Brian A. Kilgore Communications Consulting Communications - Based Management Counsel Our principal business is providing public relations and corporate communications services Learn about our public relations & corporate communications firm, at  Who we are, how we think, and what we do  or click here for a list of what we do. E-mail to BrianKilgore@BrianKilgore.com Phone 416 - 879 - 5771 New July 2004 BAK's Report is here. Portraits from the Sears Cosmetics Gala May 1  Portrait photos taken at the Sears Cosmetics Gala are here right now Take a look! LANCOME PORTRAITS AT SEARS The photographs are wonderful. Here's one below I really like. PORTRAITS TAKEN AT LANCOME / SEARS START HERE and continue on several web pages. Page two is here. Page three is here. Page four is here. Page five is here. And page six is here.   PERSONAL PORTRAITS I'm delighted with the number of requests I am receiving, asking me to shoot portraits of individuals. It's long been a serious part of my business, but until recently most of the shooting has been on behalf of corporations or government departments. A great many portraits were of authors, used for book covers and publicity. But now the requests are coming for photographs for mantels and frames in homes, and for desks at the office to remind hard workers of their loved ones. The new web site will have a special personal portrait section, but there's information here, now.   JUMP TO NEWS & COMMENT JUMP TO PHOTOGRAPHY SECTIONS There's a street circus -- free -- in Toronto next weekend. Out for a walk tonight, I met Duke Dreamer, one of the performers, and he gave me these posters. The Distillery District is well worth a visit, and kids and grownups alike love the circus. It turns out that Duke knows one of the performers my son really likes. Small world. Go to the circus if you are in Toronto.   For David and Chrissy and others. Two jumps to  employee opinion info are here and are here. And going back a bit in time, more employee communications info is here. Coverage of June's International Association of Business Communicators Toronto 2003 Conference-- Click here for coverage inside BAK's Report  Read the wrap-up story.

	Suzanne Kilgore Classical singer -  For biographical and performance information about Suzanne Kilgore, please click here.	BAK's C.V., bio. ,   resume   is here Photo Portrait Packages  here
		Coming to Toronto?  Tourist info  is here.

TOURISTS COMING TO TORONTO  Read about Toronto for visitors here This is useful for any visitors to Toronto this summer. It was originally for another purpose, but you'll still find it informative. NL FOLLOW UP ON THE SPECIAL TREAT ON THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 4 Ctein, California fine art photographer and dye-transfer printer maker  visited Toronto this summer. Click here for a collection of BAK's Report stories about his visit. Many articles I first published on this page are now in Advice & Features or at: Advertising  Crisis Communications   Internal & Employee Communi.   Internet & WWW PR    IABC, PRSA, CPRS ... What are the differences between and among PR, marketing, marketing communications, and more?  Just click here for lots on the topic. BAK'S FIRST PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC RELATIONS is here.  My essay What management should know about employee communication is in the  Ragan  Journal of Employee Communication Management.                         Read it at www.Ragan.com, clicking on Search, and typing in "Kilgore" PHOTOS ADD IMPACT Here's a shot I did for a client's web site. There's more general information about my photography here  For info on portrait photography packages, click here. ADVICE & FEATURES PAGES ARE HERE -- Stories on a variety of public relations topics.

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS 
NEWS & COMMENT

There's a Tip-A-Day for a week that professional communicators can adopt, and offer to others within their organizations over in my Advice and Features section here that you might find useful

New on Tuesday, January 13, 2004

I've got a soft spot for good small PR agencies, 
and a BAK's Report reader heads up one of the best.

I got a note for my readers from John Devaney in New Orleans today. Here's what he said:

I am thrilled to share some exciting news.

Our industry's leading publication, PRWeek (www.prweek.com), has
named Deveney Communication as one of the top five Boutique PR
Firms in the country.

And, they recognized our own Nick Shapiro as one of the top five Young
PR Professionals of the Year.

We are overwhelmed with this recognition. Nick and our entire team will
be honored for both distinctions at the 2004 PRWeek Awards program in
New York in March-where PRWeek will also name the top finalist for both
awards.

The five agencies that made the PR Week boutique list are:
Airfoil Public Relations
Deveney Communication
Keating & Co.
Kirvin Doak Communications
Travers Collins & Co.

And who, you ask, is on the young professionals list with Nick? Here's the five:

Ken Birge Weber Shandwick
Natalia Flores Burson-Marsteller
Nicholas Shapiro Deveney Communication
Melissa Smolensky Porter Novelli
Shauna Wreschner Ruder Finn

I like some lists, and I offer congratulations to these folks. A million years ago I made it onto one of these lists myself;, as one of the five most respected PR people in Canada. I was pleased, of course, to make the list, but more pleased when I saw the company I was keeping, including Ruth Hammond and John Francis and Luc Beauregard. 

New on Monday, January 12, 2004

I had to photograph myself last week

This is BAK

I've written a feature column for O'Dwyer's PR Daily, to be published, I believe, later this week, and O'Dwyer's needed a photograph. So I did it myself. PR LESSON? This is the kind of casual business photograph that I believe should be in the media relations section of most business web sites, easily accessible by business editors looking for a shot ti illustrate a story in which your company is mentioned.  My face naturally falls into a fairly non-happy expression, so I needed to get myself smiling for the shot. My trick? I told myself a story about a boy named Chief and a dog named Ben. (Chief''s my younger son and Ben is my best friend who is not a human.)

I continue to promote the National Film Board animation workshops, for free. (my promotion, not the workshops

Allan, above left, is a newcomer to the workshops, and that's his great Frankenstein creation in the close-up photo. Jonathon is one of the NFB staff that make the workshops a lot of fun, and very educational, for the kids. At left is my boy and his mom. Parents are allowed to help the kids with their creations, but this boy is the executive producer and creative director, and the mom is his production sculptor.

The National Film Board Toronto office, a block from my office, holds animation workshops for children on Saturdays and Sundays. they run from 1 - 3, and cost $5 per child. Bring a VHS tape and you'll be able to take home a copy of your little animated film.

Re-Imagine! is a great book for PR People -- it will encourage you,  if it doesn't depress you that so much, so good, gets not done

Re-Imagine! Tom Peters Dorling Kindersley Limited

I'm reading Re-Imagine!, by Tom Peters, and by the fifth page I'm thinking that his book certainly aligns to a lot of my "Tough 2004 issues" story just below. I'm not a big reader of business books, but I wholeheartedly recommend this book. But a caution -- there's a little piece about his tombstone, and it reflects one of my First Principles, which are listed here. That principle is "We are only as good as our employer allows us to be." And the tombstone Tom does not want" Thomas H. Peters  1942 - 2003 He would have done some really cool stuff  but his boss wouldn't let him And the tombstone Tom would like? Thomas H. Peters 1942 - Whenever He Was A Player

New on Monday, December 29,  2003

It's going to be a tough 2004 for us and our profession

New on Wednesday, December 24,  2003

Merry Christmas

New on Saturday, December 13,  2003

UPDATE: There's a wonderful portfolio of his work in the year-end Person of the Year issue of Time Magazine.

James Nachtwey, one of the greatest war photographers of all time, and Michael Weisskopf, a reporter, both working for Time magazine, were injured in Baghdad Wednesday night

According to a New York Times story, Mr Weisskopf grabbed a grenade that had been thrown into their vehicle and was throwing it back out when it exploded, losing his right hand but limiting injury to others. Two soldiers riding in the same Humvee were also injured.

Sometimes we forget that journalists put themselves in the acute danger in order to bring back stories about war.

Mr. Nachtwey has been featured in a wonderful TV documentary about how he works. War photographers are a different breed -- Salvador, In the Line of Fire, a Year of Living Dangerously, and a more recent movie set in Yugoslavia (the plot was a photographer was missing, his wife went looking for him...) are all too accurate, I believe, based on conversations I've had with war photographers.

The same story said that at least 16 journalists have been killed in Iraq this year.

I never was a war photographer -- I left daily newspaper work after a couple of riots and picket line battles, but was never shot at and no one ever threw a grenade at me.

And my only serious death threat came after I was in the PR business for many years, and nothing came of that.

New on Thursday, December 11,  2003

Free media monitoring for charities -- but only if you meet the criteria

A BAK's Report reader sent me the info on this; neigther of uys knows much about the organization, but you can follow the link at the bottom of my extract from the news release. And good luck...

New PR Grants Available for Non-Profit Organizations Applications Now Being Accepted; Awards To Be Made This Month

Stratford, CT. Public relations grants to not-for-profit organizations are now being made available in a new grant program announced by CyberAlert, Inc. (www.cyberalert.com), an online media monitoring company. At least five grants will be awarded, consisting of one full year of free press clipping service ranging in value from $2,400 to $4,800.

Simple and secure grant application forms are available online at https://secure.cyberalert.com/grants.html.

All not-for-profit, educational and charitable organizations in the United States and Canada are eligible for the grants. CyberAlert is accepting grant applications now and will announce the grant recipients at the end of the year. The free year of service will extend from January to December 2004.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time a media monitoring service has offered no-cost service grants to not-for-profit organizations," said William J. Comcowich, president and CEO of CyberAlert. "In this time of tight budgets for not-for-profit organizations, the new grant program is one way for us to give back to the public relations profession that has helped our business grow and expand over the past five years."

You can go to the Cyberalert site to read the rest of the news release, and learn more about the company.

New on Wednesday, December 10,  2003

More news about how the unthinking stupidity and greed 
of Wall Street and The City have harmed our profession.

Jack O'Dwyer's PR Daily is running a large feature today on the economic and social  impact, almost all bad news, of the takeovers and consolidations in the business over the past few years. Here's how the O'Dwyer's PR Daily story starts, and you almost certainly know people affected.

The announcement yesterday that Interpublic is selling $650 million in stock to pay down debt and for other purposes puts the spotlight on the staggering debt of the five big ad/PR conglomerates. It's $13.29 billion.

Their free-spending ways, criticized by the credit rating services, have caused a world of hurt in the PR counseling field, where they have behaved like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

You can get to the site and read the whole story, courtesy of O'Dwyer's Christmas time free look-see. Just use freepass as the user name and xmas as the password, at http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/1210comm_conglomsd.htm

Whether the takeovers came from New York's financial community or from London's City financial district, even the men and women selling out their businesses have seen their dreams shattered. After decades of building strong, vibrant firms, and thinking they could cash in and get rich, (and in many cases, generously share some of the wealth among their employees) many sold out for stock that's today worth about the same as wallpaper. But the merchant bankers and their stockbrokers all made out like bandits, as the expression goes. Or maybe that's not just an expression. 

New on Friday, December 5,  2003

The rules for quoting from BAK's Report -- If any journalists, or others writing a report or participating in a discussion, want to quote from BAK's Report, please make sure you get the context right. I can imagine jerks making selective quotations that will distort what I write, on purpose, and I can imagine stupid people doing this distorting by accident.

But for smart and/or honest and honorable people, feel free to quote and comment, lift paragraphs (or two or three of them) or put in a link back to here. And if you want, send your commentary back to me and I may alter my stories to reflect your comments. email to BrianKilgore@BrianKilgore.com

CANADA IS A SEPARATE COUNTRY. So is Australia, and France, even with the European Union
Further to the Edelman / PRSA / "is America loved" -- "shocked"  story below. Today I was looking at the web site of a US-based multi-national, and I could not for the life of me find a link to any kind of web site for its Canadian operations. And when I went to the media center part of the site, I got one name as the media contact for all of North America, one for all of Europe and one for all of Asia. 

I just sat here shaking my head. Do not the Yanks who run PR departments of American-based international companies know enough about the world to realize that that French journalists looking for stories don't want to go to London for info; Australian's don't want to go to Hong Kong, and Canadians don't want to go to Washington?

New on Friday, December 5,  2003

Daniel Edelman makes "intriguing" and "educational" speech at the United nations -- PRSA skips coverage and writes about new accounts at agencies, instead (see right)

Here are stories PRSA thinks are more important than Edelman's speech at the United Nations, all from today's front page of www.PRSA.org   Brightmail Retains Hill & Knowlton to Shape the Anti-Spam Debate;  ...Houston Public Relations Veteran Bruce Hicks Merges Darcy Communications With The Alliant Group... Kulesa Public Relations Opens its Doors; Technology PR Agency Serves Clients with Competitive Account Services and Seasoned Team of Professionals... New Internet Company Boosts Media Awareness for Businesses - -- PublicityFinder.com Links Reporters to Companies Through Innovative e-Commerce Tec...

Daniel J. Edelman, founder and chairman of Edelman PR Worldwide, addressed a public affairs symposium of the International Section of PR Society of America held at the U.N. yesterday and today. As I read it, I started shaking my head, wondering if this package of meat was past its 'best before" date. But Edelman has made such a contribution to our profession, I thought the story was worth repeating. On Friday, David Finn (Ruder and Finn) spoke, too.

To read the speech, go to www.odwyerpr.com and use freepass for the user name and xmas for the password. All in lower case. At the bottom of the PRSA conference news story (about David Finn and about Daniel Edelman) there's a link to the speech itself.

Jack O'Dwyer's PR Daily web site broke the Edelman story, as far as I know, and Jack has told me that BAK's Report readers are welcome to visit his site, and provided codes to get past the registration.  He wrote to me, "This is an important speech and an important seminar. You could give all your readers a temporary link to our website if you wish. It's freepass for the user name and xmas for the password (all lowercase)."  

The website is www.odwyerpr.com. You'll see Jack's story about the speech, and at the bottom of the story is a link to the speech itself. My quotation-marked words "educational" and "intriguing" are based on my reading of the actual speech, which I think contains some interesting lessons for PR people. As you read the speech, you might think of these lessons.

