Tuesday, October 16, 2001

Thursday, July 5, 2001

 Monday, May 7: Click here for Principles of Advertising

Some of the differences between writing for paper 
and writing for the computer screen.

Over in the Compuserve Journalism Forum, a woman wrote that she'd suddenly found herself teaching a writing course that included web writing. 

What was special about writing for the web, she asked. 

People who want in-depth knowledge of web writing can take an in-depth course from various experts or "experts" as the case may be. (I'm a touch cynical about some of this stuff.) The International Association of Business Communicators offers one, (good, too) and BAK's Report readers can learn about it at www.IABC.com. Look on the right of the screen for a link to Writing for the Wired World.

Or you can read on, for some of my top-of-mind thoughts.

Print journalism is like writing on a roll of paper towels.

You write and write and write, and it is all on one long piece of paper, even if it turns from page to page in a magazine.

Writing for the web is like writing on big playing cards, which can be shuffled.

You start the story on one card, and then write the history on another. A third, fourth and fifth card each have a profile of one leader. Another card has information on a competitor. And another has info on suppliers.

Depending on which link someone clicks on at the bottom of one card, the reader jumps to card four, or seven, or three, or.... Therefore, you need to always assume your readers have not necessarily read what was in earlier paragraphs, because they may have skipped those links completely.

Depending on the web site operator, the writer may or may not have more or less to do with the final visual appearance on the screen than the writer would in paper-based print.

Line length on computer screens is a big issue; but it may not be the responsibility of the writer. Bold facing, and italics, and even the color of the type may or may not be the responsibility of the writer.

Why? Because I think that in print, even today, there's someone who has at least a passing grasp of language involved in some sort of editing function. But over in web-land, it could just as easily be some computer nerd who would fail grade eight English if the school system had any standards.

Print has a longer and shorter life, concurrently, than does print. Once published on paper, print words are there until the magazine or newspaper is thrown out. Newspapers are usually gone in a day or two. Magazines stay weeks or months, and clippings even longer.

But, regardless of how long it stays, print stays unchanged.

Web words stay up for days, weeks, or months, meaning you need to write in a way that is topical three months from now. Sometimes the site is dead and gone, but the words are archived in some search engine.

Web writing often seems untimed or undated; the reader does not have a clue if this is last week's story, or last year's, so there a need for dates, including the year, on individual web pages, or even stories upon a page. In paper-based publishing, editorial work usually has a cover date, although advertising writing and marketing and brochure writing is often undated, leaving the reader to wonder if this is the latest version.

Web writing can be updated, even several times a day. With a good web site, some stories never seem to be finished because as the inspiration of the stories change, the editor puts in updates. But how many updates are too many? When is it time to start the story over again? That's a problem I face in BAK's Report. Usually I start over again when I think there are too many other stories between the top of the page and the story I'm updating. It's just too far to scroll to get to the update or the update.

The web is like radio and tv, but only sometimes, and only in some ways. What this means is that, depending on the web site navigation scheme, you may start at the top and have to proceed in some order determined by the editor and not the readers. If navigation is set up well, however, it is also like newspapers, because you can jump from story to story, skipping the ones you don't want to consume. With radio and tv, you have to listen to the sports in order to get to the weather. So you need to be patient.

With the web, you have to wait for every story to arrive on your screen, especially if there are photographs. It's like buying a magazine with the pages stuck together. So there had better be good head-ins, to justify waiting for the pages to load and the pictures to completely fill the screen.

Bad web designers (go look at the Alta Vista Canada home page) fail to understand the concept of a complete phrase. They run part of a headline, but not enough for you to make a go / no go decision, so, if you are curious, you waste time waiting for a link to activate and a story to come up. An example? As I type, Alta Vista Canada offer "Alliance strategy to focus less on …" Less on what? Tell me, and I might go there. Don't tell me, and I skip it.

People do not read carefully on screen, most of the time. They are skimmers. In contrast to paper-based articles, it's harder to go back up a couple of paragraphs to clarify some earlier reference, because you have to control the scrollbars, instead of just looking up a couple of inches.

And there are more differences.

That's just all I had time to write.

