PR LESSON
Hiring a public relations firm. Three years ago I wrote the original version of the story below. Recently my consulting activities have included helping several clients "engage" a law firm, an ad agency, two different design firms, my communications consultancy,  another PR firm, and the services of a photographer in London, and me as a photographer in Toronto.

What's "Engagement" mean?
I came across this question one day a few years ago, and I tossed out my answer to BAK's Report readers. The context is internal communications. 

If anyone would like to share their working definition of "engagement" it would be truly helpful.

Engagement / 1: Noun: an assignment, job, contract, etc. in the sense of Acme Consulting accepted an "engagement" to develop an executive conference call program for Consolidated Diversified.

Engagement/ 2 / Attitude: A (positive) mindset where someone actually cares (becomes engaged) about a project. As per, looking negatively at a real world example with the name changed, a very senior Canadian public servant who was now with a law firm, describing a phone call he'd received from the CEO of a client firm complaining about the law firm's boss, "He wasn't engaged." i.e. he did not care, was just going through the motions, putting in some billable hours but not committed, did not work hard, etc. The assignment from the client was, of course an "engagement" for the law firm.

So, are you engaged when you work on the engagement?

One way of judging whether employees or consultants are "engaged" is whether they say "our" and "us" and "we" or "they" or "it" or "the company." 

Employees are directed not to become engaged -- what do I mean? Consultants get in trouble if they think too much about a client, if they spend too much time, if they come up with original ideas, if they call people within the client organization other than some contact person, and so on and so forth. They get in trouble if they run up too many hours. True story: Consultant got a note I was shown this week from a "gatekeeper" between the consultant and a client, complaining that the consultant was asking questions and then billing for the time asking the questions, rather than just copying information the consultant actually thought was incomplete and/or wrong. The consultant was engaged, trying to do a good job, and got in trouble. 

For employees, as distinct from consultants, the phrase "it's not your job" has been heard by employees who have become engaged. Those never engaged simply say, "it's not my job."

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Speaking of The Toronto Star...excellent article on newspaper writing

Kathy English, the "Public Editor" of the Star, has a great article in the paper today about  a Star study on newspaper readership and how it affects layout and writing.

Big discovery at the Star, apparently -- we knew it here for years -- is that people have short attention spans and stop reading many long stories part way thought.

So the Star, using the term -- new to me -- "layering" is using as part of its new design more sidebars, information-filled graphics, photographs, and even more photographs.

Clicking here should get you to her column. If you write for a living, create news releases, edit a company or public magazine, it's well worth reading.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Toronto Star Online Trading section comes alive again, too.

This past winter, I was responsible for most of the content of a special 8-page section of The Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation newspaper, called Online Trading.

I'm no longer on the project, but the second edition just came out today, and it's good, too. You can learn a lot about managing your own investing process at www.thestar.com/onlinetrading.

Two of my photographs are in the current edition; Douglas Coulter, head of RBC Direct Investing, and Cathy Welling, head of ScotiaMcLeod's online brokerage operation.

Thursday, July 5, 2007
BAK's Report comes alive again.

My apologies for those who came to BAK's Report for amusement or enlightenment. It's been under-updated for too long. Enough!!!

Two or three times a week you'll find new stories.

NEW SECTION: I've decided to cluster my assocaition-related stories on a new page.

Come and take a look at COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATIONS

Tuesday, April 17, 2007, 2007
PR Responsibilities before and
during a crisis

As I watched the news yesterday and read web sites and newspapers today, I wondered, as oft I do, what the role of PR was, in this case at the Virginia Tech tragedy.

In the CNN coverage I saw, we were told the name of the town where the school is, but not much more. No maps, no good graphics of the campus, no info on the student and staff population... just the same cell phone photos over and over again. And no one from the school standing up on its behalf, and explaining what it knew.

But this morning, the disgust grew. And sloppy reporting may be to blame here, and maybe I'm unfair. But I don't think so.

Cops could not get into buildings because doors were chained shut. I'm betting those were fire doors with crash bars, designed for fast exists in emergencies. And I'm betting they were not chained shut for the first time yesterday morning, but had been for days, weeks, months. And I bet PR people walked by them over and over and did not go to the campus security office screaming bloody murder.

If they were chained shut, and if they were fire doors with crash bars... the president of that school should be taken away in handcuffs in front of the international media. And then every good journalist is the USA should be asking the PR people why they had not taken steps to prevent "chained closed" from being words that could be printed all around the world.

Our job at PR people is to look for trouble, WELL IN ADVANCE -- and prevent it from happening.

Over at the world bank, the PR staff are failures, too. If the Wall stret Journal is right -- and I believe it probably is -- there's a lot more to the "get my girlfriend a raise" story than most media are carrying, including on-the-record rules where the boss is supposed to be out of the loopp, and is, and was. Why isn't his story being told?

Friday, April 13, 2007, 2007
A plea, reprinted from O'Dwyer's PR Daily, for more openness at the Public Relations Society of America, where new "President" William Murray appears to be in hiding.
 

FROM O’Dwyer’s PR Daily:
April 11, 2007

“EMBRACE CRITICS,” MURRAY TOLD

Stuart Goldstein, managing director of corporate communications, Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., New York, has urged PRSA president Bill Murray to “fling the door open and embrace the critics.” 

Goldstein, who sent an e-mail to Murray last week and also copied this website, has yet to receive a reply from Murray.

“The PRSA governance structure suppresses debate and dialogue on critical issues facing the profession,” wrote Goldstein.

“The accreditation requirement for serving in PRSA leadership is a turn-off and barrier to input from senior corporate professionals in communications, who see APR as irrelevant,” he added.

Critics should be listened to, he told Murray.
“It’s rare that folks take the time, as I did, or Jack O’Dwyer does, to try to give a perspective not in keeping with the solo PR practitioners who are guiding PRSA,” he wrote.

Another part of the e-mail said:

“Instead of criticizing Jack, PRSA ought to be thanking him for keeping you visible and dedicating so much of his time to your activities. It’s ironic that a trade association intended to advance the value of communications is actually very rigid and closed to new ideas.”

Wrote Articles to PRSA in 2003
Goldstein noted that he wrote an article for publication in PRSA’s Tactics in 2003 that called on the Society “to foster a more open dialogue on PRSA’s direction and priorities.

It was only published “after a lengthy delay” while PRSA found someone who would write a “rebuttal piece” next to his article, he says.

PRSA then refused to publish second article outlining an “Agenda for Reform,” says Goldstein.

Instead, PRSA “buried the piece on its websit

In that article, Goldstein called on PRSA to end its emphasis on accreditation.

“Accreditation is not the standard by which PR professionalism is judged in the business world,” he wrote, saying it has “drained resources and diverted attention from the more strategic issues challenging PRSA. The lack of senior corporate PR professionals on the PRSA board and participating in PRSA activities is a sign that they question the continuing relevance of PRSA. The alarm bell is ringing off the hook.”

Goldstein’s piece also touched on the portrayal of PR people movies and in the media and said PRSA “should challenge these distorted views.”

PRSA, he wrote, should redirect its resources and energy “to focus on issues of major strategic importance to the profession. 

PR Should Mean Innovation
He said that if it created “laboratories of innovation, we’d see a resurgence in interest and commitment among senior professionals.

He said the emphasis on awards programs “should give way to research and authorship on issues, trends and innovation at the quality level of a Harvard or MIT business review.”

There are many PR people who are talented “technically” but the greatest need is for PR pros who can “think and act strategically,” says Goldstein.

“We have fewer people who bring the analytical and big picture perspective that can really add value to the development of strategy for senior management and clients,” he said.

Strategic, he explained, “has to do with influencing outcomes and affecting results. It means not seeing yourself as adjunct to the business strategy, but as an integral part of that process. Strategic means not seeing yourself less as ‘client driven’ (e.g., I do whatever my client asks), but seeing yourself as a ‘catalyst for change.’”

In a closing remark in his letter to Murray, Goldstein wrote: “You can shout down folks who are holding PRSA’s feet to the fire, though this only feeds the perception of a closed trade group. Or you can fling open the door and embrace the critics–and in the process everyone learns–and the interests of the profession as a whole are well served.

Thursday, March 1, 2007 Welcome visitors from The IABC Cafe
Some thoughts on "new social media" (whatever that means)
Yesterday I read a thread on the International Association of Business Communicators IABC Cafe blog about new social media, initiated by incoming IABC world-wide elected chair Todd Hattori, and I wrote a quite comprehensive, if I do say so myself, reply. But I'm used to the IABC blog refusing my work, so I saved it just in case. Sure 'nuf, it failed to get through.

PR LESSON? Don't trust any "new social media" to work right.

Anyway, for those interested, here's the story. To get the context, go to www.IABC.com, look down the opening page for Visit The IABC Cafe, or try your luck clicking on this: Visit the IABC Café

Read that, note the three questions from Todd Hattori at the bottom of the original posting, and then read below:

Re>What are your social media observations and experiences? How have you incorporated new social media learnings into your communication/business practices? What secrets do you have for engaging in new social media within a hectic, overloaded schedule? <

Question one:

If I knew the definition, I could answer better. Does social media need to be preceded with "new" and does the CompuServe PRSIG from a million years ago count? Does a well run bulletin board that's easy to navigate, such as dpreview.com (it's about digital photography) count, or do we need badly designed blogs, (plus the jumble of Youtube and MySpace?)

Is this very screen in front of readers' eyes (note the plural, optimistic, "readers") new social media?

O'Dwyer's PR Daily? Or just the part with comments after a story?

What I do know is that BAK's Report has, over the years, made a lot of people think about a lot of aspects of public relations and corporate communications and allowed me to "speak" with people all over the world.

(www.BrianKilgore.com for those curious) But BAK's Report does not have a way for people to insert comments without actually writing an e-mail to me. Or phoning, etc.

Question two (how have I incorporated...) Well, I've had good still photos on my web site since I started it a million years ago. And my site is topical -- go look at most sites owned by PR people and you'll find an out of date brochure. And I've tried to AVOID some of the common traits of what I think may be new social media., Type is big enough to read on all the sites I manage, for instance, and I've tried to avoid crap like the Go Fast movie with screaming jerks and bad shots of airplanes that's featured today on MySpace.

Again, we can look at this site. (The one on the screen in front of you.) Once we get past the terrible layout -- see Ragan's Grapevine and some Ragan publication about good web design and compare it with IABC.com -- we see terrible use of stock photos and no-where near good enough use of Chris Salvo's excellent portraits. But, on a  positive note, we find easy access to the IABC podcast, but we find the podcasts -- at least until I gave up listening -- devoid of editing.

IABC members, or at least the good ones, know editing is the most important thing they do with words on paper, and even on screen. Why not words aimed at the ear? (I actually know the answer to this question... see #3)

Are there any pictures that move on this site? I can't remembe

Question three -- secrets for engaging...

Flipping this back to IABC, I wonder how much effort IABC has made in working with the schools that have IABC chapters to revise courses so that good still photogaphy and good pictures that move have become part of the curriculum. 

I do know that for years employee and member publications -- the heart and soul of so much of IABC -- have been packed with really awful photographs, or stock images that mean nothing to the readers, and few or no decent portraits of real people doing real things. (Take a look at Communications World and find real pictures of real people, with their names in captions. (The last issue I saw was the AIDS special -- maybe things have changed)

So, my secrets... note the phrase "pictures that move" above. There's a new category of visual image that is not yet named, or at least not named well. "Movies" are too long. "Clips" suggests to me something "clipped" out of something longer. i.e. 45 seconds from a 15 minute television newscast.

But for "pictures that move" I'm thinking of images created for a specific communications purpose, just like a good photograph is, except using technology that allows this/these image/s  to move, and perhaps include sound, and are short enough to work on computers and not bore people.

And, real pictures of real people doing real things, not pointless Flash animations.

In my particular case, I have the theory of commercial film making and public affairs and news videomaking down cold, except for the fact my knowledge is out of date. Apparently 16mm film has been replaced.

On Sunday I bought a Fuji point and shoot camera with the ability to record moving images and record sound. I've got Premiere Elements loaded on this computer. And I have a 12 year old son who has some direction talent, a business partner who is studying movie making and writing a script, and lots of my own out-of-date knowledge.

So, my secret is that I have two goals -- find good uses of pictures that move, and then produce to an acceptable professional level, in accordance with available budgets, pictures that move.

Then figure out how and when and, most importantly, why to put these in front of people.

The huge issues in new social media for IABC members are, I believe, being professional about it and finding audiences that matter, for the messages delivered.

If your client is the Backwards Baseball Cap Company, or you've got Jimmy Neutron's soft drink that makes you belch as a client, YouTube and MySpace are great.

Assuming that new social meda does not include your own well designed and well managed web site. For this kind of site, a picture that moves of a mud-caked little kid running towards a laughing mother might be a great picture that moves for your detergent company's advice and hints portion of a web site.

Read a story about the Online Trading Academy from the Online Trading section I wrote for The Toronto Star

If you click on  Here's the story. you'll get to my interview with John O'Donnell, head of Online Trading Academy, as published in The Toronto Star Online Trading special advertising section. For reasons that escape me, there's no link I can find on The Toronto Star web site to the section, but www.thestar.com/onlinetrading  will get you there.

Thursday, February 22, 2007
Toronto Star publishes Online Trading Special Advertising Section, mostly written and photographed by BAK.
Web version, too.
The Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation daily newspaper, today published a special advertising section cog Online Trading.

I wrote the editorial plan for this section, wrote most of the promotion material, and determined the focus and story lineup.

There are five of what I call "real" photographs in the section. There's a dual portrait of Paul Bates and Tom Hamza, from the Investor Education Fund (it's web site is www.investorED.ca ) on page 2. There's a nice portrait of Doug Coulter, president of RBC Direct Investing, on page 3 beside an advertorial -- after my departure from the section the decision was made to drop a story I wrote quoting Mr. Coulter extensively -- but the advertorial is pretty good. On page 5 I have a nice double portrait of Cathy Welling, managing director of ScotiaMcLeod Direct Investing and Fred Ketchen of ScotiaMcLeod, the man I think is Canada's most famouse stockbroker. On page 6 there's a little picture of a security device from E*Trade, inside a story I wrote about keeping your online trading safe and secure. And on page 7 a portrait of John O'Donnell, co-founder of the Online Trading Academy, taken at a trade show in Toronto, where I interviewed him. All the other photos in the section are stock shots or, in two cases, handout from an advertiser, The Ethical Funds Company, used the picture it supplied in an Ethical Funds ad. Nice picture, even if not one I took. And Trade Freedom, a Montreal brokerage company, supplied a pretty good picture, too. It's a mix of black and white and color in the same shot.

Take a look at www.thestar.com/onlinetrading and you can see much of the section. Later today I'll explain more about my work.

CPRS runs accreditation ad in Globe and Mail Report on Business
Yesterday, Tuesday, February 20, the Canadian Public Relations Society ran a quarter page ad about CPRS accreditation in the Report on Business section of The Globe and Mail, which is Canada's most important national newspaper and the paper best read by the high level executives PR people really should be serving. Excellent media choice.

A perfect audience to learn about the 23 newly accredited CPRS members. All their names were in the ad, along with an explanation of what accreditation is all about.

It would have been nice if CPRS bothered to put a headline on the ad, but that's just sort of nitpicking. The existence of the ad is great, and most of the content is just fine, (an intelligent copy editor would have been nice, too, but what the heck, the ad ran) and the type is big enough to read. There's a news release about the success of the accreditation candidates buried on the CPRS web site, at www.CPRS.ca But no reference to the advertisement.

Here's the list from the CPRS news release.:

Public relations professionals who received their APR in 2006 are:

• Sophie Allard ARP - Québec
• Cindy Bayers APR - Nova Scotia
• Andrew Berthoff APR - Toronto
• Michele Comeau Thompson APR - Vancouver
• Robert Cooper APR - Toronto
• Danielle Côté APR - Ottawa
• Cindy Goldberg APR - Ottawa
• Marion Grau APR - Vancouver Island
• Susan Kirk APR - Vancouver
• Angela Koulyras APR - Vancouver
• Jeff Lake APR - Toronto
• Asifa Lalji APR - Vancouver
• Albert Lee APR - Toronto
• Lin Moody APR - Ottawa
• Captain John P. Murray APR - Vancouver
• Krys Potapzcyk APR - Toronto
• Vincent Power APR - Toronto
• Heather Pullen APR - Hamilton
• Karla Sandwith APR - Vancouver Island
• Brenda Sweeney APR - Hamilton
• Mary Louise Wakefield APR - Vancouver Isl. Christina Winsor APR - New Brunswick
• Marie Zirk APR - Vancouver Island

Saturday, February 3, 2007
Don't be misled by IABC advocacy reports
There are some stories kicking around -- O'Dwyer's PR Daily, some Ragan publication, the IABC international web site at www.iabc.com and probably more places, that would have readers believe that IABC has some sort of "new" advocacy work group.

In fact, this so-called work group started months ago, and the vast majority of people in this work group did no work -- notable exception being my partner , associate, friend Jana Schilder. The work group is run my Michal Zimet, who did not get it going for weeks, and then let most of the participants get away with doing no participating. Most did not even take part in the one -- count 'em, one -- conference call. The working group supposedly had a private blog where they were to share ideas -- again, pretty much nothing from some members, nothing of value from most others, and an excellent think piece on PR for PR by Jana Schilder.

Now, IABC has a section on its web site that's a blog about advocacy -- I've written before about the terrible design of IABC blogs -- that will cause more time to be wasted as "leaders" fail to do any leading. Go take a look.

Saturday, February 3, 2007
No longer at Online Trading And The DAT Report A Toronto Star Special Advertising Section

A couple of weeks ago I finally convinced the powers that be to change the name fo this publication, dropping the reference to The DAT Report. And last week connections between me and the publication were severed.

I wrote a lot of good stories, and took a lot of good pictures, and my thanks go out to public relations professionals and a number of online trading executives for their help. When last I saw this project, it was shaping up well, and should look good when it is published on February 22, 2007, as a special section of The Toronto Star, called Online Trading.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Online Trading And The DAT Report
A Toronto Star Special Advertising Section

I've taken on responsibilities as the director of content for a quarterly special advertising section in The Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper. Online Trading is a combination of what we call broadly-based stories -- where we use more or less conventional journalistic standards with a mix of straight reporting and opinion -- and linked-stories, which advertisers supply, or we create for them.