Edelman leads his speech with some history, saying, "When I came back to Columbia College for my senior year in September, 1939, I was overwhelmed by the surge of political support for the Presidency by a group of students from the South. They carried the message of a businessman named Wendell Wilkie. He didn't succeed in a presidential race against Franklin Roosevelt. But he brought to public view his concept of 'One World.' " PR LESSON #2: Starting a speech with history is a good way to get the audience to sleep. 

A paragraph or so later, Edelman gets to a rehash of the history of the UN --"we can consider the record of the United Nations over the past half century" -- and then another rehash of more modern history, from 9-11 to the invasion of Iraq. Again, everything the audience already knows. 

1039 words into the speech, he finally says something we either care about (we did not care about 1939) or had not read in the paper this week already. In fact, it's pretty boring well past the 1039-word mark for a few more paragraphs, until finally he gets to "Switching gears now to globalization of PR, Id like to state that it has proved extremely important to our firm to be in business in the major markets of the world. We have more than 20 multi-national clients today which we're representing in two, three or even ten or a dozen different markets around the globe. Our greatest volume comes from these multi-national clients. As everyone in this room knows, they don't automatically hand you their international business. They consult with their indigenous managers. In some places there may have been a domestic firm that had been doing the work for some years. They usually retain that company even as we launch an international program."

I put the words in boldface, but don't know if he raised his voice making the point. But at least we're past international history and talking about PR. 

And finally we get to what I think is the second most important paragraph, educational and intriguing, of the speech.

"As I'm sure all the agency people here have experienced, it's really a one-way street, taking U.S. multi-nationals to other parts of the world. Very little of it flows in a U.S. direction from Europe or Asia. Clearly, this has to be corrected in the years ahead. It's been our experience that in most instances we have to sell the company's U.S. president rather than executives at the headquarters in Europe or Asia. That's particularly the case with Asian companies."

What I love here is the imperialism inferred. When an American company expands overseas, the US bosses impose US pr companies on the branches. But when a non-American company expands in the USA, the "foreign" owner trusts his US president to hire a PR firm in the USA. Chrysler in Michingan doesn't get a German PR firm imposed upon it. Nissan does not get a Japanese firm forced on it. Or, as reported in various papers today (and in O'Dwyer) Hollinger Inc. in the USA does not get a Canadian or British PR firm imposed upon it, but hires Keksk & Co. in NY, for the USA, and a British firm to handle British issues. 

He writes about American giants taking over local PR agencies -- PR LESSON #2. If you get this kind of offer, ask for cash, take the money, and run. Canada is full of American-owned (some go back from the USA to England if you follow the ownership chain) pr agencies still locally "managed" by the former owners, tied to the firm by stock deals, with their stock prices in the toilet, facing nutsy demands for money to be sent to NY and London. The former owners have given up control, got low-priced stock, have bosses demanding ever-increasing fees, and pissed-off clients

And here, tied to PR LESSON #3, is the most important, educational and intriguing,  paragraph for my readers, from his speech.

"The United States is currently facing an unprecedented wave of hostility from foreign countries. My son Richard, our company President and CEO, and Pam Talbot, U.S. President, were shocked by attitudes of our staff and people generally toward the U.S. when they participated in a meeting of our European managers in Amsterdam recently. The Europeans feel now it's not the "Ugly America" but an "America Gone Wrong." That's basically Iraq. But another key factor is the paradox that we support free trade but we put tariffs on steel and textiles."

For months BAK's Report has been urging (it's PR lesson #3 here) PR managers in international organizations to pay special attention to how various companies view the USA, especially when American PR managers are forcing US-created programs on the branches around the world. Edelman and Edelman, a smart old man with a smart son, were both so slow of brain that, he said at the United Nations, they were "shocked." No surprise to me, or to BAK's Report readers who have been paying attention. 

New on Thursday, December 4,  2003

Billy Ray Cyrus is in Toronto, filming a television program called "Doc." One of the best two-way community relations and external promotion programs is behind the filming of this and other TV shows and movies.. From the Toronto side, there's strong and effective efforts from the municipal, provincial and federal governments, to convince film makers based in the USA and other countries that they should come to Toronto to shoot. And at the same time, the film makers work hard to get the city to make extra special efforts to accommodate their special needs. Below we see a genuine Toronto police officer directing traffic during rush hour, as Billy Ray "drives" his pickup past a faked New York advertising pillar, followed by a fake New York taxi-cab.

New on Wednesday, December 3,  2003

David Miller is Toronto's new mayor, with a PR lesson or two for us

Yesterday was the most important day in this man's life, I would think. He's David Miller, and was sworn in as mayor of Toronto, Canada's largest city, and then he hosted a skating party in Nathan Philips Square, in front of City Hall. And it must have been a really long day, because here he is yawning for my camera, getting ready to be interviewed on the Toronto One television station. Click on the photo to see a bigger yawn.

PR LESSON 1 Tell your clients that whenever they are in front of a camera, TV or still, or near a microphone, anticipate that everything you do will be recorded for posterity. I'm sure this yawn is in the TV station archives now, recorded while waiting to go to air. And, PR LESSON 2, assume that the least flattering photograph, not the most flattering, will be the one that gets published, like I did here. I think Mr. Miller may be a good mayor -- I believe our last one was nuts, partly because he was very sick -- so Mr. Miller can't help but be an improvement. So I'm a touch embarrassed at running the worst of the photos I took. But they make the point, and are more interesting than the bland ones, aren't they?

New on Tuesday, December 2,  2003

BAK's Courses and Coaching
In response to several questions over the past few days, I'm formalizing my offerings of training courses. There will be more information shortly, and you'll be able to learn more by clicking on the little green ads up above. Information is already there on courses relating to employee surveys. 

I have a multi-module course on interpersonal business communications, designed to help managers communicate among themselves on business topics. It takes several hours, once a week, for several months, and worked well for the management team at a Canadian electronics manufacturing plant, and for field managers across a province for a public service organization.

I have a course on understanding media relations, which has proven useful to the management team at several companies, trying to get their collective heads around how the media works, how to deal with reporters, how to understand the agendas of reporters and editors, and so on. There's a course on Employee Communications that radically challenges the accepted conventional wisdom. And I'm developing What PR Pros Need To Know About Digital Photography. 

COACHING offerings are aimed at recently promoted public relations executives who know they can benefit from my thirty years experience; at non-PR executives to whom PR departments report; and at lower-level public relations people who have taken on new responsibilities in fields in which they lack experience.

New on Monday, December 1,  2003

New on Thursday, November 27,  2003

My readers write, in regard to the story below about employee communications.

Charles Pizzo, New Orleans-based PR man, friend, former IABC world-wide chairman, 

Jana Schilder, one of the best, most innovative, deepest-thinking internal communications people in Canada, although now a broadly-based senior communications pro who does much more than internal stuff. She's Senior Manager, Firm-Wide Communications, at KPMG in Canada.

1.  Readership surveys are totally useless. 

 

2.  What organizations should be doing are employee attitude surveys, where the effectiveness of the publication is part of the communications mix.  But traditionally, publications (hardcopy and electronic) only account for between 7 - 12 percent of how people get their information.  The two biggest questions about publications are:  a) it is timely and b) are the articles actionable?  Do they help you do your job better?

My response to Charles was that I used the bright green to make the story very visible to one particular reader who was new to BAK's Report, but that I'd fix up the design later. What you see below is the fixed up version. Line length has been shortened, color of the words changed, new background added, column form established, and more. Plus Jana notes that many readers love the words but wish I'd team up with a good designer. My response is that I'm after readability, not beauty, and the volume of content requires the format and the typographical tricks, like bold face and color. That said, there's a redesign underway based on, among other things, the fact that most monitors have higher resolution than when BAK's Report was first designed.

New on Wednesday, November 26,  2003

New on Tuesday, November 25,  2003

Nonsense from The Toronto Star

Reader determines if it's a public relations disaster
RANDY COHEN
EVERYDAY ETHICS

Q I'm considering hiring a public relations representative to promote my new business, but I worry about having him write letters for me to sign. When I read an article or a letter, I expect the name on it to be the author's.

The public relations rep argues that he is simply conveying my message more effectively than I could. But wouldn't I be lying to tack my name on his work?

Tal Ziv, Honolulu

A Context is all. When the president gives a speech, few Americans believe he composed it. We assume that the words are those of a speechwriter; the president is merely endorsing the policies he articulates, and there's nothing wrong with that.

However, when someone's name appears on a novel or a magazine article, it is fair to assume that those are his words, not just a collection of sentiments he admires. And yet novels have been ghostwritten, and the president has signed his name to op-ed articles that some people find difficult to believe that he wrote (or, among the more cynical, that he read).

In such cases, to sign your name is to claim credit for work you didn't write — i.e. to lie. What's important is the assumption of the reader.

If the customs of your business are such that your recipients will take your signature to mean you wrote these letters, then that's what you must do — write them. If they'll assume someone wrote them for you, then no problem. Your obligation is to avoid being deceptive.

And so it's fine to employ a public relations firm to help with your communications skills, but it's not fine to do what amounts to plagiarizing.

Who knows where this crap comes from, but to consider an executive agreeing to the words written by a Pr person, created for the express purposes the signer hires the PR person for, is plagiarism, is nonsense. Should we note that the words in annual reports are not written by the CEO? That the quotes in news releases started off with the CEO? 

No. What matters, what is ethical, is that the person identified agrees with the words, and is willing to stand by them.

New on Friday, November 21,  2003

Stories have legs, and they act like germs, and things get worse ...

A little way down the page, here, I write about a crisis in Ontario hospitals, based on poor sterilization of some instruments. The story grows each day, with more and more hospitals reporting they don't sterilize properly either, and notifying former patients that t they may be infected. Back in June, Malcolm Gladwell spoke to the big conference of the  International Association of Business Communicators. He's the author of The Tipping Point, a book that discusses how "things" grow, and then boom, they reach the tipping point and are upon us with a vengeance..

Our job as PR people is to anticipate the excrement hitting the rotary atmospheric motion instigation device, and be ready with shields, mops, and disinfectant. Earlier this week I've been in several discussions about the Hollinger / Conrad Black / unauthorized payments scandal. My belief is that this story is going to travel far, and perhaps fairly fast. Because Black's sort-of Canadian, (he renounced his citizenship so he could be ...) sort of British (he's a Lord over there, not allowed by Canadian law if he was still a Canadian citizen) plus he owns The Telegraph, and many of Hollinger's investments, and shareholders, are in the USA, this will be a three-legged, tri-nation story.

Now, combine Hollinger with prostate instruments, and we come to today's PR LESSON. You really should be a pessimist, and when you see something out in some part of the world that could go wrong in your organization, get ready for things to get worse. The bad news is your non-PR colleagues will get annoyed with you for being negative, and they won't thank you when it turns out you are right, and things to get worse. 

Here's my prediction of a few things -- broad strokes thoughts --  that could affect a large number of the organizations for which my readers work. Are you up to speed and ready to talk about, for attribution ...

-- Corporate governance issues. Independent directors, and sign offs on the financials, special payments and one I think will explode, just how much work do directors actually do for their fees?. And related..

-- Changing definitions in financial communications. Do you, for instance, know what "independent" means, today?

-- Offshore operations taking jobs away from your "native" country. Companies have a headquarters somewhere, and only a few are thought of as not "belonging" to some nation. So when Morgan Stanley, an "American" company, starts killing US jobs and hiring people in India (see the latest Fortune magazine) be prepared for internal communications problems, and government relations problems.

-- Politics meets business -- I hope I'm wrong, but I anticipate anti-American actions hurting (perhaps literally) operations of American-controlled businesses outside the USA. We've already seen how Americans are trying to punish French organizations operating in the United States of America. Yesterday and today's demonstrations in London are politics-based, but I wonder when they will turn to anti-American-business. McDonald's franchise owners in many countries already know, and have suffered, because they are a symbol of the USA.

Managers who screw up love to blame the messenger. That's you, so get ready to get in trouble because you are anticipating the worst, and then get blamed again when you are proven right. 

And, to quote Stanley Bing in Fortune, about not being believed when being pessimistic, I write, "just remember two words. 'Arthur Andersen.'"

New on Thursday, November 20,  2003

Great story about public relations and the media in 
The Guardian, from London.

Go to http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,1086527,00.html and you'll see the story, written by PR woman Julia Hobsbawm

Here's the first part of the story:

Why journalism needs PR

Members of the fourth estate may love to hate the world of public relations but without it they would struggle to fill their newspapers, argues Julia Hobsbawm

Monday November 17, 2003
The Guardian

Journalism loves to hate PR. It has become the norm in the media to knock us, whether for spinning, controlling access, approving copy, or protecting clients at the expense of the truth. Yet journalism has never needed public relations more, and PR has never done a better job for the media.

If you think I'm exaggerating the antipathy, here's what Bryan Appleyard, the distinguished author and journalist, wrote in the Sunday Times in May: "Hacks still naively pursue something they like to call the truth. Their problem is that it no longer exists. For truth has been destroyed by public relations executives, or 'scum' as we like to call them."

Singling out showbusiness, celebrity and sport PR in particular, Appleyard concluded that it has become "a virus ... infinitely more infectious and, in the long run, more damaging than Sars" (I kid you not).

Given that a (conservative) estimate of 75% of entertainment stories and 50 to 80% of news and business stories emanate from public relations, it is understandable that journalists can resent their reliance on us.

It's worth reading the rest of the story. I've gone through daily papers over and over, during my career, marking the stories that clearly have the hand of pr upon them, and it is astounding how much we in the PR profession contribute to the content of newspapers, radio broadcasts, and television news and public affairs. 

What many unobservant observers observe incorrectly is that even the anti-pbursinss, anti-government stories that are published are often at the instigation and with the support of PR people; it's just that they are not PR people on the side of business or government but PR people  on the other side, whatever side that might be.