Mini-update on Monday, March 5, 2001

There are a few book reviews on their way. 
I've just started to read Dan Middleberg's Winning PR in the Wired World, a McGraw Hill book that called out to my wife and me as we were walking through The World's Biggest Book Store late Friday afternoon.

The picture to the left is a pretty good scan. The book cover really is this ugly. But the content, at least up to page 3, which is as far as I am so far, looks very good. Middleberg writes well, with a touch of the cynic / realist to his words. I think I'm going to enjoy this book.

Also in the "to be reviewed" stack is Culture.com, by Peg Neuhauser, Ray Bender and Kirk Stromberg. There's a brief article about this in the UK edition of Business 2.0, February 2001, on page 159, that ends with these words, "The book's real strength is in the amount of ground covered. ... making it an excellent choice for managers in all types of industries." I do some work for a publishing company, and we'd kill for a line like that we could use in ads and on book jackets. Peg Neuhauser is one of the speakers at the IABC  conference in New York in late June. Read the book -- meet the woman!

Also about to be read and reported on when I find the time, are the three-pack Reinventing Work series from Tom Peters, consisting of  the project 50, the brand you 50, and the professional service firm 50; The New Positioning by Jack Trout, with Steve Rivkin, and New Thinking for the New Millennium, by one of my favorite authors, Edward de Bono

IMPORTANT STUFF ABOUT SPEECHES
New on Tuesday, February 21, 2001  - Updated Tuesday, October 16, 2001. If you've come to this page because you read about the Economic Club of Detroit, click here to jump down just a little bit to where I am rude, and deadly accurate.

I've been thinking about speeches. This should be helpful to executives making speeches, and PR people preparing speeches.

Three Kinds Of Speeches
by Brian A. Kilgore

While listening at lunch yesterday to David Dodge, the new Governor of the Bank of Canada (Americans can think of him as Alan Greenspan, north of the border version) I started to think of the three distinctive categories of speeches.

All too often communicators prepare, and executives deliver, a speech from the wrong category. I've listened in person to ten speeches so far this week, and there were examples from each category. I was lucky. Everyone got the category right.

1/ The policy speech: this establishes some rules, builds a foundation upon which action is taken, provides clear instructions about what is to follow.

2/ The inspiration speech: it establishes a mood and gets people on-side.

3/ The education speech: tells people something they did not know, provides a map to a destination, establishes the tools and techniques to accomplish a goal.

A policy speech to an audience that needs to be educated is a waste of time for speaker and audience. So's providing inspiration when policy is needed.

All three speech types have several things in common. I call this the "All List"

All must cause people to take actions to the benefit of the speaker. Otherwise, why bother making the speech?

All are very important to a small number of people who hear the speech, not very important to some or even most people, and of varying degrees of importance to those in between.

All need to be understood immediately, and also be memorable afterwards.

All should be taken out of the room.

All will be taken outside of the room, even if the speaker does not plan this.

All will only be able to accomplish a little, so don't be too optimistic about the impact.

All require effort and discipline.

Here's a little more about each point.

Policy speech.
David Dodge made a policy speech. It's the kind where certain listeners hang on specific words and phrases. 3% inflation. 3% annualized growth, lower in the first half and higher in the second. The Americans won't keep buying 17 million automobiles a year. Exchange rates are an anchor. It's the policy of the central bank of Canada. 

An Alan Greenspan speech is a policy speech, too, although usually poorly written, leaving commentators asking each other "What did he say?" Will no one tell him to get a better writer?

Most corporate annual meeting speeches are policy speeches, and a few, but only a few, political speeches are policy speeches.

The speakers can control the fact that a policy speech is a policy speech, but they may not be able to control whether an inspiration speech or an education speech turns into a policy speech. Here's an example.

Right now the University of Toronto Law School is trying to find out whether an inspirational speech by a law faculty member telling students to lie about their marks when applying for summer jobs turned, presumably by accident, into a policy speech. All we know as I write this is that about 30 students apparently lied about their Christmas marks, and some are saying their teacher told them to.

Inspiration speech.
On Monday night I was at a fund-raiser for Beatrice House. Depending on when and where you read this, you may be able to find more of Beatrice House by going to a search engine and looking for The Founders Network.

