RE: Hosea Martin: If you
came here from the Hosea Martin story, click
here to jump to the reference to IABC external
communications.
Note to pre-August 28
readers of this release. There's a minor change, where I now
mention Charles Pizzo, incoming leader of IABC, by name. This
reference was not in the version of this release posted here for several
weeks. The first story resulting from this
release is printed in the grey box below.
News Release
Brian A. Kilgore Communications Consulting and
Soaring Eagle Group
Toronto
Brian Kilgore – 416 – 879 - 5771
BrianKilgore@BrianKilgore.com
Monday, August 28, 2000
PR’s lack of good PR spawns on-line lessons for flacks,
hacks, and big bosses
Toronto, August 24, 2000 -- Frustration over the increasingly
mediocre quality of public relations and corporate
communications in North America has prompted Toronto PR man
Brian A. Kilgore to launch BAK’s Report, an
on-line publication designed to help executives demand better
public relations—and help PR people provide it.
Kilgore’s intention is to provide, at www.BrianKilgore.com,
a mini-lesson in public relations and corporate communications
several days a week, as he picks a timely news event or a
business or social development, comments on the way its PR is
being handled, and suggests a way others can improve their PR
activities through "lessons learned."
"For the last couple of years, I’ve found myself
shaking my head as I came across unreadable corporate and
product ads, purely idiotic public statements by people who
should be leaders, mumbo-jumbo announcements no one could
possibly comprehend, and media stories about my profession that
insult and misrepresent PR and its practitioners," Kilgore
says.
Drivel passes for PR work
"But even worse than the poor PR work that gets out into
the public domain are the lost opportunities. Good PR or
corporate communications often never happens because CEOs and
other executive managers don’t know enough to ask for it, and
are never asked to approve it. No one’s taught CEOs and
Executive VPs what good PR is," Kilgore says. "I’ve
been whining about these issues to colleagues for years, but
whining doesn’t do anyone any good. So, presumptuous or not, I
started BAK’s Report," Kilgore adds.
BAK’s Report usually gets put together late at night or
early in the morning, inspired in part by Canadian and American
television business channels, and the morning papers, including
the Wall Street Journal, which provides plenty of
examples to use for American readers. And it reduces hurt
Canadian feelings when fun is poked south of the border.
"BAK’s Report is part hobby, part crusade, and part
sales promotion and public relations for my own consulting
work," Kilgore says, "and I’ll feel it’s
successful if I get, in today’s jargon, three ‘ROIs’ for
my efforts. I’d love some PR people and senior executives, to
write, telling me they’ve adapted one of my ‘lessons’ to
their organization. I wouldn’t mind a new client or two. And
I’d like to see better PR being practiced." He’s put
his own on-line, frequently up-dated corporate brochure on the
same www.BrianKilgore.com
site.
PR is more than just "spin"
His frustration has been growing over the years as Kilgore
noticed the International Association of Business Communicators
(IABC), the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), and the
Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) all looked almost
exclusively inward, even after he whined at them, too. No one
was telling the public relations story, except to themselves.
Most of the public and a lot of reporters and editors thought PR
was only publicity, or, even worse, giving away samples in
shopping center parking lots or lying when making speeches.
Lawyers were running news conferences, accountants were taking
over investor relations communications and speaking in tongues,
confusing investors and even themselves, and computer
technicians were deciding what should appear on web sites.
"If you go to the PR association web sites, you can’t
find much of anything that helps clients and potential clients
take communications-related actions to the benefits of their
members, which is what PR is all about," Kilgore says. The
sites, with rare exception, seem to concentrate on selling
lunches, lectures and books to members.
As a profession, PR has virtually no profile
"You can’t find speeches by the association
presidents, nor decent news releases about the important papers
delivered at their annual conferences. Ironically, as I start
publishing, PRSA in the United States announced it has finally
hired a senior PR person to tell its story externally, starting
in September, and IABC’s (it’s a Canada - US -overseas
organization) outgoing king laments, while summing up his year
in a news release, there’s only one thing he "does not
feel good about, … noting that the association had not
significantly raised the visibility of the profession during his
term." The incoming IABC king, a New Orleans practitioner
named Charles Pizzo, is much more outwardly focused.
Kilgore says he’s not trying to use BAK’s Report
to pick on people who do a poor job, but he understands he’ll
ruffle some feathers, since he often names names in order to be
credible. His own "practice," as he calls it, draws
upon three philosophies he’s developed or adapted, and his
lead story on the first day of publication was tied to an old
anecdote in that days WSJ, about DaimlerChrysler. Then
co-chairman Robert Eaton was reported to have interrupted a
presentation by his Chief Financial Officer, telling him to get
to the point, saying "Manfred, I just want to know what
time it is. I don't want to know how to build the watch."
It ties to Kilgore’s thinking, in a theory he was taught years
ago, calls Thinker, Feeler, Censor, Intuitor, Analyzer, and
preaches to his clients. There’s an outline of the theory at www.BrianKilgore.com,
but, in simplest terms, Kilgore says it means presentations
cannot be general in nature; they have to be aimed at the
attention span and learning style of the most important people
in the audience.
Employees are a company’s most important audience
Another early story/lesson during the first test week of
pre-announcement publishing was tied to a quote by Xerox’s
U.S.-based president, saying "Xerox people have lost
confidence in management." BAK’s Report’s Resource and
Checklist section contains his "First Principles."
Number five says employees are a company’s most important
audience. Clearly, Xerox did not know this.
His third philosophy, The Mission and The Matrix, involves
tricks of the trade like mailing news releases directly to big
customers and other stakeholders who might miss whatever is
published or broadcast, maximizing the impact of getting the
news release approved by the management team in the first place.
The key to M&M is cross-pollinating messages, audiences, and
delivery vehicles, whether reprints of newspaper clippings or
speeches by sales managers.
Making BAK’s Report effective
"It’s going to be a struggle to get executives to
visit BAK’s Report, (I don’t have a multi-million dollar dot
com promotion and ad program, and they don’t work anyway, as
the bankruptcy trustees looking after dead dot.coms can tell
you) so I’m working on ‘upward management’ techniques,
where professional communicators spot something interesting in
BAK’s Report, and send it to their bosses and other senior
managers, asking if their organizations can try it, too,"
Kilgore says. "But I am also building an old-fashioned
database of executives, and I’ll tip them off when I write
about them or their organization, or think they might benefit
from one of my lessons."
Kilgore, in his mid-50s, started in communications as a
newspaper photographer and magazine editor before he became a PR
consultant, and then was part of the PR team that took Northern
Electric public, changed its name to Northern Telecom, and
challenged the world. He joined CNCP Telecommunications and led
the corporate communications components of the efforts that
resulted in long distance competition and a national cellular
telephone system. He returned to consulting and has had his own
firm since 1986, serving clients ranging from the government of
Canada to multinationals such at Philips Electronics, Nissan and
Toyota, to Canadian organizations like the Ontario Flower
Growers, Acklands, the McCarthy Tetrault law firm, and several
parts of Ontario Hydro.
Brian Kilgore
President, Brian A. Kilgore Communications Consulting
and Soaring Eagle Group
Suite 1504 – 65 Southport Street
Toronto, Ontario
M6S 3N6
416 – 604 - 1566
BrianKilgore@BrianKilgore.com
www.BrianKilgore.com
