What Every PR Person Should Know

As a public relations consultant who does a lot of PR programming, I was intrigued by a recent piece in Fast Company , based on data from the Global Information Industry Center , that described Americans’ “greed” for information. A few interesting factoids:

• Americans consume some 3.6 zettabytes (a billion trillion bytes of information) — the equivalent of 5.1 trillion hard drives — every day.

• Of the almost 19 hours daily we spend ingesting data, the biggest chunk of time — seven hours — is spent on a computer, console or handheld device.

• Just over one hour is spent reading and only slightly more (1.13 hours), on the phone.

• More time is spent on radio (5 hours) than on TV (4.5 hours).

Knowing and prioritizing our stakeholders and learning where they get their information are critical components of every effective public relations plan. Increasingly important for PR professionals will be the ability to craft strategies that cut through “info inundation.”

Public Relations: Among the Best Jobs in 2010

The Wall Street Journal recently published a list of the best and worst jobs in 2010, based on a CareerCast.com study that encompassed five criteria: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.

The five best jobs (in order) are:
1. Actuary
2. Software engineer
3. Computer systems analyst
4. Biologist
5. Historian

The five worst jobs (in order) are:
1.Roustabout
2.Lumberjack
3.Ironworker
4.Dairy farmer
5.Welder

The job of “public relations executive” is ranked #79 among the best jobs…ahead of attorney (#80), architect (#86), veterinarian (#90), newscaster (#95), psychiatrist (#98), physician/general practice (#128), newspaper reporter (#184) and photojournalist (#189).

Oddly, the job of philosopher is ranked #11…well ahead of public relations. Wow. Well, there are definitely more opportunities in PR than philosophy. A recent search of the Jobs section of The New York Times yielded no “help wanted” ads for a philosopher and over 100 for public relations professionals.

The BIG News in 2009

Media relations — knowing how to craft a news hook and shape a client’s messages to create a strong editorial story — is one of the most important skill sets for public relations firms and individual PR practitioners.

But tunnel vision can sometimes be a challenge for public relations pros when it comes to crafting a strong pitch. That’s why I think that the infographic produced by GOOD magazine is worth a look.

Based on data provided by Journalism.org, the interactive chart offers media relations experts an enlightening look at the broad range of news stories that grabbed our attention last year. In 2009, the two biggest stories were the economic crisis and healthcare reform — no surprise there! — but the mammogram policy change appears to have gotten just as much coverage as the Tiger Woods scandal.

Journalism.org reviews the news from 55 outlets every week, calculating what percent of the week’s print, television, radio, and internet reporting is devoted to each story.

Making a Natural Connection with the Social Media

Last month, Estée Lauder launched a clever promotion in New York City and other key markets. The beauty leader offered visitors to its retail counters free “social media makeovers,” including product samples and a professionally shot and retouched photo that they could use on their blogs.

The program has a two-fold strategy, according to spokesperson Tara Eisenberg: helping to contemporize the 63-year-old brand for younger women, while acknowledging the fact that the older women who are have traditionally been Estée Lauder’s target consumer are rapidly embracing the social media.

“The gift that the brand hopes will keep on giving is that the [bloggers’] profile photos include the Estee Lauder logo in the background, which, assuming they aren't Photoshopped into oblivion, could give the brand lasting presence on Facebook beyond its own 27,000-member plus fan page,” reports Jack Neff in Ad Age. Public relations, of course, is also being used to spread the word about the campaign in the mainstream media.

Public relations people tend to be inveterate data hounds, because the intelligence provided to us by research can help us communicate with our clients’ stakeholders at the times, and in the places, that they are most likely to be receptive to PR messages.

So I was very intrigued recently by a nifty interactive chart in The New York Times. Based on the U.S. Department of Labor’s American Time Use Survey, it shows how Americans spend their days. While it’s not comprehensive, I found it very interesting.

Click on the image above. Then, scroll back and forth to see who’s doing what, when. Click on the chart in any activity area to minimize it and get an interesting factoid. Change the demographics to compare and contrast.