One of the speakers was a graduate of the program, and she spent a few minutes reading the "letter from the future" she wrote when, as a homeless mother, she first came to Beatrice House. The letter talked about how she had moved to Seattle, bought a two bedroom house beside a lake, become a therapist herself, and had started her own business. Her speech was interrupted by laughter and applause and there were some teary eyes. I'm prepared to believe that her speech inspired more in the way of contributions than any of the other eight speeches that evening.

The inspiration speech is the one to give to employees when things are going well, and its even more important to give this speech when things start to go badly. It's the one politicians give within the party, to get the workers to plant just ten more lawn signs before they go home, knock on a dozen more doors, make four more fund-raising phone calls before they call it a night.

Education speech.
And the education speech may inspire too, but what sets it apart is that it either tells the audience how to do whatever it is you want them to do, or explains to them how something works, so that they can be confident the efforts they make (again, because you want them to do something) will not be wasted.

At the Beatrice House reception on Monday night, there were two good, but different, education speeches. Dr. Fraser Mustard, one of the founders, explained how his organization goes about helping homeless mothers, who the supporters are, mentioning many by name, drawing the audience's attention to individuals among them, and laying out the Beatrice House program. The result was an educational speech that reassured everyone present that their donation would be carefully and efficiently and effectively spent, under the guidance of responsible people. The lesson? You can donate with confidence -- your money won't be wasted.

And the educational speech that took itself out of the room came from Bill Humphries, who reminded the audience that this was, after all, a fundraising event. In the course of his three minutes he taught several lessons, but the most important was that the children in the pictures on display around the room could have been the prosperous, successful, fulfilled people in the audience, except for the luck of the lottery of life. And that the board members would phone everyone in the room. And they would ask for money when they phoned, so please take the donor kits and give them to your contribution and donation committees. (Effectively taking the speech out of the room and into the donations committee meeting.) The audience left with knowledge; they would be called and they had better be prepared with a decision. There could be no excuses.

In a corporation, education speeches should be the stock in trade of executives speaking at conventions, conferences, trade shows and most events with primarily external audiences. And it's the educational speech, and not the inspirational speech, that's needed when there's big change in a company. People need to know what they should do to make the "new" Ajax Widgets a success. They don't need inspiration about how to deal with the change. They need instructions on how to act.

There's overlap, of course, among the three types. Once you know what the company, or department, or government agency expects (policy) and know what you must do to makes these policies become reality (education) it's the inspirational part of the talk that will get you doing it.

Let's look at the "All" list

All must cause people to take actions to the benefit of the speaker. Otherwise, why bother making the speech? 
I spend way too much time in audiences listening to speeches with no call to action for anyone, and I always wonder what useful thing could the speaker be doing, instead of droning on from behind the lectern. (I left the (relatively few) lousy presentations out of my IABC Next Wave and Conference Board conference coverage elsewhere in BAK's Report. But there was still a lot of wasted time. Honest.)

Most people say they do not have enough time in their lives.

So, if you are the speaker, what possible reason is there to prepare a good speech, go the location and stand up for 20 minutes or an hour, if there's no payoff for you? It's just stupid.

It also insults the audience.

If the speech does not cause them to do something new, or different, or important, they just wasted their time coming. Maybe the lunch was good (The Dodge lunch was fine, chicken and rice at the Toronto Board of Trade, but puzzling to me was the absence of bread and butter plates, and it was a good policy speech, with education undertones. And it inspired this paper.)

All are very important to a small number of people who hear the speech, not very important to some or even most people, and of varying degrees of importance to those in between. 
You may be willing to go speak to the Chamber of Commerce, because in the audience will be your four best prospects for major sales, plus the regulator who will approve, or refuse to approve, some bureaucratic rules you need altered. Of the other 226 other people in the room, nine are existing customers, three are your regional sales representatives, and four are suppliers. You want them all to do something too, but none of it is as important to you as getting a positive decision from those first four prospects.

And everyone else? They don't really matter, do they, except that you don't want to insult them, and out of common courtesy, you don't want to bore them?

Make sure that each time you speak (or if you're a PR pro, manage someone else's speech) you do invite the audience members you want to inspire, educate, or have agree on policy. You want to stack the audience in your favor. Invite prospects to hear you speak and you'll be amazed how many will come.

