Dirty Men, Double Entendres, Damage Control

I almost started this column four weeks ago, just after news broke of Anthony Weiner's pecker being paraded on Twitter. But I hesitated: what's the big deal? It's a harmless pic ... pervy men post tasteless photos of their willies all the time. It will blow over.

And blow until last week it did.

Over the following weeks, I watched as Weiner's story morphed from a computer hack to a misjudgment, to a televised apology à la Tiger, to a string of lies that revealed Anthony Weiner to be not only an insidious liar but a destroyer of progressive ideals and a shatterer of political integrity.

Okay, maybe that's going a little overboard, but Weiner's shenanigans demonstrate a trend among male politicians -- the crown for which, until recently, was held by Republicans. A trend that highlights how hypocrisy, lies and political sex scandals have become acceptable in our society.

It seems that perviness, narcissism and good old-fashioned idiocy are bipartisan offenders. I won't go into the "why" here, but how can they think they'll get away with it? Is the public to blame?

Perhaps.

One rule when being sworn into office is not to lie to your constituents. Another is not to expose your private parts to the universe. Clearly, a lot of men can't help themselves with the latter, but we've tolerated a growing number of sex-related scandals in the past few years (Sen. David Vitter and Mark Sanford's, for example) that have set a precedent.

So why have we accepted that it's okay to deceive, deny and lie publicly if you're a politician? One could argue that when a degree of morally bankrupt behavior gets a pass, it lends a teachable moment to A-listers' PR factories. Each indiscretion, however miniscule, provides a backdrop for the next literal battle of the bulge, Weiner-style. For social networking scandals, there's the hacking defense; for extramarital affairs, there's sex-addiction rehab. Just as our communication options have skyrocketed, so have options for finger-pointing.

There's no doubt that Weiner's lack of a PR powerhouse made a difference in how he handled his scandal. The end result of resignation may have been the same, due to the last straw that was wife Huma Abedin's pregnancy news, but the timeline and details would have been different.

Weiner committed many a foul that could have been squelched by a PR professional. The laundry list includes calling a CNN producer a "jackass" and responding to initial inquiries with a political-brand blend of defensiveness and near sarcasm. Not to mention the bald-faced lying. Backtracking on hacking claims didn't enhance the sincerity of Weiner's following press appearances, nor did his lack of a promised "investigation" into the Twitter-centric rumors.

To continue reading, click here.

Women's Pay: Equal Or Is Answer Elusive?

When International Women's Day rolled around in March, I contemplated the topic of why men make more money doing the same job as women. In the PR industry. Was this the truth, or had I succumbed to a perpetual myth? Or was I dredging up ghosts à la Feminine Mystique? Undeniably, some discrimination within the greater marcomm industry still exists, but is it pervasive enough these days to warrant such a generalization? From my own experience, as employee and employer, I couldn't see the pay inequality.

Demystifying the pay divide

Statistics, however, skew the results in men's favor. Spread over all industries, men simply earn more than women because they occupy a higher percentage of the highest-paying jobs. This does not suggest that there's a blatant discrimination, just that women are still playing catch-up in earning advanced degrees and breaking into the traditional higher-paying fields such as engineering, medicine, and law.

Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It," asserts that women are still more comfortable moving into jobs that promise the more flexible hours required by the primary family caregiver. While this point makes me a bit squeamish, I can see the merit in such a position -- not that women are assuming their "traditional" (barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen) roles -- but because a good number of women I know do, in fact, plan for a future with children and move toward flexible careers. Which, unfortunately, can preclude them from those that are higher-paying.

Another possibility is simply a chicken versus egg scenario: maybe the more flexible jobs -- traditional jobs that women excel at and gravitate toward -- have undervalued or pay-discriminated against women for so long that low pay has become standard pay?

Regardless, the answer is elusive.

So what about the PR industry?

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Word Crimes gone viral!

It's everywhere. Trite, silly marketing jargon is creeping beyond its boundaries and is now infiltrating the social media!

Word Crimes! Don't forget to send me your favourite offenders for inclusion on this year's Bull@%#$ Bingo!

