PR Resource

Amazon is showing off its marketing strength with Prime Day. Judging by the results, the company has formidable power. Few other retailers could pull off the success that Amazon had. Right now, it stands alone in retail for its ability to create a shopping day that millions take advantage of. It is Christmas in July, Black Friday four months early. Amazon and its vendors raked in $2.5 to $2.9 billion. That is a lot of Echo dots (the best selling product). In addition, Amazon induced millions more to sign up as Prime customers. Conventional and online retailers must be quaking in their shoes with Amazon’s success. What does it mean for them? The answer to that question can’t be good for most of them. They can join in with their own sales on Prime Day, but that is hardly going to help if they are not on Amazon. They can attempt to create their own Prime Day, but most don’t have the marketing power to do it. They can watch their sales erode in July, but that is defeatist. Eventually they will have to respond in some fashion.

Amazon made national news when one of its Echo devices supposedly called 911 during a domestic argument. The company rushed to correct the record. It explained that Echo was not set up for dialing the emergency number despite what local law enforcement said. Kudos to Amazon for getting out front of a story that reverberated around the country. The company rightly understood that if people got the wrong idea about Echo, they might try to use it during a real emergency only to learn that it doesn’t work that way. Correcting the record is something nearly all companies do at one time or another. It is part of transparency. Companies that fail to do so set themselves up for trouble down the road. Letting falsehoods linger only makes matters worse.

The Iraqis have retaken Mosul from ISIS. The town is a wreck. Its citizens are either in resettlement camps or picking through ruins for anything to eat. It is already well understood that the military victory will be hollow unless the town is rebuilt and its citizens resettled within. Public relations is a bulldozer and backhoe. It will take years to clear away the debris and rebuild, but the Iraqi government doesn’t have that kind of time. Sectarian tensions have not gone away and the potential for renewed clashes between Sunnis and Shiites is large. Mosul might never recover if the two religious groups cannot work together. What is needed is a unified focus on rebuilding. Failing that, ISIS could make a comeback in the town by promising to run its utilities and provide governance, as brutal as it is. The US can help the rebuilding effort but it cannot do it alone. The future of the city and its people is unclear at best.

Nothing is worse from a publicity perspective than a negative story that keeps expanding drip by drip. Just when one thinks he has gotten ahead of the news curve, another story appears that adds new, damning facts and reignites the media. This is the position that the President is in with the claims of Russian meddling with the elections. His son has now admitted to meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign. Trump is now faced with distancing himself from his own flesh and blood, and his spokesperson has already stated that he didn’t know what his son was doing. Critics, and there are many of them, won’t be satisfied. There will be a new round of “What did Trump know and when did he know it?”  The closer it gets to the oval office, the more damning it will be. It is too early to say that we’re in a Nixon scenario, but Trump needs to be careful going forward.

The fashion world has a secret. It often pays for the trips and hospitality shown to editors who attend runway shows in exotic locales. The US Federal Trade Commission wants the practice to be disclosed, and it has sent letters to major brands to gain compliance. It seems that neither editors nor fashion houses are eager to see the practice in print. The New York Times checked a number of publications as it reported this story, and it found minimal compliance. Fashion is not the only industry where reporters get freebies. Travel has historically paid for “Fam” trips for editors and reporters to familiarize themselves with exotic locales. Medical PR has quietly supported conferences and medical spokespersons for diseases and their pharmaceutical cures. If one industry discloses by regulation, why not all? The news industry places great value on independence. It should be willing to tell its public that it is accepting gratuities from the subjects of coverage and the reason why. Declining budgets for editorial.

Wolfram, the software company that makes the powerful equation solver, Mathematica, has a potential PR crisis on its hands. The company has an AI-enabled web site called Alpha. The site solves mathematical problems step by step. Students have been using the site to do their homework. Because they are copying symbol for symbol onto their sheets, there is no way for teachers to know whether they solved problems for themselves or through Alpha. Academics are crying foul. Wolfram is responding that it is a scholarly tool to show students exactly how problems are solved. There is a stand-off between the two sides. Wolfram is looking to the future when computers all will be smart enough to solve equations. Academics are looking at the present and wondering if they are turning out smart students or cheaters. There is no good answer to the locked heads. They are both right. Eventually one view will predominate and the two sides will adjust. Meanwhile, it is a case in which two goods are in conflict.

North Korea knows how to be belligerent. Its diplomatic relations is “in your face.” The government there already has South Korea and the US in a press from which there are few good options for escape. Negotiations don’t work. Sanctions have failed. The Chinese are not helping. Military activity threatens an all-out war on the peninsula, which would be good for no one. The North now has an ICBM and is almost capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to Alaska.  At its rate of progress, it will soon be able to reach cities on the West Coast. What the North apparently wants is for the US to abandon South Korea and leave it to its fate. This the US has sworn it will not do. There appears to be no good way to foster relations between the North and the rest of the world. Its leadership has isolated itself from outside influence and it glories in being a rogue state. There are times when persuasion fails, and this is one.

How does one respond to a tasteless bully? Maybe this is enough. I’ve written here recently that President Trump ought to be barred from using Twitter, and his most recent tweets prove the case. He has divided his own party with his motormouth and his stooping to the lowest of insults. It doesn’t pay to get into a shouting contest with him. He is the President after all and he has a large pulpit from which to speak. On the other hand, silence might mean acquiescence. Perhaps the best response might be an expression of sorrow about his behavior and for the country. Here is the hope that after four years of his tart tongue we get a President who is civil in tone. We need it.

Sometimes it is best to remain quiet and go about one’s business. Here is a case in which a company could have spoken out but decided against it. Lyft has been given a valuable opening with the troubles that have beset Uber. The company could mock Uber and openly invite Uber’s drivers to defect, but it hasn’t. The CEO has decided to remain out of the fray and to continue to pursue his business. It is refreshing that a company can act this way and it is better PR in every respect. There is no need to taunt competitors when they fail. Rather, one should consider that it could be my company next. Lyft has a dedication to values and ethics that Uber missed in its rapacious effort to grow. It might be that Uber now fades away, and Lyft will be the benefactor. If so, the company won’t be seen kicking the carcass of a dead company.

If you go after a President or one of his people, you need to be cleaner than clean. Otherwise, you are out. The media might tolerate mistakes when they involve a CEO, but not the leader of the United States. CNN has no love for Trump and probably would like to see him impeached, but it can’t be caught publishing “fake news” about the President, his cabinet or his advisers. So, it took the resignations of three of its journalists. PR practitioners might wish that to happen more often, but most errors in the media are not as prominent on the national scene. Still, there are reporters who raise hackles when they call and put companies on edge. They don’t go away or get any easier to deal with over time. One must deal with them and correct their errors. Call them the media relations practitioner’s guarantee of employment.