Who is Julie Hobsbawm, anyway? She's in her late-thirties. chairwoman of Hobsbawm Media + Marketing Communications Ltd (www.hmclondon.co.uk) in London, and, she writes to BAK's Report, " I'm now London's first Professor of Public Relations."

Her firm has  23 employees, and she is the daughter, the Guardian tells us, "of the well-known Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm," and then says, "Julia has specialised in promoting mainly leftwing and ethical clients." It says her energy is legendary, and "She is a staunch defender of public relations against its critics and recently attacked journalists for "biting the hand that feeds" the media."

Good for her. I don't see the defense coming from the associations that should be doing this.

Plus, she wrote to us, "I liked your site very much!" although not in bold type. But she did put in the exclamation mark.

New on Wednesday, November 19,  2003

UPDATE ON: Bad communications is a life and death issue JUST BELOW

I've now read the sterilization instructions on the prostrate probe that has caused vast worry to hundreds of men. The instructions are clear; the technician at the hospital was both lazy and badly trained, but the fault sure does not lie with the manual writer. 

New on Saturday, November 15,  2003

PR LESSON: Think about dates and get them complete and easy to understand. Do you know what day of the week it is, based only on the number, like 19 in this sign? No?  Do you have a better idea if you're free on, say, next Wednesday, or free on the 19th? You don't even know which day the 19th is, without doing math in your head, do you? Neither do most people, so if you want to schedule an event and alert people in advance, put the damn day of the month into the sign, on the invitation, into the flyer, at the bottom of the ad.  Make dates easy, and as PR person, it is your job to make sure everyone in your organization communicates clearly.

New on Thursday, November 13,  2003

PR LESSON: promote your advertising, inside and out

When your marketing department does an interesting advertising campaign, make sure your employees know about it, just before it breaks, and you can often get external publicity, if your campaign is interesting. Part of your job as PR expert is getting good photos to give to the media, of course.

I just happened upon the chance to take these shots: I was not shooting for a client, but they illustrate real world meeting fantasy, as the genuine fire truck heads out on a run, putting a pause in the shooting of the beer commercial. In Canada, beer and hockey go together. I shot from my office window and from the street in front of my building.

The fake action of the hockey-based TV commercial filmed at the fire station across from my office was interrupted as the real fire truck headed out on a genuine call. The grey blurs in the big photo are pigeons, some of whom live on the outside of my office air conditioner.

New on Tuesday, September 30,  2003

Update to an earlier story
The National Film Board in Toronto has great animation classes for kids. Here's more about them. 

I wrote an earlier story here about the animation workshops my son has been attending at the National Film Board Mediatheque. Since then, I've visited the NFB web site and discovered a special site for kids, at www.nfbkids.ca with games for children. It's fun to watch how kids learn when they get to exercise their creativity doing something they think is special.

For information about the Animation Workshop info, go to http://www.nfb.ca/mediatheque/en/fallworkshop.html and to just learn more about the offerings of the NFB in Toronto, go to http://www.nfb.ca/mediatheque/en 

New on Monday, September 29,  2003

Hacks insult flacks
We in PR continue to get insulted by journalists
Problem is, too many of us deserve it. 

Richard Morochove is an accountant-turned computer consultant who writes better than the average bean-counter, and has his words in front of hundreds of thousands of eyes every month. Today he writes in the Toronto Star's business section, and some other papers, about Kodak's financial and organizational moves, and he writes about digital photography. He's not that far off being right on the photo front, although he leaves out some info about Kodak's leadership in professional hardware, and he appears to not have visited the latest Kodak photo kiosks. You can't read his column on the web, as far as I can see. It's not on the Toronto Star web site, nor in his own.

But, inside Morochove's own web site there's a funny-if-it were-not-so-true section aimed at the PR people who send him releases and leads and story ideas they want him to cover. You can read the whole list at Six dumb PR questions you should never ask  inside www.morochove.com There's some other very good advice in the site about how to send stories and photos to a freelance journalist, too.

Here's one of the"six dumb" I particularly like from his site. It rings so true, from Toronto's Richard Morochove ...

I'll Be Coming Around the Mountain When I Comes

Q: Will you be coming to my press conference?

A: If I'm coming, I'll be there. If I'm not, I won't. I attend very few press conferences, because most are a poor use of my time. Due to the fluid nature of my work, I cannot guarantee my attendance at most events.

Except, except...

Over in Jack O'Dwyer's PR Daily, the biggest and best (next to BAK's Report) on-line PR publication, my friend Fraser Seitel (never met him in person, still think he's a friend) has written today, in a great professional development feature, these words...

Seitel

#7 Alert the media.

And speaking of the press, journalists are notorious no-shows at special events.

They'll tell you they're coming and may, in fact, plan on making it. But then, at the last minute, a new assignment beckons, and you're left with a low media turnout at the function and egg on your face with the CEO.

So journalists must be called early and often. See if they're available for the event by notifying them early on. Check back with them prior to the event to see if they still plan to attend. Finally, on the morning of the event, call their offices just to make sure.

Few things are more disconcerting - or suicidal -- for a PR professional than having no reporters show up at a press conference.

So how do you resolve the apparent conflict between Mr. Morochove's view, as the getter of the callers, and Mr. Seitel's position, as the gettee of the calls?

PR LESSON? Develop really good lists that indicate the nature and preference and relationship with various reporters. There are some events where you are only working with an assignment desk, and do not know the names of individuals who might come. Other times, you have specific names of reporters. We all know now that if we've invited Mr. Morochove, we'll just annoy him if we call again. Seems to me that since he's an accountant, he understands how to keep dates straight, and since he's a computer expert, he knows how to be reminded electonically.  So, beside Morochove, on your list you mark -- call to invite; do not remind by phone. Then the day before, send him a reminder e-mail. Don't call and annoy him.

But for me, say, if you wanted BAK's Report to cover an event, call me twice if you want, and send a pre-paid taxi.

Media relations is not a job for juniors. If someone is going to call a reporter, make sure it is someone senior enough, and knowledgeable enough, to talk intelligently with the reporter if you should reach a human and not an answering machine. Oft-times the reporter will write a pre-interview story, and you'll get two hits for the price of one, but only if the call the day before is from someone willing and able to be quoted. And the media relations person needs to know the industry, its issues, and where your organization fits in. 

BAK's Hint for best phone reminder system? Have one of the speakers at the news conference make the call, unless you really need to keep a lid on the content of the event. Let the reporter pre-interview one of the principals.

And finally -- Mr. M. is right on when he says most press conferences are a waste of his time. Instead, don't hold a press conference, hold some sort of industry event, aimed at clients and prospects and educators and other prime audiences, and then invite the reporters too. They'll still learn about your product or service, they'll be able to interview other people, and all in all, the efforts to hold the event will pay off much better.

I shake my head at the public relations organizations ...

Here's the intro to a paper I'm presenting at the management committee meeting this afternoon of one of my clients.

For more than 30 years I’ve been in the PR business, and for that entire time, the profession has done a poor job explaining just what public relations is, and why it matters.

The result; half the world seems to think PR is lying to the media, and the other half thinks it means organizing parties.

Here is the world’s best definition of the craft and profession;

PUBLIC RELATIONS, as defined by BAK:
"The management function which determines an organization's communications-related objectives, evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or organization with the public interest, and plans and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance and cause actions to meet the objectives."

The definition of public relations, and a phrase by phrase breakdown of it, are here, near the bottom of this page. It would be great if the bosses of the organizations would go out and tell the world what it is we do, instead of organizing more was to extract more money from their members. But that, unfortunately, seems to be what drives them.

New on Monday, September 22,  2003

Are ethics and communications in general 
important topics in the business community, or not?

I had two interesting conversations last week. In one, a man who supplies keynote speakers to major business conferences in Canada and the US told me that when discussions of what speaker to select get around to experts on either ethics or communications, the conference organizers lose interest. 

And, on the other side of the coin, (and the other side of the ocean) in an e-mail exchange with Sandra Macleod, Chief Executive of Echo Research in London, Paris and New York, she told me about the ever-growing interest in ethics, and corporate social responsibility, telling me she's launching a new study this Wednesday, September 24,  about CSR and the business community.  "Ethics will not die down that easily," she wrote. I hope to have more about her conference here by the end of the week.

New on Thursday, September 18,  2003

PR LESSON: Always include the day when you publish a date.

It seems so obvious, but designers who can't think, and poor PR people, all too often leave out useful information. Today I read this notice from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: "... Hosted by Andy Barrie, September 22,  5 - 7 p.m. ..." which forced me to go to a calendar and look up the 22nd, to determine what day of the week it is. Why not just put "Monday" in the notice, making it easier for everyone? Are people brain-dead?

Kids learn animation at National Film Board: 

The Toronto office of The National Film Board of Canada has a wonderful Saturday and Sunday program teaching animation to children. It's from 1 - 3 both days, costs $5 per session, parents are welcome to watch for free or participate for their own five bucks. The kids learn about scripts, make their own props, think about the actions, learn to plan and implement, and all in all, have fun while learning a lot. If you bring your own blank videotape, you can take away a copy of your work. 

The NFB office is in the Toronto entertainment district, at the corner of John Street and Richmond Street. The instructors are recent graduates of one of the best animation courses in the world, and they really know how to work with kids.

I'm planning on telling a newspaper education reporter about this course. It really educates kids, and it is fun. If you arrive early, you get to watch movies for free. I recommend Wrabbit, a cartoon, if the kids are seven or older. Parents will enjoy it, too. Info about the workshops is at at http://www.nfb.ca/mediatheque/en/fallworkshop.html 

New on Sunday, August 17,  2003

LISA HOMER The new president of the Canadian Public Relations Society speaks to BAK's Report readers. I asked Lisa Homer, a Calgary PR-woman and the newest president of CPRS, what her plans were for the advocacy part of her role leading the organization. Here, below, is what she wrote.  What do you think? Is there an action program here? I don't see any sign of the one person who could make a difference, the actual President, out making our profession important. No, there's some speakers bureau, and you've never seen one of these that was any good, have you?  I can remember back, many years ago to another Calgary president. John Francis, from Francis Williams and Johnson, made a coast to coast speaking tour. And Jean Valin made some good efforts a few years ago. But those are the last times I remember any president actually out talking about the association he or she was supposed to lead. I've spent time in the CPRS web site tonight trying to find indications of external efforts. Not much there. But her article talks about the presidential tour. I need to find out more. UPDATE: With an hour of putting up this story, I got more info from Lisa Homer. Some of the examples in her piece stretch back over the years, apparently. (Accreditation ads, for instance) There's no plan, yet, for her to make a major effort to speak to senior business execs, but it's a topic to be discussed several months from now at a board meeting.  I don't think she understands she's the most important public relations practitioner in Canada, the elected head of an organization desperately in need of leadership. But, on the other hand, who else is there willing to fight for the reputation of our profession?

By Lisa Homer, President, Canadian Public Relations Society The public relations profession could use a little "p.r." As public relations professionals, we all know this, but it’s a little like the shoemaker’s children. The Canadian Public Relations Society has a role in promoting our profession and advocating for our place with the key decision-makers in an organization. We have been doing this in one way or another for several years through accreditation promotion, the presidential tour, recent articles in some key publications, national conferences, media relations, the awards program, and professional development initiatives at the local level. At the national level, we will continue promoting our profession by going outside of our membership doors and inside other organizations. One of the ways to accomplish this is by creating a speakers’ bureau. We hope to have some of our long-standing, experienced members take advantage of speaking opportunities with various organizations outside of our profession like APEGGA, the Human Resources Association, the various accounting membership associations and so forth. Speaking opportunities will provide us with a venue to talk with those with whom we closely work to promote our value. I believe two of our greatest skills are the ability to look at the big picture and the ability to synthesize information for all audiences, no matter how complex or sensitive that information may be. But the promotion of our profession does not come from the national or local association alone. Each and every day, we demonstrate our knowledge, skills and experience as individual public relations professionals. To truly demonstrate our abilities to those outside our profession, we must commit to lifelong learning, to adhering to our code of professional standards, and to continuing to build our base of accredited members.

New on Tuesday, August 12,  2003

BAK's Report and I are mentioned in a Ragan publication

Charles Pizzo, one of the top speakers at the IABC conference in Toronto this June, a past chair of IABC, and a New Orleans-based PR man, has written about on-line journalism in PR Intelligence, a Ragan publication. It's a good article, even without his mention of BAK's Report.

Here's what he wrote about us.

We’re deep in uncharted territory. Online writer Brian Kilgore (Blogger? He says “no!,” preferring journalist) has confounded observers with views about the various global communication associations. He’s a critic and a champion both, and he really doesn’t care what you think. He calls ’em as he sees ’em, a sort of journalistic gunslinger—to borrow a phrase penned by Kathleen Parker (a syndicated writer who composed an insightful piece about the blogger phenomenon).

Should the subjects of Brian’s blog—he finds that term insulting—treat him as a journalist? Or, as an individual who reports in a Web log, BAK’s Report?

PR Intelligence is a registration-only (but free) publication that is well-worth reading. Just go to www.ragan.com/pri

And work your way thought the (easy) registration process, and you can read not only this story, but others about crisis communications, the real estate business, and more.

Elaborating on Charles' quote about me, yes, I am a journalist when I'm writing this, but a journalist from the "columnist" side of the ledger, with opinion. I work hard at the facts, making sure I get them right, but willing to comment on them, too. And since Google can find content within BAK's Report, and since journalists use Google to do research, PR people should think of BAK's Report the same way they think of the New York Times, sort of. A lot less circulation, but my comments come up on a screen in a Google search, so my stories reach your audiences, too, thinks I.

New on Thursday, July 31,  2003

Today's thinking ...  is that we in public relations, myself included, sure don't make as good use of photography as we should.

Digital camera or film camera?
Here's a piece I wrote today for The Fleet Street Forum, a web site based in England, primarily for UK journalists. One of the members was considering buying a digital camera.