The below is reprinted from theage.com's Executive Style column. For your cringeworthy enjoyment, I submit:

Mind Your Jargon

Jargon is bad enough in the business world but social media is adding a whole new layer of gobbledygook, and it is sending me around the twist.

My eyes glaze over whenever I hear talk about being on the 'same page', about 'going forward', 'key drivers', stuff that’s 'mission critical', taking the 'viewfinder' over the 'mission statement' and seeing what's at the end of the 'digital tunnel', with the 'low hanging fruit' and 'key drivers'. And the list goes on.

Forbes writer Christopher Steiner, puts it well: “For people bent on achieving superstar status in the business world, knowing one language is often not enough. Unfortunately the second tongue most popular to many American corporate types isn't Spanish, German, French, Italian or Chinese. It's jargon, a heinous amalgamation of terms with unknown origins and delivered with no explanation, irony or even a crumb of guilt.”

He then lists some of the worst examples: drill down (as in drill down to what? oil?), ducks in a row (how do you do that? have you ever had to deal with ducks? and if you ever manage to do that, what good comes out of getting the birds to stand in a straight line), price point (which is the same as saying price, so why the extra word?), think outside the box or square (why the box? what’s wrong with just thinking?), giving 110 per cent (as opposed to 100 per cent. that means you have to do more than what you are capable of. it’s ridiculous nonsense), synergise (sounds so much better than combining and streamlining), it is what it is (fair dinkum?), take it to the next level (what exactly does that look like?), solution (what exactly does that mean?), managing expectations (which usually means preparing people for the worst), and break down silos (as in getting people to talk to each other).

Vanessa Horwell at Media Post has her own list that includes terms like “proactive” (which the dictionary defines as creating a situation or taking control of it, rather than just responding which, when you think about it, is the opposite of sitting around and waiting for things to happen), and sole survivor (the word sole is redundant because a survivor is the one person who survives) and, one of my pet hates, non-essential personnel (which basically dismisses the grunt workers keeping everything going as unimportant).

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, author Scott Berkun says jargon feeds and encourages lazy minds. “To use these words with a straight face is to assume the listener is an idiot. They are intellectual insults. They are shortcuts away from good marketing and strong thinking since they try to sneak by with claims they know they cannot prove or do not make any sense. Marketers and managers use jargon because it's safe. No one stops them to ask: exactly what is it you are breaking through? … Pay attention to who uses the most jargon: it's never the brightest. It's those who want to be perceived as the best and the brightest, something they know they are not. They use cheap language tricks to intimidate, distract, and confuse, hoping to sneak past those afraid to ask what they really mean.”

And indeed it might be getting worse. Julian Fernando argues that social networking sites and blogs encouraging people to contract words, and in effect create a new language.

“Clearly, there is enormous potential for the clarity of expression to be diminished, and for what reward? 'U' is hardly more efficient than 'you', and even less efficiency is gained from 'da' (although by saving those one or two characters you might be able to add a smiley face somewhere). LOL achieves far greater efficiency gains, but what does it mean? For a long time, my mother thought LOL meant 'lots of love'. Are we really such a society of comedians that we all burst out laughing at every text message we receive? Or has it become a ridiculous catchphrase (or catch-all phrase) to express anything from uproarious mirth to mild embarrassment (or nothing at all, as in 'I went to the shops, LOL').”

If he’s right, it means that social sites like Facebook are creating a new kind of jargon, adding to all those business buzzwords, and fogging up our language up even more.

What are the worst examples of jargon, buzzwords and language mangling you’ve heard?

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/management/blogs/management-line/mind-your-jargon-20110521-1exh3.html#ixzz1NwYOpACn

PR and Journalism: An Evolving Relationship

A recent article published on ProPublica (and co-published by the Columbia Journalism Review), looks at how the boundaries between PR and journalism are blurring. For better or for worse, PR professionals now have much more power in terms of influencing the news, primarily because newsrooms are maxed out. Working with smaller staffs and budgets, and a news cycle that never sleeps, many media outlets are grateful for great “news” content. So when a publication receives an article written by a PR person, increasingly there is a chance that it will be published as is, or with minor edits.