First publishing date in Thursday, February 22, 2007. The full schedule is here, on the Star's website including other special advertising sctions, and normal editorial-based sections. I'm involved with all the sections that say "advertising" in the "Type" column.

Online Trading comes out on Thursdays; February 22, June 21, September 20 and December 6

I'm very receptive to proposals and story ideas from PR people involved with Online Trading. Anything from a 100 word quote from a CEO about some aspect of Online Trading to a 600-800 word article filled with insight is welcome for my consideration -- just send the short items, and call about the longer nes, to make sure they'll fit, be useful, and match our content mandate. This is a great opportunity for by-lined articles from your senior executives.

Remember, we're interested more in the process of Online Trading than in specific investment opportunities -- what software to analyze a gold mining company, more than an announcement that there's fresh gold found in the mine.

The company creating Online Trading for The Staris called Communitech Inc., and Teh Star is handling advertising sales, promotion, printing and distribution.

And I'm particularly interested in everything to do with DAT -- Direct Access Trading.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

From O'Dwyer's PR Daily
PRSA finally replaces Catherine Bolton

PRSA announced on Dec. 27 (were they trying to bury this story?) the appointment of William Murray as president/COO. A 20-year veteran of catching international copyright violators for the Motion Picture Assn., he might be interested in PRSA?s 1993-96 battle with a dozen authors who claimed PRSA violated their copyrights.

Teckie note: The link above takes you to a paid page. If you are not an O'Dwyer subscriber, try www.prsa.org to find the announcement.

The paragraph above is the teaser for Jack O'dwyer's story yesterday on the appointment of Mr. Murray to the renamed post (Bolton was Executive Director) as top paid official at PRSA. I have some sympathy for the poor guy. Jack takes a shot at the date of the announcement, and he's right about it being buried. If you read the news release on the PRSA site, you'll see that Cedric Bess, the PRSA supposed-PR guy, did not bother following PR 101, and get a quote from Mr. Murray to put into the release. And a Google search yesterday tracked down an educator who got agreement from Mr., Murray to do a telephone interview with his PR class, and then Bess backed out of it. Who's the boss? Bess or Murray?

Monday, January 1 2007

Three resolutions or evolutions for 2007.

1/ BAK is getting more deeply involved in a major new project we're calling Branded Content Publishing -- the latest project, and the one in which I'll be taking a higher public profile, is the cretion of a special advertising section on Online Trading in The Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation newspaper. The sections, planned for quarterly release, with the first in late February, will be a mix of advertising, what we're calling advertiser-linked stories, and what we're calling broadly-based content. My job is to oversee everything surrounding the ads. My challenge is to make the words and pictures so interesting that readers will spend enough time on the pages that they'll see, reac and react to the ads, and enjoy"my" part of the section enough that they'll look forward to seeing it every few months.

2/ More education in BAK's Report in 2007. 'll be writing feature articles on public relations and corporate communications themes, which will be published here and also offered to other PR publications. Two of the topics on the inital list are branding, based on an excellent IABC Toronto presention I was invited to cover by IABC, and one on party and event planning and implementation, inspired by a magazine I bought this week called Bizbash.To, To standing for Toronto. There are New York and Florida versions of this publication, too. It got me thinking.. I'll put those thoughts into BAK's Report for my readers.

3/ Expanded advocacy journalism in 2007. Readers of BAK's Report in the past know I've been in favor of some things and against some things, and I've written about these opinions here, often. At the heart of much of what I've written, more often than not, is the belief that the pr associations have a responsibilkity to promote the profession in addition to providing nice trips for the elected "leaders." (Note the quotation marks.) In 2007, I'll be writing my opinions in more places than here, and I'll be looking for opinions on national and international  association leadership from IABC, CPRS, PRSA and other local chapter leaders. My opinions will be seen in Toni Muzi Falconi's blog, at wwww.tonisblog.com and in O'Dwyer's PR Daily, at www.odwyerpr.com

To start off, I'm asking people who are invoilved in IABC to take a good look at the performance of the senior paid staff.

Is the IABC magazine really, really good, because no less should be acceptable to an association of communicators.

Do IABC news release sing? Are they the best written, most interesting, release around? And do they cover the entire world? Or are they just mediocre examples of quasi news, almost alwasy trying to separate someone from his money?

Outside of the speakers -- because the speakers are responsible for their own performance, does the IABC conference sing and dance and entice and enthrall? Is it the best communications convention in the world?

What about the IABC web  site? Is it a "living" document that is so interesting that members come b ack to it week after week, month after month? Is the type easy to read, are there lots of real photos of real people?

If the answers to these questions are in the negative, it's time to either fire, for cause, the senior web, publications, PR and conference staff. Or, if they are just doing what they are told, it's time for a new executive director, unless... what do you think? ...the IABC elected chair has told the paid staff to do a poor job.

Comments welcome.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Gino Empry, Canada's most famous publicist, dead at ??

Gino Empry, a Torontonian who personified show biz publicity in Canada, died of a stroke this week, with no-one really knowing just how old he was. Reports range from early 60;'s --not true, for sure -- to 81, 82 or 83.

Gino, known to Canada's media and PR community often by just the single name, was born Gino Emperatori, and was a genuine character, in addition to being a great show biz publicist.

Perhaps 1000 people attended his funeral, and the major Canadian newspapers ran large obituaries, usually with warm anecdotes about how Gino helped reporters get stories good for his clients and amusing, interesting, entertaining or helpful to the readers. Joe Warmington, a street-wise reporter for the Toronto Sun illustrated his Gino obit with a picture of Gino and Tony Bennett taken a few years ago, toasting Joe and his camera with glasses of red wine, when Joe "just happened to be passing by" -- propelled in reality by a phone call from Gino.

In addition to managing Bennett for years -- cynics would wonder if this was true and then Bennett and Gino would show up somewhere together, clearly as a team of business associates and personal friends -- Gino's Roladex had the Frank Sinatra rat pack numbers, along with thousands of other performers and journalists.

Early in his career he oversaw booking performers at the (now Fairmont) Royal York Hotel's Imperial Room, where all the great singers and musicians played over the years.

Later he worked for Honest Ed Mirvish -- "Sir Honest" after Ed was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for rescuing the Old Vic Theatre in London, --  after Ed took over the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. Ed and his son David are now Canada's top theatrical impresarios. Ed's in his 90's and housebound, but his wife Anne, an artist in her own right, and son David attended Gino's funeral at St. Michael's Cathedral.

Gino may have owned a necktie, but odds are he's in his coffin with some chains around his neck, or, since his funeral was such a special occasion, his trademark ascot 

Gino joined the Canadian Public Relations Society in 1979, and was a member up until his death. In my time with CPRS, Gino was never a board member or real activist, but he could be counted on for adding a bit of show biz flair when it was called for. A quiet man for one so immersed in the entertainment business, he could move through a crowd silently, stopping every few feet to be kissed my women and have his hand shook by men.

A few months ago, The Guardian Angels, the New York based "we'll keep the streets safe" group, showed up in Toronto. Unneeded -- this is a safe city -- they nevertheless stayed, and Gino gave them some free assistance getting positive publicity for their efforts. They were at his funeral, in their red jackets and carrying Canadian flags. Gino would have been proud, and probably nudging photographers to get them into the picture with him.

Over the years, there have been lots of stories written about Gino, in addition to stories about his clients. And the Gino stories were always positive, and frequently funny. Canada has lost a first-rate public relations man.

Saturday, September 22, 2006

IABC Ethics study makes it into Marketing Magazine
UPDATE: I sent the graphic and this story to IABC headquarters in San Francisco, but the staff there apparently don't think it is important enough to post on the media clips part of the IABC web site.

This graphic ran in the September 11 2006 edition of  Marketing Magazine, Canada's number one, at least in my estimation, advertising industry trade publication.

Note that if you squint, you can see the credit to IABC.

When last I looked, it had not been flagged in the IABC news centre list of media clips.

For those who did not see the BusinessWeek graphic about IABC's ethics study that's mentioned in the clips report on the IABC web site, this one from Marketing is pretty close to the same thing.

Marketing is also the publication that ran an excellent story by Alix Edmiston about public relations, with credit to IABC.

As far as I can tell, this puts Marketing coverage well ahead of Advertising Age in the USA.

Friday, September 21, 2006
The story below was written by me for O'Dwyer's PR Daily.

The dead parking meter is really just a prop.
While walking along King Street West in downtown Toronto street, the driving school car up on the sidewalk, with the broken parking meter under the front fender, and the driving instructor bawling out the sheepish student, catches the eye.

And then things seem a little off kilter.

 A closer look at the car door reveals "Steve Fenton's School of Bad Driving" and, wait a minute, there are no meters in this block, dead or alive..

 It turns out to be a traffic safety promotion stunt sponsored by the City of Toronto transportation department. The errant student driver is actor Joe Vanderleeuw, left, and Steve Fenton, with the clipboard, center, is really actor JJ Evans.

 At right is Quentin Evans of SMAK, an events agency hired, as he puts it, "to bring to life and execute the street-level component of the campaign, as well as dream up each of the individual installations." SMAK is headquartered in Vancouver, with Evans running promotions in Toronto.

 The agency of record behind the overall traffic safety campaign is Axmith McIntyre Wicht Ltd., which bills itself as an advertising, design and public relations agency. AMW has done a lot of work for the city, trying to convince residents to behave themselves, whether using water, taking out garbage or driving the crowded streets. One AMW ad makes the point that dog poo from your lawn ends up in Lake Ontario.

 Speaking of the Steve Fenton Bad Driving campaign, Gary Welsh, General Manager, Transportation Services, City of Toronto says “The ads are designed to show, in a humourous way, that we all need to improve certain behaviours such as stopping for red lights, avoiding distractions like cell phones and always being cautious when we cross streets.”

 Evans told BAK's Report that calling the 1-877 number will result in hearing various taped recordings of driving tips from Steve. A test revealed this info: "To drown out pesky ambulance sirens, turn up the music in your car."

Sunday, August 27, 2006

BAK writes about Public Relations for Public Relations in Canada, published in O'Dwyer's PR Daily.

Here's a link to the story. O'Dwyer's is a paid site, and you can use sample and august in the log in box, at least for a few days. If that does not work, send me an e-mail and I'll give you current passwords.

Jack O'Dwyer edited my original story., to cut it down to a smaller size for his site.

Here is the original, considerably longer, article, for BAK's Report readers.

Original article, without editing by Jack O'Dwyer
for the version published in O'Dwyer's PR Daily.

PR for PR -- it's a big problem in Canada, too.
By Brian A. Kilgore
North of the U.S. border, there's barely any more PR for PR in Canada than in the USA, but this may be changing.

Canadians get almost all US media, so any American insults, or praise, of the profession reach them, and there are occasional efforts in Canada to do more PR for PR, but they are few and far between. But there is reason for optimism.

Trudie Richards is the head of the public relations course at Mount St. Vincent University, in Halifax, and a former PR woman herself -- Greenpeace, among other employers. Her university's course has provided the greatest number of degreed public relations practitioners in the country.

Asked how well the profession is known, and how well it explains itself, she said, "I think many who hire public relations practitioners have limited knowledge of what that person has to offer. Their understanding of the PR function is often limited to media relations, or employee relations. Education about what public relations practitioners are capable of achieving is made more difficult by the fact that PR is still practiced so badly, so often."

Public education about what PR is logically falls to the Canadian Public Relations Society, roughly equivalent to PRSA, and they share the APR designation. Colleen Killingsworth, with National Public Relations in Calgary, is the CPRS National president.

Killingsworth, asked whether CPRS plans to communicate more, says, " Yes, the governance and management review a few years ago resulted in the hiring of an Executive Director who is an accredited public relations professional. (This is Karen Dalton, a long-time CPRS member, based in Toronto, who has worked for CPRS for several years.)

"This year CPRS also awarded a contract to Torchia Communications," Killingsworth said, "to develop and execute a multi-year plan to promote the APR designation. This program will also improve perception of our profession with important opinion leaders."

In Canada, it is very rare to see either IABC or CPRS accreditation listed as a qualification in job ads.

And, Killingsworth says, "CPRS also issues news releases announcing newly accredited members and many CPRS chapters place advertisements to promote successful APR candidates." The most recent news release, February 8th, 2006, reported 22 new accreditations, bringing the number of accredited members to 485, approximately one in three.

Killingsworth told this newsletter that, "During my first term as president, I visited and made presentations to 12 of the 16 societies across Canada. Many of them extended the luncheon invitation to include members of the business community and the media. I plan to continue this outreach and make use of my business travel as much as possible to promote CPRS and our profession."

The CPRS national web site provides no indication of any significant coverage of such events.

And in a followup to this newsletter", Killingsworth says, "The College of Fellows, under the leadership of Patricia Parsons, APR, CPRS Fellow, is establishing a speakers network whose focus is reaching out to the business community through boards of trade, chambers of commerce, etc

"As part of the Speakers Bureau, the CPRS Professional Development Committee, under the leadership of Christina Winsor, is establishing a speakers service which will provide local member societies with access to a network of speakers from across Canada.
One CPRS loyalist, although not a current board member, Gordon McIvor, a vice-president with Canada Lands in Toronto, wrote a very positive op-ed piece for The National Post newspaper, in June this year, after attending the Canadian Public Relations Society national conference. The Post is read across the country. He thinks the reputation of the profession -- and he calls it a profession in contrast to Mark Towhey's view, below, has improved dramatically."Until a few years ago," McIvor wrote, "most organizations largely viewed the public relations and communications profession as a necessary evil, chief executive officers eying its practitioners warily as back-slapping flacks on the peripheral of the organization's core business."

But, McIvor says, things are better, writing, "Fast forward to 2006 and to the height of the information age, and take a close look at the PR professionals who meet in different cities each year to discuss their profession.

"Today, these men and women are graduates from universities offering PR and communications courses, often at the post-graduate level. Their salaries or hourly rates (if they are consultants) are approaching those of lawyers, and more often than not, they are part of the senior management team of their organizations and often have privileged relationships with both the CEO and the chairman," he wrote.

While McIvor is thinking things are getting better, PR is Canada is still mocked frequently by the media. This week, the Globe and Mail's Patricia Best, in her Nobody's Business gossip column in the Globe's Report on Business, poked fun at IBM and the Toronto office of Ketchum, for promoting IBM's security, identity and privacy consulting practice by sending out DVD's of Harrison Ford's Firewall movie, which Best reports is full of Dell equipment and she characterizes the film as, "one of the most blatant product placement gigs in recent memory."

Geoffrey Rowan, Ketchum's Toronto-based managing director and himself a former Globe and Mail reporter for a decade, shrugs off the criticism. But he raises an important point about the reputation of PR people, saying, "I think Pat's column was simply another example of the healthy dynamic tension between PR and the news media. The value of the news media to PR is that it is a critical, skeptical, independent conduit to an audience that generally trusts it. PR professionals need to appreciate that value and make sure that any outreach to journalists meets the standards they set to maintain credibility with their audience."

McIvor's not surprised the PR has a bad reputation -- he knows that all too many news releases don't contain any news -- but he points out that the traditional rivalry between media and PR is one reason reporters write negatively about the profession, and the general public may get a poor impression of PR. But, he says, "PR is viewed better inside business, than it is outside."

Mark Towhey, a former soldier, banker, PR man, and a holder of an MBA from Ivey, thinks a lot about public relations, and he's no-where near as positive in his outlook as McIvor.

Asked about whether executives outside PR understand what it is all about, he says, " I don't know any CEOs (except those leading PR agencies) who've ever heard of IABC, CPRS or PRSA. Nor, do I think most general managers and strategic planners spend any time worrying about how their media relations folks and newsletter writers, speech writers, etc. are 'represented' to the business world at large. Few, if any, would consider PR a profession. And they'd be right. It's not, by any credible definition. It's a job. For many, it's a career. But the way the PR career path is currently being shaped by 'PR professionals, it certainly does not lead to the strategic ranks of business management. PR is a highly skilled trade. It could be an excellent breeding ground for future CEOs, but as it stands today... not so much."

And asked about the role and responsibility of CPRS, PRSA and IABC to implement PR for PR programs, he told this newsletter, "As I see it, communication associations have two public advocacy roles: First, they should be speaking out to build recognition for corporate communication as an excellent breeding ground for strategic corporate leaders of tomorrow. Second, they should be speaking out as the de facto trade association for PR businesses: agencies, independents, etc. and advocating for recognition, rules and regulations that would help member businesses be more successful."

And while Towhey possesses the non-traditional PR credential of an MBA and uses that knowledge for clients, over in Hamilton, Ontario, Terry Flynn, Ph.D, teaches communications (of the public relations type) to MBA students at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, and serves on local and national CPRS committees.

He told O'Dwyers, "While I may agree with your sentiment that our professional associations are more internally focused -- accreditation, professional development and now education, I would suggest that there really hasn't been a great demand on behalf of the memberss, government relations, community relations and employee relations. Some understand the advocacy role of public relations and other see public relations as responsible for the organization's reputation."

That said, he quoted a movie star, saying, "As Richard Dreyfuss said in What About Bob! "baby steps, Bob, baby steps!"

"I believe that we are at an important juncture in our profession's short history ... managers are beginning to recognize the importance and effectiveness in public relations but we must break the easy stereotype that public relations is only about headlines and hits.

"I believe that under the leadership of Colleen )CPRS national president Killingsworth) and the current and future boards...we will continue to make small steps to furthering and strengthening our reputation."

In Halifax, Richards, the university educator who teaches PR students, has a slightly different take on the issue.

"I'm not sure having someone on staff to do PR for PR is the answer," she said. "It would seem, though, that the executives of each organization could be more committed to a PR role. At present, much of the work seems to be internal to members. And in the case of IABC, I believe there's no national (Canadian) office, and so no stated commitment to education about the profession on a national scale.

Jana Schilder's spent two decades in public relations and communications, worked for giant corporations and professional service firms, and runs a consultancy in the Toronto area. She's sat down with Charles Pizzo, when he was IABC chair, and with outgoing IABC chair Warren Bickford and incoming chair Glenda Holmes together this spring, urging them to look outward.