Did you know that the majority (53%) of people with advanced degrees wake up between 6:50 and 7:00 am? Not this PR person, alas. I am however one of the very elite two percent of Americans who are already hard at work on the computer at 8:20am.

Insurance, Trust + the Free Market System

According to the IBM Institute for Business Value, “The insurance industry suffers from a general lack of trust — the ‘animosity issue.’” In fact, only 41% of U.S. customers agree with the statement that “insurance companies can be completely trusted.”

So, I was very interested when I saw a piece on Boing Boing on the “anti-universal-health-care” movement which ultimately led me to Bill Moyers’ interview of Wendell Potter on PBS. A former VP of public relations at Cigna, Potter was talking about the “dirty tricks” used by the insurance industry to fight universal healthcare.

“The [insurance] industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that, you're heading down on the slippery slope towards socialism,” Potter said. “We shouldn't fear government involvement in our health care system. There is an appropriate role for government.”

I say, let the free market compete — and if government comes in, they will compete, too.

“Multitasking: Destroyer of Human Happiness?”

The ability to juggle dozens of balls simultaneously has always been a fundamental requirement in the public relations profession — especially in New York. That may be why I’ve always been fascinated (and repelled) by the apocalyptic tone of many social critics when they describe the dire effects of multitasking.

“Certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us,” novelist and critic Walter Kirn wrote in the Atlantic. “In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy,” he warned.

Um, that can’t be good.

So I was delighted to read Sam Anderson’s “Defense of Distraction” recently in New York magazine. “This doomsaying strikes me as silly for two reasons,” he writes. “First, conservative social critics have been blowing the apocalyptic bugle at every large-scale tech-driven social change since Socrates’ famous complaint about the memory-destroying properties of that newfangled technology called “writing.” (A complaint we remember, not incidentally, because it was written down.) And, more practically, the virtual horse has already left the digital barn. It’s too late to just retreat to a quieter time. Our jobs depend on connectivity.”

PR professionals have long recognized the benefits of being a world class multitasker: the ability to sift through information quickly, see associations that others may miss and increased passion, energy and creativity.

I’d rather be challenged than bored, anytime.

PR salutes “Web 2.0”: The Millionth Word in the English Language

As a public relations professional at a leading New York City-based PR firm, words are important to me. (For the record, words are also important to my boss, Ken Makovsky, who once devoted an entire entry in his “My Three Cents” blog to his distress over the challenge to the English language posed by texting shorthand.)

So I paid attention when The Global Language Monitor(GLM), announced that — on June 10 at 6:22 am EST — the English language had acquired its one millionth word: “Web 2.0” — defined as “the next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.”

Among the finalists for the 1,000,000th word: “Jai Ho,” “N00b,” “slumdog,” cloud computing” and “carbon neutral.”

For the record, at its current rate, English generates about 14.7 words a day, or one every 98 minutes. Based in Austin, TX, GLM documents, analyzes and tracks language trends worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon Global English.

Did Bacteria Invent Communications?

Communications may be a fundamental principle of life. At least, that’s one of the big ideas I took away from Bonnie Bassler’s TED talk a few months ago.

A brilliant molecular biologist at Princeton University,
Dr. Bassler studies how bacteria use chemical signals to communicate with each another, enabling them to act in concert to mount attacks and coordinate defense.

This behavior — called “quorum sensing,” or bacterial communication — used to be considered a rare phenomenon. Dr. Bassler contends that nearly all bacteria do it and most do it all the time. These tiny single-celled organisms can distinguish between their own and other species, “speaking” one language within their own species and communicating with other bacteria in an interspecies language, like a form of “bacterial Esperanto.”

The pharmaceutical industry is paying careful attention to her work, since Dr. Bassler’s discoveries suggest the possibility of a new generation of antibiotics that work by interfering with the communication among pathogenic (bad) bacteria … especially resistant strains.

I have to confess, however, that as a public relations consultant, what moved me most was the notion that communicating is as natural — and fundamental — as eating, breathing or reproducing. In fact, the impulse to communicate may be hardwired in virtually every living thing.