What does this mean? Will this lead to abuse? Are PR people like myself writing the news? Keeping media and news sources unbiased and accurate is very important; does the presence of the PR industry and its influence represent a loss of journalistic integrity?

Not necessarily, and for a couple of reasons.

As the article PR Industry Fills Vacuum Left by Shrinking Newsrooms points out, any reputable publication won’t accept a story idea that is untimely, unimportant, irrelevant or self-serving. Conversely, as the PR field evolves and matures, there is a concern about the ethical dealings with journalists, and a self-awareness that serves to prevent wrongdoing. Any good PR person knows (or should know), for example, that it is professional suicide to submit an article that is biased, overtly “salesy,” or riddled with marketing speak – that is completely useless to an editors. But a great story idea, however, presented with real data and information to back it up, is absolutely acceptable and very helpful to time-strapped journalists. Perhaps that’s the point that so often goes unrecognized – that PR provides valuable support to media outlets and helps to increase its efficiency as well.

Well, we do try you know….

You can read the entire article on ProPublica here.

Repeat Offenders: Word Crimes Revisited

Back in November 2010, I wrote a column in MediaPost about Word Crimes: words that have been resigned to corporate jargon, ill-suited for the situation, or overused enough to render their meaning useless. Unfortunately, these crimes continue and I feel a duty to round up the posse and bring more "offenders" to justice. Here are a few buzzwords of language malfeasance. Proactive Proactive is, hands down, one of the most overused words in the world today. Whether it is in politics or business, being proactive, circa 2006, has been thought of as a revolutionary concept. My question is this: In business, why do people need to be constantly told to be proactive? The definition of proactive -- or acting in anticipation of future needs/changes -- is pretty much the definition of work, or doing business. The opposite of proactive seems to be just sitting around waiting for things to happen, so if you have to tell someone to "be proactive," maybe you should just say, "go to work." Proactive is not a selling point folks. "At the end of the day...." You know this phrase: it's always followed by a summation -- the situation boiled down into a pithy, already-known conclusion, such as, "At the end of the day, it all comes down to providing our clients with the best service possible." In all of such summations, is it not the same situation that exists at the start of the day? What profound event, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., has taken place to completely change such an obvious conclusion? Constructive Okay, constructive is a good word, but my problem is with the context in which it's constantly used: people say "constructive" in meetings and memos to somehow imply that "now we're really going to get somewhere." What have we been doing up to this point? It should be implied that all of our intentions in business are to be constructive. Much like the word "proactive," why would you need to tell someone to be constructive? Again, the meaning of the word -- to promote improvement or development -- is an essential element of doing business itself. Oh, and if you're simply handing out criticism, without the intention of being "constructive," you're just being an arse. Turnkey For a while there, I thought this term had gone away (like end-to-end); however, it seems to have begun another crime wave. Although originally meant to be something (a project, construction, design, model --made popular by the IT industry) that is developed and built, then turned over, ready to use by the purchaser, "turnkey" is now used to describe every "solution" under the sun. Somehow along the way, it's also become known as the speed at which something is done, or to describe a solution that has been figured out along the way, or done impromptu. Personally, if I hear the word "turnkey," my BS meter is tuned to "maximum sensitivity." "Non-Essential Personnel" I don't know how to feel about this one: livid at those who coined the phrase, or sorry for the ones that are labeled as "non-essential." The phrase conjures up more questions than answers: how many non-essential people are necessary during ordinary times? Are there a lot of non-essential, paid-for activities going on day-to-day? Might I suggest changing the term to "Core Operations Personnel Only" when referring to the skeleton crew needed to keep businesses and governments running in times of crisis and financial distress? "Sole Survivor" I understand it's not a business phrase, but it's one that drives me crazy nonetheless. It's redundant. "Survivor," singular, means exactly one person that survives. "Sole" means "the only," or "one." Maybe we should play a game of spot the oxymoron next time? And a few others: "Let's circle the wagons ... on Friday" (I choked on my coffee when I heard this one) Engagement (offenders, you know who you are) Insights (provided by the "new" experts) Of course, there are many more repeat offenders of word crimes so please be on the lookout for clichés, overused buzzwords, and useless lingo. Send them my way to vanessa@thinkinkpr.com as I compile a 2011 unabridged version of Bullshit Bingo. Read the entire article on MediaPost here.