“Advocacy for the public relations profession is the single most important thing that either IABC or PRSA, or CPRS in Canada, could do for their members,” says Schilder. “Let’s go back to basics. Public relations is a management function and the top-ranking PR professional in any organization should sit at the right-hand of the CEO. This means that PR is present to review and input on all management decisions. Proactive, strategic and anticipatory.”

“PR is frequently called in after all the key variables that might have fixed that particular problem are already in place, cast in concrete. No wonder we have a reputation as ‘Spin Doctors’! It’s the ultimate irony that the profession that seeks to build understanding and awareness for others has bad reputation itself,” she adds.

“Throughout my career, only about 20 per cent of CEOs know and understand what good public relations really is,” adds Schilder. “Good PR is truthful, timely, and seeks to inform stakeholders of the facts to the benefit of that particular organization. The associations should be making this clear to the outside world, not telling it to themselves.”

Judy Gombita, manager of communications for the Certified General Accountants of Ontario, raises a PR for PR question based on her own role in an association. Should the public spokesperson be an elected official, or should it be the top paid staffer? Gombita says it makes the most sense for the CEO, president or whatever the top permanent person is called, to be the public face, and this should be built into the job description. This does leave, in her experience, plenty of room for the public relations professional to operate, including being in many cases, the first contact the public has with an organization. And there's still a role for the top elected person, limited as he or she is by a limited time in office.

If Gombita's concept took hold, Catherine Bolton at PRSA, Julie Freeman at IABC, and Karen Dalton at CPRS would be in the spotlight more than Proctor-Rogers, Holmes and Killingsworth. That's assuming those three ever got into the spotlight.

Across Canada, the profession, if "profession" is what it is, continues to be misunderstood. If the general public in Toronto were questioned now, as the Toronto Film Festival is about to start, many would think public relations professionals were party planners with clipboards and two-way radio headsets.

UPDATE: The O'Dwyer's version of this piece was #11 on the most selected story list for O'Dwyer's in August. Not bad considering it was published on August 25.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Canadian Public Relations professional 
David Chenoweth died last Thursday, August 17,
after a sudden stroke.

Born in 1949, and educated at McGill University in Montreal, David was an editor of the McGill Daily, and then became a professional journalist, spending 15 years at the Montreal Gazette where his by-line in the business pages was respected across the country. From there he worked with the Ottawa Sun and Toronto Star, where he was an editorial writer.

Like so many of us, he moved into public relations, (with Shell Oil) and then moved to Northern Telecom,  (now Nortel Networks) where I knew him. He then joined the federal government, working for the Department of Finance for the past 17 years.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

"Names" is the term used for Kellie Garrett's (at left) ascension to the top at the International Association of Business Communicators Research Foundation.

Here is the news release.

All I've done is add the photograph to the story. The picture comes from the IABC web site News Centre.

News Release Issued: June 28, 2006 3:00 PM EDT

NOTES FROM BAK --

IABC's news release did not include a link to the photo, nor any info that a photo was available. The top 50 employers is not by size, it's a survey of where people like to work. The News Centre switched from poor pictures to  re-edited photos of Chair Glenda Holmes and President Julie Freeman, too, at some point today. Added several shots, and changed the picture of Kellie Garrett. Here's a story about the earlier photos.

About the BusinessWeek mention. Try and find it yourself at www.IABC.com, or just click here to read it in BAK's Report.

Tuesday, June 26, 2006

A letter to the editor, more or less. This arrived from Robert Holland on Monday, June 26, 2006. Holland thinks I'm a blowhard. Read his prose.

I used to work for a PR man named Roy Cottier, and one of his favorite expressions was along the lines of, "we shouldn't have to teach them how to suck eggs." I never knew exactly what this meant, but the idea was that people should at least know the basics, and we should not have to explain everything to them.

Yesterday, I thought about tackling this e-mail a phrase at a time, but them I got thinking about sucking eggs. What I'm doing by writing about IABC as I do is pretty obvious to anyone who is reasonably intuitive. And being reasonably intuitive is a requirement for quality in the PR business.

As for "lighten up." This is the lightened up version.

I did not write about the screw up in BusinessWeek when I learned about it. I decided to be nice. I told IABC, and I waited more than a week for it to be fixed. And if it had been fixed, I would not have written about it, other than, perhaps, to direct my readers to the item. I think the content n BusinessWeek is interesting, although sad.

I'm in a nice-guy period. Imagine if I'd spent any time writing about the failed blogs and not-kept promises of IABC's conference communication. And the failed media relations tied to the international conference. But maybe there was no failure; maybe there was no attempt. And I did not take apart, minute by minute, that awful podcast of a woman named Jane. Go listen for yourself and see if she said anything that was not better conveyed with three minutes of reading.

Anyway, I'm in semi-nice-guy mode, giving Glenda Holmes a chance to show her stuff as IABC chair. I wonder if IABC did any external media relations in Richmond, Virginia -- home of Mr. Holland -- when she was there last week. Holland has a column on a newsy local web site, so it is, in this city, likely that there was some PR for PR in that community. UPDATE: read what Robert Holland wrote right here.

Jim McDaniel, great telecom professional, dead at 88
When I joined CNCP Telecommunications in the early 80's, after about a decade at Northern Telecom, I found I had a beautiful office, company paid parking, a secretary I shared with my boss, and Jim McDaniel, sort of.

Jim was the best known man in telecommunications, because he used to host commercials convincing Canadians to lease telecommunications systems. When I got to CNCP, he was, supposedly, retired, but that did not last long.

We were taking on the regular telephone companies, opening up competition, and Jim was willing to help. Early in my stay, he came to me and we talked about speeches he could make, and he sid he'd wait for me to write him a speech.

"No, that's not how it's going to work, " I said. "If I was going to write a speech, I'd have to ask you what to say. Write your own."

So for the next couple of years, Jim was off hither and yon, speaking to all kinds of groups, and showing up in the office every once in a while with invoices and expense accounts.

From my position as the corporate officer responsible for communications, he was a great addition to our team. Imagine the luxury of having an well respected spokesperson who knew his subject cold.

Jim died on Father's Day, after a special dinner, a glass of wine and a good cigar.

Sunday, June 25, 2006
Pick a headline from these two. How nice do you think I should be?

UPDATE: FIXED MONDAY. Do you think they would have even noticed if it was not for BAK's Report?

A: IABC research gets hit in BusinessWeek, one of the world's best business magazines.
("hit" is a good thing in media relations terms)

or should we choose ...

B: IABC screws up at telling members about BusinessWeek mention.

Follow the time line. A while ago (in May) the International Association of Business Communicators sent out a news release about a research study.

Having failed to proof-read it properly, it sent out a correction on May 23, 2006.

BusinessWeek picked some content from the release, and ran it in the June 19, 2006 edition, on page 13.

IABC got credit for the research. Get out your magnifying glass, and look beside the word "Data" at the very bottom of the picture. Anyway, nothing we can do about that tiny type, and it's not IABC's fault.

Next, IABC mentions the media hit in its News Centre (spelled with the re, by the way) on its web site. Buried so deep no one will see it, because the web site has no sense of topicality to it and the design is awful. Go see for yourself at www.IABC.com. Find the press clippings. Good luck.

Anyway, BAK reads the mention in News Centre, and sees it is screwed up. BAK writes the e-mail below on Friday, June 16, to a big shot at IABC.

I saw this in the IABC news site tonight, and I think that the last two items show different answers to the same question.

 

THE BIG PICTURE
Jun 19, 2006 - BusinessWeek

ETHICS - In a recent poll, 53% of about 1,800 communications professionals said top management is an organization's conscience. Their other responses reveal that employers may be sending mixed messages:

(Chart)
IN MY ORGANIZATION...

Discussion of ethical/unethical conduct is encouraged
Agree - 46%, Undecided - 28%, Disagree - 26%
Unethical behavior that results in personal gain is reprimanded
Agree - 68%, Undecided - 23%, Disagree - 9%
Unethical behavior that results in personal gain is reprimanded
Agree - 51%, Undecided - 36%, Disagree - 13%

Data: International Association of Business Communicators
 

 

My neighborhood book store, ...  is closed, so I can't go over and see what the magazine really said.

So, I wait a few days, and go back, and the posting in the News Centre is STILL wrong.

Yesterday, Saturday, June 24, I go to the library, and find the BusinessWeek, and take it out and take a photograph of the page. You can look at the picture and find out what the survey results really are. And yeah, there are typos in BAK's Report. But I don't have 13,500 members sending me $300 a year.

Joseph Uglade is a vice president of the International Association of Business Communicators, and is responsible for media relations. His name is added here for the convenience of Google searches.

At 5:30 in the afternoon today (Sunday the 25, it is still wrong). Also wrong at 11 p.m. Sunday. (Unfair update Monday at 10:45 a.m. Still wrong, but this is unfair because it's only 7:45 at IABC headquarters.)

Oh, try this to get to News Centre. You'll never find it on your own.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Connie Eckhard is a "he." Holland considered  quitting IABC but didn't.

When I wrote the "second insulter of the day " story down below about being called a bozo by Connie Eckhard, I used the words, "A woman I know almost nothing about, named Connie Eckard. " I thought Connie was a woman, and an avant-garde lesbian who had recently married another woman.

However, Connie is a guy, apparently. I learned this thanks to this message from Robert Holland.

Connie is a guy.

 

A good journalist would have checked that out.

I did try to find out about Connie. A Google search yesterday turned up little; almost all things he has written in blogs. But today, a Google search tells me that not only is Connie a guy, but it is Dr. Connie, as in PhD, not in medical doctor. Read more here. It's from a web site of an organization called Information Matters, which seems to be a clearing house for consultants.

I'm a Johnny Cash fan. I've listened to "A man names Sue."

CLARIFICATION And Robert Holland is still a member of IABC, although " I was ready to give up my membership in early 2005." he wrote when saying he did not automatically defend every thing IABC did/does.

He wrote,...

"Perhaps you missed the public criticism I leveled at IABC a little more than a year ago when I believed the association was not focused enough on supporting chapters? It was my criticism along with that of many other IABC members that lit a fire under the leadership to greatly improve the way IABC listens to -- and responds to -- members."

...in regard to my deaf, dumb and blind comment. Perhaps I was a touch harsh when responding to the insufferable blowhard crap. Which does not negate the vast difference between target and achievement.

Monday, June 19, 2006
Ned Lundquist's Job of the Week keeps the  failed accreditation marketing story alive
NO. NOT AN ERROR. The headline above is the same headline as last Monday. Ned's having fun, keeping the story alive, and this may get the chapter accreditation people off their butts and working harder.

Today's Job of the Week newsletter  (June 19) from Ned Lundquist keeps the story alive for one more week. Robert Holland, a pioneer in IABC hyperspace,  provided these finely crafted words.

***  Over exposed:

You gave Brian Kilgore 100% more space than he deserves. He is an
insufferable blowhard who does not deserve to be given the free
publicity to further feed his ego.

Oops, I just mentioned his name again. Another clipping for him to add
to his collection.

Keep up the incredible Accreditation work.

Robert Holland, ABC

What puzzles me is the line about "the incredible accreditation work." The target was missed by a million miles. And Holland thinks this is incredible? Maybe he's being ironic. But I don't think so. I think that he's deaf, dumb and blind, and would support anything IABC did, no matter how bumbling, just because it's IABC.

And the second insulter of the day, published in Ned's newslettter: A woman I know almost nothing about, named Connie Eckard. She got an IABC chairman's award a decade and a half ago, and she got married (it's in a blog) Holland and Eckard are both among the 754 accredited members of IABC. Anyway, here is  her finely crafted prose.

***  From Connie Eckard, ABC:

Capt. Ned:
 
The exchange of words between professional communicators like Eric
Bergman, ABC, APR, MC; Wilma Mathews, ABC, IABC Fellow; Ned Lundquist,
ABC and some self-impressed bozo laboring under the name Brian A.
Kilgore add further fuel to my contention that blogging should be
outlawed  Kilgore has only proven again that sometimes it's better to
keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove
all doubt. 
 
Thanks for your support.  --Connie
 
PS:  Congratulations on the increased number of accredited members and
candidates in our professional association.

Note the P.S., and remember. Target 2006. Accomplished 754. No-one seems to comment on the point of the story. Nor report on how many people they brought to the ABC table.

And here's a line from a BAK's Report reader.

By my calculation this means that percentage of accredited members has “risen” from 5.12 per cent to 5.56. I guess that is something.

Monday, June 12, 2006
Ned Lundquist's Job of the Week keeps the  failed accreditation marketing story alive
Down below, I wrote about the failure of IABC to get anywhere near its accreditation target of 2006 members by 2006.

Today's Ned's Job of the Week newsletter (see here for more about Job of the Week) has a long section in it that includes many of my words, words from Wilma Mathews, from Eric Bregman... and, for the first time, Ned himself.

The spin seems to be that setting ludicrous targets, and missing them by miles, is OK.

Silly me. I think targets should be achievable.

Job of the Week is normally sent out by e-mail, but the JotW e-mail includes these words:

To read this list on the web, go to the JOTW online at:
http://www.topica.com/lists/JOTW or
http://www.CornerBarPR.com/JOTW/jotw.cfm

Try your luck,looking for JOTW 24-2006 You have to do some registering stuff at topica, and Corner Bar does not have today's version up, yet. But almost everything in JotW is written below in BAK's Report, too

From today's Job of the Week: (the strange line spacing is a function of how Ned sets up the e-mail.)

***  Now Ned responds:

I set out to accomplish something as marketing director of the
accreditation council, and I wanted to stretch myself and the
accreditation program.  Was my goal of having every accredited
communicator bring one new ABC aboard in 2005, and then have all of
them
bring one new ABC aboard in 2006 too ambitious?  I’ll admit to that. 
It
is better to have tried and failed than succeeded at trying nothing. 
And, I still have until December 31 to officially fail.
By the way, I’m promoting October as accreditation month, and am
looking
for some cool prizes.  Last year we had an HP color photo printer.  The
year before a trip to Vegas.  What shall we offer this year (only
answer
this if you are offering a prize)?
 

BAK's PRIZE  OFFER -- well, we don't know what someone has to do to win the prize, do we? Anyway, here's my localized offer. I'll take a group photograph of all IABC members who became accredited in calendar 2006 and who are willing and able to be in the same spot at the same time, in January 2007, in the city of Toronto, at a location organized and paid for by IABC, But only IF IABC's total number of accredited members as of December 31, 2006 equals HALF of the 2006 target. Get 1003 current members who are accredited at the end of the year, and the prize will be awarded.

But there's more ... who are we kidding?... this target won't be met, so, if IABC has, as of December 31, 2006, a grand total of 1003 current members who are accredited and current members who have had their accreditation applications accepted (and paid the full accreditation application fees, which is part of the rules of accreditation) added together... the prize still stands.

This group photo can be used by IABC for publication in ads in newspapers and magazines, touting how important accreditation is. I see similar ads throughout the spring from other organizations. And it can run in the IABC web site -- a news photo in the IABC web site would be a first -- and it can run in Commie Whirled.

But there's more... Every person assembled for the group shot who would like a business portrait of just themselves, will receive one, too, if they'll put it to good use. It may take a while, but I'll photograph each person who wants a picture to mark the occasion, and who commits to having it published somewhere, marking their accreditation. Their company's web site, their company's internal magazine, the business pages of their local newspaper, a paid ad in their industries' trade magazines, the chapter web site...the requirements are loose.

Each person gets:

One 5x7 print of the group shot, and three 4x6 prints of the individual portrait. I get to pick the pose. And each person gets web access to the images, prepared for web viewing and print publication, so they can pluck them from me and send them to various media.

Since Toronto's the biggest IABC chapter, there might be lots of people able to take part. Plus Ottawa is close, and London, and Hamilton, and London, and....

But there's more... the first six farther-away IABC members who received accreditation in calendar 2006 ( remembering  the 1003 rule) who can't be in Toronto for the group shot but show up in Canada's biggest city before the end of March and call me will get the free business portrait if they promise to publicize their accreditation.

What's Ned Lundquist's Job of the Week?
It's a weekly, or more often, listing, via e-mail, of communications jobs all over the world, although mainly in the USA. Subscribers to the e-mail list, and people they know, submit the job titles and some inoo about the job, and a link to find out more. The list beats the bejeepers out of IABC's own weak attempt to provide a job list, and IABC execs should really be reviewing the performance of the people in charge of their lists, compared to Ned's.

Ned does JotW out of the goodness of his heart, usually early in the morning. JotW has some gossip in in, and some other stuff where people complain about things and look for companionship.

Friday, June 9, 2006

UPDATE: late in the day Friday. E-mail from Wilma Mathews:

Brian,

 

Thank you for responding.

 

And now I'll follow my father's advice to never argue with anyone whose opinion I do not respect.

 

Wilma

The story below was very early on Friday.

IABC old-timer Wilma Mathews is mad at me.
I got an e-mail Thursday from Wilma Mathews, a woman whose name I've heard ever since I started following the adventures of the International Association of Business Communicators via the miracle of the internet.

I've known lots about IABC for twenty years, attended local meetings in several cities, attended conferences, wrote extensively -- and better than anyone else -- about the Toronto conference a couple of years ago, but I'd never heard of her until IABC Hyperspace on the internet.

She works in Arizona, and although she does not have an official IABC title right now, as far as a quick look through the IABC web site tells me, it would be hard to find a current IABC leader who does not know her, and value her loyalty to the organization.

She complains about my story about the failure of IABC to meet its accreditation goals. Here's that story.

As this bio below from the IABC In Session blog says, she's a former Accreditation Board chairwoman. (The bio says "chairman" but I don't believe it) No wonder she's defensive about the failure to meet the target.

Before you read her complaint about me, why not read some of her work? She posted a message in IABC's pre-conference blog, In Session,about Media Trends. Read her insights, and then read the commentary her words inspired, and then ask yourself, "Just how good a job did she do here? And how good a job did IABC do supporting her words and ideas?" And you might as yourself, "Is this blog a failure, or a success?" Six comments, two of which are from her. Two of which only came about a month after her original posting. The content of the message, and the comments, are, by the way, really good.