Believe Me, It Was High-Tech in Its Time

One of my guilty pleasures is Smithsonian.com’s “Today in History” feature; and I was pleased to see, at the end of last month, an acknowledgement of the important advance in technology pioneered by Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia. On March 30, 1858, Lipman was issued a patent for his breakthrough concept: attaching a piece of rubber inside one end of a pencil to serve as an eraser.

(Regrettably, 17 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court would revoke the patent, ruling that “a pencil with an eraser is just a pencil with an eraser and not a new invention.” Churlish of them, in my opinion.)

According to the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. is the single largest market for wood-encased pencils today … in part, because it is the instrument-of-choice when it comes to solving Sudoku and crossword puzzles. It’s also immensely useful in all of the communications professions … but especially public relations and journalism. Unlike a pen, a pencil never leaks, surprises you by running out of ink or freezes in cold weather. Despite its many virtues, however, I know people who haven’t written anything with pencil — let alone erased it — for years now.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, I have to say that I have nothing but pity for my colleagues who were born into a high-tech universe in which the delete button is sufficient to their needs.

How Are the Mighty Fallen!

There have been massive changes in the practice of public relations since I first joined the PR firm of Makovsky + Company more than ten years ago. Back then, most major cities had two or three local newspapers. Today, many are down to just one, as Ken Makovsky has described in his recent “My Three Cents” blog… and it’s at risk of folding.

On March 16, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last print edition, leaving the biggest city in the state of Washington, with just one daily newspaper, The Seattle Times. The 146-year-old Seattle P-I will live on in a digital version as a “news and information portal.”

The struggling U.S. newspaper industry must be waiting with bated breath. Who’s next?

Just a week, content provider 24/7 Wall St. released a list of the 10 most endangered major daily newspapers. Based on an analysis of the financial strength of their parent companies, the amount of direct competition they face in their markets and their financial losses, these are the newspapers likeliest to fold or begin publishing an online edition only … many within the next 18 months!

1. Philadelphia Daily News
2. Star Tribune
3. The Miami Herald
4. The Detroit News
5. The Boston Globe
6. San Francisco Chronicle
7. Chicago Sun-Times
8. New York Daily News
9. Fort Worth Star-Telegram
10. The Plain Dealer

I’m a big believer in consumer-generated media and the importance of citizen journalists as investigators and whistleblowers — but as a public relations consultant and a citizen, I certainly would hate to lose the professionals of the Fourth Estate.



Technorati Tags: media crisis, newspapers, journalism, 24/7 Wall St., Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Times, Philadelphia Daily News, Star Tribune, Miami Herald, Detroit News, Boston Globe,San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Daily News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Makovsky + Company, PR firm, Ken Makovsky, My Three Cents

A Question to Bankers: What’s Up with Your PR?

I recently read an interesting article in Advertising Age about the marketing challenges facing financial services industry in the post-TARP world and how banks are responding.

Some customers are asking whether Citibank is a safe place for their savings,” writes reporter Beth Snyder Bulik. “So what is Citibank doing? Running ads in the Wall Street Journal about its microfinance capabilities in Texas and India.”

It’s just one example of the tone-deaf marketing messages coming from some banks that don’t answer worried customers’ real concerns … Is my money safe? Can I trust you? Will you be here tomorrow?

According to Ad Age, the top 10 banks and credit-card companies cut their ad budgets by a more than 25% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and nearly 40% December compared with those same periods in 2007. This represents a tremendous opportunity for banks and other financial services institutions to step into the void and claim it for their brand.

As our CEO, Ken Makovsky, wrote recently, public relations “is significantly less expensive than advertising and much more credible. We’re talking about a modest investment in time and money that delivers a major return on investment.”

DST: A Sinister Plot to Toy with Our Biorhythms?

It’s almost here. The time of the year I hate most. The day on which I am robbed of a precious, precious hour of sleep … Daylight Saving Time. This year in the U.S., DST begins on Sunday, March 8, at 2:00 am, when clocks are adjusted forward one hour. Time doesn’t revert to normal again until November, when clocks are set back (and I get my hour of lost sleep back again.)

I’m a public relations consultant. I work for a leading business-to-business (B2B) PR firm based in New York City. Our unique positioning is the “power of specialized thinking” — so I have to be able to think. How can I think when, every spring, my bio-clock is being messed with by some Time Lord with a nonsensical agenda?

