contraception and abortions.

In her resignation letter, which has been posted on Forbes, Handel goes to great lengths to explain how the situation got so out of control. Her defense? Komen is in the business of saving lives. Anything that distracts from that goal is a disservice -- thus the decision to pull funding and divorce itself from a controversial organization that might be spending money illegally, like funding abortions.

In October 2011, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I wrote about how the "pinking" of America was diluting the message of curing cancer and replacing it with corporate capitalism and too much consumption. I also took issue with Susan G.’s near-bullying tactics as they related to how the fundraising and marketing gargantuan has left smaller cancer-fighting organizations to fend for themselves, and how they aggressively muscle out any group that seeks to challenge breast cancer as the only cancer worth raising money for.

This latest misstep only adds to my great concern that Susan G. Komen, for all the good it has admittedly done for breast cancer awareness, has become a monopolistic and politically compromised organization. If she were alive today, I wonder what Susan Goodman Komen -- whom the organization gets its name from -- would think. After what must have been a grueling fight for her life, finding a cure and staying true to the organization's mission and goals would be more important to her then whether or not grant money was going to another group similarly charged with helping save the lives of young, often poor women -- an organization that happens to provide abortions.

Letters of resignation aside, let's not forget that Karen Handel is a former Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate, whose campaign promises included cutting funding for Planned Parenthood, and was Georgia's 26th Secretary of the State.

On Sunday, the Huffington Post reported that it had obtained an email exchange between Komen leadership confirming that Handel had the sole authority in crafting and implementing the Planned Parenthood policy.

Does this not have all the makings of a woman hell-bent on achieving a personal goal and using a behemoth organization which itself had become too politically connected, as cover to achieve her aims?

Yes -- the organization did reverse course in barely 72 hours, and restored the funds. It also made changes to its grant awarding guidelines that say only organizations under criminal investigation would be denied funding. But like a true cancer, this organizational one has already done much damage -- to those who truly believed in the structure of non-profits being “doers of good,” to those who held Komen as saviors of women, and to the brands who’ve invested heavily to be part of Komen’s shiny pink halo.

The upside to all this? Susan G. Komen’s misdeeds have opened up an enormous pathway for all the non-profits around the country, breast-cancer-related or not -- to start reclaiming their place in consumers’ hearts, minds and wallets.

And as for the PR advice, first administered by Ari Fleisher and now Ogilvy, all I can say is that it will take a lot more than some clever PR tactics and new positioning to rebuild this country’s trust in the Susan G. Komen brand and its “values.”

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 2/10/12.

On Media Bias and PR Spin

The content of this post comes courtesy of my colleague, Sam Burritt. Thank you Sam!

A brilliant mind, a brillant writer and all round brilliant thinker. Glad he is my team.

On Media Bias

"I think it's too easy to blame the obvious political bias in the media on the temperament most often personified by opposing ends of the political spectrum, though as a good lefty that's my first instinct. I tend to view the sound and the fury emanating from those bastions of right-wing vitriol as- rightly, I feel- signifying nothing, and thus not worthy of my serious attention. But this sells short the sheer power of it; Rush and Fox et al pay their audience with the currency of fear and passion, and it earns dividends. As a PR guy, I know people respond to these emotions much more viscerally than to a well-reasoned argument, and that perpetuates the echo chamber. The left has actively ceded this position- even Air America and the Daily Show rely more on nuance than bluster- and it has its efforts compounded by conservative programming that paints it as too effete and intellectual to appeal to the average american.

Speaking again from a PR perspective, everyone has an agenda, including those that gather and report the news. And while the Woodward and Bernstien generation of reporters is reaching their lion's status, the media conglomerates that pay them are becoming larger, more corporate, and more Republican. This isn't a universal trend (see NYT, editorial board, Sulzberger family), but the correlation between the big business-ification of news gathering and the right-leaning trend of editorial boards is hard to ignore. It's only at single-ownership papers like the Times, or at newspapers that give the newsroom some ownership control (like the St. Petersberg Times did, at least until recently) that you see true impartiality and even sometimes a leftward slant.

The rest of the left is relegated to the blogosphere, which is powerful and ascendant, but ultimately still reliant upon traditional news sources. "Old" media still beats the blogs to scoops by more than 2.5 hours, according to recent statistics, which means that even though online news is usually more opinion-driven, it still receives news first gathered by sources paid for by gargantuan business interests. And let's not forget that the internet isn't the sole purview of the left (maybe if Al Gore had actually invented it...); conservative voices come through loud and clear.

Neither an internet teeming with competing perspectives nor a traditional media structure balanced, in a sense, by equal numbers of Keith Olbermann-Sean Hannity news-opinion hybrids will replace the need for a robust, independent, unbiased fourth estate.

What may serve the left better than breeding a generation of Rush competitors would be encouraging the rise of ideology-impaired newspeople. But then you have to ask: who's going to pay them? And has the right succeeded in polarizing American society to the point that such professionalism is unattainable?

PR at its worst specializes in inducing spin; is that what we're condemned to?

WSJ and NBC…don’t they have bigger fish to fry?

This blog is by intention strictly nonpartisan. There is a place for politics, and it’s not here. My focus today isn’t national politics – it’s the politics of the media covering it.

I read a piece in the Washington Wire last week and felt compelled to comment.

The Wall Street Journal and NBC News conducted a recent poll on Obama Exposure. At least this topic is some relief from the endless rounds of opinions and polls on the healthcare debate – right? We all know that BHO is loved and hated, passionately. He makes for a good headline and avid viewing. Media in this country have been feeding on that passion and his media blitz even before the get go. Both Fox News and MSNBC have absolutely thrived post-election, and there’s no sign of letting up. So don’t you find it ironic that two news organizations created a poll which served to reinforce the very core of the problem?

Do you see that, or is it just me?

Even White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, wasn’t lost on the irony about Obama’s media exposure - “We’re sifting through your questions of overexposure in between your interview request invitations,” he told reporters.

But surely there are more important topics the media could be addressing? Like how many Americans are looking forward to not having their homes foreclosed upon? Or is Wal-Mart is the best symbol of corporate America today? Really? (Yes, according to Vanity Fair, 60 Minutes and CBS News). Or what can be done to help California climb its way out of the enormous debt-hole - or wait, wait…what about how many Americans are feeling positive about the next quarter? (I made that one up).

Can’t we be prodded to feel good, positive and productive for a change? Cant the media be asking questions that would add a bit more meaning and value to our experience (and perhaps a more accurate glimpse into our current psyche), than whether or not the President has been over-exposed in the media? (In fairness, he IS the president at a time of national crisis. It’s probably not a bad idea to pay attention to what’s going on.)

I just think the media could use its influence in a way that better benefits the public - its constituency.

What do you think?

Media Blitz - http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/09/18/its-show-blitz-obama-tapes-today-for-sunday-talk-shows/

Obama Exposure Poll - http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/09/22/wsjnbc-news-poll-on-obama-exposure-too-much-too-little-or-just-right/