All need to be understood immediately, and also be memorable afterwards.  
I keep hearing speeches that I can't understand, simply because they were not written by anyone knowledgeable about writing for the ear. The phrases don't flow.

Don't use jargon and don't use abbreviations and don't use psychobabble and don't use phrases generated at http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

Leave out most of the statistics. Leave out most of the history.

Think what the sound clip would be. When the speech is over, if you asked audience member's "What did I say that was important to you?" make sure the audience member can remember something you want remembered.

Dodge said Americans won't keep buying 17 million cars, and that quip made the papers today, but I don't think that was the message he wanted to leave. I suspect the car companies are a bit annoyed. Bill Humphries, at the Beatrice House event, said a board member would call. I'll bet that was remembered. Now the audience members are waiting for the call, and, we hope, have their cheques ready.

All should be taken out of the room.
(Note the "should" in italics.) What you say in the room may be important to those people, but there are dozens, hundreds, thousands more people outside the room who would probably take actions to your benefit if they actually knew what you had said. Get your speech out of the room, via media, via your web site, via your sales reps, via the postal system.

Leave copies at the back of the room, so that the audience can take a copy back to share with a colleague.

Fourth rate PR people do not invite the media to the speech, and if reporters do show up, don't have a copy to the speech to give the reporter.

Third rate PR people don't bother posting the speech on the company web site, nor do they send copies to reporters covering the industry who did not hear the speech in person.

Second rate PR people post the speech on the web site, but bury it so there's no indication of the speech when a visitor gets to the opening page of the site. No, wait a minute. They're third rate PR people, too.

Second rate PR people post the speech, flag it on the opening page, but don't bother sending copies to clients, customers, suppliers, regulators, reporters, etc. They don't even send e-mails saying the speech is on the web.

First rate PR people invite the media to cover the speech; underline the best parts and give it to technicians so that the news cameras and radio microphones are turned on when the speaker says the words you want to appear on television and radio; send the speech to reporters who don't show up; extract the highlights of the speech and put them in a news release; publish both the highlights and the entire speech on the web site, with an opening page flag; send the release and the speech both (because they know most people won't read the whole text, but will read the release) to customers, prospects, suppliers, industry leaders, state, provincial, municipal and federal politicians and civil servants, and sometimes even competitors. They hold a news conference immediately before or after the speech.

They also send the speech in some form or other to the most important audience; employees.

All will be taken outside of the room, even if the speaker does not plan this.
(See "all" in italics?) And someone in the audience will take the interesting bits of the speech out of the room anyway, and spread the word, whether you want them to or not. Two hours before starting to write this I was reading about an American diplomat based in Hong Kong, Michael Klosson, who managed, in a speech he gave in Texas, to seriously annoy the Chinese government. Back in Hong Kong, officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called comments in the Texas speech "totally inappropriate " and "irresponsible."

Maybe that was his plan. Maybe not. Probably not. But anyway, the comments went around the world.

All will only be able to accomplish a little, so don't be too optimistic about the impact.
Speakers think people are paying attention. Mostly, they are not, even with the good speeches. And the audience promptly forgets.

A speech is like an ad. Advertisers who spend millions of dollars on publishing or broadcasting their ads would be happy to run the ad only once, if it made a really great impact. But once doesn't work. Advertisers know this, and good PR people know this.

Speakers need to be told this too, and then sent out to make the same points over and over, to audience after audience, month after month, community after community, and even country after country.

All require effort and discipline.
No speech is easy, yet amateurs think it is. I watched last week as the creation of three minutes of comments by one speaker took three hours of writing by professionals even before the words were given to the speaker for his review. He changed some.

I've written some speeches for very, very good lawyers. You might think this would be quick, because they're used to being on their feet, speaking in front of very smart people. The reverse is true. Because lawyers know the value of words, they want to make sure exactly the right word is chosen, and it is in exactly the right context.

Perhaps the greatest honor I've received for speech writing was a comment from a former Justice of the Supreme Court, who, upon reviewing words I'd written for him said, "Thank you, these are fine," and went on to speak them on national television.

The best speakers I've worked with rehearse, and practice, and change and alter and modify, and then practice again, before they present.

It pays off, because, although I did not list it in the original "all" list, there's one more "all."

All speeches are showbiz. Don't forget this. Get the right costume, and good writers, and a director, and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse.