And I tried to add a comment to her original posting. I was in fact going to try to rescue her failed* attempt at discourse, adding a trend every couple of days, up until the conference, but IABC's technical system blocks any posting from me into this blog. Apparently IABC is working on getting my inbound messages accepted.

(*failed in the sense that she generated a couple of comments right off, and then it died, regardless of 13,000 members world-wide. Sad, really. In Session says "IABC has asked 15 communication professionals to make regular posts to In Session - some are speakers, others serve on our program advisory committee and some are Vancouver know-it-alls." See how many actually delivered.)

And now... drum roll please.. her message to me, un-edited. Note the complaint about typos. Yeah, I know I'm not much of a typist.

Brian,

In response to your posting (below).
You seem to indicate that all goals must be completely achieved and that, if not, the creation of the goal was "a plain dumb idea."

Have you never set an audacious goal? Or are all of your goals so small and focused that they are easy to obtain?
It appears to me that your single driving goal is to openly criticize and ridicule anyone and anything that you deem to not meet your personal standards.

As you are not a member of IABC, I cannot help but wonder why you even care about what the association does. And as you are not an accredited member of IABC, I cannot help but wonder how you can criticize a program of which you have virtually no knowledge.

We will continue working towards this goal. Perhaps you could continue trying to reduce the number of typos per posting. In that way, we'll both be making progress.

Wilma Mathews, ABC

About "You seem to indicate that all goals must be completely achieved and that, if not, the creation of the goal was "a plain dumb idea." " Have you ever seen a point missed as completely? Where did I write anything about "all"?

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Glenda Holmes becomes  becomes chairwoman of IABC.

The International Association Of Business Communicators today issued a news release saying Austin, Texas resident and  apartment association PR woman Glenda Holmes is the new chair of the 13,500+ member world-wide association.  In the release, we learned, among other things:

As chair of the association, Holmes will be the chief elected IABC 

board member, presiding at board meetings, establishing committees, judging 

teams and representing IABC at meetings of other organizations and at public 

events all over the world.

So, she gets to travel. More importantly, it appears she is the public face of IABC. And she outlined "three primary areas that she would like to emphasize during her term as chair."

1. The member experience. Members expect a return on their investment. 

IABC must continually evaluate the member experience through a global lens, 

and work to improve that experience. 

2. Chapters and regions. For many members, the local chapter is the 

face of our association. IABC must support chapters and regions, providing the

resources they need to deliver value.  

3. The profession. Professional communicators deliver bottom-line results

for organizations. Regardless of how you feel about IABC’s role as an

advocate for our profession, there’s no question that we should do 

more to illustrate and raise awareness of the value we deliver. 

3, above, is what I've been arguing for for the better part of a decade now, I think. 

At least it seems like for ever.

IABC uses some weird type face so that releases from it come with the 
trademark symbol and the Euro sign in them. I'm just sharing them with you. 

Line spacing was all messed up too, but I fixed that as best I could.

ATTENTION PR STUDENTS.
Compare and contrast two ways of learning what's happen' at the IABC conference.

Official IABC blog: http://blogs.iabc.com/ic/
Joe Thornley's blog: http://www.propr.ca

The first one is run by people working for 13,500 members around the world who pay the better part of $300 each to belong to IABC. The second one is free to everyone, courtesy of Mr. Thornley's generosity.

Does "Social Media" mean "Amateur Hour"?
The hot topic at the International Association of Business Communicators annual conference, in Vancouver this year, is "Social Media." Apparently it means blogs and podcasts and wikis, and so on and so forth. In Session, the IABC's social media method of letting people around the world know what's going on in Vancouver today added a "podcast" interview with incoming "elected" chair Glenda Holmes. (Someday I'll ask a chairman / woman of IABC who actually votes. I know ity is not the 13,600, or so, members around the world.)

Months ago, I described a podcast as amateur radio, and BAK's Report readers are welcome to go to In Session at http://blogs.iabc.com/ic/  and see -- well, hear -- for themselves, the interview with Glenda. See if you can stay to the end. I couldn't.

Professional communicators are supposed to be, err, professional. And doing radio is hard. So is writing well, but at least IABC gets credit for the written part of In Session, such as it is, for decent writing. Too bad no one bothered to write a story about the interesting and important things Glenda probably said during the interview for the podcast. PR LESSON Radio is a tricky way of communicating, because listeners can't skim ahead when they get bored, as they can with print, just to see it it gets interesting again.

And there's another IABC blog that might interest BAK's Report readers.

IABC completely and utterly misses accreditation target that never made sense in the first place.
A couple of years ago IABC accreditation program marketing director (a volunteer job) Ned Lundquist announced his intention to get 2006 accredited IABC members by 2006.

He failed.

It was just a plain dumb idea, but it was presented seriously. So last week I asked Ned and IABC Accreditation Chairman Eric Bergman what the result was.

If you go to the IABC Commons, you can read my original e-mail to them -- they were kind enough to point out the typos -- and Eric's response. Here you go: read for yourselves the double talk and weirdo-speak

Beats me what he means by "

Eric and I must define "extremely successful" differently.
Target: 2006 members with accreditation (ABC after their name)
Actual: 754

Quick math. My typos, three
Missed target. One thousand two hundred and fifty two.

IABC has paid staff with accreditation responsibilities. Whomever does employee reviews should remember these numbers.

Monday, June 5, 2006

Update to below: It's midnight in Toronto, 9 in Vancouver, and now In Session has two postings up. Read them at www.iabc.com

IN SESSION ISN'T
The IABC Cafe, the blog run by IABC's elected chairman Warren Bickford, has a posting from Warren reminding Cafe readers that  "you can follow what’s happening at the 2006 IABC International Conference" at In Session, part of the IABC conference web site, It's been 24+ hours since the conference started... but I know it is hard to actually do something, rather than say it will be done, at IABC. (NOTE: for those easily confused, it is NOT Warren's job to keep In Session up to date.) Whose job is it, come to think of it? The names of those responsible are conspicuous by their absence.

So far, i.e. 2:30 Monday afternoon Vancouver time, a whole day after the conference started, In Session is devoid of anything new.

But Cafe Readers and BAK's Report who go to http://www.propr.ca
can read lots of stuff from the conference, courtesy of Joe Thornley.

Maybe IN SESSION will add contact info so we can read blogs, etc., from other diligent IABC members who are at the conference, and if any working journalists have words up on the web, tell us where we can read them, too.

The IABC web site does have a new addition today -- ads trying to get $50 a pop from people to get DVDs of the sessions. Ads, apparently, get the attention first.

Sunday, June 4, 2006

The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) International conference starts in Vancouver this weekend.

IABC promises lots of on-going info about what's actually happening  will be posted on the IABC web site during the conference, in a blog called In Session.

Here's what IABC says about its plans:

Our goal with In Session is to engage participants before they arrive in Vancouver for a richer conference experience and to capture the conference experience onsite for those who don’t attend conference.

I'm interpreting this to mean In Session will be concurrent with the conference, not reporting days, or weeks later. But maybe I'm wrong.

If you click on http://blogs.iabc.com/ic/ you should / might get to In Session, and you can learn who the 15 people selected to provide input to the blog are.

Friday, June 2, 2006

MORE IABC STORIES ARE COMING. In some ways, I feel the need to apologize to BAK's Report readers who don't care about IABC. On the other hand, lots of you like these stories. People even thank me for some of them.

Earlier today I wrote to incoming "elected" chairwoman Glenda Holmes, telling her a bit about BAK's Report and the stories I'm looking at. Among them, governance (just who votes for those elected board members, anyway?), and the job performance of the paid staff. Who does their job reviews? Are there board members responsible for communications, Communications World, the mediocre, hard to read web site and the dog's breakfast of blogs?

And I told her I was really interested in running stories about how IABC goes out into the world to tell the story of professional communications, using all the tools and techniques of our profession.

One of the smartest communicators I know is planning on rejoining IABC, on the understanding she can spearhead this "PR for PR' effort. More on this next week, assuming she does send in her $300 or so. Look at the top of this page to see a few words about my motivation, in What is BAK's Report.

IABC posts a few people photos,
only in one spot.

I've been wondering, for months and months, when IABC would actually get off its duff and put up the photos of members it has promised since last October.  Here's a story about that.  So I went to the IABC web site tonight, and lo and behold, there was a great portrait of an IABC member, with name and location, in the upper right corner. And each time you go to the site, you see a different person in the corner.

CHRIS SALVO
The pictures of the members, incidentally, were taken by Chris Salvo. Learn more about him, his work, and the work of his wife Suzanne, at www.Salvophoto.com

So I happily started jumping through the IABC web site, thinking, "Finally, the end to the awful stock pictures that IABC staff think are fine, and elected board members won't get fixed." Silly me.

Of course IABC's web staff and "professional" communications staff didn't bother seeding these new portraits all through the site. 

The Education section has this nice photo of chair backs. Wow!.

The Research section has this nice shot of a pen. Wow!, again.

Underneath the opening page portraits there's info on the conference in Vancouver starting this weekend.

Among the info -- remember, it's June 2 as I write this -- is this gen:

13,500 members, spending over $300 each in dues, deserve better than this, don't they?

Friday, May 19, 2006

On October 11 last year, IABC said it was going to place professional pictures on its web site. Nothing so far. It was in a news release that is still on the IABC web site, unless IABC pulls it down out of embarrassment.

Here's the content of an e-mail I sent to IABC vice-president Joseph Uglade on Thursday, asking about this.

It's only been November, and December, and January, and February, and March, and April, and half of May. Your membership dollars at work.

And IABC's news room has the worst photo I've ever seen on a supposedly professional news room on a web site. But I don't think any one at IABC's so-called communications department has even basic skills, but maybe I'm harsh. Do you think this is good? You can see it for yourself at IABC.com, and then look for the news room and then look for images.

This is Kellie Garrett, Vice Chair, IABC Research Foundation. This photo has been on the web site for months, but no-one notices, or if they do, no-one cares.

Will there be performance reviews for vice-presidents at the IABC conference in Vancouver next month? Should be.

Sunday, April 6, 2006

IABC Chairman Bickford drinks coffee with me, gets interviewed by the Globe and Mail
Oh, and he chaired an IABC executive committee meeting in Toronto on Saturday, but I put that in third place.

In between drinking coffee with Jana Schilder and me Friday morning and drinking coffee with incoming IABC chair Glenda Holmes and me Sunday morning, IABC Chairman Warren Bickford talked to Ginny Galt, the careers expert at The Globe and Mail, Canada's most important newspaper, and this quote was part of her story in yesterday's newspaper.

"Young job-seekers who have grown up with the Internet "need to get off-line and talk to people," adds Warren Bickford, president of the International Association of Business Communicators and vice-president of Gryphon Reputation Management, a consulting firm based in Regina. "They need to network like crazy.' "

Warren has plans for a deeper interview with her. This was a quick conversation when she was on deadline, which forced postponement of their originally scheduled interview, which will discuss ethics.  Stay tuned. I'll keep BAK's Report readers posted. To read the whole story from which the quote about is pulled, just click here. The link should work for a while.

Jana Schilder (www.JanaSchilder.com) and I met with Warren for a couple of hours Friday morning at yet another of the Starbucks he visits around the world, and talked about everything from the need for high quality execution in the communications  profession to the barefootedness of the cobbler's children at IABC. At least, as shown by the Globe interview, and an earlier interview in Houston, thanks to Alice Brink's efforts, IABC is getting better publicity.

I've got to find out more about the Houston interview. Stay tuned about that, too.

Thursday, April 6, 2006

A good picture that was hard to take, at a presentation that was very interesting.
A couple of weeks ago my friend and associate Mark Towhey called and invited me to a presentation on Personality Assessment, at a reception hosted by FelixGlobal, an HR consulting firm. "And bring your camera, please," he added.

It's a lot harder to take a picture of a speaker in a dim room that people might think. Especially when you don't want to annoy the rest of the audience.

You can learn more about Norman Buckley and his insights into personality assessment by reading the FelixGlobal newsletter, at www.FelixGlobal.com. and you'll be able to see my credit line, on the left of this shot, much more clearly.

They'll be using the Easy Button at Staples Business Depot today.

Sometimes PR can be really easy. Or really lucky.

Last evening I was watching Kevin Newman, the host of the coast to coast Canadian news show Global National interviewing the new Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, in Harper's office. As they walked past the PM's desk, Newman points to a big red button, and asks about it. So Staples, creator of this great promotion, suddenly has a new corporate spokesman and product demonstrator, as Harper leans over and presses the button and the Global coast-to-coast microphone picks up the words, "That Was Easy."

What more could any PR person ask?

PRSA announces yet another opportunity to spend money.
From a PRSA news release:
NEW EXECUTIVE EDUCATION PROGRAM TO ADDRESS GLOBAL PUBLIC RELATIONS CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
NEW YORK (March 15, 2006) – Public relations professionals from around the world will converge in New York City from May 31 – June 3, 2006, for a new executive education event, “Towards a New Global Public Relations Model: From Theory to Practice.”  The four-day program will address topics within a global framework, including advanced reputation management methods, contemporary organizational behavior and trends, shifting relationships and communication practices, and strategic leadership roles.

The program is presented by Toni Muzi Falconi, The NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies – Division of Graduate Programs in Business, and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

And PRSA ran a photo. It's one of these two.

Which one do you think is the one from the PRSA web site, and which one is the version I spent five minutes fixing up? The PRSA web site release came from Cedric Bess, so I guess he gets the credit, if that's the word, for including this photograph.

Toni Muzi Falconi

I couldn't do anything about the angle, though. You'd think a PR association would at least try to get a good photograph.

IABC eliminates its deficit early, it reports
IABC sent out a news release today, that starts off saying:

IABC Eliminates Deficit Two Years Earlier than Projected

SAN FRANCISCO, CA 9 February 2006 The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) today announced it has eliminated its financial deficit two years earlier than forecast. In addition, unaudited results reveal that FY05 was the strongest year for the association in over a decade.

This financial turnaround represents an important milestone in IABC's history, made possible through strong membership growth and by controlling expenses. At the end of December 2005, IABC had 13,452 members in over 60 countries, representing a 7 percent growth over the previous year.

Good for IABC. You can read the rest of the news release on the IABC web site, at www.IABC.com and look for the link to the news room. there's a little story down below on this page (jump to it here) about IABC's membership numbers.

Patricia Bowles joins the British Columbia Securities Commission
There was an announcement in the paper the other day that cleared up a question my mind, and linked to a discussion I'd been having about the PR industry.

Patricia Bowles has joined the B.C. Securities Commission as Director of Communications and Education.

Years ago, she ran Martland, the Public Relations firm owned by McLaren Advertising, and back then, the only ad-agency-owned PR firm I thought was any good at all. and I thought it was very good. McLaren was "my" agency when I managed public relations and public affairs at CNCP Telecommunications. Years ago she headed west to work for Telus, and then, the appointment announcement tells us, Westcoast Energy and the B.C. Ministry of the Attorney General.

Maintaining (or really, regaining) confidence in capital markets is, I believe, extremely important in Canada, and I think having Pat at the B.C. Securities Commission won't just be good for the commission, it will be good for investors. 

Print advertising and web sites
In a couple of weeks, I'll post links here to a business magazine and to a client's web site. We've created small space ads for several trade magazines, including the web address of the client. When you visit the web site, there will be a link to "About our 2006 Advertising." Click on that, and you'll see a much longer essay explaining the importance of each phrase in the copy in the ad. Overall -- a good way of mixing long copy and small space for optimal media expenditures.

IABC review issue grows...
If you visit the IABC Cafe at www.iabc.com look for the story with elephant in the title, and the one about the Bulldog Reporter story. These are growing out of and/or related to the Desirable Roasted Coffee story immediately below, too. the last time Allan Jenkins and I started writing about the same problem at IABC, then-chairman David Kistle bailed out of his blog, and Warren Bickford took it over, months before he became the chairman.

European IABC critic calls for serious review
Allan Jenkins, who publishes a blog called Desirable Roasted Coffee from his base in Copenhagen, this week took a shot at the IABC Cafe blog, and IBC leadership in general.

You can read it all for yourself at http://allanjenkins.typepad.com/

Warren Bickford, left, is the elected chair of the International Association of Business Communicators.

Here's the start of Allan's piece.

It's time for Warren Bickford to assess IABC

Straight out: Warren Bickford has done a good job of blogging as IABC chairman. He turned the effort around when it was reeling on its feet, and he's thrown out topics that are worth chewing on.

But.... it's not right, yet. The IABC Chairman's Blog, or Café, or whatever, is still not there.

He  recruited co-bloggers. That was a good move, but a decided failure. Keefe has contributed. So did Pizzo, until Katrina put him out of house and town. Barbara Gibson remains as invisible to the world as she is to IABC's European members.

There's more. Go read it at Desirable Roasted Coffee. The IABC Cafe currently has several interesting threads. You can read it at www.IABC.com, and then look for the link to the IABC Cafe.

IABC updates its web site's news section.
Hot on the heels of an October 11, 2005 news release that said, "Newsroom. Plans are underway for a complete overhaul of the current newsroom." the International Association of Business Communicators today launched a revamped news section on the web site.

In a news release starting off...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – 24 January 2006 - The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and PR Newswire announced the launch of IABC’s online News Centre powered by PR Newswire’s MediaRoom tool. The launch of the News Centre is the next stage in the recent redesign of the IABC web site.

... IABC touted the development. You can read the whole release and see the site for yourself at www.IABC.com

There are pictures there of some of the top elected officials, (that's where I got the nice photo of Warren Bickford, above) and paid executive leader Julie Freeman. And there are some news clips, after months of their absence from the IABC web site. Some of these clips are worth reading, I expect. I've just glanced at them so far. I'm going back to read a clip from New Zealand, and I'll look for coverage of speeches and presentations by IABC leaders, although I'm not optimistic I'll find much.

US Olympic Team uniform suppliers honored by Toronto's Canadian Public Relations Society Chapter

The Toronto chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society yesterday named the founders of the company supplying the US Olympic Team uniforms, Michael Budman and Don Green, as CEOs of the Year.

Budman and Green are true cross-border personalities. American born and raised in Detroit, they spent their summers in Canada. They now own Toronto-based clothing and fashion company Roots, which designed Canadian Olympic uniforms for many years. Last year it lost the Canadian contract, and replaced it with an American one. Roots is now the supplier of the US Team uniforms for Turin.

