Author: Jim Horton

Two Sony executives have apologized for remarks they made in e-mails that hackers exposed to the world.  One wonders if anyone ever told them that what they write in an e-mail is sent to the world and not just another party because one loses control after hitting the send button.  It is E-mail 101.  Never write in an e-mail what you don’t want to see in a headline.  This basic lesson is one that I hammer at students in business communications class.  Yet, people don’t learn or easily forget.  Why?  Because they treat e-mail as a stream of consciousness, a continuation of conversation, that doesn’t require the same attention as a formal letter.  E-mail is a dangerous medium for that reason.  One should treat it as a sharp tool.  Handle with care.

As if the internet didn’t provide enough worry for PR practitioners, here is another.  Online vigilante detectives are reporting incidents faster than the news media, sometimes accurately but just as often inaccurately.  It is almost impossible for a PR practitioner to keep up with them in handling an incident.  For one, PR is bound by facts and not rumor, a constraint the vigilante is not held to.  There is no good remedy for self-proclaimed investigative reporters on the web.  The first step is to monitor them and what they are writing in their Tweets.  The second step is to rebut where possible inaccuracies.  But, that is a slow process, and the online detective can easily outpace those in the middle of a crisis.  One dare not ignore the vigilante.  The news media are paying attention to what he is writing and are reporting what he has discovered.  The vigilante detective is a feeder to the mainstream press. Speed and transparency are essential in modern media relations.  But as fast as a crisis communicator can operate is not fast enough.

The public editor of The New York Times has wise advice for Rolling Stone magazine.  Rolling Stone has had to retract a rape-on-campus story because of poor and incomplete reporting.  It was a heavy blow to the publication’s image.  The Times’ editor is telling Rolling Stone to reveal the entire shoddy episode and how it occurred in a public mea culpa.  That is what the Times’ did in the past as well as the Washington Post.  In other words, Rolling Stone should investigate itself and learn from the incident what not to do in the future.  It should rely on complete reporting and transparency with its readers and ask their forgiveness.  And, as the editor writes, it should be wary of using anonymous sources in the future who can’t be cross-checked for truthfulness.  The Times’ advice is what a PR practitioner would counsel the magazine to take.  It is Journalistic Disaster Response 101, as the editor writes, but it is essential and the best way to regain public confidence.  The question now is whether Rolling Stone is listening.

This is an interesting story about dot-com companies that were born before their time and failed.  Infrastructure and public understanding weren’t in place yet.  Of those two, the most important was consumer appreciation for the benefits that a Pets.com provided.  It wasn’t there.  People still preferred to buy pet food and accessories at stores.  Chalk many of the dot-com busts to public relations.  The start-up companies didn’t know how to relate to their publics and spent wildly, hoping they would figure it out before the crunch.  Of course, they didn’t.  The companies that made it through that period, such as Amazon.com, were careful to gauge what consumers were willing to pay for and have delivered.  Getting ahead of one’s target audience happens often.  One spots a trend and tries to interest the media in it only to be rebuffed.  A year later, it is all a journalist wants to talk about.  This is one of the frustrations of media relations, but a reminder that one dare not leap too far into the future.

Uber, the ride-sharing service, might have a fatal flaw — the drivers themselves.  Consider this case.  It might be a one-time crime perpetrated by a driver, but once is enough in cities where Uber is under attack anyway for taking business away from regulated taxi companies. Secondly, Uber had the perception of being a safer way to travel than regulated taxis.  This incident destroyed that image.  Delhi is just one city among many in which Uber offers its service, but the company can’t afford tragedies like this and the statement from Uber, while conciliatory is not enough.  Proper PR demands that Uber do better driver checks and have the correct permits for its drivers to work.  This might mean that the company has months to get back into the good graces of the Delhi Transport Department — or it can be excluded forever if regulated taxi drivers complain too loudly.  Either way, it should be a warning shot to the company to do a better job.

When does sloppy editing weaken a brand?  When you get mistakes like this and this.  News organizations build their credibility and public relations on accuracy.  They do make errors, but they should be assiduous in correcting them promptly.  The question is how many goofs over the millions of words they deliver yearly.  There is a feeling that errors have risen as news organizations cut back on editing in their efforts to stay solvent.  It seems that way,and if true, news organizations ought to worry.  They will lose even more of their shrinking audiences at a time when they can ill afford it.  The challenge is daunting.  How can one reduce costs while maintaining an historical standard of accurate reporting?  No one appears to have figured that out yet.

It is past time for US debit and credit card issuers to convert to chip and pin technology.   which is the way Europeans pay for purchases.  Why did it take so long?  US issuers thought their cards were secure enough from hackers.  Tens of millions of stolen card information have proven them wrong.  Since PR is what one does and not what one says, card companies are guilty of bad PR for taking so long to protect consumers.  It is not that they didn’t know.  They were well aware of the increased security in the chip and pin process.  They didn’t act because they said it was too expensive to convert hundreds of millions of US cards.  They are doing it now, no matter the expense.  Information thefts at Target, The Home Depot, Michael’s and other stores were disastrous. They needn’t have happened if credit and debit information had been better secured.  Inertia is a poor PR and business strategy.

No one knows yet whether North Korea launched a cyber attack on Sony Pictures and gutted its infrastructure.  However, there are strong suspicions that the country had a hand in the act.  It had declared Sony’s pending release of a comedy portraying the attempted assassination of North Korea’s leader was an act of war against the country.  North Korea is a state that practices habitual evil.  What seems normal to it is shunned in other countries.  Its public relations is built on fear.  Its citizens never know when the knock on the door will come and they are dragged away to one of the country’s gulags.  One wonders how long a state can exist like this, and the answer is a long time, as long as the army continues to back the “Dear Leader.”  However, should the head of state lose control of the military forces, he will be cashiered and another will take his place for better or worse.  The system is rotten, but not yet ready to fall.  One wishes for the citizens of North Korea a day of freedom, a time of democracy while knowing it is a dream deferred for yet another generation.

Most tech entrepreneurs want to build “buzz” for their products and services.  It sparks marketing and sales and investment.  But, this woman has been different.  She has kept her head down and worked on her product out of the limelight for years, and she prefers it that way.  It helps that her product is revolutionary and can change medicine as we know it.  However, it is unusual for someone in Silicon Valley to remain silent.  She is apparently stepping away from her monastic vow with recent interviews, but not too far.  To someone in PR, it is difficult to understand why anyone would reject favorable publicity.  Perhaps she didn’t want the pressure to perform while developing her product.  Perhaps, she has no use for the media.  Perhaps she feared competitors seizing her idea and running with it.  Whatever the reason, she has refused to talk until now, so she is largely unknown by comparison to other Silicon Valley billionaires.  She has been the despair of publicists.

The Federal Aviation Commission has set a huge PR task for itself in its announcement that it would educate the public about the use of drones.  Most drones are the size of model airplanes.  The difference is that they can hover and move in ways a model airplane can’t.  The FAA is likely to face huge resistance from drone users who see the utility of the aircraft and are not afraid of the risks.  Drone use has mushroomed and projected use, including aerial delivery, are making the craft part of everyday living.  It will be hard for the FAA to regulate them, since they can be used anywhere anytime.  That is what commercial users of drones are hoping for.  They can loft the aircraft, perform a mission and be gone before anyone knows.  The FAA is correct that there needs to be some kind of drone rules. Otherwise the sky will become a freeway of aircraft crashing into one another.  However, the FAA has cast itself as the heavy in regulation, so it might need to proceed with a gentle hand.