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.