Here are the three top reasons I think we should do away with DST. (I’ve got more if you want them.)

1. It makes for less efficient workers. Studies estimate that that sleep deprivation costs U.S. businesses an estimated $150 billion a year in absenteeism and reduced productivity.
2. It’s not green. A 2008 study that examined billing data in Indiana before and after it adopted DST three years ago found that DST increased residential electricity consumption by 1% to 4%.

3. It takes time to change clocks. And as more high-tech devices contain clocks, more time is spent changing them. (I avoid this problem by leaving my watch on standard time all year-round. For the six months of DST, I simply add an hour in my head.)

In his My Three Cents blog, Ken Makovsky has written that “outstanding productivity in business depends on executives who are awake.” He suggests power napping as a solution. I say, put an end to Daylight Saving Time.

The Decentralization of Brand Building

Powerful, complex and volatile, a brand is often a company, product, service or individual’s most important competitive differentiator. While marketing, public relations and advertising can help to preserve, protect and enhance the brand, it’s important to recognize that, ultimately, the brand is a collection of perceptions in the minds of your stakeholders. That was never truer than today, at a time when the Internet has empowered its 1.6 billion users to tell the world—loudly, instantly and continuously—when a brand is failing to live up to its promise.

The reverse is equally true, as I was reminded today when I happened on a video called “If I Made a Commercial for Trader Joe’s” on YouTube, which its creator, San Francisco-based Carl Willat, says he “shot on my Palm Treo before I accidentally ran over it with my car.” It’s hard to imagine a paid commercial that would have the power of this three-minute-long, unofficial, fan-made riff on the unique quirks and pleasures of Trader Joe’s.

The video was posted on YouTube on January 27. By February 12, it had been downloaded nearly 124,000 times and it had swept the blogosphere, with hundreds of thousands of references and links. The vast majority of comments were made by people who talked about why they loved Trader Joe’s … reinforcing the retailer’s brand promise of being a place where “value, adventure and tasty treasures are discovered, every day.”

High-Tech Temptation: Leaving the Laptop Behind

For most public relations professionals, technology is not just a helpful tool; it’s a driver of our business. So, as a PR person, I was initially surprised when I read the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal blog by Nick Wingfield: “Time to Leave the Laptop Behind”.

Wingfield explains: “For years, mobile workers have been ditching their desktop computers for laptops that they can take wherever they go. Now road warriors are starting to realize that they can get even more portability — and lots of computing punch — from smart phones.”

Wingfield cites a recent survey by market research firm In-Stat which revealed that more than half (52%) of technology users said they could envision using a high-tech smart phone in the future as their sole computing device … provided that manufacturers could improve keyboards, screens and applications so that they work like those that come with a PC.

We’re not there yet —Chiclet keyboards and teeny-weeny screens can be mighty frustrating for PR consultants like me who are copious note-takers — but we can see the High-Tech Promised Land that lies just ahead.

Whether smart phones get bigger or laptops get smaller makes no nevermind to me. I just want the technology in place that will let me have my office with me wherever I go!

Kindle’s Powerful Branding Strategy: Word-of-Mouth

Abbey Klaassen wrote an interesting article last month about a public relations/branding strategy that enables Kindle devotees to become ambassadors for Amazon’s wireless reading device.
This brilliant branding strategy takes social networking and consumer product reviews to a whole new level … to the real world!
None of the Kindle enthusiasts work for Amazon, nor do they receive any remuneration for their efforts.
Klaassen describes one such ambassador, Cindy Longo, who has shown off her Kindle to about 15 people in the Chicago area. She has even set up a special email address to handle requests for demos. Longo reports that she not just motivated by the urge to be of service. “I love my Kindle,’ she had said, “and if demand remains strong, authors/publishers will be motivated to make their books available in Kindle format.”
According to Drew Herdener, senior PR manager at Amazon, some Kindle owners reported that they couldn’t use their Kindles in public because strangers were asking to see it. Meanwhile, prospective Kindle buyers were asking where they could see the product. Amazon message board put the two together.

