PR Resource

PR can be small and seemingly insignificant things, such as this.  Consistent labeling standards for perishables has been long in coming, and it wasn’t until the big players got involved that it happened.  Walmart is looking after its customers.  Ten label warnings have been reduced to two – “Best if used by” and “Use by.”  One wonders why this wasn’t done before.  An answer is that the food industry saw no compelling reason for standardization.  It took a major player and two food retailing associations to overcome the inertia.  And the change won’t be instantaneous.  Some food producers will hang on to their labeling for awhile until the pressure from retailers becomes too large.  Most consumers will not notice the change.  But, it is a little thing that makes a difference.  Kudos to Walmart and the two associations.

This lament about the state of journalism in a “post-truth” era is deja vu, although the author doesn’t realize it.  Fact-based journalism is relatively modern in its conception and practice.  Before the New York Times much reporting was opinion-based and delved into fantasy.  Partisanship was high and charges against the opposition frequent.  H.L. Mencken proudly related that at the time of the Russo-Japanese war in the Far East, he and a colleague made up a story about a sea battle between the two countries that had Japan winning.  Months later, he learned he was right.  The point is that post-truth journalism is nothing new. The difference now is that virtually anyone can engage in it and that should worry PR practitioners. There is no substitute for rigorous monitoring of social media and news sites of all flavors and persuasion.  One must be ready to move quickly to get the facts out in the face of falsehood.  In the old days, falsehoods traveled short distances, the reach of a newspaper.  Today, they travel the world.  That is worrisome.

Here is a medical PR challenge.  How do you convince doctors that a medical procedure isn’t effective and to stop doing it?  It turns out some physicians and surgeons don’t get the message or reject it because they feel they are being effective.  Thus, you have areas of the country where certain medical procedures are performed more than anywhere else. This drives up the cost of medicine and doesn’t help patients in the long run.  There needs to be a mechanism through which such situations are spotted and remedied.  And, of course, there needs to be in-depth communications with doctors through ongoing training, conferences and medical literature.  Still, some won’t get the message or will ignore it.  It is these who should be open to some form of discipline.

Self-driving cars are on the way but one feature of their computerized systems still doesn’t work.  That is handling road construction.  Lane change signs and traffic cones confuse the systems set up for straight-through driving.  It presents a major marketing and PR challenge for auto manufacturers as well.  How do you sell a feature that works some of the time?  What kind of PR must one do to teach people that construction zones require hands-on driving?  Vehicle manufacturers have a major step to make before they put autonomous systems into cars and trucks.  Somehow they will need to teach their software to guide around barriers or to slow or stop until someone puts a hand to the wheel.  One can imagine the dangers lurking in this hand-off from automatic to gray-cell driving, especially if the human has been distracted.  The manufacturers will find a solution but it might delay the debut of autonomous driving, which would be a pity.

This event was a conflict of interest.  You are not supposed to shill for private business while serving in the White House.  Why Kellyanne Conway did it is a question in itself.  Ivanka Trump’s fashion line has been taking hits as one department store after another has dropped the line.  President Trump weighed in about it with a tweet.  Conway might have felt she was pleasing the boss by making the statement she said.  Conflict of interest was probably nowhere in her thinking at the time.  It should have been. Now, she has upset even the Republicans in Congress, and made the separation between Donald Trump’s businesses and role as President narrower.  Conway should have been fired.  She was counseled instead.  That in itself makes the charge of a conflict of interest between President Trump and his businesses more real.  From a PR perspective, it smells — and not sweetly.

A lie repeated often enough becomes fact.  That is the tactic of the White House administration.  Calling the traditional media “fake news” will convince some of the public that reporters lie regularly and should be discredited. The White House wants the media to report positively on its actions and will attack anyone who doesn’t. Journalists should be on guard for false stories because their reputations are being questioned.  It is the lowest form of relationship with the media — an adversarial set-to that the White House can’t win in the end.  The media will still be here in four or eight years when the Trump White House is history and it will continue to report on falsehoods of the administration.  Eventually, most of the public will come around and view fake news for what it is — a way to sell advertising or to impugn a foe.  Today, there is a credibility issue.  People don’t know what to believe, so they are as apt to accept the White House with its charge of “fake news” as they are to read and believe media reports.  Trump’s people are exploiting that confusion, but it won’t last forever.

The media are blasting the Trump administration for relying on “alternative facts.”  But what makes this any different?  Buzzfeed rushed to publish unconfirmed documents alleging misbehavior on the part of Trump.  Buzzfeed went on to defend its actions but was roundly criticized by members of the traditional media.  Publications of alt-facts from either side don’t make sources accurate or right.  Buzzfeed is now in court over its actions and well it should be.  Some of Trump’s supporters belong there with it for spreading scurrilous and untrue stories about Hillary Clinton.  PR practitioners should be horrified by what journalism has become with traditional sources overwhelmed by social media that brays constantly in the background.  It means our work is harder and vigilance is the order of the day.  One never knows when charges of some kind are going to appear and where.  If Buzzfeed escapes judicial punishment for its behavior, it will only justify the medium in its own mind.  That would be sad.  Fact checking still counts, or should anyway.

84 Lumber, a materials business, ran a spot during the Super Bowl that invited viewers to its online site for the conclusion of the ad.  The site was overwhelmed with a deluge of viewers.  Within one minute of the ad’s appearance, the company received 300,000 hits to its web site, twice the site’s capacity to handle the flow.  Predictably, the site seized and tens of thousands were turned away.  This was a rookie error.  When dealing with online, especially after an ad viewed by millions, one should set up for a surge that is many times the size of one’s normal viewership.  It is a costly mistake to be caught short as 84 Lumber was.  The company will know the next time it tries a multimedia approach like this, but that doesn’t make up for the error this time.

Nordstrom cancelled Ivanka Trump’s fashion brand from its lineup and said it was purely a business decision.  Maybe so, but it also spared the retailing chain from boycotts and agitators opposed to the Trumps.  One is hard put to believe that this thought was not part of the consideration when the decision was made.  There is no rule that says a retailer must carry a brand. Yes, a store can carry merchandise that breaks even or even loses money for the prestige value of having it, but the Trump name doesn’t carry that cachet.  So, Nordstrom avoided potential controversy and embarrassment of handling Ivanka’s designs and it can breathe a sigh of relief that her pieces weren’t selling that well anyway.

IBM is masterful in marketing its artificial intelligence program called Watson.  Now Watson is assisting in completing returns for H&R Block.  Watson has already been put to work on helping doctors identify and treat cancer, sell auto insurance, and assist customers in stores among dozens of applications for its silicon brainpower.  Watson’s initial success was built on its winning Jeopardy several years ago.  It was a brilliant publicity stunt that proved the power of the software.  Since then, IBM’s marketers and engineers have tailored the program for numerous uses.  It helps IBM that Watson is anthropomorphic and named after a previous CEO of the corporation.  The male voice answering questions during the game show seemed real.  It wasn’t hard to visualize a brain working in the background.  It will be interesting to learn how H&R Block’s 70,000 tax preparers use the machine.  It is one more example of great PR for the technology.