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Sunday, April 6, 2008
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
| And when you go to the
CPRS web site, you might note that the CPRS National
President, Collen Killingsworth, has not thought of or
done anything important enough to post on the opening
page since last June. |
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
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – 28 June 2006 –
Kellie Garrett, ABC*, has been named
2006–2007 chair of the International
Association of Business Communicators (IABC)
Research Foundation. As chair of the
Research Foundation, Garrett will work with
the Foundation’s Board of Trustees to
provide strategic direction for the
organization, raise the profile of the
Foundation and its research, and ensure that
the Foundation continues to serve as the
preeminent source for intellectual capital
for the communication profession. “I
believe the communicator’s role as
‘sense-maker’ is becoming ever more vital,”
says Garrett. “How can organizations
understand the difference that such
‘sense-making’ makes to its stakeholders
and, ultimately, the bottom line? How do we
communicate respectfully with diverse
audiences with very different perspectives?
In the wake of numerous scandals, how do we
know whom to trust? These are some of the
questions the Research Foundation is
interested in pursuing.”
The Research Foundation’s most recent
study on ethics in business communication,
The Business of Truth: A Guide to Ethical
Communication has received extensive
media interest including coverage in
BusinessWeek magazine and The Wall
Street Journal. Last year saw the
publication of two groundbreaking reports:
Thinking Big, Staying Small, which
focused on the public relations practices of
small businesses, and Best Practices in
Employee Communication, which
highlighted the critical challenges faced by
internal communicators.
“We plan to release a combination of
traditional, in-depth studies as well as
quicker and more topical research, using
varied approaches such as member surveys,
academic research, focus groups and
literature reviews. The goal is to equip
communicators and other businesspeople with
the type of knowledge required to
effectively reach various audiences,” says
Garrett.
In addition to her role as chair of the
IABC Research Foundation, Garrett is senior
vice president of strategy, knowledge and
reputation at Farm Credit Canada, one of
Canada’s top 50 employers. She has a
master’s degree in leadership and will
participate in Harvard University’s advanced
management program this fall. Garrett is a
passionate volunteer, serving on several
boards as well as serving as a lay counselor
to families who receive autism diagnoses.
*Accredited Business Communicator (ABC)
About the IABC Research Foundation
The IABC Research Foundation translates
communication theory into practice,
providing real-world knowledge and
applications for the communication
profession. Established in 1982, the
Foundation is a tax-exempt organization with
benefits to the donor under U.S. tax law.
For more information, visit
www.iabc.com/rf.
|
|
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.
Brian,
I just don't understand where you're
coming from most of the time.
I found the IABC News Centre in less
than 20 seconds and that was with a
delay in the pages loading. And I don't
go to the News Centre very often at all.
It's presumptious of you to publicly
condemn IABC for having an "awful"
website design when you might be the
only one having a problem finding a
particular page.
Also, I think it's ironic that you would
criticize ANYONE for having an "awful"
website design. OK, so you're not paid.
Don't you care how your site reflects on
you professionally?
People who live in glass houses....
Yes, IABC screwed up by posting
erroneous information. I'm sure they'll
correct. Just like you had to correct a
few items last week. Several times.
Remember?
Nobody likes a constant complainer. Do
us all a favor and lighten up.
Robert
|
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.
Wilma is the director of
constituent relations for Arizona State University, the
largest public university in the U.S. She is co-author
of
On Deadline: Managing Media Relations, now in its
4th edition, and author of numerous articles on
communication disciplines and issues. Her career spans
more than 35 years and includes positions with AT&T,
chambers of commerce, a medical center and a weekly
newspaper.
She has served on the
IABC executive board and is a past chairman of both the
IABC Accreditation
Council and the
IABC Research Foundation. Wilma is an IABC Fellow
and on the advisory board of communication briefings
newsletter.
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 "
"In Seattle, I told Ned I will continue to support
him. And I do.
We will not achieve Ned’s ambitious goals. But he
(and the other members of IABC’s international
accreditation council) have been extremely
successful."
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.
Re>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.<
Any truth to this paragraph from an IABC news release
now more than half a year old?
A friend of mine is thinking of joining IABC and we were
talking today about the professionalism of the
organization, and the association's use of basic
editorial and professional communications techniques
came up.
|
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?
Saturday, March 18, 2006
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.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
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. Wednesday,
February 8, 2006
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.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
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.
Tuesday, January 204, 2006
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.
Friday, January 20, 2006
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.
Thursday, January 19, 2006On
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.
Wednesday, January 11 2006
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.
Monday, January 9 2006Cheryl
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.
NEW YORK (Dec. 20, 2005) —
The Public Relations
Society of America announced today that Cheryl I. Procter-Rogers,
APR, Fellow PRSA, has received its highest distinction in
multicultural affairs, the D. Parke Gibson Pioneer Award.
Established in 1990, the award
recognizes individuals who have increased awareness of public
relations within multicultural communities, and helped promote
issues that meet the special informational and educational needs
of diverse communities. D. Parke Gibson, for whom the award is
named, was a pioneer in multicultural public relations, founding
the first black-owned PR firm.
The presentation of the award was
made following Procter-Rogers’ keynote address at the Black Public
Relations Society (BPRS) of Atlanta’s Third Annual PR Summit, held
recently at the Atlanta headquarters of UPS.
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.
Wednesday, January 4, 2006BAK'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
Tuesday, December 13, 2005IABC'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.
Thursday, December 8, 2005
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.
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.
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. Saturday, August 20, 2005
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)
Wednesday, August 10, 2005Is 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. Tuesday, June 28, 2005
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. |