Gordon McIvor, a long-time CPRS Toronto member, conceived the idea for the CEO of the Year awards more than a decade ago, bacjk when I was still active in CPRS Toronto. Gordon commissioned a sculpture to serve as the award, and has continued to lead the program. Recipients over the years have ranged from the Canadian presidents of Ford, (returned to the USA)  McDonalds (Retired) and Xerox (Returned to the USA) to leaders of organizations as diverse as The Toronto International Film Festival and The Toronto Police Service (his contract was not renewed). This year's presentation, in a large ballroom of the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, was sold out.

I couldn't make the whole lunch, but I went over after the food but, as it turned out, before the speeches, to get included in a CPRS past presidents photo. While waiting for the photo shoot with me in it, I took these pictures. And I sat at one end of a huge ballroom, packed with people, and thought what a wonderful job Gordon has done keeping this program going for so long.

Budman and Green are well known personalities across Canada, and their Roots stores are a tourist destination. Since starting their business in 1973 selling "natural footwear" they've been publicity hounds, starting with arranging for widely published pictures of John Lennon and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau wearing Roots shoes. Now their weekly internal employee newsletter, The Source, includes "Guess who just dropped in…"  So far this year, those dropping in include Jerry Seinfeld, Mariah Carey and Seal in Aspen, Canadian comedian Martin Short in Sun Valley -- Jamie Lee Curtis was in that store, too, and in Toronto, Robin Williams and Queen Latifa.

And that's only a small sampling. Roots web site, at www.roots.com , contains dozens of pictures. Every store has a camera. And someone who thinks like a publicist.

Budman and Green, in their acceptance speeches, drew attention to the top two communicators at Roots, Raymond Perkins, Director of Public Relations, and Robert Sarner, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, and praised the other people in their PR department. But it was clear that all staff internationally are tuned into the publicity ethic.

They also talked about their partnership, how long they have been friends, the influence of hockey in their lives, -- they had played that morning -- and the inspiration of Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay, Detroit Red Wing team-mates from an earlier era. Ted Lindsay was a guest of honor at the presentation, seated at the head table. I was more impressed to see Ted Lindsay than I was the shoeguys, but I must admit, lots of people like Roots products, and I do believe that they are high quality items. I guess Costco wouldn't sell Roots products if they were not good.

Since I spend a lot of time complaining about the lack of media coverage of PR association events, I was delighted to see, as I wrote this story Thursday night, a spot on Toronto's CFTO television news cast. A Google News search told me a photo was distributed by the CCN Mathews news release distribution company at 7:14 Thursday evening. CCN Mathews was a sponsor of the event. Earlier this week I talked with CCN MAthews about its photo distribution system. It sends pictures direct to the picture editors who are subscribers to the Canadian Press service, so I expect this shot is one news desks coast to coast. We'll see about pickup.

AND MORE: Just as I was about to post this, I turned on my TV at 1:30 in the morning, and on E-Talk Daily, Ben Mulroney, son of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and host of the show, was mentioning the award.
Don Green, left, and Michael Budman, right, founders of Roots, the Toronto-based supplier of the United States Olympic team uniforms for Turin, were named CEOs of the Year by the Toronto Chapter of The Canadian Public Relations Society Thursday, January 19. CPRS Toronto member Gordon McIvor, center, back to camera, has been the driving force behind the awards since he originated the idea more than a decade ago.

Former Detroit Red Wings star Ted Lindsay was a hero of Budman and Green growing up, and was guest of honor at the CPRS CEO of the Year award presentation. 

On January 19, PRSA issued a news release about the plans for new President Cheryl Procter-Rogers
PRSA is also looking for a new paid senior executive. Currently the title of the job now held by Catherine Bolton is Chief Operating Officer, and according to Jack O'Dywer's PR Daily, she's hauling in over a quarter mil a year.

PRSA elected President
Cheryl Procter - Rogers

C P-R took over as head of PRSA almost three weeks ago, but she's known for months she was getting the job. Read about C P-R's plans here on the PRSA web site (that release sure isn't gonna get published in your local paper's business section, so you might as well read it there) and read about the search for the new COO on Jack O'Dwyer's PR Daily. If you move quick enough, you can use "most" and "stories" without the quotation marks in the login for Jack's site. These sign in words should work until the end of January.

And for a better overview of C P-R's plans than PRSA has it its own release, look here. It takes you to a BAK's Report story about the Bulldog, which did a good interview with her. there's a link.

Missing from the PRSA web site story, but present in the Bulldog story, is this quote that really speaks to what I think is the most important thing an association can do.

"We’ll also be taking on particular issues that impact our industry by creating dialog in the market in a way that demonstrates to business and the public the value of PR and communication."

Monday, January 16, 2006

My picture's in Eric Eggertson's web site.
Which is not necessarily the most interesting aspect of his site.

This link should get you to a three-part picture of David Murray,  who writes for the publications of the Ragan publishing and training organization, International Association of Business Communicators elected chairman Warren Bickford, and me. Eric's written a story about various aspects of the IABC Cafe blog.

At the heart of the story is a piece David Murray wrote, commenting that the IABC Cafe is bland, or at least Warren's postings are. I try to add some interest from time to time. BAK's Report readers are welcome to go to www.iabc.com and find the IABC Cafe link, and decide for themselves.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Cars, computers and now Coke
for top PR man.
Tom Mattia is now the top PR person at Coca-Cola, world-wide, and he'll report directly to the CEO. Before Coke he was at EDS, the big-time computer services firm, and prior to that held various PR-related jobs at Ford. If you follow his career back far enough, he worked for Jimmy Carter's election campaign and is a genuine former reporter.

He's got his work cut out for him at Coke, as more and more schools get caught up in some poorly-conceived groundswell of anti-Coke sentiment, and are trying to get Coke vending machines kicked out of their institutions. There are, of course, others things to do in the PR department, world-wide.

My view: Coke is the best cola, diet Coke is not any good but no diet beverage is, and the Coke polar bears are my friends. I wish him well.

Cheryl Procter-Rogers is really the
boss of PRSA
The Public Relations Society of America 's PR Vice-Presidnet, Janet Troy, has confirmed that Cheryl Procter-Rogers has taken over as president of the society.

And she's sent us this link to a story on the Bulldog web site, which provides a lot of insight into what C P-R wants / plans to do during her term in office. Try this link.

It's worth reading. Get a fresh coffee, because it's a long story and worth thinking about as you read. The part I think is the most important is this: "We’ll also be taking on particular issues that impact our industry by creating dialog in the market in a way that demonstrates to business and the public the value of PR and communication."

And there's some very interesting content based on the idea that there is so much media today that people narrow their viewing / reading / listening to input that confirms their worldview. Nothing new going into their brains, just stuff that agrees with what they already think they know.

The interview is worth reading.

(Lack of) progress report: at noon Eastern time today, there's no link to this story on the PRSA's own web site, and the PRSA web site still does not have the 2006 "leadership" posted. In the Bulldog story, C P-R talks about how the web site is important. Maybe she needs to give someone a kick. UPDATE: by 4 p.m. on Thursday, January 12, the new board listings are up on the PRSA web site. The "Profiles" page still has last years listings and titles.

Cheryl Procter-Rogers apparently
boss of PRSA
The Public Relations Society of America put out a news release on December 9, 2005, mentioning who had been elected to lead the society in 2006. As far as I can tell, the new team took over January first. The release does not say. It's at www.prsa.org

But tonight, about 10:15 eastern time, this is what PRSA web site has for leadership

2005 Board of Directors   President & CEO Judith Turner Phair, APR, Fellow PRSA President PhairAdvantage Communications 8421 Cherry Laurel Ct Laurel, MD 20723 Phone: 301-317-8243 Fax: 301-725-2382 jphair@phairadvantage.com   President-Elect Cheryl Procter-Rogers, APR, Fellow PRSA Corporate Affairs Director-North Central Region Home Box Office 6250 N River Rd, Ste 10-300 Rosemont, IL 60018 Phone: 847-318-5156 Fax: 847-825-1333 cheryl.procter-rogers@hbo.com

Doesn't mention 2006. However, I think this might be out of date. The Chief Operating Officer of PRSA is Catherine Bolton, and chances are the people who have not kept the web site current work for her. I think web sites should belong to the PR department, and the vice-president PR is a Janet Troy.

The president for 2006 is Cheryl Procter-Rogers, who is "diverse" in the American sense of the word, and apparently slow off the mark. It's January 9 as I type, and I cannot find anything on the PRSA web site giving her vision, her values, her ideas for the year she's the big boss. Nothing. I've written to PRSA PR VP Janet Troy to ask if the vision is on the web site, and it's my fault I can't find it.

You'd think the leader of a PR association would have a clue about the importance of a strong start for a new leader.

There was a story about her in Jack O'Dwyer's newsletter the other day. My overall impression from that was that she just might get around to doing something or other, but it was not a sure bet.

Procter-Rogers was featured in a PRSA news release last month. Here are the first three paragraphs,. You can find the rest at www.prsa.org. Don't you love the led to the release? No APR involved in writing this one, I bet.

Sunday, January 8, 2006

Dawn K. McDowell,
Canadian PR leader, dies at 50
Dawn K. McDowell, the managing director of GPC Toronto, died Thursday. She was 50. Cancer was the culprit. I did not know her, but I have great respect for GPC, which I think of as one of the best combination "regular" public relations and government relations firms in Canada.

Her husband, John McHugh, is a well known and well respected PR practitioner in Toronto.

Before joining GPC she was Superintendent for Communications and Community Relations with the Peel Board of Education, which operates schools west of Toronto. Her career's early days and education were in Minnesota. She was a member of the Canadian Public Relations Society.

BAK's Business News Predictions For 2006

What’s going to happen in business news, as related to communications professionals, in 2006? What will the major business reporters and editors be covering? Here are some ideas I originally put into the International Association of Business Communicator's IABC Cafe blog on New Year's Eve.

1/ depth of management will become more important. Less emphasis on the CEO as king, or at least more attention to the princes.

2/ more and more journalists are going to reduce their function as stenographers and start doing more and more holding of feet to fires, but the vast majority will still not ask hard questions and not insist on good, honest, complete answers. In the holding feet department, what I mean is the kind of follow up we in North America are seeing from Anderson Cooper in regard to Katrina, plus Kitty Pilgrim’s pressure-interviewing techniques.

“More and more journalists” does not mean very many, however.

3/ PR people will be even more torn about whether to offer their execs for media relations opportunities. A few reporters will be better, a few will be more challenging, and even more won’t have done their homework, and/or will get the story screwed up.

4/ communicators will continue to not understand photography. (see the IABC news release about the revised web site, and the IABC magazine guest editorial about communicators not being photographers, and the Ragan story insulting IABC over its treatment of photography, and the vacation pictures feature, month after month, in Commie World.) (Commie World is Communications World, the IABC internal magazine that is only half as good as it should be.)

5/ Smart communicators will try to get their heads around digital television; the technology and the content. Warren (Bickford, the IABC elected chairman) is procrastinating in his own way; my son and I are watching episode after episode after episode of American Chopper, as I explain the values of the show to an 11 year old.

6/ Three or four really important professional issues will be just under the surface, but none will really emerge. Example? Who do we work for for? Our boss? His or her boss? The CEO? The management committee? The board, or the chair of some board committee? That legal entity that is “the company” or something else. It’s a complicated legal issue, but it has to do with who tells us what to do, and our responsibility to refuse, perhaps. See Lay and Skilling and the people who worked for them.

Another example? Where does communications stuff fit into E-discovery, which is the legal process of gathering info that is in electronic form, rather than typed on paper, for court cases.

7/ The continuing world-wide distrust and disgust at the USA and / or its “leadership” will affect international communications, as will the growing (hard to believe it could get bigger) insularity of the “leader of the free world.” Especially interesting for senior communicators at non-US branches of US-headed multinationals., and US communicators at branches in the US of non-US companies, like Chrysler.

Welcome to 2006
Everything above is 2006. Everything below is 2005 and earlier.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Pay money -- suck up to your boss
While I was checking something in the IABC web site (whether there was any news, is what I was checking) I clicked on the news release about IABC's excellent communicator award. Here are the fees:

Excellent communicator entry fee:
US$325 per nomination for IABC members
US$475 per nomination for non-members
US$600 Join IABC and enter

I was looking to see if IABC issued a news release about the extensive travels of the chairman, all the way to China and back. What did he learn? What lessons was he passing on? What should communicators know about cultural differences? You get the idea.

But no. No news release about that. Instead, yet another news release with no news, trying to get people to give IABC even more money. The winner of this award is not a professional communicator, so you can nominate your bosses and tell them, and maybe your annual review will be more positive. The last winner, Mark Hurd, is the guy who fired vast numbers from Hewlett Packard instead of figuring out how to run the company so that it made products people wanted to buy.

General Motors and Nortel are firing people. Maybe their CEOs should be nominated, if anyone at either company has a spare $325. (Complete aside: Saw the new Pontiac Solstice yesterday. Stupid trunk design -- you can't go away for a weekend with a friend -- but otherwise, a beautiful little, but bigger than you might think, car from General Motors.)

That pay for a nomination release is, up to December 20, the only news release this month. No news in November. In October, IABC put out a news release trying to sell you copies of a survey. The same day (don't they know about pacing news release distribution? They should take a course or read their own books.) IABC announced its new web site design.

Here are two paragraphs from that October 11 web site news release:

Some of the additional features to be added to the IABC site in the next few months include:

Member photos. Professionally-shot photographs of IABC members from around the world are being gathered to reflect the diversity of the IABC community. These photographs will be incorporated into the site design in the next few months.

Newsroom. Plans are underway for a complete overhaul of the current newsroom.

If you go to www.IABC.com you will not find any pictures of diversity-enabled people, nor will you find anything other than an awful newsroom portion of the site. But it's only been two and a half months, and maybe that's not "a few" as defined by IABC vp Joseph Ugalde, whose name is on the release.

It's time for employment contracts to be reviewed. Do IABC directors want to find themselves in a class action suit related to wasting their members' money through lax hiring and firing?

IABC's membership reaches 13,500

For years I've been writing that IABC has 13,500 members, and then I increased this to 14,000. I was wrong.

IAC chairman Warren Bickford, in response to a question I asked him in the IABC CAFE blog, told BAK's Report readers the population is 12,615 fiull members and 817 students, for a total of 13, 432, as of the end of November 2005.

KISTLE'S MEMBERSHIP PROJECT. Former IABC chairman Dvid Kistle (before current chairman Bickford) had some goals when he came to office, and one of them was to increase IABC membership so there were five cities with more than 500 members.I remember writing at the time that there were more important things to do than this -- like promoting the profession -- but anyway, here are, again as of the end of November 2005, IABC's largest chapters.

Toronto  -- 1301
Washington -- 654
Chicago -- 450
Calgary -- 440
Minnesota -- 424

IABC's blog has been updated:

Why, you ask, would this be news? Read on. Last year I wrote in BAK's Report that David Kistle, then the IABC chairman, should just quit the blog and let Warren Bickford, slated to take over a few months later, take over early. Here's that story. Part of my argument was that Kistle had really failed as a blogger.

Allan Jenkins, an IABC member and blogger in Denmark, was in favor of Kistle's departure from the blog, too. Well, Kistle did bail out of the blog, and Warren Bickford jumped in early, changed the name to IABC Cafe, and posed some "mixed" messages. Mixed means that they existed, but there sure were not very interesting, very often. (Don't believe me? Look at the number of responses they generated.)

Apparently the Ragan Report ran a piece recently chastising Bickford for the bad job he's doing on the blog. I hate being beat on a story, but I've been trying to be good and trying to be supportive, and trying to post something or other on the IABC CAFE that is half-way interesting. You certainly don't get much of that from Bickford. So I've pulled my punches here on The IABC CAFE. For instance, I could have written about the absolute lack of member communication as Bickford, Julie Freeman (the IABC paid president), Kistle, (at least he was on the program -- don't know if he actually went) went to the other side of the world.

Bickford has organized a set of guest posters, which he calls baristas, but the only one I can remember ever doing anything is Tom Keefe, who's got an interesting thread going right now about employee communications.

So, I have written this tory here just to let you know the boss is back, and he's posted a couple of messages. One, posted today, Tuesday, by Bickford, repeats what I posted there last Thursday about the Hurricane Katrina fund raising. Another is a semi-sneer at the Ragan story. Read for yourself at www.iabc.com and then search around for the link on the badly designed front page.

CORRECTION, December 13: See story immediately below. The original IABC Hurricane Katrina fund-raising target was $5000, as reported originally here. I have no idea how $2000 got into my head. So it was thirty percent over target, almost half a buck per IABC member instead of the original target of 35 cents.

IABC southern region has hit triple (plus) its fundraising target. (See correction above)
The International Association of Business Communicators, in a program driven by the southern district, embarked on a fundraising program just after Hurricane Katrina wacked New Orleans, devastating the homes, jobs, businesses and, generally, the lives of the IABC members there.

BAK's Report has run stories about this project before, down here and in other places. Last night I sent out an e-mail to some of those involved, and here's the response I got from Lisa Owens, the woman I think of as the brains behind the project. She's in San Antonio. The target was $2000. Here's what Lisa has provided to BAK's Report readers.

OK, here are the sweets: $6500 total raised, averages out to $166 odd per person.  Twenty-six chapters from around the world contributed.  Check was mailed yesterday.

New Orleans is planning to distribute to all members a portion of the funds, with the amount to be scaled up or down based on direct effect of storm on that individual (home damage, having to house family/friends, business affected, etc.).  I will get a reporting of exactly how the money is distributed, but will guard that information close to vest to protect the pride and privacy of our members.

So what's my next wonderment? Will IABC headquarters think that this is worthwhile to actually mention on its web site?

Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Six things to know about buying a digital camera.

Buy now
Sure, there's constant innovation, cameras are getting better every month and prices are dropping. But so what? Prices have already dropped, quality is already up, and if you wait, you won't be able to use a camera you do not own, so you won't have any pictures to look at.

