PR Resource

There is nothing so dangerous as crowd action when it comes to investing. If everyone says it is time to get into a financial instrument, be it a mortgage or Bitcoin, it is then one should examine the premise on which the mania is built. Do housing prices always rise? Is Bitcoin guaranteed to appreciate in value? Should one go all-in or diversify to moderate risk? Communications practitioners, especially, are subject to the buzz of new, hot trends. They live in a world of information. They, however, should be the foremost skeptics because they have seen it and fallen into a trap more than once. It is hard to resist the crowd, but one should be ready. The masses aren’t always right and more often than not, they are dead wrong. When it comes to wealth creation, one should ask questions and be independent.

This is the latest panacea gullible citizens have taken up. One wonders how credulous people can be, but then it has always been that way long before medicine men toured towns and villages selling quack remedies. The mystifying part of the craze is that well educated people are engaging in it. It seems their university degrees did not produce critical thinking. They live in a semi-state of paranoia, convinced that nothing society offers is pure enough for their bodies. Thus, they eschew vaccinations, genetically modified foods and other conveniences modern society has developed. As PR practitioners we must acknowledge them, but we shouldn’t be held back by their beliefs. Companies like Monsanto, the producer of GM seeds, live with the protests of activists who say the corporations are poisoning the world. It makes no difference that their organisms have been tested thoroughly and found safe. There is a lack of trust that no amount of persuasion will cure.

While legal marijuana is earning some respect after decades of prosecution, it is also changing the way the plant is grown and harvested. Small producers are being squeezed out and large ones are consolidating the market. There is a wide variety of products offered for sale, more than a small farm can create. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Pot growing was the ultimate small business. One could with a few plants and grow lights make a living. That is no longer true and small producers are being forced to specialize to survive. While legal weed is gaining a positive reputation, fewer producers are successful. It is the iron law of economics.

I’m taking the week between Christmas and New Years off. Happy holidays to everyone.

Chipotle is fighting yet another case of foodborne illness. This time it occurred in one of its Los Angeles restaurants. The firm is in a chronic crisis caused by some kind of failure in its logistics. There should be no way that contaminated products slip through its system, but they are. The chain will need to investigate again what went wrong. Was it restaurant specific or food delivered to the restaurant? If it was restricted to one building, how were edibles being handled? Was there a storage problem, an employee foul-up such as failing to wash one’s hands? If the fresh vegetables were carrying a bacteria, how did it get there? Did it happen in the field, at the time it was being picked, in transportation? Ideally Chipotle will discover a root cause and fix it once and for all time. But, so far that isn’t happening and the chain has had a loss of reputation as a result. There is no worse PR than for a restaurant to poison its customers.

Homeopathic medicine, a quack approach to health, has poor PR. The FDA is now set to start regulating it. The administration pulled no punches with its decision.

“In many cases, people may be placing their trust and money in therapies that may bring little to no benefit in combating serious ailments, or worse—that may cause significant and even irreparable harm because the products are poorly manufactured, or contain active ingredients that aren’t adequately tested or disclosed to patients.” 

Why is it that segments of the public continue to trust so-called therapies that have no basis in scientific fact? There is a lack of logic in many people’s minds. They posit their trust in modern day medicine men who prey on their credulity. They need to be protected from themselves.

In spite of best efforts of authorities, people continue to text and drive. Or, they are reading their e-mail with their heads down. Or, they are yammering on the phone while steering through traffic. Nothing transportation agencies and law enforcement have done has stopped people from using cell phones while in control of a vehicle. There is no doubt it is dangerous. Accident statistics prove that. But, people continue to divide their attention between the road and screen. Authorities are left asking what kind of PR campaign combined with enforcement is necessary to get drivers to stop. There is no easy answer. It’s an issue as stubborn as smoking. It is essential, however, for the message and behavior change to get through. While campaigns till now have failed, they can’t stop. At some point, texting and driving should be as serious a negative as running a red light.

Robert Mueller has been a relentless investigator of Russian meddling in US elections and held in high respect. Now, with one act, the perception has turned to that of a man out of control. This stems from the seizure of thousands of transition team e-mails from the GSA. Such correspondence is not considered part of a government agency and was supposed to be destroyed. Mueller discovered that it was still intact and hauled it in. There now is a worry that any potentially prosecutable offenses might be thrown out due to tainted evidence. Mueller would defend himself by saying he was just doing his job. But, one can over-reach, especially in the law. There is great danger in the power of prosecutors.  They can wreck lives in their zeal and have. Mueller is close to being reckless, as the author of the article says. He has maintained positive PR until now. It would be unfortunate if he loses it through his own actions.

Omarosa Manigault Newman is leaving the Trump administration. Was she fired or did she choose to go voluntarily? The first reports were she was escorted from the building and left shouting in anger. Her version is the opposite. The answer is who knows? This administration is riddled with falsehood and lies. One can’t believe what anyone says. The absence of truth starts at the top and radiates through the staff. There is no effort to stick by facts or to tell the truth. It is a sink of the worst kind of communications and PR. It is a say-anything, do-anything organization without ethics. The executive branch is a moral vacuum. While it might have worked for a short time, the American public has caught on, and Trump’s popularity ratings are the lowest of any president at this point in office.

Some Silicon Valley heavyweights are now admitting that its denizens were starry-eyed optimists when it came to creating and introducing new technology. They saw only the good side of humanity and failed to think about those who would do evil. They were rudely surprised by Russians meddling in US elections, by neo-Nazi declarations, by pornographers, by others who choose to live outside the boundaries of society. One could almost forgive them for their naivete. Technologists from the beginning have only seen the good side of their labors. They had to learn the hard way that humans are flawed and will misuse hardware and software to their own benefit even if it hurts others. They know now and they are working diligently to edit out inflammatory material from their social media. They still aren’t comfortable with their new role, but they recognize the responsibility they have assumed with the success of their systems. It has been a hard-won maturation.