---

Published  Labor Day Weekend, 2000 -- Easy-Print version

A BAK's Report advisory for Chief Executive Officers and other senior executives who need to make speeches that inspire.

Nine tips for ensuring the quality of your speech

1/ Start hard and fast, like a great movie. No history, no recapping, no setting the scene.

Take the machine gun, climb out of the cockpit, crawl along the wing, and jump into the  passing helicopter.

"Thanks Bob, good afternoon – Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the ride of your life, because next year we’re cutting turnover 25 %, we’re doubling the number of people we’re going to recruit, and we’re going to integrate our national operations with the rest of North America.

And while we do this, we’re going to become an even greater place to work! Are you up for it? Let’s go!"

2/ Allow weeks, not days, for the speech to be researched, written, read over, revamped, vetted by your senior management, rehearsed, revamped again, rehearsed some more, and presented. This always takes longer than you think, and your delivery of the speech will get better.

3/ Eliminate words that do not fall clearly upon the ear. Cut "these policies are endemic in our organization," and put in "found throughout the company." Never use a word that starts with "a" to indicate the opposite of the rest of the word. Atypical, for instance.

4/ Minimize middlemen. If you are going to be standing on the stage in front of 400, or 4000, or 40 people worth speaking to, it’s up to you to make sure the writer is properly briefed and updated, and always in sync with what you think is important. Not the job of your underlings.

But remember…

5/ Vetting counts – make your vice-presidents sign off on the specific facts relating to their areas of responsibilities. Do not stand on stage and spout the wrong information because the low-level manager who briefed the speechwriter did not know the latest departmental managerial strategy. Get the executive management involved.

Incidentally, it takes a lot of time and effort, on the part of many people, to develop and delivery a great executive speech.

6/ Respect the professionalism of the speechwriter, and don’t screw around with the copy. Sure, the facts must be right, and the tone must be something you’re comfortable with, so you can make some alterations. It is, after all, you up on the podium with the spotlight. But deal with the speechwriter yourself at this stage. Chicken mid-managers will suck the life out of your speech if you give them half a chance.

And trust the speechwriter to choose the words and the phrasing and the pacing, and don’t try to change something like "We have three goals for the next month" to "At this point in time an analysis of opportunities allows us to delineate several priorities within the balance of Q3." Readers: you know this is true, don’t you?

7/ Remember that a speech has its own rules of grammar and style, designed to be heard and remembered, not read silently/.

The audience can’t backflip – there’s no way for them to stop listening now and re-hear what you said a few paragraphs ago, the way they stop on a page, and flip back a page or two to make sure they understand what is written.

So a speech will have a structure you may be uncomfortable with when reading it silently to yourself sitting at your desk, but which will fall clearly upon the ears of your audiences.

Phrases, not sentences.

Words that depend on inflection and tone for their meaning. Repeats of something you said before.

Want some examples? Use "two thirds" and "about half," or "the vast majority," instead of 67.9% and 54.7% and 87.4 percent, because after three or four multi-digital numbers, the audience gets lost.

Try this if you've got a speech draft handy: Read it, with feeling, into a portable tape recorder or dictating machine, and play it back. Does it sound stilted and boring? You'll probably see complete sentences and good grammar. Fire the speechwriter? Does it sound vibrant and alive? Then it's written like a good movie script, so hold your next meeting with the speechwriter over a good, expensive, steak (or tofu, if appropriate)

8/ Don’t confuse a speech and a presentation.

In a speech, there’s a spotlight shining on you, the audience looks at you, and you inspire and lead and motivate.

Speeches are what CEOs of major corporations, and presidents and prime ministers of nations, and executive managers of major divisions, and winning coaches of sports teams, and genuine gurus of the new and innovative, make.

In a presentation, you are in the dark, and the audience is looking at a screen, using much of their brains trying to read the slides. They barely hear you.

In a well done presentation, you inform and build technical understanding, but rarely do they inspire. Winston Churchill kept his Powerpoint slides under his bowler. Abe Lincoln deliberately left the extension cord in the log cabin, so he had a good excuse to talk without the computer projector. Abe knew he wanted the audience looking at him, not some fuzzy slides.

Presentations are for getting budgets approved and selling widgets.