The brand is only semi-important
There are shakeouts in the camera business, so buy from a real camera company, committed to the photo industry. That eliminates the electronics companies like Samsung and the computer companies like HP, which have the ugliest cameras anyway. Sony is a maybe; it makes good cameras so may be the exception to my rule. Canon and Nikon can't be beat. I've played with several Fuji cameras lately and am very impressed. Konica and Minolta have merged and then failed in Canada, abandoning the country. Not a good sign. And I think that even though they sell a lot of lower-end digital cameras, Kodak's not a good choice. It's already abandoned the pro market, too.

Understand the three camera styles / concepts.
There are point and shoot, fully automatic, digital cameras, much like P&S 35mm cameras. Some do not have eye-level viewfinders; all have monitors on the back that you can use to frame your shot, holding the camera out in front of you. Even the tiniest ones are really good.

Digital single lens reflex cameras are much like their 35mm brothers, and usually come with a "kit" lens that is your best bet to start with. Then you can buy interchangeable lenses for wider angles, more telephoto reach, or better pictures in very low light, depending on what you want. The screen on the back only shows you what you have already shot. And their biggest advantage is they are very quick to use, with no delay between turningthem on a capturing a picture.

In between the DSLR and the P&S is a different kind of camera, the electronic viewfinder all-in-one model that has a fixed lens that covers the range of several interchangeable lenses on a D-SLR, and with the "live" back monitor. If you want good big enlargements, lots of versatility, but don't want to be bothered with too many accessories and extra lenses, this type is a fine choice.

What some numbers mean
Point and shoot and EVF camera lenses are described as 3X optical,  6X optical, and so on. This is the ratio between the short and long focal length of a zoom lens. 10mm wide to 30mm telephoto is 3X; 9mm wide to 90mm long is 10X. The higher the ratio, the more versatile the lens. But also, the bigger it is.

You may see 10X digital (instead of optical), 4X digital, and so on. Ignore this. It's just an electronic way to zoom in, and you can do it on your computer afterwards.

You'll see numbers called 35mm equivalents. The sensors in most digital cameras are different in size than a frame of 35mm film, which translates to different amounts of the scene being captured by digital lenses, sometimes, but no always, depending on the camera. To minimize some of this confusions and give you an idea of what you'll get, camera makers compare their lens coverage to approximately what you'd get with a 35mm film camera. My Canon 18-55 mm lens on my Rebel XT gives the same coverage as a 28-90mm lens on a 35mm film camera.

Those megapixel numbers (3MP, 6MP, 12MP, etc.), simplified, really mean how big a good print you can get. Contrary to a screwed up story in the Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine, here are real numbers for framable prints.

3 megapixels -- great 5x7 prints, very good 8 x 10 prints
4 megapixels -- great 8 x 10's, very good 11 x 14 prints
5 megapixels --  excellent 11 x 14 prints, very good 12 x 18, and 13 x 19 prints
6 megapixels, and more -- very good for any common conventional print size

FOR PR PEOPLE: If your photo is going to be reproduced in print using four color printing press inks on high quality paper  (a premium capabilities brochure, an annual report, etc.) , look for the "very good" listings above.

And remember, a good camera does not automatically mean a good picture; Shooting conditions are important, and even more important is the talent of the photographer.

More pixels than these mean you can go even bigger, or you can crop off the edges of the shot and concentrate on the most interesting part of your picture.

Get prints
I used to write a column for CEBiz magazine, read by photo and conmsumer electronics retailers across Canada, and my first column, years ago, said the big breakthrough in digital photography would come when it was easy to get good prints. Making your own prints on an ink jet printer is expensive and a pain. Loads of fun for a serious hobbyist but a lot of trouble for most people. Now you can just pop the memory card out the of the camera and stick it in machine at a drug store, a discount retailer or warehouse store, or a real camera store. You'll see all your images on a monitor. Click on the ones you like and in an hour or a day, you'll get your prints. Or connect your memory card to your computer, sort through the images and pick the ones you like, play with them, adjust cropping, adjust color, add special effects, (Adobe Photoshop Elements is my software of choice; inexpensive and excellent) and either download them to an on-line printing service or put them on a memory card or CD, and take them to a lab.

Incidentally, the memory card is reusable. Shoot your pictures and record them on the card, transfer the images to your computer, "wipe" your memory card and reload it into the camera, and use it all over again.

With digital, you'll take more prints than on film (they are "free" to shoot), you'll get prints made sooner than with film (no need to wait until the roll is finished) and, overall, your print quality will be better, too. Prints made on lab machines will usually last longer than most ink jet prints, too, (unless you are very serious about your printer and ink and paper combinations)

Have reasonable expectations
I spend a lot of time on the Digital Photography Review web site forums (www.dpreview.com) and they are full of people who have thrown a lot of money at a digital camera and really expensive lenses, without any knowledge of photography. They whine about technology, and seem unable to actually see the content of the photo; they are too busy peering at the pixels. Digital cameras are wonderful, but they are not all created equal, and they are not magic. They need decent light. And more important, they need good subjects in front of the lens, and they need good photographers to press their buttons. For photographs of family and friends, taken in decent light and then blownup to 11 x 14 and framed and hung on the wall, a good 5MP digital camera is all you need. For giant enlargements to sell in the great art galleries of the world, there's still a lot to be said for medium format cameras and film. (Or $30,000 digital cameras, not $1,000 models)

What do I recommend?
There are so many to pick from.

I have a Canon Digital Rebel XT digital single lens reflex with the Canon 50mm f1.8 lens, the Canon 18-55 mm "kit" lens, and the Sigma 24-135mm lens, and I'd recommend it without reservation, with only the kit lens, to anyone serious about digital photography. Then grow from there.

In the Electronic Viewfinder category if you have a good eye, want 11x14 enlargements sometimes, but don't want to lug a lot of stuff, the Fuji S9000 electronic viewfinder camera seems hard to beat. I played with one at a camera show recently.

For me, the big advantage of a point and shoot is having it with you all the time. Since I've got some friends doing some work for Fuji, I'm thinking friendly thoughts that way. The Fuji Z1 is tiny, and really good, and if they get me a deal on one, I'd love it.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The easy button is a wonderful thing

Staples Business Depot is a giant Canada-wide chain of office supply stores. There are other stores in the chain in other countries too, but I don't know how they promote themselves.

In Canada, adds feature the easy button; the idea is that Business Depot has an easy button and therefore solves your problems easily. The promo is somewhat confused. I once went to a store thinking this button was some sort of way of actually doing business. I wanted to get a rebate on a printer. No such button.

But now, you can buy your very own button, for six bucks. Tap it, and a voice says, "That was easy." A friend has one, and her family keeps tapping it when things go right. Take out the garbage, tap the button, and everyone smiles. Heat up a cup of tea... etc.

But the easy button is not advertised in the flers, and is not available in all stores, and is hard to find, and staff in a store near me never heard of it, and so on and so forth. A good promotion, done badly.

Charles Pizzo, refugee from New Orleans, featured in the story just down the page, sent this letter to my readers.

OPEN LETTER TO BRIANKILGORE.COM

 

 

The link on BAK, "Tiny audience for Charles Pizzo at IABC Vancouver," confused me - since it was written before the event. Does your editorial staff have a point of view about IABC which colours its coverage?

 

In reality, there was a robust audience of senior communicators present for the breakfast talk in Vancouver, B.C. It's effective to have a two-way dialogue with a group of a manageable size - in this case, about 35. IABC Vancouver also arranged for me to speak on CBC Radio, and the event was covered by Metro News. An appearance on CITY TV had also been pre-arranged, though changing political winds in Canada (courtesy of  NDP leader Jack Layton - with whom I snagged a photo op) pre-empted a scheduled appearance.

 

In Edmonton, 80 people turned out for an evening event that competed with the Canadian National Rodeo Finals. Nearly 50 communicators joined us for lunch in Winnipeg, and 53 came out - despite blustery snow -  in Regina, Saskatchewan, including a journalist who spotlighted the content in the Regina Leader-Post. After lunch in Regina, another dozen top communicators sat down for a 2-1/2 hour intensive workshop about strengthening crisis plans to include natural disasters. Business contingency and recovery planners joined communicators in that session, lending operational and HR expertise.

 

Between professional audiences and media, our message reached a lot of businesses thanks to IABC.

 

Several of these chapters - which I do not charge a speaking fee - graciously offered honorariums to help me get back on my feet. Jennifer Wah in B.C. orchestrated an additional fund-raising dinner that was both packed and delicious. Chapters and businesses in the USA, and member's organizations in the U.K. have done the same. IABC members have booked me into speaking events for many months.

 

It is a humbling experience to be supported by one's peers, yet I have come to accept that from IABC - which treats its own as family. Numerous members sent assistance and food in those first critical days and weeks, and many (yourself included) took me for meals when I have been on the road.

 

IABC's Hurricane Katrina fund is coordinated by the Southern Region and spearheaded by Lisa Owens. Their appeal remains posted online (http://southernregion.iabc.com/katrina.htm), and it was linked off the IABC home page for weeks if not months - quite a high priority - as front page news. As an association of professional communicators, IABC is not in the business of raising funds for individuals, yet this effort clearly shows that the organization is willing to step up to the plate with compassion and empathy for its members at critical times.

 

Furthermore, when you have lost all of your valuable IABC knowledge products, Research Foundation studies and resources in a flood that destroyed your office, any sum is helpful and most appreciated.  Your math might be off, because folks whose homes were not destroyed may ethically opt out of the IABC Katrina fund (New Orleans' chapter members who live in or near the French Quarter, Uptown or on the North shore were only minimally impacted).

 

I believe your readers would want to know the other side of the story - and the success of the IABC Canada Western Region leaders and volunteers.

 

Please print this letter in full, unedited. Since I know you are committed to accuracy in journalism, I remain confident you will do this.

 

Charles Pizzo

2006 IABC EXCEL Award Chair

Sunday, November 6, 2005

Charles Pizzo, refugee from New Orleans, to speak at a small IABC meeting in Vancouver.
Charles Pizzo, former world-wide elected chairman of IABC and a victim of the New Orleans floods, is speaking about crisis communications, based on lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, at an International Association of Business Communicators morning meetng next Tuesday, November 8, in Vancouver. The meeting is restricted to 30 out of the chapter's 300 members, and the site promo material makes no reference to fund raising for IABC's Hurricane Katrina fund. As of tonight, 27 are registered.

Finally, a good story about PR,
thanks to IABC.

A friend handed me a page from the Wednesday, November 2 National Post tonight, saying, "Here, write about this."

There's a four column photo of IABC Calgary president Bev Shaw, and a big headline saying "PR in the boardroom"

If anyone at IABC headquarters cared, they might argue about the use of the letters PR in the headline; they don't know what PR is, of course (try to find a definition on the IABC web site, if you can read the tiny type in the badly designed new site.) There's no link to the story at www.iabc.com, You can try this, but all the papers in the Canwest network (the Herald and the Post's publisher) are hard to access.

Calgary Herald Article 278K 
PDF version of IABC Calgary interview (photo included).

Friday, November 4, 2005

PRSA boss Bolton can't figure out how to manage technical and PR staff.

PRSA, which blew the cancellation of its conference in Miami as Hurricane Wilma headed toward the city late last month, has apparently told PRSA leaders that PRSA is incapable of updating its web site on a timely basis. My source is O'Dwyer's PR Daily.

Bolton's a terrible manager. Why has she not put into place an easy update system? Isn't keeping a web site up to date a function of a good pr manager? And she's the well-paid boss of an association full of communicators.

From the time I started this update until the time I anticipate it being posted, five minutes will have evolved. How much is Bolton paid to manage so badly? A quarter million, I understand, from O'Dwyer's PR Daily web site.

More at www.odwyerpr.com Jack O'Dwyer welcomes BAK's Report readers, and has given us best and stories to use in the login box, for free, for November.

Monday, October 31, 2005

The lawyer's are taking over.
Are we fighting back?

No, of course not. At least the associations supposed to represent us are not.

They have courses to sell, and books to sell, and research projects to sell, and awards ribbons to sell. And web seminars to sell. And conferences to sell. And mini-conferences to sell. No time left to stand up for our profession.

In Canada's National Post newspaper on October 19, 2005, Sandra Rubin, a good writer with extraordinary contacts in the world of law, wrote a feature called The court of public opinion. You can read it here.

The whole story was about how staff lawyers have recognized the need to be the spokespeople in major news stories -- so where's that put us? Written from The Association of Corporate Counsel annual conference in Washington, it's based on a panel discussion with senior staff lawyers at John Deere, Schering-Plough and MCI, and Don Tomlinson, clinical professor of law at University of Houston.

The lawyers give media relations tips, right there in the newspaper -- "a terse no comment doesn't cut it anymore", "you have to practice bridging"-- and more. And they explain bridging.

But the line I hate the most is this one, from James Jenkins, senior vice-president and general counsel of the tractor company: "Recognize that you need to prepare your CEO and your CFO and other members of management, including yourselves, for the day you will be interviewed," he said. Sandra continues quoting him in her story, writing that he said, "You want to do this as well as you possibly can because the court of public opinion is very unforgiving. It doesn't matter what happened three years later in the litigation, if you win it, if you've blown the interview and people basically assumed you were guilty. That's what follows you every day."

Remember, the "you" in the paragraph above is a lawyer, not a communications professional.

So, let's look at this.

1/ A conference of lawyers said something interesting enough to get 75 percent of a section page in a national newspaper. Can you remember anytime (in the past decade, anyway) when anything said at an International Association of Business Communicators, Canadian Public Relations Society or Public Relations Society of America conference ever made it into a national newspaper?

Can you remember anytime in the same decade when those three associations even tried to get something important into major newspapers?

Yes, sez I. Down in Jamaica this fall. It's possible Warren Bickford's interview (he is the top guy at IABC) with the Jamaica newspaper lead to some coverage, but there's notihng my eyes are good enough to see on the IABC tiny-type web site.

2/ Mr. Jenkins, (his picture is in the paper; he looks like a cheerful right guard you would never, ever, mess with) says it's the lawyers who need to train the CEO and CFO. No mention of the PR people. Can you remember any time, anywhere, except in England where IPR does a pretty good job of public relations, that any association stood up and said the CEOs need training, and it's the pro communicators who should do it? The closest I can remember is a Globe and Mail story by Alix Edmiston, a smart PR woman in Toronto. You can read about that story here.

3/ The content in the National Post article is good, as you'll see when you read it for yourself. And what's more, it's published in a newspaper that employs lots of reporters, telling executives how to interact with reporters. How often do newspapers write about how to deal with them? And when they do, it's how lawyers, not us, should do it.

4/ Last week, PRSA's annual conference, planned for Miami, was blown away by Hurricane Wilma. So that opportunity to get out a positive story about the importance of public relations, which PRSA would have messed up anyway, I bet, (tell me about the track record of Cedric Bess and Janet Troy. Troy is a PR professional at PRSA. Bess just has a PR title but he tried to slide one by me once, and thiat's wiped his reputation with me.).

But next week, in Melbourne (Australia, not Florida) IABC big shots and talented speakers from around the world (London, San Francisco, New Orleans, Regina who I have heard speak) will be at a semi-giant conference.

I bet there's no other conference in Melbourne that day with a speaker (Warren Bickford) who is elected to represent members in 60 plus countries, plus another who is paid (Julie Freeman) to represent these same 14,000 members, and one who used to be elected (David Kistle, last year's elected chairman) and no meeting about anything nearly as important as communications. And Melbourne is connected to the internet, and has telephones, and computers work there, and there are smart people there. They could do this if they tried.

So, will IABC do a decent job taking world-wide publicity advantage of the expenses involved in bringing half a dozen speakers half way around the world?

I doubt it.

Today, as I type this, there are about 17 clear links on the IABC web site opening page. Go see for yourself at www.iabc.com By "clear link" I mean some link that actual says what it does, not some vague term like "education." Most are for things to buy, but none for the thousand buck conference in Australia. But in the upcoming events part, there's a conference in the USA. Once again, the "International" in IABC seems to be taking second place, with a big-time international conference for members from many countries not getting featured coverage, but a money-maker in the USA getting prominent placement. Can you see with your very own eyes any indication that there's a conference going on next week that is so important Freeman, Kistle, Devaney, Bickford, Grossman, et al traveled thousands upon thousands of miles to attend?

Tomorrow is Katrina Day at IABC.
IABC announced after Katrina hit New Orleans that it was raising money to give to IABC members in the devastated city. There was a target of $5,000, and a deadline of November 1. It's a bit under $150 per member.

I'm willing to bet that tomorrow there is no info about this on the IABC web site.

IABC also announced special deals for employers offering communications jobs to the IABC members displaced / affected. last time I looked, I could not find one example of IABC being taken up on its offer, but there is a job at Ned Lundquist's Job of the Week web site, today.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

We don't use enough photography!
I spent yesterday working with my friend Al Matanovic, proprietor of Jelly Studios in Toronto, shooting some fashion photographs for a designer named Jayn Simpson. Her web site is www.jaynsimpson.com ; none of the pictures on the site right now are ours, though.

But as we shot the pictures for two ads, I got thinking how rare it is for PR people to even try to make good use of pictures. Not only don't we take them and supply them to the media, we don't even supply good backgrounds and props for photographers newspapers and magazines send to cover our events. And when we do, people sneer at us for arranging "photo opportunities." Yet is is great photos we remember, even more than the details of a story.

So, I'm changing... and about time, since I'm a professional photographer in addition to being a PR guy.

Today, it looks as if one of my partners in another venture will be doing media relations for a special event gala. So in a meeting today, we actually planned the photos we'll use. We'll take a dozen different shots, mostly shot in one afternoon and evening, mixing and matching people and props. Then we'll e-mail the photos, along with customized news releases, to media as geographically diverse, and content-diverse, as the Los Angeles Times, television stations in Houston, and Canadian Architect magazine.

I'll put some of the Jayn Simpson fashion shots here soon, and some of the Gala promotion pictures, too.

Monday, October 24, 2005

UPDATE:Turns out PRSA is not giving refunds if you provide an explanation, and instead is fighting with its insurance company.
Public Relations Society of America has cancelled its 2005 conference.
At www.prsa.org you can click on a link and learn about why PRSA cancelled its 2005 conference in Miami. It was supposed to run from October 22 to the 25th.