Even those of us at sophisticated, successful New York branding firms can learn a thing or two from this savvy Seattle-based online retailer.

Thought Leadership in Action

Thought leadership is an important strategy in the tool box of virtually all PR practitioners, whether they work within a corporation, or as a consultant in a public relations firm. At Makovsky + Company, we define “thought leadership” as “building and promoting the expertise and/or image of an individual regarding the issues, trends or personal qualities that key constituents are most concerned about.”

At this point in time, the issues, trends and personal qualities that most concern the American public are 1) the current financial crisis and 2) the personal qualities of the candidates for president and vice president of the United States.

If you’re a senior corporate executive, you probably want to steer away from commenting on the presidential race. (Whatever you have to say automatically runs the risk of alienating half your constituency.) But you can certainly address the upheaval in the credit markets.

Procter & Gamble Co. Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley did precisely that, when he urged congressional passage of a financial rescue plan in his op-ed — “How [the] Financial Crisis Affects You, and Why You Should Sound Off” — which ran in the October 1 issue of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Lafley notes that “consumers are feeling the credit crunch very directly” and some P&G suppliers are “hampered by the inability to get the capital they need to run their businesses.” He calls on Washington to come up with a proposal that Americans can support and urges folks on Main Street “to let our legislators know that it’s impacting them.”

This is thought leadership at its best. It serves to underscore the fact that consumer understanding is one of Lafley’s — and, by extension, Procter & Gamble’s — core strengths.

There Is Nothing like a Nap

Ken Makovsky, the CEO of our public relations firm, has written about the benefits of “power napping” on his blog, My Three Cents. He passionately believes that naps enhance information processing and learning, reverse information overload and increase productivity. He’s definitely not alone in his views.

If you too want to deploy a napping strategy to become “smarter, healthier and safer,” it’s worth checking out the Boston Globe feature, “How to Nap.” It’s not just a great in-depth look at the myriad health benefits of naps and how to attain them, it’s also a great example of how to use a well-designed visual to effectively communicate complex information quickly and easily.

Very High Tech: Sky-High Tech, to Be Exact

In his Personal Technology column in the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg reports that inflight WiFi is on the way. A new system called Gogo will make it possible for any passenger with a WiFi-enabled laptop, PDA or cell phone to surf the Web, use email or IM texting and download files, including streaming audio and video, once the aircraft has reached 10,000 feet. A data-only system, Gogo will not enable phone calls and will block all services involving voice communications.

The new service — priced at $12.95 for flights of three hours or longer and $9.95 for shorter trips — is already available on a trial basis on select American Airlines flights between New York and Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami. It will shortly be available also on Virgin America.

It’s a mixed blessing, this new technology. We’re either going to be more connected and productive public relations professionals, or we’ll lose one of the last opportunities left to sit quietly for a few hours and just … think.

Are You a TimesPeople Person?

Formerly dubbed the “Gray Lady” for its staid appearance and style, The New York Times has just announced the beta version of TimesPeople, a new social network for readers of the newspaper. If you’re a marketing consultant, financial communications professional, PR practitioner or just a news junkie, you may want to check it out.

Unlike MySpace, it’s not a place to find a potential soulmate. TimesPeople is much more like Digg, in that it lets you share interesting things you find on the NYT website with others in the network. Users of TimesPeople can build up friends lists and can see a “news feed” of the stories their friends are recommending, sharing and discussing.

Currently available only as a Firefox browser add-on, when TimesPeople is formally launched, it will work with all web browsers.

Medicaid Insurance Crisis: Who’s in Charge of PR Here?

According to an article in the AARP Bulletin, a new rule designed to keep illegal immigrants off the Medicaid insurance rolls has had the net effect of denying healthcare coverage to tens of thousands of Native Americans … because they can’t prove that they’re U.S. citizens!

No one knows precisely how many have been affected, but in Oklahoma alone, more than 20,000 of its 700,000 Medicaid recipients — of whom almost 13% are Native Americans — have been dropped from the program, “not because they aren’t citizens, but because they’re having a tough time coming up with the right pieces of paper at the right time,” according to Mike Fogarty, CEO of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.