The Great Pay Divide (for Women in Public Relations)

When International Women’s Day rolled around in March, I contemplated the topic of why men make more money doing the same job as women. In the PR industry. Was this the truth, or had I succumbed to a perpetual myth? Or was I dredging up ghosts a la The Feminine Mystique? Undeniably, some discrimination within the greater marcomm industry still exists, but is it pervasive enough these days to warrant such a generalization? From my own experience, as employee and employer, I couldn't see the pay inequality.

So I created an informal survey for women and men in the communications industry that aims to establish whether pay inequality really does exist.

Here is a link to the survey if you would like to take part.

Your responses will be treated confidentially, unless you would you like to comment openly, in which case I can include your comments in my findings - with your permission, of course! And if you have any questions or would like to contribute information beyond the questions in the survey, please drop me a line at vanessa@thinkinkpr.com.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to complete this survey.

http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e3u6ar0fgngi6sjy/start

Email Marketing Missteps Monday (and Other Days)

1. Apology emails

2. Lame email subject lines

3. When it comes to sales calls and email follow ups, more isn’t better

I've been on the road again for almost two weeks. A number of things happen when I travel for business; I manage my time better (imagine that?!); I am more critical of emails (that waste my time), and I spend a lot more time thinking, analyzing and observing people.

While away, I was bombarded with apology emails. Marketers discovered last year (2010 seems like eons ago, doesn't it?) that apologizing for an email screw up was endearing to customers. So they started "screwing up" on a regular basis and sending silly emails with subject lines like “We screwed up, and we’re really sorry.” When consumers switched off to this nonsensical tactic, like in September 2010, most email marketers wised up and moved on to the new/next email trick.

But clearly some marketing laggers are still churning out "we are sorry, we screwed up" emails. Ever heard of the boy who cried wolf? I guess not.

Can you stop clogging my inbox and find something more original please? Do it now, or forever be banished to opt-out hell.

Lame Email Subject Lines

Working in the communications business, I'm constantly confounded by the lack of creativity or testing by marketers. (I'm going after email marketers again today). In the last two weeks, I've received an email offering me a birthday discount (my birthday is in December), an email to sign up for Nutrisystem (I guess someone snitched on my unhealthy love for Poutine), an email offering an AARP subscription (I am a good 10 years away, thank you very much), and a multitude of poorly timed, and poorly targeted offers.

No wonder people have switched off to email.

More is better? Not always

Some people believe that more is better. More caviar Madam? Definitely! More Sauvignon Blanc for you Madam? Yes please! More headache pills Madam, you look rather faint? Absolutely!

But there are some things that don't improve with quantity. Like sales calls, or the same sales email every other day. Selling is a tough game. I got out of it years ago. Consumers today are unforgiving, and woe behold the sales person that catches me at the wrong time, or on the wrong day.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), we've shoe-horned ourselves into a way of life where we want everything, but that demand varies from day to day - even hour to hour. Businesses are as much to blame by accommodating our indecisiveness, and demand for instant information and gratification.

My particular experience started when I inquired about a software solution. I filled in the questionnaire and then it began. We had the demo, the follow up sales call, the quote, the email, another email, ANOTHER email, and then the ultimatum. Sign now, or you miss out on the discount.. Sign now, or you miss out on a free set of (whatever).

As a marketer (and salesperson), I've come to learn that pressure and intimidation tactics do not lead to long-term relationships or the nurturing of good clients. Those deals might engorge your sales quota for the period, but not much else. Good clients buy a product or a service (usually) on its merits, and the timing of their business needs.

So instead of applying pressure about your commission deadlines and your needs, why not try a different approach that focuses on my needs (I'm the customer, remember??), instead of yours.

That may be a novel approach for some sales people and marketers, but it’s an approach that usually works.