A quick guide to the film compared with digital question for semi-serious photographers

Digital cameras cost much more than film cameras, for similar features. In Canada, it's at least 2.5 times as much for digital as film, and may be worse in the UK. The savings on no film in digital can only be achieved over many, many photographs. If you need prints, or want prints, the big difference is this. With film, you usually have the whole roll printed. With digital, you only print the ones you wish, and leave the other frames unprinted. the math gets complicated, depending on how many pictures you would throw away from a 24 exposure roll of film. About flat bed scanners. Yes, it is easy to scan a print to the standards required by a magazine or newspaper that cares so little about quality that it does not use real photographers. (Not trying to be snarky, just an observation) And if the original photo is any good, both artistically and technically, the end result will be fine. A 4x6 inch print, scanned, can be "enlarged" (digital terminology gets confusing) to be published at around 5x7 inches with no trouble. If you think the magazine will want to run the photo bigger, you should have a bigger print made, and scan this. So a 5x7 print can be scanned and enlarged to 8x10, but you'd be better off scanning an 8x10 so it runs at that same size. The biggest advantages of digital are these: -- Faster. No need to wait for prints, and then no need to scan them -- You can still get prints if you want. Photofinishers have new equipment that makes excellent prints, quickly -- You can check the quality of the shots right now. Digital cameras have a little screen on the back, and you look at that and see if you have a nice shot, and if so, you can stop shooting. -- Digital mistakes can be fixed easily, often but not always. Because you have the original digital file, you, or someone at the publication, can play with it in Photoshop and make fairly significant adjustments to some of the technical aspects of the picture. -- Often, better quality to camera size ratio. Tiny digital cameras take good pictures. The biggest advantages of film are these: -- Much less expensive -- You get prints more easily -- You still get digital advantages by using a flat bed scanner, or by sending the negative to the magazine, where it can use a film scanner to get excellent quality. -- If your photofinisher has the equipment, you can get a CD made of all the negs at the same time the film is being developed, so you "go digital" very early into the workflow. I just did this on a job, and got the film developed to negatives, and then a CD made, but did not have any prints made. Then I used the CD to open files, processed them, and then sent them by e-mail 500 miles to be published.

Some of us actively involved in photography are starting to think digital images look better, at least up to 8x10. About picking a camera: The most important number to know is the resolution, measured in megapixels. 2 megapixels makes good 5x7 prints. 3MP makes good 8x10 prints. 4MP makes prints good enough for a full magazine page in a medium quality publication, or half a broadsheet page. I personally advise you to buy a camera from a camera company -- Nikon, Canon, Olympus -- and not from a computer or home stereo company -- Sanyo, Casio, Hewlett Packard. The tiny, tiny cameras are amazingly good, so if "cute" appeals, you won't sacrifice too much in quality or features, but you'll always have the camera with you. Can you charge extra for the photos? If so, and if you have the camera all the time, you might actually work hard at taking better pictures, get editors to buy more, and end up financially ahead. Digital zoom is unimportant. Optical zoom is important. 3x describes the ratio between the widest setting and the narrowest. i.e. 3X would describe a lens that, in 35mm camera terms, zooms from 35 mm to three times that, or 105mm. Today, in Toronto, an excellent, full featured 35mm single lens reflex film camera costs the same as a lower-middle, limited capability, point and shoot digital camera. Nikon F65 cf Canon A70. For you, as you describe yourself, I think the digital would be the better choice. Extra costs: with a digital camera, you may need a spare, expensive, battery, a battery charger, extra memory cards, a card reader to get the pictures into and out of your computer, and maybe even need to upgrade your computer. Digital camera files eat up hard drive space, so I bought a CD burner. Besides, you need to save the pictures, and can't trust your hard drive. Incidentally, some people don't understand that the memory card is reusable. Take, say, 100 shots on it, transfer those pictures to your computer, clean/erase/reformat the card, and start taking a second 100 on the same card. My bottom line: when I'm not being a pro photographer, and just a father who takes pix of family and friends, I love digital, but I'm using a thousand pound, ($2000) or so, camera. And when I'm being a pro, I love digital even more, for the speed of getting pictures to editors, up on web sites, and more. Finally, the best way to improve quick and dirty portraits is to use a reflector to soften the shadows, or shoot in some gently lit place, rather than in bright sunshine. The reflector can be as simple as a white wall. Just move the subject over so light bounces off the wall onto the darker side of the face.

New on Saturday, July 26,  2003

Nike ad slammed in Marketing, by me
Marketing magazine, Canada's leading advertising industry trade publication, ran a letter to the editor from me inthelatest edition.

Here's the letter from the July 28 / August 4, 2003 issue

Another letters piss fest

Don't just do it on the street please

When an advertiser resorts to promoting pissing in an alley-the Nike campaign made the front page of the June 16 issue of Marketing-it's no wonder that advertising is sneered at by so many.

Here's the Nike poster on the side of a publicly-owned Toronto Transit Commission streetcar.

Al and Laura Ries have it right in The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. Not only does (far too much, but not all) advertising have no credibility, but efforts sanctioned by the likes of Caroline Whaley-Marketing tells us she's director of marketing for Nike Canada and responsible for this Runto.ca program-should embarrass everyone in the business.

Marketing says "The campaign's public relations is being handled by Veritas Communications of Toronto," but doesn't say if "campaign" means the ad campaign or the overall run program. Veritas is supposedly an expert in good and bad PR, according to the "How Not to Drop the PR Ball" article on page 16 of the same issue, which describes how Bob Reid and Derek Kent of Veritas pronounce judgment on PR actions of others. Look inward, gentlemen.

I wonder if they'll write about alley-pissing as a way of helping, to quote the Marketing page one story, Nike meet its "goal of returning the beleaguered city of Toronto to its former self." In my city, I'd prefer no-one in Nike suits "doing it" in public.

I hope the TTC is charging full rates for the streetcar sides. If it's willing to help promote Toronto as a city of boors, it should at least get paid well.

 

 

 

 

New on Tuesday, July 22,  2003

New cool (well, hot, really) store near my Toronto office

I was out  researching digital photography printing the other day when I discovered the first Calphalon Culinary Center in Canada, and the second in the world. The other is in Chicago. It is at King Street West and Spadina Avenue, in the gizzard (a culinary word, just west of the heart) of downtown Toronto. Curious about the place, I went in, was warmly welcomed, and given a tour. There's very high quality cookware for sale, and two classrooms where you can learn to use the cookware. One is like a theatre, and you watch the chef at work.

But the other's got two gas burners per student, the best in Kitchen Aid appliances, and a corner of the kitchen where, when the class is over, the students and the teachers gather together and eat up the course's projects.  I have no business connection -- I just thought it was a sharp (sells knives, too) place you should know about if visiting Toronto There's more at www.Calphalon.com. Look for the link to Toronto

My first magazine cover was of this fireboat

I took this shot last weekend, just at sunset down at the harbor in Toronto. The first time I shot this boat, my picture ended up as my first magazine cover, and was a big part of getting me into professional photography. The original was taken when  was in Grade 10, a guest of my father on a harbor tour sponsored by the Toronto Board of Trade. I shot the boat and made a print in my high school darkroom, and my father liked it and took it in to Cyril Davies, the editor of the Board of Trade Journal, who bought it and ran it and got me encouraged.

New on Monday, July 7,  2003

Accreditation doesn't matter at IABC's biggest chapter
IABC Toronto, which I've been told repeatedly is the largest chapter world-wide in this association, has an accreditation program it touts as being one of the advantages of membership.

But not one member of the board, save last's year's president who automatically becomes past president, is either  1/ qualified to become accredited, or if eligible to write the exam, 2/ bothered to become accredited.

IABC's got a mediocre system of selecting "leaders" as it likes to call them. Once you get to the Executive VP level, at least at the Toronto chapter, you automatically become the president a year later. Same principle, different titles, at IABC world-wide.

This guarantees that members have no real say over who is going to be the head of the association in a time of rapid change. Instead, they get someone chosen ("elected" seems too strong a word, since there don't seem to be many candidates running for office) a year before taking office. If changing circumstances requires a different kind of leader, well, you're out of luck at IABC Toronto.

For that matter, you're out of luck at IABC world-wide, too, unless the man named this year is the right guy for the changed circumstances a year from now. Next year's Chairman is already chosen -- David Kistle. He's from Minnesota, and he's accredited.

The new president of IABC Toronto is Amanda Brewer, who works for a mutual fund firm. She has no ideas of her own that she's willing to share with BAK's Report readers. Leadership??? Here's what she wrote to us; "At this time I will have to decline your offer to provide you with my mandate for the chapter - that is something that the board collectively will work on during our strategic planning session, which will take place later in the summer." It makes me wonder what "President" means.

I'm curious if the IABC Toronto board mandate will include actually implementing the principles of business communications (not the dental plan stuff, the image and advocacy and fighting for their members stuff) that's been missing for far too long.

New on Wednesday, July 2, 2003

THE FALL OF ADVERTISING AND THE RISE OF PR -- Al and Laura Ries 

If you need summer reading, here's the book to get. It might well  change how you make presentations to your clients, whether you are an advertising or public relations professional. But if you're on the ad side, you won't like what the book says, even if you admit to yourself that it is true.

The thrust of the book is simple: use public relations (Al  and Laura thinks this is mostly publicity, with some special events tossed in) to build a brand, and then use advertising to maintain the brand. Stop spending multiple millions to launch a new product with a blockbuster ad blitz, and just use publicity (PR) instead.

There are lots of examples, and they do make the point that there are exceptions to the rules. But what they end up saying, several times, is that the credibility of PR, as expressed by editors who decide to print stories about our clients, outweighs the lack of credibility in most ads. Readers expect ads to be one-sided and incomplete, and they trust editors to pre-clean the honestly of PR claims. 

I'm recommending that publicity-oriented PR firms buy lots of copies, and give them to clients as gifts.

ISBN: 0060081988
Published: September 2002 | Published by HarperCollins Publishers, Incorporated

---

New on Friday, May 30, 2003 -- 

Canada's finest publishing company thanks us all and says goodbye

Macfarlane Walter & Ross, Canada's finest publishing company, has shut its doors. The real Macfarlane, John left, the Walter, Jan, center, and the Ross, Gary right, invited the authors, designers, editors, editorial assistants, landlord, and other friends of the firm to a goodbye and thank-you party, on Thursday, May 29. MW&R had books atop the best seller lists month after month, year after year, and for several years, the number one best seller all year was an MW&R book. Fifteen great years.    I was a friend of the firm from the start, spent countless hours bouncing ideas around, designed and assembled catalogs, wrote the best ad about a book ever written by anybody -- for On The Take -- and took dozens of photos of authors, and hundreds more of my pictures were published in Going To Town.

New on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 --

Digital photography is worth looking at, so to speak

I've invested in a Nikon CoolPix 5700 camera, and am conducting experiments to see just how far a camera of this level can go in meeting the needs of public relations professionals for high-impact photography without the time (or expense, although digital is not much cheaper) If you've got questions about digital photography and public relations, just drop me a note at briankiglre@BrianKilgore.com and I'll try to answer them. So far, the investment seems to be paying off.

York University, Toronto (I went there) appoints ad guy Chief Communications Officer
Richard Fisher, who spent the past four years at TBWA \ Chiat \Day, and his background includes some other ad agencies. (O&M for one.)

York is a huge university, mostly on the northern edge of Toronto, although there's a smaller campus closer to downtown, where I was a student long ago. Fisher's got his work cut out for him. There's a letter to the editor in a national newspaper in Canada today pointing out that goons at York regularly attack people who have opinions. My overall opinion of the school is that it is not very good, except for the business school, is badly run, encourages goons and thugs to bully other students, and generally is home to people who can't get into a better school, or live in the neighborhood. Maybe it does need an advertising man to run communications, but I might have opted for a genuine public relations professional. Mr. Fisher's department ran a big appointment ad with a huge photo -- as appointment ad photos go -- of himself, and then ran another ad announcing another appointment to the York board. Each ad repeated lots of bumpf about the school, meaning York and its students paid for the same message to be published twice, a page apart.

I'm curious now, and will be watching to see what I can learn about the school as the new CCO goes to work.

New on Friday, February 21, 2003 -- 

PR stunt of the month -- 
A good story by a good reporter about a good pr stunt
Here's the opening blurb on the National Post newspaper web site today, leading to a story about how a Canadian airline, Westjet, offered people named Hamilton the chance to fly anywhere the airline serves, for free, for one day. It was part of a promotion to let Canada know the airlines now flies to Hamilton, Ontario. ASIDE: Attention IABC members. If you are flying to Toronto for the conference, (see red box below) you can fly to Hamilton instead, via Westjet. The Hamilton airport's closer to Toronto than the Edmonton airport is to that city. Fortunately for the airline's PR people, there is a National Post reporter named Hamilton (Graeme is his first name) with a sense of humour and a sense of adventure and a sense of fairness.

535 Hamiltons take flight without paying a penny
OTTAWA-HAMILTON-WINNIPEG-CALGARY-VANCOUVER-CALGARY-HAMILTON-OTTAWA - I wouldn't know the Hamilton tartan if it flapped in my face, and I lose track of my family tree at the outer branches, but this much I can say with certainty about the Hamilton clan: We love free flights. 

If the link in the blurb does not work for you, go to www.nationalpost.com and search for Hamilton. I thought it was a great story, fun to read, not even counting the PR success for Westjet. The Post's editors thought it was worthy of the front page. So do I.

New on Tuesday, November 19, 2002 --  my wife's birthday!

Eight things to remember during downsizing

If you go to Eight things to remember during downsizing you should see an interesting article by my friend / associate / colleague / client Mark Towhey, an expert on crisis communications, whether physical -- fires, bombs, etc., -- or intellectual, like a downsizing. It's the latest addition to Mark's web site. If the link does not work, try www.towhey.com, and then look on the left hand side of the page for the link to the article.