Native Americans and other minorities, including African Americans and Latinos, experience higher rates of infant mortality, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and cancer, according to the Office of Minority Health of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The causes are complex, but two major factors are 1) inadequate access to care and
2) substandard quality of care.

In today’s troubled economy, the issue of healthcare insurance for all Americans has the potential to become a serious public relations crisis for the entire insurance industry.

The [Divorce] Court of Public Opinion

Tricia Walsh-Smith, an angry New Yorker engaged in a bitter divorce with her husband, a wealthy Broadway executive, is continuing to air her grievances on YouTube in the second of two videos about her impending divorce. The original video — which was downloaded more than 2.5 million times and was picked up by 383 mainstream media outlets in the first week — can be seen here.

Whether Walsh-Smith has helped or hurt her cause is immaterial … although I would imagine her shenanigans are unlikely to impress the judge who hears her divorce case. As MSNBC’s senior legal analyst Susan Filan said, “In the end, a divorce, as upsetting and emotional as it is, is just a financial transaction.”

As a PR practitioner in New York, who has worked for law firms and handled crisis management assignments, what concerns me is the increased potential for sudden, swift blogstorms — like this one — when parties to a lawsuit or crisis decide to take the communications into their own hands. My concern is intensified when the ultimate decision is the responsibility of lay people (members of a community or jury), who may be swayed by what they see and hear on the internet.

Early Ends to Positive Oncology Trials? Not Always Good News.

According to a study published recently in the Annals of Oncology, there is a growing tendency for pharmaceutical manufacturers and clinical investigators to call a premature halt to cancer drug trials the moment a benefit appears, in order to beat their competitors to market.

The Italian group analyzed 25 randomized controlled trials of oncology drugs between 1997 and 2007 — all of which were stopped early after showing some patient benefits. More than half of the trials were stopped in the past three years. Five had enrolled less than 40% of the target number of patients. The researchers warn that “the risk of overestimating treatment effects increases markedly when the sample is small.”

Paul S. Mueller, MD, an associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic— who wasn’t involved with the Annals of Oncology study — concurs, saying, “Decisions are being made on some fairly shaky evidence.”

We agree with Dr. Mueller’s conclusion: “Trials should be carried out long enough in order to obtain data about outcomes important to doctors and patients.” It’s not just good public relations; it’s good public health.

A Word to the Wise

“Mind the gap,” warns a recent article in the Financial Times earlier this month. FT columnist John Plender offers substantial evidence that “income inequality in the U.S. is at its highest since that most doom-laden of years: 1929.” And, I would add, it doesn’t bode well for the image and reputation of retail and investment banks and hedge fund and private equity firms.

Here are just two of the gasp-inducing indicators Plender cites, which were the result of an analysis of Congressional Budget Office figures by Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute:

• Between 1979 and 2005, the pre-tax income for the poorest households grew by 1.3% annually and middle incomes grew by less than 1%, while the income of households in the top one percent grew by 200% pre-tax and — even more shockingly — by 228% post-tax.

• The result of this lopsided distribution of income growth was that, by 2005, the average after-tax income for the bottom fifth of households was $15,300; for the middle fifth $50,200; and for the top 1%, just over $1 million.

The subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of the American housing market has left negative equity in its wake … also anger about a system that gives banking executives huge bonuses when the economy is booming, while taxpayers pick up the bill when banks fail.

This is certainly a public relations challenge, but it’s not just a PR challenge. It’s a fundamental operational issue that also needs to be addressed by the entire financial services industry — including banks, investment banking, hedge fund management and private equity firms and their professional associations — to avoid regulatory backlash … or worse.

The Demise of Truth?

A couple of years ago, in his My Three Cents blog, PR guru Ken Makovsky wrote about the concept of “truthiness,” a word coined by the Stephen Colbert, host of the Comedy Channel’s Colbert Report. Truthiness is believing what you feel or wish were true, without reference to logic, evidence or facts.

There’s new book out called True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, by Salon.com staff writer Farhad Manjoo. In it, he explores the idea — well supported by cognitive scientists— that when the facts don't fit a person’s frame of reference, the frame stays and the facts are ignored.