Jack O'Dwer's web site has been following the story. You can read Jack's take on it -- he's found people who think PRSA fumbled the ball on this one -- at www.odwyerpr.com You'll need access codes. Try "good" and "reading" on the login page. They'll work fine for a few days. Normally it is a pay site, but Jack likes BAK's Report readers.

I love this paragraph from the PRSA web site:

PRSA: To request a refund, we ask that you write a letter to PRSA to include the following information:
Your name, organization, phone number and e-mail address;
The reason for your being unable to attend the Conference (please be specific -- e.g., your flight was cancelled, the seminar you were planning to attend was cancelled, etc.);

Would "I thought I'd be killed!!!!" count as a good reason? Does PRSA make fools of themselves just so we can mock them, or is it accidental?

IABC boss to the far east -- Hong Kong bunglers...
Which causes me to wonder if the people over there think of themselves as being in the far east, or are they just in the middle of things?

Anyway, back from his adventures in New Orleans just before Katrina hit, and his adventures in Texas and Kingston, Jamaica, and Bismarck, North Dakota, and Indianapolis, now, as Sonny and Cher used to sing, the beat goes on.

International Association of Business Communicators elected chairman Warren Bickford is now on his way to Beijing, Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne.

IABC has said it is redesigning the News Room section of its web site. If the web staff, and the PR staff (What? There's PR staff at IABC????) are on their toes, we can keep track of Warren's travels via reprints and links to all the news story that will be generated as the top communicator in the world (who else represents 14,000 communicators (typo correction; this used to say, incorrectly, 140,000)  in more than 60 countries? Anyone else you care to name as the top communicator?)  heads to cities so far away from his home town, Regina, Saskatchewan.

HONG KONG BUNGLERS Go to the IABC Hong Kong web site http://www.iabchk.com/events/index.htm  and see just how bad a chapter this is. Try "Events" The last event sure isn't Mr. Bickford's arrival. It's a June 2004 social with drinks. Note: ...04, more than a year and a quarter ago. It's so bad the so-called leaders should be ashamed to show up at....

IABC conference and leaders sessions in Melbourne.

IABC's Asia_Pacific group is running a two-day shindig in Melbourne, November 7 and 8. Once again, IABC doesn't bother in its promotion to tell you what days these are (Monday and Tuesday, it turns out) Putting in the day is just such a junior thing...geeezzz.

The usual gang is showing up on the other side of the world. In addition to Warren speaking and chairing a session, Julie Freeman's on the trip, and so is last years "leader" David -- failure as a blogger -- Kistle. Russell Grossman is there from London. What I know for sure is Russell's session will be excellent.

John Devaney, in exile from New Orleans, is on the agenda, too. I wouldn't want to hear his regular speech -- just talk about the hurricane.

More info available once you get to http://www.iabcnsw.com

Monday, October 17, 2005

The National Post runs some fine ads.
These ads are part of a campaign by The National Post, Canada's number two national newspaper, created this ad, and others in a series, and they make a good point. "Just the facts" are not good enough. For a story to be readable and memorable, it should be well written.

Good writing  matters to PR people, too. And that means most PR departments need better writers. If you look at most news releases on web It's easy to find releases. Just look for Canada news Wire and the American organization Business Wire. Would you willingly read all the way through very many of these releases? No? So why do they get written this badly?

IABC redesigns its web site.
Go take a look, at www.iabc.com and judge for yourself whether it's a diamond or a chunk of broken Coke bottle. While you are there, make sure you visit The IABC Cafe (look for a link -- The Cafe is IABC chairman Warren Bickford's IABC blog) In The Cafe, go to the "Previous" messages and find the string about the redesign. When last I looked, there were 16 messages there; a couple from me, and I HAVE NOT been back to see what's been written. I'll get to that in a day or two. And find the thread about comments in The Globe and Mial today regarding web design, and compare item one in the Globe to my comments.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Ted Turner at the PRSA Conference
Ted Turner is the biggest name of the big name speakers at the Public Relations Society of America conference in Miami Beach, as the web site says, October 22-25. Is it just me, or should dates include the days? That's Saturday to Tuesday, to save you looking it up on a calendar, as PRSA wants you to.

The hotel is the Fontainebleau Resort in Miami Beach; if you click on the hotel's link at www.prsa.org, you get phone numbers, but no link to the hotel's web site. How come? I don't think there is a web site.

I can't find a web site, probably because the hotel has just left Hilton management. So who knows the service levels to expect, just two short months from now, with a new crew of managers in place.

Thinking about logos
I'm working on several logo-related projects right now, and they bring up a number of considerations for PR people.

Who is in charge of the company logo? I submit it is the PR department, by whatever name it goes under. But as I look at logos, it is clear that we sure don't know much about creating and/or approving a logo, assuming those bad logs were approved by us.

How rigid should the logo police be? If you go to www.janaschilder.com you'll see a story about Google's flexibility in logo design. Special logos for special occasions. Highly forbidden by the rigid thinkers, but it works for Google.

How many versions of the logo are OK? Earlier today I drove past the former headquarters of Nortel Networks, named Northern Telecom when I worked there. One of my jobs was getting the Minister of Highways for the Province of Ontario to approve an exemption form Ontario law to permit us to place a readable sized Northern Telecom logo on the side fo the buillding. We were limited by law to a certain number of square feet, and our logo combined a big symbol and small type for the name. By the time the name was big enough to red, the symbol exceeded the law. I moved the two words from being beside each other to being arranged one over the other, squaring off the logo and going closer to obeying the rule.

And the cabinet minister said OK.

This weekend I'm redesigning a client's logo, changing the size and arrangement of the four words in a tag line. The original designer never tried to fit the logo on a business card or a web site, where the tag would be too small to read.

Here's another lousy logo design.

You can't read the words, can you? Yet it was on the web site of an organization that's supposed to know something about communications. If you go to www.prsa.org you can see a larger version in the upper left, and you'll see it can't be reduced without major revisions.

IABC names Brit as head of research foundation.
Paul Sanchez, who works in England for Mercer, one of those HR consulting firms I can never quite understand, has been named head of the IABC Research Foundation for the next year. The news release is on www.IABC.com, and there's a link right at the top of the opening page.

Still no news on the IABC site about the pr person who supposedly should be responsible for improving the reputation of the communications profession, though. (see below)

Is this person a PR pro or not?
New title for new employee at IABC
The International Association of Business Communicators has hired Archana Verma as Marketing/Communications Specialist, and I think this is intended to fill the gap left by the woman who departed after she replaced the woman who departed after she replaced Heidi Upton, who used to have the title Senior Public Relations Manager, at the start of the year. IABC has chosen to just put Verma's name up on the staff list on the IABC site, but has not deemed it an appointment of enough consequence to issue a news release or even write a little story about this person.

Maybe the story is in the works. Maybe not. But maybe now that I've written this, IABC will prove me wrong, and issue a story, do a little bio, and let its members know just who it is that is supposed to specialize in marketing and communications.

In my part of the world, "specialist" is the second lowest rung on the ladder, with only "coordinator" signifying the organization thinks you have no-where to go but up.

I think there's a song that says, "Wise men say..." although I don't think we're allowed to say wise men any more. Regardless, wise men say that putting marketing in the title of a PR person is a pretty good way to mess up your media relations.

But IABC probably does not care about media relations. Over the years it's proven itself incapable of even minor level media relations activities. Have you seen any announcement in any major paper, or even his home town paper, about the "election" of the new IABC chairman, and what his plans are to fix the mis-managed world of communications. Didn't think so. I have not seen these stories, either.

IABC is just a seminar operator and training book publisher in competition with Regan and Melcrum, et al, with no need to make money because its members finance the organization by paying dues.

Wednesday, July 14, 2005

My apologies for so many IABC stories -- it's just that they get me going over there and I can't help myself.

IABC to get fourth PR pro in 2005
Kristina Jackson, hired just a little while ago to replace a woman whose name I've forgotten, who replaced Heidi Upton, who left in January, is gone from IABC headquarters in San Francisco. And Ms. Iv is on her way in. More turnover than in a pancake factory.

Jackson was not at the IABC conference in Washington, leaving PR duties to Joseph Uglade, who is VP Marketing. That title, it seems to me, means he's the king of separating members from even more of their money, once they pay their dues. Ain't got much to do with real PR.

During the conference, there was absolutely no sign of any attempt being made to capitalize on PR opportunities, as far as I could see. And I asked.

Warren Bickford, the inbound chairman, was not interviewed about the importance of communications by any reporter in Washington, probably the number two media city in North America.

No, not even an attempt.

No news releases issued during the conference, either. And the one post-conference release is pretty bad. Go to www.iabc.com, and look for it. Judge for yourself.

Anyway, Jackson was under contract and Julie Freeman, IABC's paid boss, tells BAK's Report that IABC is bringing the job back inside.

Beats me why it went outside in the first place.

Freeman neglected to answer my question about the level of the new Ms. Iv PR woman. IABC was advertising the job in January on its web site at fifty grand -- not enough to get anyone good and experienced in SF, I believe.

I asked Freeman and Ugalde who on the board is responsible for PR and she semi-replied,. not giving me the info but writing to say that Warren Bickford would talk to me when he's back from his holidays.

IABC Conference not worth attending for PR people.
Or at least that appears to be IABC's attitude. Kristina Jackson, hired to replace a PR woman who quit shortly after she was hired to replace Heidi Upton, is still in San Fran, rather than in Washington where the International Association of Business Communicators is holding its world-wide conference.

Now, I'd think that you'd bring the PR woman to the international conference of just about any association, but for an association of communicators, it's a no-brainer. Apparently not. She is not there.

And when I asked about news releases for the conference, this is what I got. PR LESSON: read this release from IABC, and then when you write a news release do the opposite. News releases are supposed to be about news, and there ain't none here. Just a laundry list. Can you imagine anyone, anywhere, publishing this. (Well, I guess I did.)

Does this release tell us who the new board members are -- although I wonder who cares. Does it tell us about emerging trends in communications around the world, and that pro communicators from 50 countries are studying these issues and returning home to bring understanding around the world. No. It mentions sponsors.

Maybe it's time for IABC's new board to sit down under a big sign that says "End The Hypocrisy" and look at every IABC paid employee, job by job, and see if they represent the communications profession well, or are an embarrassment.

And if they are an embarrassment, maybe they can be trained and educated (going to the conference would mean Jackson would know dozens, if not hundreds, of members that she serves on a paycheck from their dues.) But it really is the bosses who should be on the next stagecoach out of Dodge.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

International Association of Business Communicators conference is underway now, in Washington.

Several years ago, BAK's Report covered the IABC world conference in Toronto. There was a lot of good content, and people who went got reasonable value for their money. But you could not read the name tags.

Apparently you can't read them this year, either. (Down below I mention the IABC CAFE, where I learned this) And do unreadable name tags matter, you might ask.

Well, yes. IABC is supposed to be all about communications, and one of its favorite words is "networking." PR BASICS- An annual conference is a great chance for perhaps 1500 or more people to get to see each other in person. Obviously, most people don't know what the other people look like. They come from over 60 countries. But some names are known, whether from IABC's Memberspeak, a pretty-much unused bulletin board, or from Communications World, IABC's magazine that features travel photos of a columnist well beyond his best-before date, or from lots of other sources, including IABC's relentless attempts to extract more money from members. Lots of IABC people are famous, or at least reasonably well known within the organization.

For some people, networking isn't about matching a face to a pre-known name. It's about finding someone from a particular industry, or company, or country, or city. They need to be able to read name tags that specify all this info, in type faces big enough to see across a table, to spot as you walk by a group, big enough to read as you walk past someone down a trade show aisle.

This ain't brain surgery, and I cannot think of any reason except arrogance meeting incompetence, combined with laziness, aggravated by bad management, for unreadable name tags. Computers can write 24 point Arial type. IABC knows all the information. It's easy to type up a model card, lean it against the wall, back away from it while looking at it, and saying, "yes, I can read that from five feet. That's good enough." Or say, "Wait a second. How in the world can anyone read that, and knowing who other people are is the point of this whole shindig," and go back and make it bigger.

PR LESSON: Just because IABC can't create a name tag is no reason real PR people at better run organizations should be as bad.

NEW IABC CHAPTERS
SEMI-ANNOUNCED.

IABC has decided that the chapter in San Diego deserves to be a full, real, chapter. And it has granted what it calls developmental chapter status to groups in Ireland, northern areas of Africa, and. close to me as I type (I'm in Oakville right now) , the mis-named Golden Horseshoe.

No, this is not the Las Vegas strip, but is by IABC's definition, the area from about 30 miles west of Toronto around the west end of Lake Ontario, over to Niagara Falls, including Hamilton, Burlington, and St. Catharines. (The real Golden Horseshoe includes Toronto, home to IABC's largest chapter, and extends east a few communities, to around Oshawa and Bowmanville.)

I say semi-announced because there's no official news release on this yet.

WILL IABC DO ANY DECENT MEDIA RELATIONS?

My betting is that IABC's pr manager will not do anything very useful at the IABC conference in Washington. By very useful, I mean working successfully with editors of business and general interest publications -- not the PR trades that cover this stuff anyway. I survived a couple of years ago with pretty much no help from IABC, which stupidly kept its PR manager at the time, Heidi Upton, back in San Francisco. 

Come to think of it, is new PR manager Kristina Jackason actually at this conference? Hmmmm. Is she there in Washington, presenting business leaders around the world with stories that cause them to react positively to our profession.

And "react positively" means confiding in us early in important projects, taking our advice along with the advice of the lawyers and finance people, and paying the senior PR person at the same level as the senior operations, engineering, marketing, manufacturing, and personnel people.

This story at left from the Friday, June 23, 2005 Globe and Mail, the most important newspaper in Canada, is an example of what I'm looking for. This one was written by IABC Toronto president Aliz Edmiston, and if you click on it, you can just about see the words. Go to www.JanaSchilder for another story about this article, and links to the article itself. You'll see that, among other things, Alix recommends that executives take advantage of the skills of their pr rofessionals.

LEFT BRAINS AND RIGHT BRAINS
How we think influences our future. Really good PR people are right-brainers
Toronto PR woman Jana Schilder (www.JanaSchilder.com gets you to her insightful web site) sent me this link to Wired, and an excellent article about how we think.

Revenge of the
Right Brain 
Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion.

By Daniel H. Pink

I've long believed in left-brain, right-brain theory, and am myself solidly on the right brain, left hand (although I am not left handed) big picture, high imagination, problem solving side of the noggin.

You'll find this story fascinating, but I think right-brainers will understand it better than left brainers.

What's the difference? In simplest terms, left brained people are analytical and linear thinkers, and usually right-handed. Accountants and engineers, for instance. Right brained people are lateral thinkers (Edward DeBono's term), often left handed, and look at the big picture, are imaginative, tend to be able to process multi-facted ideas all at once. Think of architects and film directors. And really good PR people.

Last night I got into a conversation about this article with two saxophone players -- musicians tend to be right brained, and both these people were left handed.

PEOPLE THINK I KNOW ANSWERS
Today I received a copy of an IABC Memberspeak posting, asking for monthly meeting ideas.
So, here are five... If I was an IABC member I'd like to go to these, or present them, for that matter. and, pretending I'm thirty years younger, I'd like them, too.
-- Specific to the request. Why not call Charles Pizzo in New Orleans and ask him if he'd come up to your city and present his short-form talk on media relations and the web. Tell him you'll do your best to get him interviewed on your local television news station, making the point the not only is PR honorable, but the PR people in YourTown are trying to make sure citizens get to understand important issues via better communication with journalists. Charles is a busy man, but maybe, just maybe, he'll have that day free, and you'll have a local chapter member who works for a hotel willing to provide a bed for the night, and another member in the restaurant business.

-- What A Media Relations Web Site!!; Call two members of your local chapter, and ask them to each call two members of your local chapter, and have them call two more, (that's 15 including you) and ask each person to give you the web address of a media relations page from a web sit that they think is great, or awful. You'll be lucky to get 10 ideas, but that's more than enough. Copy those pages into PowerPoint, and then put them up on a screen at lunch, and ask the audience to comment on them. You can be the moderator, and you don't need to make any comments yourself, just ask half a dozen questions for each page. Make the audience do the work It's probably a good idea not to have local members' pages in the awful category, though. Include the IABC National, and PRSA National, "News" pages as bad examples.

-- Call the state director of tourism and ask for a tourism official to present to you the same presentation it gives to travel agents, bus tour operators, and so on, outside your own state. Most smart states have this presentation in the can, so to speak, and can do it on a moment's notice. You might even invite a local state politician to attend. Your members can then crib from it in their own US-wide (and further) pr activities, making the point that the state is a fine place full of interesting things to do, and wise, kind, people. (note to readers; the original message is from what I think of as a backward, loser, bumpkin kind of a state where the main recreation is shooting holes in traffic signs, and I bet I'm wrong. (I know, I know, there are scientists there too. I used to have a client headquartered in the state, and it had a terrible time getting employees to agree to transfers there) 

-- What's with technology? Call the local Best Buy store, and ask the manager to present a seminar for your members on the pros and cons and everything else of LCD television, Plasma Television, flat screen and CRT and so on. Plus "bring us up to speed on DVDs, please" and "tell us, and show us, the basics we need to know about digital photography, and what we need, as communicators, to know about the latest digital video." Hold the meeting inside the store. Best Buy's former PR boss (she sold her soul and went into HR but she still thinks like a PR pro) understands your needs, and has worked hard to make local managers into sharp presenters and understanders of the need for community relations. Have pizza delivered for lunch. Make Best Buy give you half a dozen lucky-draw certificates for music CDs. Oh, and have them explain computer projectors, too.

-- Bring a young'un to lunch. Too many young people today don't understand etiquette, are lacking in sophistication, and once they get into business, are often ill at ease in some fancy social situations. So do a deal with a really good restaurant with a private dining room. Pick a place that would really benefit from the kind of business IABC members could bring to it in the form of conferences, business dinners, special events, and so on. That lets you negotiate prices like your life depends on it. Then each local IABC member (works for other associations, too, of course) is expected to invite a young person between 16 and 22 to come to the lunch. And pay for it. So what if they miss two hours of school? The restaurant manager and perhaps some genuinely kind but sophisticated local chapter member guides everyone in the room (young'un or not) through how to read a menu, which is the fish knife, which napkin and which bread and butter plate is yours, and that little bowl of warm water with the citrus slice isn't lemon soup. Establish a dress-up dress code for this event.