Speeches are for changing the way people think and act.

9/ Take the speech out of the room. When the CEO or an executive manager speaks about confidential company issues at a company function attended by all employees, it’s clear the most important audience is in the room.

But when a CEO or an executive manager speaks about company issues that affect shareholders, customers, suppliers, prospects, current and future employees, regulators and other stakeholders, most of the effort that went into writing, rehearsing and making the speech goes to waste if the speech bounces off the walls, but doesn’t rush out the door, too.

If it’s a company function but only a few employees can be present, send copies of the speech to everyone absent. Get the speech up on the web site, and put the highlights into a news release.

Underline the points most important to various types of stakeholders, and mail copies to them. Include the CEOs, in addition to the day to day contacts, at your largest and your highest potential clients and customers. Give copies to your sales reps, to drop off on their rounds. Let your suppliers know how you are transforming your team.

Even have copies of your speaking notes in piles by the door, so your audience can take your information with them, and share it with others.

 

New on Sunday, February 18, 2001

Just a rhetorical question. You can catch on to why it is important.

Regardless of whether you are a CEO, an executive manager, or a professional communicator, how many customers have you talked with, in person, this year? (When I wrote this I was thinking about how well the executive management of Nortel, and the public relations management, knows its customers.)

Was the number of customers you visited enough?

Enough said. Decide for yourself if you need to change some priorities and get out more.

New on Wednesday, February 14, 2001

This article ran in the Globe and Mail newspaper on Monday, February 12, 2001

Asia is going it alone
APEC, in which Canada has been an active member, may be
on its last legs, says international lawyer TIM ARMSTRONG.
It's a consummation devoutly to be wished

TIM ARMSTRONG

Monday, February 12, 2001

While attention in Canada has been focused on trading relations with the United States and the rest of the hemisphere, the countries of Asia have quietly been going about the business of creating the world's largest trading bloc, one that embraces a third of the world's population and dwarfs the EU and our own NAFTA.

The initiative gained impetus from three key developments in the past year. In May, at a meeting in Thailand, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed to a network of currency swap/repurchase arrangements, designed to protect member countries against the sudden withdrawal of "hot money" investment by Western speculators -- the kind of thing that triggered the financial meltdown in Thailand in 1997 and quickly spread to many other Asian jurisdictions. Under the swap plan, countries are guaranteed short term, hard currency liquidity by their Asian partners when faced with an exodus of off-shore investment.

Then, in October, Singapore, Japan and Korea accelerated their discussions toward bilateral, intra-regional free-trade agreements. Other countries within the region are rumoured to be considering similar bilateral arrangements.

Most significantly, the ASEAN group met again in Singapore in late November and agreed to expedite a feasibility study for an all-encompassing Asian trading bloc. Japan's Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori hailed the plan as "epoch-making."

ASEAN was formed in 1967 in the shadow of the Vietnam war and the perceived threat of communism's spread in South East Asia. The original members were Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. Following the end of hostilities in Indo-China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (formerly Burma), and Brunei joined. Japan, China and South Korea later became associates and the group's agenda became one of safeguarding and promoting the members' economies.

While there will be impediments to establishing this enormous trade bloc, including the varying stages of development of the countries within it, none of the difficulties seems insuperable. Judging from the support among the 13 member nations, the question now seems to be when, not if, the bloc will become a reality.

Japan's vice-minister for international affairs, Takatoshi Ito, identified four factors behind the push for regional consolidation: first, the World Trade Organization's failure in Seattle in 1999 to advance its agenda for further multilateral trade liberalization; second, the disillusionment in Asia following the currency crisis in 1997 and 1998, concerning the role of the International Monetary Fund and its controversial management of the crisis; third, the single market and currency in Europe and the proliferation of free-trade agreements beyond Asia, most notably NAFTA; and fourth, the belated recognition of a natural community of interests among the Asian nations and the need for permanent institutional arrangements to accommodate them.

Asian leaders were quick to point out that the Asian bloc is not intended to exclude North America or Europe, nor any other region, but rather to balance the global trading system by providing a "Made in Asia" institution to match NAFTA and the EU.

Despite these reassuring statements, the Singapore initiative, when realized, is bound to have a profound impact on other institutions, principally on APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation Forum) and on the WTO.