Here's one of the points he makes, just to give you the flavor of the article.

2. Remember the survivors.

Where your company has been able to pick and choose who goes and who stays, you have probably chosen to retain your superior performers. Don't forget them during the downsizing turmoil. They will probably be just as shocked as those who are leaving. No doubt, their first thoughts are "how does this affect me?" and "am I going next?" Productivity will drop during this period, that's a given. How well you can communicate with them, and make them more comfortable, confident and effective, will determine just how far productivity drops and when/if it recovers. Expect to need special communication programs targeting these people.

I know there are some PR people, and other managers, coping with downsizing who don't in fact, have the luxury of having retained to top performers. As we live our lives held hostage to financial "analysts" and with CEOs still trying to beat the street estimates, all too often the top employees are fired after years of loyal service, in order to cut the payroll even more. What's left? Juniors who are in over their heads.

Tylenol -- another look at the crisis communciations. Go see www.odwyerpr.com for a new take on an old story.

New on Thursday, November 14, 2002 -- 

Are you making your media events tv-friendly?
Most PR people are not, of course, doing this

Here's something I wrote for a photography forum in the internet, where a person had remarked on how hard it is to take good video pictures. PR LESSON? The television crews need interesting things to happen in 30 second chunks, and you need to tell them when those 30 chunks will arrive.

I spend a fair bit of time with television news video photographers because I'm mostly in the PR business. 

It's amazing how most PR people do not take the needs of video photographers into consideration when setting up news conferences and publicity stunts.
While a still photographer needs on, say, 1/125 of a second of interesting action, the video guys need 30 seconds at a time, repeated several times.

If your CEO is making a speech, get a copy beforehand, mark the paragraphs that you'd most like to see on the TV news that night, and give it to the tv crews. You'll find they are just as interested in getting the good stuff as you are, and chances are pretty good they'll turn the camera on if you tell them when the best parts are.

Failure to provide tv-friendly events results, as you can see by watching television news, all those tv news shots panning across the gathered reporters and other photographers, just in order to have something going on to put on the screen for the time the announcer needs to tell the overall story.

Here are some more tools, techniques, tips and philosophies that most PR people arranging media events seem to forget.

1/ Television requires props. Have real products, or blown up photos of real products, or samples of raw materials, or charts and graphs that are big and bold enough to be seen on television.

2/ Television does not require dull-looking un-named drones standing behind the person being featured. There's no need to surround t he person being interviewed with silent unknowns, and it distracts from your message.

3/ More people will see the tv coverage of your event than will see the event in person, if you do your job right, so make it easy for the tv people to get their shots. I remember working at a conference organized by twinkies who put the television crews at the back of the room, so they would not get in the way of the people in the audience. Just plain stupid, and stubborn as only a twinkie can be. the only way we got the tv people to the front, where they needed to be, was when I told the twinkies that there would be no luncheon speaker and that instead we'd hold a news conference outside the banquet room. 

4/ Lighting matters. If you can illuminate the podium, and illuminate the displays with the products or the posters or the graphs, the tv crews will happily use your lights, instead of turning on the camera lights and blinding your speakers. And they won't be disturbing everyone by installing and removing their light stands when the event is underway. The still photographers will appreciate your efforts, too.

5/ Help with the cutaways. Television video requires pictures to show in between the chunks of a speech that are being broadcast. Producers just can't cut from one part of the speech to another, because the picture of the speaker jumps. So cutaways are used. These are chunks of film -- often the panning shot of the audience -- that are in between the pictures of the speaker. Before the event starts, take the tv crews aside and show them samples, graphs, posters, raw materials, etc., set up under good lighting. They'll shoot these, and be able to insert them into the news clip when they need a "bridge' from one shot to another.

There are lots more ways to pay special attention to television crews. Use your imagination, and you'll improve your coverage dramatically.

New on Friday, November 1, 2002 -- 

Either three days too late or 25 days early
Did you send out a great photograph with your month end results?
PR LESSON: Lots of industries report results at the end of the month. The car companies all provide sales figures, real estate boards publish sales stats, and so on. If your company is a player in the industries that provide these kinds of stats, did you send out a great photograph for business editors on daily papers to use when they ran the industry story?

Just asking.... 

New on Wednesday, October 30, 2002 -- 

I go nuts when supposedly professional communicators bury interesting and important information. The story below is on the International Association of Business Communicators web site, but you sure wouldn't know it if you just went to the front page of the site, and looked for what's new. No, the people that run the site can't figure out that putting news up front would be a public service. IABC did not bother sending me the news release, either

Over at the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society, the web site boss is looking for committee members who know HTML coding. Why? You don't need coding to figure out what stories and information should be on a web site, nor do you need the knowledge in order to post the info, if you use a decent piece of web management software. And as a reader pointed out to me today, HTML coding is the old fashioned stuff, so if the committee needs tekkies, that's the wrong qualification.

Anyway, below is the latest important info from IABC -- a lot more important than an announcement of yet another opportunity to spend money, which is the usual IABC non-news News Release.

New on Tuesday, October 22, 2002 -- 

Canadian Census data shows our audiences are changing greatly
We appear to be at the point where major changes to demographics are happening more rapidly than in my memory. The Globe and Mail website, at www.globeandmail.com has a new story telling us how families are changing, where the most common-law families are, how many kids are still at home, and lots more of interest to communicators who want to reach mass audiences. the main point? Mass audiences aren't what they used to be. It's easy to find the story, and, PR LESSON?  when you read it, think about what it means to your communications plans. Here's just one paragraph from the story, by Darren Yourk:

Married or common-law couples with children aged 24 and under living at home represented only 44 per cent of all families. These accounted for 49 per cent of all families in 1991, and represented more than one-half in 1981 (55 per cent).

Imagine what this means if you're planning the communications plans for a car maker, or even a dealer. Do you pull the minivans from the ads, and replace them with the two-door sedans, high enough off the road that 50 - 60 year old knees are still able to get in and out? How does it change your promotion of vacation sites, or even your menu planning for a company picnic? There's lots to think about in that story, plus links to more sources.

Are you involved in "lifestyle" marketing communications? The study gives some stats on same-sex couples, too:

Statistics Canada released the first-ever count of Canada's same-sex couples Tuesday, saying a total of 34,200 same-sex common-law couples were counted in Canada in 2001.

The number represents 0.5 per cent of all couples in the country. Male couples outnumbered female couples in the 2001 census, with 19,000 male same-sex couples comprising 55 per cent of the total.

How does this compare to the numbers you've heard from special interest groups?

You can read the IABC story in the National Post
IABC says Canadians beat Americans in access to the bosses, increased budgets, but take a 30% pay cut to accomplish this

Yesterday's National Post newspaper's Financial Post business section included a column called Ad Lib, written by reporter Susan Heinrich, with a segment about the International Association of Business Communicator's latest member survey. I wrote about it yesterday, just a bit down this page. Today, you can read the entire story by going to www.nationalpost.com

Then, type "Susan Heinrich" into the search box at the top. Then look for the story headed "Look for Marketel New Venture" which is the headline for yesterday's column. Scroll down and the last story is about IABC. My favorite line from the story, referring to the increased access and decreased paycheques of the Canadians, is, "A bit of advice to all you out there who are "In like Flynn" with Mr. President: ASK FOR A RAISE!" 

New on Monday, October 21, 2002 -- 

IABC finally gets some good PR.
National Post newspaper, read by business leaders across Canada, covers the International Association of Business Communicators "Profile" survey.

IABC PR manager Heidi Taff was in Toronto last with with Warren Bickford, elected head of IABC's research foundation, and Annette Martell, the elected queen of all IABC (she lives in Toronto) and they went to visit Canada's two nation-wide newspapers. In the Financial Post section of National Post today, ad columnist Susan Heinrich has six and a half column inches of her Ad Lib column devoted to some of the stats from the survey -- Canadian IABC members have better access to the top management than do US members, Canadians make two thirds the pay of the Americans, and, in Canada, 59% increased department budgets over the past two years, compared to only 37% with increasing bucks in the USA. 

Ms. Heinrich reports that IABC surveyed 1,349 members. Semantics raises its ugly head: In fact, it surveyed about ten times that, (around 13 thousand) and 90% of members did not bother to answer the survey. You can probably read a lot about the survey yourself by going to www.IABC.com

I can't find a way to get to this Financial Post story on the web. The Financial Post / National Post web site is weirdly constructed, with lots of interesting stuff missing. Maybe it is trying to get you to buy the paper, or maybe it just has not enough money to hire people to get all the stories up. If you have the paper, look on page FP6. For reasons I do not understand, Bickford, Martell and Taff are not mentioned, and even International Association of Business Communicators isn't in bold face like every other organization in the column, so the story certainly does not stand out. But, at least, an IABC story is there in a major newspaper. IABC tried media relations and it worked. An ad columnist recognized a business communicators (whatever "business communicator" means, anyway) story was worth covering and of  interest to her readers ...

I've been trying for years to get the associations to do something important in media relations, other than, as the story below about the Public Relations Society of America shows, wasting their time on crap that does not serve the members, or news releases touting courses.

Thursday, September 26, 2002 -- 

I'm right about the newsworthiness of pr association events
CPRS / Consultants Institute meeting makes 
Canada's National newspaper
Tom Hoog, chairman of Hill & Knowlton USA,  was in Toronto last week and spoke to a joint Canadian Public Relations Society and Consultant's Academy meeting. The contents of his speech made it into the Globe and Mail, which is a national newspaper roughly parallel to a combined Wall Street Journal and New York Times in the USA, read by business leaders across Canada

You can read the story at www.globeandmail.com, by typing Tom Hoog into the search engine. Or try clicking on the story title here: It's good PR to keep employees loyal

Regular readers know I've been campaigning for years for the PR associations to do a better job with PR for themselves. One argument is that the meetings are not interesting enough to justify coverage. Leaving aside why a chapter would run a dull meeting, at least this proves that reporters will come when invited, and newspapers will run the stories. PR LESSON? Invite the media to the speeches your executives give. There will be more people outside the room who are interested than there will be inside the room.

But what about IABC? Julie Freeman, paid boss of the International Association of Business Communciators, spoke recently in Malaysia about ethics, but I can't find her speech on the IABC web site, and it's not on the IABC Malaysia link provided on the IABC's main site, either. Here's all I can find on the IABC web site: "In addition, Julie presented a keynote address on the ethical practice of communications in the New Economy." I've asked Heidi Taff, IABC's PR manager, for a copy to publish for my readers. Did IABC even send the speech to the business newspapers in the world's capitals? I'll see if I can find out.

New on Tuesday, July 16, 2002

If you don't want to believe me, believe Fraser Seitel
The PR chief should sit at the right hand of the CEO

It says so in my First Principles, which you can read here. And today, in O'Dwyer's PR Daily web publication (PR daily is at at www.odwyerpr.com and the article is at http://www.odwyerpr.com/0716prof_dev.htm ) Fraser Seitel writes, with my emphasis added, "

The fundamental difference between PR and advertising or marketing is this:

Advertising and marketing sell the product. PR sells the organization.

That's why the PR director should properly report to the CEO, while the advertising or marketing departments can be subordinated with line product or service groups.

It's another good Seitel column, worth reading because it discusses primarily when advertising belongs to the advertising sub-section of a marketing department and when advertising belongs in the public relations or corporate communications department, and then goes on to discuss media choices.

I'll add four thoughts to the content of Fraser's column:

1/ Getting corporate advertising right is very hard to do, and requires a senior level brain (which may or may not be housed inside a fairly young head.) For instance, if you have today's New York Times handy, turn to page C3 for a lousy ad from, presumably, the PR department of American Electric Power. The first sentence of the body copy is self-justification twaddle that causes smart people to almost wretch. Don't have the paper handy? It says, "AEP knows the equation for financial success. Our business model is built on rich, diverse assets across the energy spectrum. This provides a strong foundation for sustainable growth in a varity of market scenarios." And it goes on, unread.

Shareholders, regulators, employees, and customers should write to the CEO of AEP and ask him why he approved wasting tens of thousands of dollars on this crap.

Which leads us to point two.

2/  Bad corporate advertising is worse than no corporate advertising. Do you have any respect left for Carly the HP gal, after she blew tens of millions on misleading advertising promoting her get-Carly-rich merger with Compaq? Remember the really awful corporate ads from Alcatel where they bastardized Martin Luther King's Washington speech for selfish corporate gain? Note that Alcatel is now laying off people and the stock is in the dumpster. Lousy corporate ads sure did not help it, either.

And, just to make life more interesting in the intra-office turf wars, I suggest to you point three ....

3/ All advertising is corporate advertising, sortof. I believe that someone within the corporate relations or public relations department should be both authorized to and required to sign off on just about all product and service ads created by the advertising department, because advertising speaks to the values of the company, in addition to helping get something sold. 

I assumed this role at Northern Telecom (Nortel Networks before the idiots took over and ran it into the ground) and it took some diplomacy to get it working, but it did work, and the ads spoke to the corporate values of the time in addition to selling phones and cables and switches. I ended up getting deeply involved in the content of the product and service ads, but that was just the nature of the place and the people there at the time, and is not necessary. Just make sure, for instance, the ads do not use fuzzy photos, because this suggests fuzzy thinking. And that the copy is straightforward and not misleading, because honesty is a corporate  value. PR LESSON: Want an example? No good PR person reviews Dell ads, or that small type at the bottom would be enlarged to be readable, instead of leaving the impression that there are catches and tricks and scams being pulled that Michael Dell and Steve the tv-guy don't want you to know about, so the ads are deliberately hard to read.

4/ Print ads are meant to be sent directly to your most important audiences, so order pre-prints (even better than reprints) and add "With the compliments of ..." cards, and mail them to the people most important to you. Post them on bulletin boards and include them with pay stubs. Frame them in lobbies and include them inside product packages... Remember, all the people you want to read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal on some Tuesday may be reading the Times of London and the Financial Post that morning, so send them the ad, uncluttered.