Manjoo cites a study by Stanford professor Shanto Iyengar and Washington Post columnist Richard Morin who tested Republicans and Democrats’ reactions to a list of headlines covering topics ranging from politics and race to travel and sports. The headlines were randomly paired with one of four logos: BBC, CNN, Fox and NPR. Not only did the Fox logo triple Republicans’ interest in stories about politics and Iraq, it even increased Republicans' interest (and decreased Democrats' interest!) in headlines about travel and sports.

The rise of the internet and the disintermediation of the mainstream media were supposed to help us get to the truth faster than ever before. But when people choose to read only the news that supports their ingrained prejudices, those of us who are responsible for public relations and brand management must recognize that we are facing a bigger challenge than ever before.

Environmental Claims Meet with Consumer Doubts

It seems that everybody these days is leaping on the “green” (or clean technology) bandwagon. I’ve seen press releases and ads taking the moral — i.e., green — high ground from companies in virtually every industry, from financial services and professional services to pharmaceutical and technology.

It’s no surprise to find that the blogosphere is exploding with talk about environmental issues. According to Nielsen Online, sustainability buzz more than doubled between September 2006, when blogger messages on the topic totaled 83,000, and December 2007, when they had skyrocketed to 172,000.

Unfortunately, one of the most popular blog topics is corporate hypocrisy — also known as “greenwashing” — where companies misrepresent their commitment to sustainability with aggressive PR campaigns. Greenwashing was the topic in 25% of all sustainability discussions on the web in 2007, according to Nielsen.

Confirming consumer skepticism, a recent web survey by Burst Media, an online media and technology company, found that while 70% of respondents recalled seeing green ads at least occasionally, more than 20% said they never believe the claims. Two-thirds say they only believe the claims sometimes.

Before you risk overstating your company’s use of clean technology, check out the Federal Trade Commission’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims. Issued by the FTC in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they can help ensure that your company’s green claims don't run afoul of the law.

Do Ethics Matter? Yes!

Our job as PR practitioners is to build connections and trust, so ethics ought to be top-of-mind for us at all times, whether we work for corporations or public relations/investor relations firms.

We’ve already experienced the consequences of ethical lapses on the corporate side. And once the U.S. Presidential Election really gets underway, I have every confidence that we will be subjected to the inevitable array of charges and countercharges that range from dubious to patently untrue.

Even small sins can lead to big evils, according to Stanford Professor of Psychology Philip Zimbardo, the author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. (Zimbardo is famous for creating the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which normal college students randomly selected to serve as “guards” in a simulated prison, became so brutal so quickly that the experiment had to be shut down after only six days.)

A speaker at this year’s TED conference in Monterey, CA, Zimbardo presented the “Seven Social Processes that Grease the Slippery Slope of Evil”. They include “blind obedience to authority,” “uncritical conformity to group norms” and “passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference.” Zimbardo concludes that we need to foster a culture of heroism as the antidote to evil.

In its list of professional values for our profession, PRSA lists “honesty” as the #2 value, after “advocacy.” I think “honesty” warrants a promotion to the #1 spot.

Branding the Professional Services Firm

Uh-oh. Real GDP is not expected to “grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly,” Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke recently told Congress's Joint Economic Committee.

You can’t afford to let short-term economic conditions compromise long-term goals … especially if you operate in the professional services space — e.g., as an accountancy, law, wealth management and personal finance advisory firm. Look at tough economic pressures as a growth opportunity and consider the following seven brand-building strategies for your organization.

1. Concentrate on core values. Understand who you are and what you offer and communicate simply and directly.
2. Make a commitment to investment. Establish an adequate budget. Consider retaining an outside specialist firm to execute.
3. Prioritize your constituencies. You can’t reach everybody. Hone in on your most important constituencies.
4. Focus on your clients’ needs. Forget features; promote benefits.
5. Take a holistic approach. Integrate your marketing, advertising, customer service and product development teams.
6. Think inside out. Your employees are the vanguard of your branding efforts. Enlist their support.
7. Follow through. Don’t falter. You can’t afford to lose ground!