APEC, founded in 1987 at the initiative of Australia and Japan and comprising 21 nations (including four non-Asian members, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand) has had a checkered history. At its meeting in Indonesia in 1994, the group committed itself to multilateral tariff reduction, with 2010 as the target for total tariff removal by the developed nations, and 2020 by the developing economies. No visible progress has been made toward these objectives.

Thus, even before the ASEAN meeting in Singapore, APEC had lost any meaningful momentum, and there has been growing scepticism in Asia about the inclusion of the non-Asian members. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia sees the United States as a trojan horse, intent upon manipulating Asian trading relationships according to its own national interests. Japan's colourful former vice-minister of finance, Eisuke Sakakibara, adds that for APEC to be a true regional organization it should not include the United States.

At the last APEC meeting in Brunei, also in November, it was obvious that the organization was in disarray, had lost its sense of purpose and that its defenders were desperately attempting to paper over cracks in a seriously flawed and foundering organization. If the Asian trading bloc envisaged by ASEAN materializes, it is difficult to see a meaningful role for APEC.

The impact of an Asian bloc on the WTO, however, is likely to be positive. With over 130 members and deep divisions within the organization between the developed and developing nations (to say nothing of the dissent from external interests) it will be difficult to kick-start a new round of WTO multilateral talks. But there are persuasive arguments that a strong, cohesive Asian bloc could reinvigorate the WTO's multilateral agenda. As Japan's vice-minister Ito wrote recently, "The task for Asian countries is to ensure that regionalism in Asia really complements global trading and financial systems, like other regional arrangements in North America and Europe."

Canada's interests are surely best served by applauding this new Asian initiative, and recognizing it as complementary to the objectives of the WTO.

As to whether Canada should cling to the existing APEC structure, one is reminded of John Cleese's classic Monty Python episode about the dead parrot, when, in response to the pet shop vendor's claim that it was alive, Mr. Cleese exclaimed: "It's bleedin' demised! This is a late parrot! It's joined the Choir Invisible!"
Tim Armstrong is counsel to McCarthy Tétrault. He was Ontario's agent-general for the Asia-Pacific region, and deputy minister of industry, trade and technology.

New Sunday, February 4, 2001
Media Relations 101 -- for functional managers
This presentation was developed for middle managers who are cleared to provide media interviews on their own, without a professional communicator being present. The idea is to get increased coverage of specialized functional departments. In typical companies, it could be aimed at coverage of information technology initiatives such as the introduction of an electronic exchange or a new way of approaching e-mail; human resources policies such as recruitment,  retention or new benefits; marketing developments such as a new advertising campaign or pricing policies; or sales policies such as new channels, introduction of new dealers, revisions to distribution programs, etc. 
CLICK HERE FOR THE PRESENTATION

Saturday, January 27, 2001

Ken Burns on communications, 
interpreted for PR people by me

Ken Burns, the producer of the PBS Jazz series, the Jazz book, the Jazz CDs and more, was in Toronto earlier this week, and we spent some time together. He was talking about, among other things, photography, and some of his comments relate to what we as PR people do for a living.

Here are a few of the comments I think are worth passing on the BAK's Report readers.

"All meaning improves with duration," he said, referring to why the quick cuts jumping from image to image that are so popular with low-quality video producers and on rock music videos do a disservice to viewers. (See my shots at the Manulife video shown at the Canadian Public Relations society lunch recently. Continuing on, he said "Meaning accrues." It's a concept we need to keep in mind in all our communications. One story, one release, one example is never enough.

Discussing the importance of still photography to communications, he remarked "I can hear the horns honking in a still photograph," and then went on to mention that they reviewed about 100,000 stills, reshot about 6,000 onto videotape, and finally used about 2,500. It was, he said, a bit like making maple syrup, where 40 gallons of sap yields only one gallon of syrup.

Another comment referred to his working with researchers. His point was not what researchers brought to him, but what they rejected before showing to him.

Translated into communications management terms, it points out the bad thinking when PR executives outsource too much of the creative work, and wait in splendid isolation for "the answer" to be delivered to them. We actually need to be there when the thinking is done.

Burns was in Toronto, at the main Indigo book store, doing an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and addressing an audience of several hundred.