More Seitel praise from me...
Martha Stewart and Brunswick pr
He writes well and informatively about Martha Stewart and the Brunswick PR agency that PR headhunter Arnie Huberman thinks is the wrong choice for Martha. Fraser writes at http://www.odwyerpr.com/0715comm_martha.htm , and I write about Huberman's scorn for Brunswick here. 

An update in November of a story originally from Friday afternoon, July 5, 2002

Thoughts on crisis communications
 Back in July I ran a story about crisis communications related to Martha Stewart. Here are some of the thoughts from back then that still apply today.

Can we find some PR LESSONS? in this? Here are four (plus) thoughts about crisis communications for the readers of BAK's Report.

1/ In the world of crisis communications, the requirements of the agency hired to help (or PR firm, or counsellor, or whatever you want to call the firm or person hired) as to size and heritage are these:

a/ What matters most is the experience and way of thinking and approach and skill and talent of ONE INDIVIDUAL within a firm responsible for the overall strategy (and the word is the actual word to use in a crisis) used to cope with the crisis.

b/ It barely matters how many other people work for the firm, but the counsellor should have a circle of trusted associates to bounce ideas off of. 

c/ The extent of the geographic scope of the crisis requires the individual in a/ to have access to strategic advice and tactical implementation in appropriate geographic places. In a financial crisis, those places usually can be defined by country, rather than by state or city or county. Where is the stock listed? Where do large numbers of shareholders live? Where are there company operations so big that the local / national media care about the problem? As an example of this "where are" considerations, look at the interest in in the USA in the Vivendi scandal, which concerns a French company. But a French company with a lot of USA operations.

However, there is no need for these "geographic reps" to be employees of the same firm as the lead counsel. In the case of Martha Stewart, her stock is listed only on one stock exchange (New York, in the USA), the vast majority of her magazine sales are in North America, her store sales are almost all in the USA and Canada, and it is reasonable to expect the same geographic interest in her via her web site. She can be served well by a counsellor in the USA, and Brunswick's non-USA people, and foreign ownership, don't matter. All that matters is the quality of the individual one or two Brunswickers involved in leading the project.

d/ And it does not matter where the company owning the crisis counsellor is owned; all that matters is that the person working the file knows the country where the crisis is. (Note all the ad agencies and PR companies actually owned in England but operating around the world. Or, if you are a BAK's Report reader outside the USA, think of all the ad agencies and PR firms in your country that are owned in the USA but staffed by local experts. (I know, I know, lots are staffed by expatriate Yanks who don't know anything about your country, but that's another story.)

2/ I believe a crisis can involve a well-meaning individual just as easily as it involves a genuine crook, and I believe that the lead players in a crisis can often include people who just plain refuse, at least for a while, to catch on that there is a crisis. 

a/ Related thought: a crisis can involve a number of people with conflicting interests, but it is amazing how often they will, at least for a while, try to support each other. In the Martha Stewart case, look at the initial reaction of Martha and her then-supporters as they acted instinctively to questions, and then look at later developments when they had time to think out the implications of each word spoken, and as they found out additional facts.

b/ It's necessary in a crisis to calm down and think of where the problem really is, and what range of end-results you would consider reasonable. In a lot of crises situations, the thought is that media relations is the most important element, but often the most important element is criminal prosecutors or civil suit lawyers. Where the skill of the crisis expert often really gets tested is in the oversight of media relations prior to (intending to avoid) legal filings / charges.

3/ The two hardest parts of crisis communications are:

a/ getting the person / people involved to realize that a train is coming down the track at them, and ...

b/ getting them to do what the PR counsel tells them, often in conflict with their instincts and often in conflict with the wrong kind of legal advice. (Good legal advice is always welcome by the top PR people. We don't hate lawyers, we just hate bad, chicken, lawyers. As I say in my First Principles of Public Relations (it's here) We are only as good as our clients allow us to be.

c/ We (the PR counsellors) do not, of course, have any ultimate control over the elements of a crisis. We can often predict a problem coming, but usually we are ignored. We may suspect a problem, but we don't get heard. Other times, things develop without our knowledge, we are blindsided, and we are as surprised an anyone. This blindsiding should be rare, though.

When we do our job right, we are cynics and pessimists and we can see bad stuff coming.

Want a prediction of trouble? Here's one you can get ready for. The PR profession is going to be next (after analysts, brokers, and accountants) getting slammed over the shambles in North American business, and the "leaders" of the communciations associations are ignoring this train coming down my metaphorical track, and just trying to sell you more courses and manuals.

Anyway, back to the topic.

4/ Luck plays a huge part in crisis management. Is there some big story breaking that keeps your crisis out of the paper? Does the politician who would take up arms against you go off on holidays the day before the plain brown envelope damning you arrives at his office? Is the crisis so complicated that most reporters can't figure it out, so skip the story (Global Crossing, for the first few months, Enron for many months.)?

 

New on Thursday, May 2, 2002

I'm in O'Dwyer's PR Daily today
A few weeks ago, Jack O'Dwyer, to my mind the dean of the PR journalism profession, asked me to write a guest column for his web site. Here's the heading he put on the opening page today. You can read the whole column by going to www.odwyerpr.com, and then scrolling down the page, or click on http://www.odwyerpr.com/0502gc_kilgore.htm to go straight to the column. Or, click on the first few words of the extract below.

GUEST COMMENTARY:
By Brian Kilgore
Editor, BAK's Report
By not speaking up on key issues, leaders of PR groups such as PRSA, IABC and CPRS are failing their societies and the PR industry. Joann Killeen, elected head of PRSA, is the most important PR woman in America. But try to find anything she ever said

And a warm welcome to any O'Dwyer's readers who have come to BAK' Report for the first time, courtesy of the links Jack put into his PR Daily. I try to put lots of interesting comment here, along with hints and tips that either reinforce the thinking of some people or bring fresh ideas to others. And, if you are an IABC, PRSA or CPRS member, and you do have any examples of good presentations, speeches, out-reach -- call it what you will -- by the top elected leaders of your associations, please tell me about them, and how they were "taken out of the room" in a way that would cause business leaders (and other kinds of clients and employers) to get the PR people more involved, earlier.

New on Monday, April 8

SEVERAL THINGS TO DO WITH A SPEECH
I've been involved with a major dinner speech over the past couple of weeks. Here's some of what I did.

-- Short excerpt from speech given to conference organizers for pre-conference publicity.
-- Speech reproduced for distribution to media.
-- Media conference called for 9:30 on morning of speech, since speech is at dinner, and that's too late for the television news that night. Media notice included speech extracts.
-- Suppliers to deliver props for news conference, to be used for photos and to generate interest with reporters.
-- Poster for background at news conference, with major points in big type, making it easy for news photographers and tv cameras to capture main points.
-- Poster will be main focus of speaker's opening remarks at  news conference.
-- Speaker to say four most important two-minutes portions of speech at conference, so TV can tape them.
-- Speaker scheduled to do live interview on major business television program morning after show.
-- Copies of speech, along with cover letter from speaker and/or division head, ready for mailing morning after speech to over 300 customers who will not be in attendance.
-- Table cards with phone, e-mail and regular addresses of division head and speaker designed, printed, and ready to be put at each guest's place at dinner, to be used to request copy of speech.

We know enough to take the speech out of the room. And I wasn't even "elected" president of PRSA.

New on Saturday, February 2, 2002

Low-priced presentation training: I worked on a couple of speeches / presentations last week, without being able to deal directly with the speakers in person. One of the speakers is just wrapping up her comments, in a city many miles from me, as I type this. Here are the hints I sent to them for low-priced, easy-to-do, self-serve presentation preparation. They'll work for every speaker without the time or budget for professional rehearsal. Feel free to cut and paste them into a memo for your own staff, although I'd like some credit.

Five hints for successful presentations and speeches

1/ Record your second or third run through as you read through your text.

Then play it back, listening to yourself. You are your own best critic, and you'll see immediately how and when you need to adjust pacing, emphasis, and maybe even change some of the words. You'll realize what names or other words you can't pronounce, too.

2/ Revise your speaking notes so they are designed for the ear, not the eye. Most speeches start with a grammatical written text, and this looks good to the eye when you read it silently to yourself. And this is fine for the handouts and news release.

But, for your speaker's version, revise it just a bit, revise it just a bit so that there's some repetition and bridges from thought to thought. Flip back and remind your audience aurally of those points they would look back and re-read in a paper-based version.

3/ Format your speaker's notes so that you can read them easily, and they guide your pace and emphasis.

• Keep the words on the top two thirds of the page, so your eyes keep looking at the audience, and you aren't always trying to find your place.
• Make the type big enough to read without putting on silly glasses.
• Break up sentences so that there's emphasis in the right places. Sentences that are two long on the page make you rush through them,  
  ... but you slow down when they are broken up in your notes. (Test for yourself; just read the preceding sentence out loud)
• Introduce a new thought at the end of one page, so it sinks into the audience while you are not speaking because you are turning to the next page inyour text.

4/ Synchronize your breathing and reading. This takes a little practice.

A/ Turn your eyes down, breath in, read a sentence silently and insert it into your brain
B/ Bring your eyes up, look at the audience, and say the words while breathing out
C/ Look down again, take a breath, read the next words silently and put them into your brain
D/ Look up, say the words, and maintain eye contact.

Watch most business people as they speak. (at least the ones who didn't read this.) You'll see the top of their heads when they are talking to you, and you'll see their eyes while they are breathing and saying nothing.

5/ If your slides don't matter, don't show them. But if they do matter, give the audience time to read them. Remember, they can't read the slides and listen to you at the same time. People's brains don't work that way. So pause, or read some of the slide out loud while the audience reads along silently with you.

New on Monday, January 21, 2002

My predictions for 2002
Charles Pizzo, the immediate past chairman of IABC, a PR man based in New Orleans, and an excellent lecturer, is speaking in Tucson and Phoenix this week (January 23 in Phoenix and January 24 in Tucson) and he asked a number of people for predictions. Here's the heart of what I wrote to him, edited for BAK's Report.

Charles, I've been working hard over the past few days to get into a positive mood, so I could tell you about the great things that are going to happen in our business in 2002.

I failed. 2002 is going to be more of the same, and the same is pretty crappy.

The rest of this story is here, because it is so long.

New on Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Just about a year ago I wrote:

The nine most important concepts in employee communications
Brian A. Kilgore -- Communications Counsel
Saturday, January 27, 2001
If you missed it, you can read it at the top of the page in the new Internal & Employee Communications section, right here.

New on Sunday, January 6, 2002

The internet as a (publicity subset of) PR tool
I could write a whole book on this, but Steve O'Keefe has beaten me to it. You can read about the book over at Jack O'Dwyer's web site, at www.odwyerpr.com, in Fraser P. Seitel's Professional Development section about Online Publicity, part way down the page. Fraser writes, "The best resource for mastering such publicity is the seminal work by Internet publicity pioneer, Steve O'Keefe, Publicity on the Internet, published by John Wiley & Sons."

And if you do a web search (I used Google) you'll get to more info on Mr. O'Keefe and his ideas. I'm going back later today just to troll through the stuff, and pick up some tips. 

But, for those of you here expecting something useful from me, here are, off the top of my head... 

Seven things PR people need to know about the internet. (And there's an earlier story about Public Relations on the Internet down here.)

1/ The web is just another courier, letter carrier, envelope over the transom delivery device. It's just (sometimes but not always) faster and cheaper. I could mail BAK's Report to you if I had your addresses, and you could carry it out onto the porch, put your feet up on the railing, and read it there. But I don't have your address, and it takes a long time to type up the envelopes, so it gets delivered by computer.

2/ The content matters. You won't read BAK's Report if you don't trust me, but the delivery medium does not really matter. You read this for what I write, and what I find for you. You may read for entertainment or enlightenment or because your tv is broken, but content matters more than delivery system. Chances are the people writing most web sites for most companies are among the most junior professional communicators, or they are not even pros in the field of conveying "content." That said...

3/ Speed is the greatest thing about public relations and the internet. You can send ("send" is the wrong word -- see below) information anywhere in only a few seconds. Yet vast numbers of PR people have no idea that speed and the internet are related. Want an example? Go to www.PRSA.org and root around for a while. You'll find reference to a story in the New York Times about PRSA but the braintrust there did not bother to even mention the story on the PRSA web site until so much time went by that the free access to the story -- You would like to read it, wouldn't you? -- has expired and now it costs $2.50. And you won't pay that, will you?

4/ You find them / they find you. In the O'Keefe story on O'Dwyers (and remember, it was very short piece about a whole book, so there was probably more on this topic)  the idea was that PR people send releases out to editors. This may quality for the jargon-word "push." But "pull" also occurs, where editors (or other stakeholders) go looking for stories that have not been sent to them. So even if you send news releases by e-mail to selected editors and reporters, remember that others of us just go prowling around on web sites we think may have stuff. That's what I did as founding editor of eBizChronicle, and that is what I do here, too. 

This means you need to get your releases up on your web site the moment you send them to editors. This is especially important in publicly traded companies. Another example? PRSA, after years of dealing with me, still doesn't bother sending me releases, and I get most of my news about this organization by searching through its badly designed and inadequately managed web site. Harsh? Try to find anything about the content of PRSA ex-Queen Bee Lewton's really-pretty-good speech to the Economic Club of Detroit. Links to a webcast were easily available, but no one put them up on the headquarters PRSA site for members or anyone else interested in PR to find. (Want to hear it? Go to www.prsadetroit.org There's a link there.)