The bottom line? Using PR to preserve and protect your brand can mean growth for your bottom line … even in the most challenging of economic times.

A Reputational Roller Coaster Ride for Accountants

The accounting industry has successfully redeemed its reputation from its rock-bottom low in 2002, according to Gallup’s most recent Business & Industry Sector Ratings. But even now, complacency represents a serious threat … witness the effect of the subprime mortgage scandal on Bear Stearns. While the reputation of its management may have been besmirched, the credibility of its independent auditor, Deloitte & Touche, was not … largely because its statements, in an audit released last year, warned investors of the potential problem, according to WebCPA, citing a BusinessWeek story on the topic.

It’s my view that every accounting firm PR program should have a strong component dedicated to highlighting ethical standards. After all, do any of us truly believe — to the extent that we did seven years ago — that accountants provide a rock-solid guarantee of the honesty and accuracy of the financial statements that they audit? Enron was a watershed in this respect, and public relations must take this into account.

How Deep Is Your Law Firm’s Commitment to Growth?

Market budgets continued to climb at law firms of all sizes for the second successive year, according to BTI’s Benchmarking Law Firm Marketing and Business Development Strategies 2008, a recent report produced by the BTI Consulting Group, a research/consulting group. Among the study’s findings:

• Overall marketing budgets are up $1 million
• Marketing spending per attorney has skyrocketed more than 20 percent
• Marketing staffs have grown by more than 30 percent

Clearly, law firm marketing is moving from a back-office function to its rightful role at the management table. In fact, according to the San Diego Business Journal, many national firms spend millions and employ teams of 50 or more for marketing and public relations.

Public relations may be commonplace at most law firms today, but the real questions to ask are: how well do they do it and how deep is the commitment? I think that when it comes to law firm PR, it’s often a matter of the head being committed, but the heart unwilling. Attorneys may recognize the need for public relations, but the function is often hampered by the caution and risk-aversion that is endemic to how lawyers operate. So PR winds up being a shadow of what it can and should be.

Using PR to Differentiate in a Commoditized Investment Market

According to senior reporter Kevin Black, in “Fads Dominate as Creativity Falls,” an article last month on FT.com, “The US mutual fund industry’s best attempts at innovation have fallen flat in recent years due to a hairy mix of factors ranging from changes in how funds are distributed to the simple fact that many new products have failed to deliver their promised returns.”

Black goes on to say that innovation is discouraged. “It’s expensive to roll out new products and it takes three to five years to incubate a fund and develop a track record. Being a first mover also carries a lot of risk, something most firms are unwilling to roll the dice on.” He adds that one way to differentiate in this mature and crowded market is to offer access to a particular niche, but warns that there’s still a downside: “limited appeal.”

Public relations would seem to be an essential tool that is being too often overlooked by the hyper-competitive mutual fund industry, with over $12 trillion invested in over 8000 separate funds, according to the Investment Company Institute (ICI). As wealth managers move downmarket and as the client mix for many funds grows more and more institutional, PR strategies have to change accordingly. A lot of what were once strictly institutional products are now being reconstituted into tremendously complex products for individuals, such as hedged mutual funds. In this kind of environment, two basic PR skills are key: financial experience and the ability to clarify complexity.

Don’t Miss This Video

There’s so much great stuff on the internet, it’s hard to keep up. This week I finally caught up with an amazing and challenging video on YouTube. I think it should be mandatory viewing for generalists in public relations and financial, healthcare, pharmaceutical and high tech corporate communicators and the specialty PR firms that cater to them.

“Did You Know/Shift Happens” is a PowerPoint presentation about globalization and the information age created by Colorado educator/blogger Karl Fisch and posted on his blog, The Fischbowl. To whet your appetite, here is a sampling of the facts and figures that caught my eye:

• The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQs is greater than the total population of North America.
• China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world.
• If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China, China would still have a labor surplus.
• The U.S. is 20th in the world in broadband Internet penetration. (Luxembourg just passed us.)
• There are over 106 million registered users of MySpace [as of August 2006]. If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th-largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico).
• It’s estimated that a week’s worth of The New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.

For those who are interested, sources for the data featured in the video can be found by following this link.