PR Resource

What could be worse than to be on the receiving end of a customer Twitter stream in a faltering organization? That is the fate of customer relations representatives who serve the New York City subways and its decrepit system. They are in a no-win situation. The subways are decades past upgrading their signals. Stations are dirty. Ticket machines are on-again-off-again. Delays are constant. Riders feel and are helpless to make things better. So they spew, and representatives try to answer calmly and with empathy. They can’t promise a fix because most likely there isn’t one. They can reply, “We hear you,” but that is empty. Nothing can be done once a complaint is logged. This is the worst position for customer relations to be in — powerless. The transit authority would probably be better off if it didn’t respond at all to riders’ venting, but it is making the effort anyway. Now, if it would only fix the system.

One wonders whether government officials understand transparency. They try to hide intents only to have them discovered through the Freedom of Information Act. That is what happened to EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt. He tried to bamboozle the media by restricting public appearances and orchestrating events for the reason of security. Some 10,000 e-mails disgorged through FOIA show the real reason was to avoid exposure to unfriendly audiences. He has created a PR crisis for himself because he didn’t tell the truth in the first place. It would have been far easier if he had been up front. Yes, he would have had to deal with hostile questions, but his actions have been inimical to the environment. He deserved to get them. Now, he looks dumb and his enemies are using his lack of transparency against him.

With this kind of negative publicity for Bitcoin, how can it survive? Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have been negative about cryptocurrency for a long time. Calling it names is the latest in their barrage of blunt remarks. Despite enthusiasts who defend Bitcoin, the two men have a point. There is no intrinsic value to the computer coin. It is whatever people agree it to be at any given moment. It rises and falls with no apparent reason and no underlying guarantee of worth. Buying and selling rest on the greater fool theory. Speculation is faddish. People get excited and want to try it out. Some make money. Most don’t. Bitcoin might not go away but over time it should recede in public consciousness, especially if it proves to be as bad an investment as it is now. Negative publicity will not stop foolish investors, but it should cause most to pause.

This is an example of what public relations is all about. SpaceX pioneered reusable rocket boosters and cargo carriers, which have cut down the cost of spaceflights dramatically. Each time one returns to earth safely, it is another feather in the company’s cap. This was the “third round-trip flight with a reused Dragon capsule.” The company can confidently say that it is a world leader in multiple use of spacecraft. Since that is the future of the industry, SpaceX can claim legitimately that it is ahead of its competitors and even of NASA. It is not spin if one is doing it. It is public relations.at its best.

Elon Musk is wearing out his stature with investment analysts and the public. He insulted them on an earnings call and generated numerous stories about it. For example, here and here. He has been living a charmed life. Few entrepreneurs have been given the slack that he has to lose billions while pursuing an electric vehicle. There have been solo voices in recent months that questioned why the company’s stock remains so high and now, it appears they are being heard. Musk himself seems to want to remain a visionary. The investment community is understandably concerned that he will have to tap capital markets yet again for a billion or two. Musk is skating on thin ice. One hopes he understands that perception can and has changed, and it is time for him to focus on the car business rather than boring holes in the ground and populating Mars.

Here is what can happen when a firm has bad PR. It can go out of business. Cambridge Analytica acted shabbily by taking profiles of millions of Facebook users and developing specific pitches to sway their votes for Trump. It would have gotten away with it too except that it was caught.  Clients abandoned the company and it was forced out of existence. There will be other Cambridge Analyticas because politics has few ethics.  Winning is everything. Once an effective technique for persuasion has been developed, politicians will use it unless public perception is negative and bad PR catches up with them as it did with CA. Practitioners raised in the campaign mode are more likely to be spinmeisters. They will use tools of persuasion without a sense of right or wrong. As such, they give PR a bad name.

Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator, has promised to shut its nuclear testing site in May. Do you believe him? This is a man who has acted bellicosely for years and is the son of a leader who broke his promises more than he kept them. It is hard to think of another world leader with lower credibility. Yet, South Korea is choosing to believe him for the moment. Each side has been making overtures — the North with the Olympics and the South with K-Pop. It is easy to spin scenarios for Kim’s long-term goals. The man is a cipher. He has acted brutally in getting rid of rivals. He continues to repress his citizens. He continues to enjoy the products of the free world while denying them to his own poverty-stricken country. If he has had a change of heart, it is impossible to know what caused it. He might be trying to lift sanctions. He might be pursuing a long-term goal to reunite the North and the South under his rule. It will be up to the South and Trump to determine whether they can trust him. That will be difficult.

Vancouver, Seattle and Portland have an image problem. The three cities are overrun with homeless men and women who reside on the streets because the weather tends to be mild. The three towns want to project a forward-moving economy, but it is hard when people congregate on sidewalks,in alleyways, under bridges and in parks. Portland has emphasized services to the homeless, but the result has been to attract more of them. Seattle and Vancouver seem to tolerate them, but have no particular solutions to finding them shelter. Part of the challenge is that it isn’t just people with no place to live, but drinking and drug problems and mental derangement that drive them out of doors. The homeless are an achilles heel. No matter how innovative they are, the three cities will always be held back by the appearance of dirty people in filthy clothes lying on sidewalks. It is a reminder that they have not done enough to feed, clothe and shelter all of their citizens.

I’m taking time off from posting until May 1.

The Internal Revenue Service has a PR black eye. Its payment system went down yesterday at the height of tax filing. The IRS said it didn’t know what the problem was but it gave taxpayers an extra day. That was the least it could do. There are systems that have to work 24/7 such as electricity, water and sewer. The tax system is one of those utilities. Government can’t function without a flow of dollars through its bureaucracies, even if some of those greenbacks are the creation of the Federal Reserve. The IRS is working again at this hour, but it is an embarrassment that it glitched in the first place.