5/ Get to the readers of the reporters. When some people think first of PR (or the publicity subset of PR) on the internet, they think about sending stories from them to reporters and editors. Well and good, but of great importance is also getting to their readers. Reporters are going to filter your release in various ways when they prepare it for their papers, newscasts, and so on. By having your release information up front and obvious on your site, your stakeholders (the readers of the reporters) can get the full story, too. Yet finding news releases on most web sites is a dig, dig, dig exercise. Bad web managers put all kinds of crap other than news on the opening page, and the news is buried in some "Press Room" or "Investors" sub-section. You want the story on the font page of the Wall Street Journal or The Financial Times, and yet you bury it on your own site? That's just stupid.

6/ The first two "W"s in WWW stand for "World Wide" yet most web sites are country-based. Your customers, employees, suppliers, investors and more are all over the place, yet you are provincial in your web presence, aren't you? Those few companies that even try to be international think it's good enough to start out with some flags viewers can click on, and then the sites become country-by-country. And some don't bother making each country site complete, linking viewers back to (often) the USA site to get the full story. That pisses people off people who do not live in the USA. Look at your site's executive biographies, and see if the top five people in England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, France and other places are deemed important enough by some junior webmaster in the USofA to have their names even mentioned. If the junior webmaster has not included these people, maybe you should make an executive decision to overturn his or her bad judgment.

7/ The web is the greatest way to deliver photographs to the media.  There are two ways to do this (well, there's more, but these are the most important) You can include photos in the news release package you send by e-mail to editors. It's often better to send them as attachments, so that download times are quicker for the release itself, and editors can them choose whether or not to open the attachments.  Or you can just send small sized, low resolution images in the news release it self, so the editors can see what the shots look like, and then insert a link to higher-resolution print-friendly versions. The editor needs to go back to you to get the shot, but you can offer it scanned for, say, 2 columns and five columns in a newspaper, half a page and full page in a magazine, and in color and black & white 

Go prowl around for a while on your site, and the sites of your biggest competitors (you do go visit their sites regularly, don't you?) and see which of these points applies.

New on Tuesday, January 1, 2002

Happy New Year. 

Need some New Year's Resolutions? No time to think them up? Here are a couple most PR executives can use.

I resolve in 2002 to:

1/ Write an 18 month rolling communications plan aimed at prompting actions that will benefit us. A "rolling" plan adds another month as each one ends, meaning it always looks 18 months into the future. I'll do this by January 22.
2/ Depth of Management will be a component of the program. We won't let ourselves get tied to the life or death struggles of a single executive.
3/ We're going to "own" our industry. Our communications program will convince more people, month after month, that we are the company in our industry.  Best products. Best services. Best people creating them. Best to work for. Best to sell to. Best to buy from. Smartest. Most socially responsible.
4/ Our communications department is going to properly adopt at least one new technology or tactical tool within four months. It may mean fixing the web site; maybe it's Blackberrys for the whole department. It could be digital cameras and photo transmission. But it will be important, and it will be operating very well by March 15 and  flawlessly by May 1.
5/ We'll write down the public relations and corporate communications mission of our web site, in plain English, and we'll get started with putting this mission into practice. What's a PR mission, in plain English? Here's a possible one: "Because our  web site can reach almost all stakeholders, anywhere at anytime, it will reflect all the strategies, tools, techniques and elements of our entire PR program, from reprints (and rebroadcasts) of speeches to summaries of our positions on issues of international importance to governments in all our markets around the world."

For an example of a web site that does not fulfill a PR mission, just go to www.prsa.org, and try to find info on the New York Times column about public relations, printed back in November, or info on the content of a speech made by PRSA to the Economic Club of Detroit.

If you allow me to add "better" at the end, I'm pleased to offer nine items
off the top of my head about what AOL Time Warner needs to do, or keep
doing, to make the merger work, better." I think it's working pretty well
right now.

1/ Each unit, each business, has to be viable on its own. Cull any operation
that is a loser.

2/ It's still the content that counts. Good content means happy customers
and financial success. My wife bought me a Fortune subscription for
Christmas and at my house we watch, to quote my wife, "my man Aaron (Brown)"
almost every night, because of the quality of the content of the show.

3/ Recognize that almost everyone who works within the AOLTW empire works
for some organization with a real name, a real reputation, a real product or
service. Time, Fortune, CNN, Warner Music, Little, Brown and so on.

4/ It's a world-wide company. Pay attention to all of the empire, all at the
same time. Don't be insular Americans.

Don't lump Stockholm and Cairo into the same region, and then ignore it

5/ Convergence is semi-nonsense, and is no big deal. And synergy is a scam.
Don't force-fit magazine writers into daily journalism, or make musicians
into TV hosts. And can anyone remember any honest and accurate prediction of
merger savings? They are all lies, so ignore them and get on with the job of
being great.

6/ Remember your customers aren't rich. We'll stop paying when it costs us
$500 a year to read web versions of magazines And we don't have another $500
to see a stock quote on an AOL-enabled cell phone.

Which brings us to...

7/ We don't care. Contrary to badly designed and semi-honest, at best,
surveys, we don't care if we see movie trailers on our cell phones or if our
cable television brings us 150 channels (we can only watch three at a time
anyway without getting divorced) and we don't care whether we get a daily
joke e-mailed to us.

 8/ Keep flexible. Don't get locked into the wrong technology, philosophy,
or strategy, unable to get out because you are worried about saving face
with some analyst.

And number nine.

9/ Your employees risk their lives for you. Respect this, respect them, and
respect the trust your customers have in you.

Not all risk their lives, of course, but enough do, and many, many more
support those risk takers. Aaron Brown told us this week of Steve Allen, a
CNN technician who died in Afghanistan, not directly because of the war,
this week.

He was there, he was risking his life for no on-air glory, sending signals
back to Atlanta and around the world. I benefited from his work. Mr. Case
should be at the funeral. I'm willing to bet, as I write this, that Mr.
Turner will be.

At the heart of all nine is the need to provide good service and good
products, not roll over to meet the desires of the commission-churning stock
market industry.

Brian Kilgore
Corporate Communications Counsel
Toronto, Canada

Nine ways to make (keep) AOL Time Warner a success
Brian A. Kilgore
December 11, 2001

Kara Swisher, who writes the Boom Town column in the Wall Street Journal, asked me what AOL Time Warner needs to do to make the merger work.* This presupposes the merger isn't working; I'm not so sure about that. Time is on the newsstands; CNN is on my television as I type this, and I'm willing to assume AOL is up and running.

So I'll take her request but I'll add "better" at the end, giving us "…what AOL Time Warner needs to do to make the merger work better."

I've got eight items off the top of my head, but remember, making a merger work is a work in progress, and the rules keep changing. Which nudges me into saying there's now nine items.

1/ Each unit, each business, has to be viable on its own. Any merger that brings in a wounded, dying partner is doomed to failure, and so AOLTW needs to cull any operation that is a loser. The rest need to be nurtured as individuals or groups with similar focus, and not all folded into some "Media Salad." So far, AOL seems to be doing this pretty well.

2/ It's still the content that counts. Media coverage of AOLTW spends too much time looking at el weirdo numbers and so-called magic words like synergy and convergence. What really matters at AOLTW is the content presented to readers, viewers, listeners by the divisions. Good content means happy customers means financial success, so pay attention to the quality of the writing and the photos and the singing. Its book division published Jack Welch, a best-selling author. CNN added Aaron Brown to the on-air staff; at my house we watch, to quote my wife, "my man Aaron" almost every night. And we watch him because of the quality of the content of the show.

3/ Recognize, and cater to, the better side of "either / or." Everyone who works within the AOLTW empire, with the exception of a few in-the-spotlight people and their support staff, works for some organization with a real name, a real reputation, a real product or service. Time Magazine. Fortune Magazine. CNN. Warner Music, Little, Brown and so on.

The investor-driven AOLTW execs, and the reporters who cover the company, need to remember that the loyalty of most of their employees is to the sub-set organization where they work, not to some God-like AOLTW. When I was an executive at Northern Telecom (now Nortel Networks) outsiders thought I was run by, controlled by, loyal to, in awe of the management of, Bell Canada, which was our major shareholder. Not true. In reality, we just thought Bell was a customer, and the PR people there were like cousins, not brothers and certainly not bosses. But my world, my loyalty-driver, was Northern Telecom.

Same deal at AOLTW -- the divisions and subsidiaries are what matters, and Pittman and Parson and Case seem to have noticed, and reacted. Ted Turner certainly knows this. And from what I can tell, AOLTW is doing a good job giving the various components enough autonomy. I'll thank Walter Isaacson, the CEO of CNN, not Gerald Levin, the CEO of AOLTW, for hiring Aaron Brown.

Everyone at AOLTW is either an AOLTW person, or a CNN, Time, Fortune, etc. person, or both. Don't make the mistake of thinking of this latter group as simply more cogs in the AOLTW wheel. Their loyalty to and pride in their own divisions are what makes the AOLTW content so good, and the customers so supportive.

4/ It's a world-wide company. Pay attention to all of the empire, all at the same time. It's hard to do this, and that's why organizations break empires down into bite-sized pieces, but the reality is that too often many of these bite-sized pieces are artificial. They lump Stockholm and Cairo into the same region, or they force a manufacturing business and a service organization into the same regional structure. Too much leadership is lost when silos -- The Americas, Europe; Asia-Pacific, and so on -- are constructed with each silo's boss reporting across the ocean, and the vast number of smart people within each silo forbidden or discouraged from working with people in the other silos, without going to the top and down again.

But AOLTW needs to avoid the mistake made by most American multi-nationals, lumping nation-wide organizations from several vastly different countries into larger units. The whole "The Americas" concept beloved of low-level thinkers, for instance, pretty much insults Canadians and generally pisses us off as we suffer while dorks in Stamford or Palo Alto or Huntsville, Alabama, try to impose US values on a sovereign nation.

AOLTW has an extra set of problems, because of various restrictions on foreign ownership in countries where it cooperates. In Canada, it gave up on Little, Brown because of government rules, and we can't see The WB (is this a loss?) and CNNfn on our cable television, although I do get regular CNN and CNN Headline News and TBS Superstation here in Toronto. And Time has a special government approved Canada-only edition.

5/ Convergence is semi-nonsense, and is no big deal. So make sure every organization within AOLTW is viable on its own (point one, above) and don't lower the quality of the content (point two) by force-fitting magazine writers into daily journalism, or making musicians into critics, or trying to force readers to go find a computer, fire it up, wait five minutes for "booting" to be finished, log on to some internet site (preferably via AOL, of course) and then click and wait and click and wait, all in order to see the sidebar for some magazine story that a convergence promoter decided to put on the web instead of on paper, just so there could be some animation. (Bored by the previous sentence? Imagine being bored by doing what the sentence said.)

Instead of catering to the financial communities unthinking love of convergence, it's time to point out that this is of limited value. Same with the supposed synergy of a merger. In truth, the cost savings never turn out as hire as predicted (too often, the cost savings never turn out at all). It's time for AOLTW to control expectations, and actually admit that a merger is the sum of its parts, so don't expect miracles.

6/ Robert and Richard and Steve: Remember your customers aren't rich. (I think Ted Turner knows this already.) Avoid adding and adding and adding "features" to the AOLTW world, so that people have to spend a fortune to read Fortune on-line. R&R&S probably don't even pay for their own cable, internet connection, and cell phone. But the rest of us reach into our own pockets, and a great many of us will stop when it costs us $500 a year to read web versions of magazines because we need broadband in order to see charts that would take two days to load onto the screen at 56K. And we don't have another $500 to see a stock quote on an AOL-enabled cell phone. Which brings us to…

7/ We don't care. Remember that we didn't care about being able to buy dog food on the internet.

Now, we don't care if we see movie trailers on our cell phones, and we don't care if our cable television brings us 150 channels (we can only watch three at a time anyway without getting divorced) and we don't care whether we get a daily joke e-mailed to us, and we don't even care if we can use e-mail to send a request to a musician during a televised and web cast concert. At least we don't care enough, most of us, to pay for it.

Remember this when expanding. It will cost you too much money to develop something we won't pay for, so don't bother.

8/ Keep flexible. (This is the one I added as I started to write this, because I still want to end with one very important point.) Don't make predictions and plans because of pressure from the stock manipulators. (As I write this, Credit Swiss First Boston is looking for One Hundred Million United States Dollars to atone for playing fast and loose with the rules, so I'm not in the frame of mind to be kind to the "market"). Make your plans and review and revamp and keep everything possible fluid, so that the pace of change within AOLTW can stay at the leading edge. But make sure you don't get locked into the wrong technology, the wrong philosophy, the wrong strategy, unable to get out because your plans are too firm and you are worried about saving face.

And number nine.

9/ Your employees risk their lives for you. Respect this, respect them, and respect the trust your customers have in you.

Not all risk their lives, of course, but enough do, and many, many more support those risk takers. Aaron Brown told us last night of Steve Allen, a CNN technician who died in Afghanistan, not because of the war, apparently, this week. But it could well have been because of the war. He was there, he was risking his life for no glory, sending signals back to Atlanta and around the world. I benefited from his work. Mr. Case should be at the funeral. I'm willing to bet, as I write this, that Mr. Turner will be.

* Kara Swisher asked everyone who reads her column to offer advice, by the way. Not just me.

A public relations or corporate communications department lucky enough to have three or four or more smart people could benefit from spending a day in a meeting with no agenda, but five or six or more big signs.

Write each of these phrases on a big sheet of paper -- that flip chart stuff -- and tape the six or so sheets to the wall, and then just talk about them, and maybe order in a better than usual catered lunch.

If you've got good outside consultants, bring them in, too, but keep the group down to about half a dozen, at most. Here's what some of the signs should say:

HUNKER DOWN
DEMAND A PLAN
FOCUS, SIMPLIFY, ACT
LEADERSHIP COUNTS
READABLE & UNDERSTANDABLE
NOW! NOW! SOON! NOW!