VERY SERIOUS COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH
Today I received a promotion mailing via e-mail from Echo Research, an England-based research company with offices in New York, Paris, and some other cities. The mailing is packed with thought provoking concepts, which, understandably, take you to more information on how to hire Echo to help you out.

What I like best is the thought-provoking parts -- for example Echo mentions our profession's emphasis on media relations, and makes the very good point that by the time an anti-us, anti-our-client story hits the papers, it's too late for us to respond well. We're caught flat-footed, unless (Echo advises) we've thought ahead and done some issue tracking to predict when the problems will hit the fan.

Is this a real-world problem? I'm sure Victoria Secret would have liked to have been better prepared to counter the full page ad in the New York Times yesterday accusing it of environmental malfeasance.

I can forward the e-mail to you, so you can start thinking, too. Just send an e-mail to me at BrianKilgore@BrianKilgore.com Echo's web site is www.echoresearch.ca Echo's CEO, Sandra Macleod, is a friend.

WONDERFUL RESTAURANT PR
And then, as I was writing about Rick mercer, there was a segment on his show with Sue Johanson, a sex expert on Canadian TV and Can-Am radio. You may have seen her on David letterman and Jay Leno shows.

She does a funny interview on the show, riding in a limo, and then they stop for lunch at a restaurant. There's a great shot of the restaurant sign, and a funny bit with the head waiter. The restaurant is the Kit Kat, around the corner from me and owned by my friend Al Carbone. It's too bad I wasn't doing Al's PR. Then I could take credit.

WONDERFUL MILITARY PR
As I was writing about the Calgary Stampede (below) I'm watching Rick Mercer on television, and he's at a Canadian military training camp, doing funny, but with a serious undertone, interviews with young officers.

And then, in one of the great moments of Canadian military PR, he gets the Kingston military band, in full dress uniforms,  to play Trooper's "Raise A Little Hell"

And, in the world of coincidence, one of my friends / clients just sent me a note about giving me a reference as a wedding photographer. A few years ago I photographed her wedding, at a military officers mess in Kingston. Small world.

IABC downscales PR job:
IABC is willing to pay 50 grand for a 5-7 year PR pro to do marketing and communications, with a bit of PR on the side, apparently. This is the replacement for departed senior PR manager Heidi Upton. More on this story soon. You might find info at www.IABC.com but I have not looked yet. A reader sent me the job description, and it certainly is a low-level job.

PRSA launches new chapter in Missouri
You won't find the news on the PRSA web site -- what's a new chapter, after all? -- but Joplin Independent newspaper tells BAK's Report (Google New was the source while I looked up info for the PRSA story above) that there's a new Southwest Missouri chapter of PRSA, which is the society's 114th chapter. Rod Surber, director of public information at Missouri Southern State university will be the professional development chair of the chapter.

Sunday, January 2, 2005

Do PR association leaders take advantage of their opportunities to actually do PR?

On a Friday late in November, PRSA elected national president Robyn Quinn came to Edmonton, Alberta, the province's capital city and the home of a 135 member CPRS chapter, to talk about ethics. Here's the title and a bit about the show: 

Making Good on the Promise
How to include ethics in marketing communications
Featuring Robyn Quinn, APR National President, Canadian Public Relations Society

Devonian Room
Westin Hotel
10135 - 100 Street

Ethics in Marketing Communications is a topic of great interest to those in and outside the communications field, particularly when an item like the sponsorship scandal hits the news. Ms. Quinn will share her perspective on the subject, a perspective that has been shaped by a varied and accomplished career in public relations.

I've spent a lot of time in that Westin Hotel; I used to visit Edmonton several times a month and stayed in that hotel a lot. I lived in Edmonton for about a year, and used to be a member of that CPRS chapter. I've written to CPRS Edmonton chapter president Sharmin Hislop and chapter communications chair Sherry Brownlee to ask whether there was media coverage of this event -- PR for PR seems pretty obvious to me -- and also what the plans are for media relations for the next chapter event. 

For that one, Tim Spellicy, both the boss of the local Global Television station and its news director, will be the speaker. Global's parent owns the biggest newspaper in town, so it looks like a slam dunk for two major news stories about how important PR is in getting honest, straightforward, well-balanced, communications out to the people of Canada. He'll probably have some horror stories, too, since we do have some losers in our profession. Global's parent also publishes the number two national newspaper in Canada, National Post, which includes an excellent business section, The Financial Post.

I'll report back to BAK's Report readers on what I hear for the local chapter president and communications chair.

CPRS did pass my e-mail on to The Global Alliance, and here's info from Global Alliance chief Jean Valin. Since that response he's sent me an article published in England, and I'll put it in BAK's Report over the holidays.

PR LESSON
PR, search engines, News Releases, etc
Here's a Q&A from a Mediapost Search Insider  e-mail newsletter I got this afternoon. The article was written by David Berkowitz, director of marketing for search engine marketing firm icrossing. 

Q: "Isn't there value in having a PR firm on retainer to help 'drive' the news into the market? Or is the PR firm's value gone now that search engines are being heavily used?"

A: PR firms will always have value. Few people can really get ink just by being more visible in search engines. It takes a much more targeted, consistent, comprehensive strategy to make that happen. The better PR pros out there are true mavens in piecing together the big picture. They prove their value every day.

There's more in the newsletter of interest to PR pros, too, including observations on using news releases as direct mail pieces (the article talks about my e-mail, but regular mail works, too) and  you can read the newsletter itself by clicking here. The overall focus of this editon of Search Insider relates to search engines and PR, Mediapost keeps sending me interesting stuff, and you can sign up, for free, yourselves by clicking on the link above.

SENDING NEWS RELEASES TO CLIENT, ETC. I've been sending news releases directly to clients, customers, prospects, and assorted other people, including government officials, for years, either as a PR consultant -- I've worked for the three best and one most interesting pr consultancies in Canada, plus owned my own firm since 1986 -- and as a PR executive at Northern Telecom and CNCP Telecommunications, for four reasons, (plus some others)

1/ Readers get your entire message, unshortened by an editor tight on space.

2/ There's no chance an enterprising reporter has called your competitors to get anti-you content.

3/ Newspaper, magazine, and web site readers, and television watchers, miss lots of issues, forgot to buy  today's paper, save the magazine for later and never get to it, etc. But chances are better they'll read a free-standing release they take out of an envelope addressed to them personally, especially if there's a note in the corner in your own handwriting saying, "David, we wrote point four, mentioning web sites, with you in mind."

4/ And if they do read the release in the paper, you get the added benefit of, as the ads guys say, "frequency" when they read their personal copy of the release, too.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004 -- with updates (2)

Do association members deserve to have good PR in return for their dues?

I think so, and can't find any effort from any of the major associations to engage in even mediocre PR on behalf of the profession of their members. No effort at all. So on Monday evening, I sent this e-mail to various of the top dogs at the Canadian Public Relations Society, the Public Relations Society of America, the International Association of Business Communicators, and the Institute for Public Relations, which is in England. All I want is one major speech by each association president in a large city with lots of members, to a broad business audience. A board of trade or chamber of commerce or Economic Club, etc. I'll post all the responses. 

I'm thinking of turning this BAK's Report article into an op-ed piece for a business publication, too. If they won't speak out, maybe I'll speak out about their failure. But first, they have a chance to tell you, my readers, that I'm wrong. 

Here's the e-mail:

As we end 2004, I'm looking for copies of any speeches or presentations to major business audiences anywhere in the world, by the elected leaders of the major public relations and corporate communications organizations in the English-speaking world, anytime in 2004.

So I'm asking some of those elected leaders, and the paid employees, supported for the most part by the dues of members, for help.

And copies of, links to, etc., of any major media coverage to external audiences, again anywhere in the world, that does a good job of explaining to the employers and clients of PR people just what it is we do, why we do it, how it helps the organizations of the clients, and how it makes the world a better place. i.e. PR for PR.

 

In Canadian terms -- where's the speech to The Empire Club in Toronto, and coverage of that speech in The Globe and Mail, National Post, and Maclean's? (The Empire Club president is a CPRS member.)

 

In American terms, where's the editorial in the Wall Street Journal following a meeting the with WSJ Editorial Board discussing the role of public relations in American business today and the need for candor and honesty.

 

British terms? Maybe an interview with Gregory FIPR in The Economist. You tell me, although my last communications to Francis and Ann remains unacknowledged.

 

I'm not looking for preaching to the choir -- I don't count interviews with the trade press and speeches at your association lunches. Although even a copy of these speeches posted to an association's web site would be a breakthrough. One association elected chief flew across an ocean to make a speech but tells me he did not say anything his association members outside the room would be interested in.

 

Nor am I thinking of Galloway's complaining about the FCC.

 

The one good example I've found is from IABC -- David Kistle and newspapers in Bangkok, which at least would be of some benefit to IABC members in that country.

 

A couple of times in the past decade, PRSA presidents spoke to the Economic Club of Detroit but completely mishandled any PR surrounding these speeches. The last good example was John Francis' Canada-Wide speaking tour more than a decade ago.

 

Have I missed anything the PRSA, IABC, and CPRS presidents have done externally in the past year?

 

I'm running this e-mail in BAK's Report, (http://www.briankilgore.com/BAK's_Report_2004.htm ) and will run responses for any of you.

 

I'll add responses to my story as they arrive.

FIRST RESPONSE --  This was waiting for me when I turned on my computer Tuesday morning, from Institute For Public Relations, England:

SECOND RESPONSE  From fellow-Canadian Jean Valin, writing on behalf of The Global Alliance. Jean chastises me for forgetting about his speeches to business audiences in Edmonton, Calgary and Hamilton when he was national president of CPRS in 1996-97. He has a good point. I mentioned him in BAK's Report earlier, in this story about last year's CPRS president, Lisa Homer. Notice how she sort of pre-abdicated her advocacy role with some mumbo-jumbo about training. 

Maybe some of the people I sent the e-mail to last night will contact the CPRS presidents from 1997-98, 98-99, 99-2000, 2000-01, 01-02, 02-03, and 03-04, and they'll remind me of speeches to external audiences that I missed. I had, in fact, thought of Jean last night in connection to The Global Alliance, where's he's worked diligently on several issues, including ethics. Here are the highlights of his e-mail to me / you readers, too. Note the emphasis, once again, on speaking inwardly, as far as I can tell. When he spoke to PRSA, for instance, Janet Troy did not arrange a news conference for Jean, or even a one-on-one interview with the NY based correspondent of a European or other business paper. Here, from Jean Valin:

In addition, I gave key note addresses at the CPRS conference and at the Congresso Ibero Americano in Brazil last October. All of these are on the GA web site at www.globalpr.org. Here is the Brazil speech http://www.globalpr.org/news/features/overview_jv_04.pdf and the Quebec papers are here. http://www.globalpr.org/knowledge/features.asp

THIRD RESPONSE -- Hmmmm. We wait, optimistically.

Wednesday, December 1, 2004 
Make the logo big enough

(Update, October 2005 -- this is now the new home of Second City in Toronto)

For reasons that escape me, mediocre designer like to run logo so small they are unreadable, and silly clients accept this.

PEPSI HAS BRAINS, though. Here's a wall painting along the side of Gretsky's restaurant in Toronto. It looks good, and it is visible across this parking lot from King Street West, in a block full of restaurants, right across the street from the Holiday Inn on King.

Just after I took this photograph, a hockey fan came along, set his camera up on a post, set the self-timer and ran across the street to have his picture taken. It's a good tourist attraction, a good promotion for Pepsi, and the loigo placement is excellent.

Sunday, November 28, 2004 

How tall are Toronto's office towers? And what's the PR Lesson?

Bill Taylor, a feature writer at the Toronto Star, Canada's highest circulation newspaper, tells us today, in a story about hubris;

After mentioning the gold in the windows of the Royal Bank building, he continues, "... But if it's the brightest hubris, it's not the tallest. At 172 metres, it's not even close. As the gnomes of Bay Street during the '60s, '70s and '80s pointed their masonry fingers at the heavens, the Royal Bank — completed in 1975 — was never in the running. That distinction went to First Canadian Place, also finished in 1975, at 290 metres. Scotia Plaza (1989) comes in at 189 metres; Canada Trust Tower (1990) 263 metres; Commerce Court West (1973) 239 metres; TD Centre (1967) 226 metres, Royal Trust Tower (1969) 172 metres. The one that started it all was the TD Centre, considered Toronto's first real skyscraper and almost twice as tall as the old Bank of Commerce, a skyline dominator since 1931." 

(For those metrically challenged, a metre is about 40 inches. Close enough to three feet unless you are a bank CEO trying to get taller than your competitor.)

Read more in The Star at The heights of our pride (If you get asked to register, it is free and I've not experienced any extra spam)
PR LESSON There are some you should be able to figure out, but among them is the fact that your building's architecture, flower beds, maintenance, and even its interior cleanliness makes it part of your community, and reflects on your management. 

SPIDERS IN THE RAFTERS Brookfield is the management company looking after BCE Place in downtown Toronto, the building in Bill's list that is called Canada Trust Tower. It's always a pleasure to walk through the building and last week I saw these spiders -- no, in fact, real men -- up in the rafters putting up Christmas decorations. (picture to follow). And the sculpture garden or cow pasture -- take your pick -- that's featured on my Toronto Travel Tips page is at the Toronto Dominion Centre, and I sent a group of tourists to see that yesterday.

Thursday, November 18, 2004 

EMPLOYEE ANNUAL REPORTS Yesterday I learned that a woman at a high technology manufacturing firm was thinking about an employee annual report, and wanted to know more. So I sent here this e-mail, more or less. (I've taken out reference to her specific company.

BAK's Report readers might find it interesting, too.

Some things to think about.

What your employees did last year doesn't matter all that much. What they are going to do next year is what is important.

That said, what things did they do last year that you want more of them to do next year? Figure this out, and base part of your report on featuring those things.

What did they do last year that you want them to stop doing next year? Include this in the employee annual report, so they stop.

Do not choose people to include just so that the coverage is equally spaced all over the organization, as someone suggested you do. ONLY feature the people who are exceptionally good. If they don't deserve to be featured, leave them out. This isn't high school.

Don't leave out people who did great things just because they are far away. Go see them, interview them, write about them, and get excellent photos taken of them.

Are ideas valued from every level? Do you need more suggestions for the suggestion program? If so, feature the men and women who got $10,000 and $30,000 and $50,000 suggestion awards last year.

NEVER, EVER run a poor photograph of an employee. Mediocre employee communications "pros" seem to think fuzzy, under or overexposed pictures of non-managers are acceptable., but they wouldn't run a lousy picture of the president. Don't run a lousy picture of an salesman or a marketing clerk or a receptionist, either.

Put the employee annual report on paper, not on a computer screen.

Every person pictured in the report gets their name beside the photo; never run an employee picture without being respectful. You wouldn't run a picture of the president without identification, would you?

The employee annual report is more important than the regular annual report. the regular annual report is a legal document that contains pretty much nothing that has not already been distributed in quarterly statements. Employees, however, are the heart of your company. Keep the heart alive.

Go to www.JanaSchilder.com and click on CASE STUDIES and learn a lot.

Very early Friday, November 12, 2004

Fourth time in 30 years I've got bikini girls published.

I was waiting in a food court this afternoon to meet with my colleague Jana Schilder when my phone rang. "You got a camera with you?" Jana asked. "You've got to get down here. I'm at First Canadian Place and Mexico's got a beach here with girls in bikinis. It's great." So I walked over and shot some pictures for Jana's web site, at www.JanaSchilder.com , where she writes about publicity stunts. Go take a look. 

Earlier in my career I got pictures of bikini girls sunbathing on top of recreational vehicles at an RV show published, and another girl in a bikini, on a snowmobile, promoting winter vacations for local residents, at the Howard Johnson's Hotel near Toronto airport. And I did promotion materials for a resort on Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto, with bikini girls. But never anything crass and non-logical, like bikinis at car shows.

Oh... just remembered. Number five. There were the models in bikinis at a real estate agent conference. We convinced ourselves that was legit because we were giving away vacations to beach country to the leading agents. I gave some prints to the girls above within half an hour of shooting them. The miracle of digital.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

THINKING ABOUT (the lack of) PHOTOGRAPHY
Earlier today I was visiting the web site of another PR agency, and I was struck by just how badly most PR people use photography, on those rare occasions when they even bother.

So, am I fair? Why not go visit the sites of some other firms and look for:

-- Some indication of who the boss of the agency is. We know we run paid appointment announcements of senior client promotions in major papers. Why don't PR people at least put their own photo into their own web site?

-- Real pictures of the staff. When you visit a web site, will those people in the pictures be real employees, or just stock photography models?

-- Can you see the clients? When you look at a PR agency's web site, you can often find links to news releases, but can you find any decent photographs the agency provided to the media support of the news release? Humans from the client firm, or products, or happy customers? I'm not sure if this is because the agency did not supply any pictures in the first place, or if they haven't figured out they should put the pictures into the agency site, too.

More credit for the BMW ad tomorrow.
Tomorrow I'll give the ad agency credit for the BMW ad I mentioned down here.

Need an opera singer?

No, seriously, do you need an opera singer for the national anthems for in international conference, or for an up-scale 20 minute relaxing recital after a formal dinner? Or for a special concert tied to the Christmas holidays? 

Suzanne Kilgore would like to sing for people in the public relations business, anywhere near Toronto. Today we created new business cards for her, based on a photograph taken in Florida when she competed in an opera festival in Palm Beach. 

Welcome to BAK's Report --2004
We'll add interesting, entertaining, and professionally-helpful stories to BAK's Report several times a week. Bookmark the page, add it to your favorites list, and come back often. Comments welcome. Guest columns welcome. Learn who I am in the Communications-Based Management Consulting section. New stories are at the top.

Guest column, sort of:
 
How to write electrifying speeches.

Nudged by the speeches at the US democratic convention, communications expert Jana Schilder has 24 tips on writing speeches. Read the entire list. Here's Number 7:

7. Take a clear stand. Like the old saying goes, "if you stand for everything, you stand for nothing." After listening to the speech, what do you want the audience to do with the information?