You might think up a couple more, either before the meeting or part way through. With these in place on the walls, just engage in a free-wheeling and open discussion about what your department should do in 2002 (starting next week; no need to wait a month -- see "NOW," etc.) There's no need to be too formal about this, but you should take a few notes.

Here are a couple of quick ideas about each of the sheets.

HUNKER DOW
The world of business is cutting back on just about everything. That's generally wrong, but Hunkering Down means that you are concentrating on the important stuff. Forget award applications and other fluff. Design your programs so that everything has a really obvious and really direct benefit.

DEMAND A PLAN
Too many PR departments exist with either no plan, or a vague plan. Yes, add a line about "And other activities as appropriate from time-to-time" to allow for new stuff, but set up goals, times, action items in your plan, and then follow it.

FOCUS, SIMPLIFY, ACT
Pay attention to what matters, cut out all the extraneous activities, and then actually do things instead of having meetings for months.

LEADERSHIP COUNTS
And it counts at several levels. Put the big boss -- The General -- in front of the stakeholders, and then put the Colonels and Captains in front of their particular stakeholders, too. Get them out into the world, leading, not hiding in some Osama-like cave.

READABLE -- UNDERSTANDABLE
Cut the crappy writing and mushy graphics and the MBA-generated "leading in our branding initiatives to synergize our imperatives" nonsense. (Read Compaq ads to see what not to say.)

NOW! NOW! SOON! NOW!
A sense of urgency is the best thing for any communications department to have inside itself, and, more important, a sense of urgency is probably the most important value to add to a corporation or other organization. Coming soon. Some thoughts on Face to face

The future of on-line journalism
Over in CompuServe's MediaPro on-line discussion group, someone (A student, I suppose) asked about the future of on-line journalism. I knocked off a reply. Here's the question, and what I said to her, off the top of my head, with just a little editing. But you might find it interesting. 

Q? I am a college student, and I am trying to survey what professionals think is the future of online journalism. If anyone has any opinion to offer, I'd greatly appreciate it...

A! The future of on-line journalism is "it depends."

Cutting this pie in one direction, there are at least four major kinds of on-line journalism.

1/ On-line distribution of information created originally for print or broadcast. The web sites of some daily newspapers are the most obvious examples, and they will survive, more of less intact, with breakeven, or close to it positive or negative, finances, for at least five years, in North America.

1A / Web-based sites of print or broadcast publications, but expanded, designed to not only contain the material created for the other mediums, but which take content further, in one or both of two broad ways. One extension is the updating of stories from earlier print editions or broadcasts in the day and the early posting of stories that have yet to be broadcast or printed. And the second extension is the addition of material that will never be published or broadcast. CNN does this, with maps, surveys, links to full text of speeches, etc.

The future of this stuff is shaky; can the publishers figure out how to pay for the extras?

2/ On-line free-standing commercial publications running with a business model similar to a print or broadcast publication. i.e. the main purpose is to make money by selling ads that surround the "journalism." Often these have a moral imperative, for lack of a better phrase, that nudges the publisher into this kind of venture. The publisher wants to spread the word about something or other, but wants to make a pound or a euro or a yen or two at the same time. (I did not say "a buck or two" just to get a dig in at the all-Americanism of so much of MediaPro.

Salon and Slate and www.eBizChronicle.com (where I was founding editor) come to mind.

Publications in this category will have a very hard time making money, and we can expect many of them to die, unless the backers have enough money keep them going until there are big changes in the world.

These big changes include some "intellectual" and "cultural" ones, like designing sites to be truly international. If you go over and visit at http://go.compuserve.com/MediaPro and then click around for a while to find MediaPro you'll notice that a great deal of the content in MediaPro that's generated by USA people pretty much ignores the rest of the world, (see the political drivel and the law stuff). You'll also see that a lot of the interesting content here comes from people outside the USA. Once web publications become genuinely international, they'll stand a better chance of surviving. Except for the advertising problem... which is the second big change.

Right now, advertisers, and the on-line sites where they advertise, don't really have a clue about the flow of money, for many reasons. No-one has accurate figures about web traffic; no-one knows whether ads have any impact, the wide variety of shapes and sizes of screens means the creative control of ads is difficult and confusing, and there are more problems, too.

So, can publishers afford to lose money until these things get straightened out, and then once the money starts to trickle in, hold on until all the earlier losses are paid off?

3/ These are special interest or public service or hobby web sites, paid for by the operators out of their own pockets, for various reasons. Whether they count as "journalism" depends on the site, and the definition in the minds of the readers. This publication, BAK's Report, is ad free because I haven't got around to selling any, and is completely financed by me. It's got two purposes; I want to change the PR world (and so far I'm accomplishing some of this, in not terribly high-falutin' ways) and the site acts as a corporate brochure for me.

There are lots of other "educate people" privately-funded sites that appeal to specific segments of the population. Think of these as a kind of trade magazines with no production expenses that really matter. These will die out on a case by case basis when the owners/editors/publishers get tired.

In some ways, MediaPro falls into this category, too. None of the writers there make a buck from this, but a few of us who participate actually write useful stuff to educate each other. And there's a lot of crap, much from a guy in Arizona who keeps alluding to getting the lawyers after me if I quote his words. 

Whether "entertain each other" counts is another question; most magazines and newspapers are more entertainment than anything else, by the way. You could probably find travel web sites like this, put out by people who just love where they live.

4/ And finally there's the on-line version of "advertorial" journalism.

Businesses, or other organizations, run sites that contain material you could count as "journalism" depending on your definition. www.nikonnet.com is an example, where there are articles and photo features supported by the Nikon camera company. Other business sites (and sites of different kinds of organizations) have this same kind of mix of product promotion, company-site info for investors and employees, and then articles and information for specific segments of the general public or some hobby group or business segment.

Because I'm a photographer, other camera ones are the sites I pay attention to. A lighting company, for instance, has article on the site similar to articles you would see in a printed camera magazine. Travel boards and convention bureaus run these kinds of sites, or should, sometimes buying real articles from real journalists.

These sites will continue well into the future, paid for by co-op advertising, promotion budgets, etc.

One factor that will come into play even more in the future of on-line journalism is the mix of boredom and falling out of love that's going to happen to the internet. People are going to get tired of waiting for downloads, and realize that reading on screen is much harder and more annoying that just buying a magazine or newspaper. It's got to do with leaning forward to read a computer and leaning back to raed a magazine. One is comfortable. The other isn't.

(BAK's note: after I wrote this forward/backward stuff, I noticed today in a Forbes web site that Volvo is thinking along the same lines, and running special web-style commercials.)

And they'll get tired of paying too much to be connected. (Andother BAK's note: It was announced today that Excite@home commits suicide at the end of the week, stranding 4,000,000 people who wanted fast cable-based internet service. And in Ontario this week, one local version of Excite@Home, has had huge amounts of trouble trying to get its customers' e-mail address changed to end in @Rogers. People will just throw up their hands in frustration, and go back to the newspaper for information.

And, I finished my message to the student by writing "Your original question requires, of course, entire books worth of input to answer properly."

New on Thursday, October 11 -- just a bit of a rewrite of the headings, but no substantial content additions, except...

What's PR, anyway? (update on October 18: now two IABC members want to know this stuff)

An IABC member asked a question in the International Association of Business Communicators message board. She's looking for a definition of public relations. Here it is.  

The IABC member also wants to know how it differs from marketing. Here's a quick overview of the differences.

The fundamental differences between Public Relations and Marketing

First, please note that anyone can define words however they like, wrong and misguided though they may be. And there are legitimate differences of definition. And the definitions depend in large part on the corporate structure and other aspects of the organization.

That said ...

A Marketing Department is that part of an organization responsible for determining:
- products or services to be developed; 
- the features to be included and promoted; 
- pricing and packaging or the product or service; 
- the list of prospective buyers
- the distribution channels
- the means and methods of promoting the products using what's generally called marketing communications, sales promotion and product )as distinct from corporate) advertising.

Depending on the organization, the Marketing Department may include the sales department, or the sales staff and the marketing staff may report to the same senior executive.

And depending on the organization, the functional subset of Marketing Communications may or may not include a media relations component. Marketing communications is the creation of ads, flyers, sales sheets, trade show booths, etc. 

Marketing departments, as much as many may try to redefine themselves (Everyone's a Marketer!") are devoted to the products and services of an organization, and their success can be reasonably calculated against sales targets.

In contrast, Public Relations Departments have a broader mandate, responsible for the overall corporate reputation rather than the reputation of products and services.

In well run organizations, there is extensive cooperation, and in the best run organizations, actual evidence of the oft-promoted but rarely found concept of synergy.

Confused by the overlap? You are not alone. Back in the days I worked at Northern Telecom (now Nortel networks) I spent a great deal of time within the physical space of the marketing department, coordinating its activities with those of the public relations department. I had final approval on all advertising, for instance, because the ads reflected on the corporate reputation. But marketing owned the baseball and hockey tickets, because they were intended to go to customers and prospects. I still work on special projects with the man who was Northern Telecom's Vice-President of Marketing at the time, and he almost always introduces me as a marketing man, rather than a PR person. It's the same difference to him.

Among the overlap:
- a product introduction (marketing) may affect stock price (investor relations, which may or may not be part of the PR department)
- a new advertising campaign for a product (marketing) becomes an employee motivator (HR or employee communications)
- a plant opening becomes a government relations activity, which is "marketing" if local governments have preferential purchasing programs.

And on and on ...

Good Citizen Jany Schilder gets famous while proving On-Line PR works

Jany Schilder received a special good citizen award, presented to one boy and one girl in each  Grade 1 - 3 class at his school, in recognition of their hard work, kindness and good citizenship within the school. This photo ran in the Bloor West Villager community newspaper. Technical info: Kodak Gold 400 consumer color film, chosen because I happened to have a roll at home, and because it has punchy color, great for shooting portraits in the shade, where there's no sun to add impact. Leica M4-P camera with 50mm Summicron lens, because I own one and some crook stole my Nikons. Shot in open shade, to control glare on the certificate and keep the boy from squinting. Plus it was where I was able to catch up to him on his way back to class. Agfa 1212 SnapScan $100 scanner, because it is good enough for all I need, until I need the quality of the high-end pro units. Machine-made 4x6 print from good minilab, because this is cheap, easy, fast, and good enough for reproduction in newspapers up to about 6x9 inches, using the entire photo with minimal cropping. For bigger reproduction, get a 5x7 or 8x10 / 8x12  print made from your negative, and scan this print. If a pro took the shot, a standard machine-made enlargement from a good mini-lab that does on-site enlargements will be good enough.

Quick and easy on-line  PR example When I got home from the On Line public relations seminar (see below) I picked up the local community weekly paper, The Bloor West Villager, from a stack in our lobby, and leafed through while riding up the elevator. Bingo! There was my photo of my younger son (he uses his mom's last name) with the special school citizenship certificate he received on the last day of grade one. This is a color version. The shot ran in B&W. The production aspects of this shot were simple, and most BAK's Report readers could do this themselves, probably with hardware and software you already have. If not, you might need to invest $250, not a thousand dollars or more. Here's how I did this. 1/ Got an interesting, sharp, clear, normal 4x6 inch machine-made print from a minilab, taken on conventional film with a real 35mm camera. The photo  ran about 4 inches wide, 100 percent of the original print size. No need for a digital camera. Prints can be ready in an hour. 2/ Scanned the photo using a desktop scanner.  I figured the newspaper would run the shot no bigger than two columns, so I measured a copy of the paper with a ruler, and then set the scanner to a "final" or "output" size of four inches, just slightly bigger than the 3.8  inches of two columns. And I set the final resolution at 225 pixels per inch (ppi). Deciding on the 225 is the most confusing part of scanning for the non-pro, and settings between 200 for a newspaper with pretty good quality up to 300 for a typical business trade magazine, is all you need. (For Vanity Fair and Architectural Digest, let the pros do the scanning.) For the Toronto Star, use 200 ppi. I just added 25ppi to 200 ppi to get to 225 and be on the safe side. In this case, the real scan for The Bloor West Villager was done with the scanning software set for greyscale, (black and white with grey tones in between) since the paper only runs color on the front page and the shot is not that interesting. I made a minor imaging editing tone change, but it was very simple and you can do it, too, without being a computer editor. 3/ Save the scan as a jpg file, which will automatically reduce it in file size. (not in picture size in the 2-column wide sense) If you start with a good print, your end result will be publication quality in newspapers, using the software bundled with your scanner. No need for Photoshop. 4/ I re-scanned the photo at the "for the web" setting, which is a 72 ppi,  giving me a much smaller file that looked good on-screen, but would not reproduce well in the paper. 5/ I wrote an e-mail to the editor of the paper, including the web-friendly low resolution picture in the body of the e-mail,  the high (225 pixels per inch) file "attached" to the e-mail, a clear note saying the attachment was production quality. And I wrote the photo caption in the body copy of the e-mail. 6/ Waited to see what was going to run in the paper. He's delighted, of course, and very proud. I tried this project for two reasons. I wanted to test the resolution, the e-mail transfer, etc.,  and I'm really proud of my son for winning the award, so treated him like a client.  PR LESSON? You can do this for every client you have who ever wins an award and lives somewhere there's a community newspaper, or, if the award is significant, the system works perfectly for getting pictures to trade magazines within budget, and on deadline. Remember: You need a clean, sharp, professional quality photo. Do not send crap, washed out colors, photos full of glare, indistinct faces, fuzzy shots. Use a pro photographer.  For cover shots, big reproduction, major projects, you might want to let the pros get more involved in the production, but this works for newspapers and most trade magazines.

Understanding just what public relations is

New on Thursday, April 5, 2001 (really Wednesday night)

28 points about the Journalist / Public Relations relationship
I answer a journalist's question about how to get a PR person to stop blocking an interview with a CEO. And I write about why a PR person might want to prevent an interview. Click here to jump to this essay.