PR Resource

McDonald’s has announced that its clown, Ronald, is taking a vacation until the hysteria of evil clown sightings goes away.  The panic this time seems to have started in South Carolina and spread through the country.  It is not the first time this has happened.  The question is why parents and children become so alarmed by clowns.  What is it about pancake makeup, costume and oversized shoes that engender fear?  Perhaps it is the anonymity of the person.  Perhaps, ersatz clowns are trying to scare people.  Whatever the reason, it is interesting and a PR case study of how quickly fear can sweep a nation.  The panic will subside in time but in the meantime real clowns are hurting for business.  They have been swept up in the uncontrollable emotions, and they can only wait until calm reason returns.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.  This saying describes the PR disaster engulfing the Republican Party, which is repudiating its standard bearer for his comments on women.  With less than a month to go, the party has fractured in the worst way and support for Trump is a litmus test for decency or lack of it.  It is a sad situation for the party, but Democrats are thrilled.  They have a chance of gaining both houses of Congress and the White House at the same time.  If so, pent-up legislation will sweep through the Federal government quickly and the President will have a chance of appointing several Supreme Court justices over the next four to eight years.  An era of divided government will come to an end.  Republicans have little time left to consolidate their position without Trump, but they will have years to dig through the wreckage and ask themselves how to prevent such a disaster again.  Meanwhile, Trump will return to his status as a businessman, perhaps no worse off than when he left it.  His reputation will be in tatters, but that may not extend to his dealmaking.

Tiger Woods announced his re-emergence to professional golf then just as quickly withdrew from the first tournament he was to play in 14 months.  He said he realized he was not ready, and he needed time to work on his game.  Woods is 40 and doesn’t have many more competitive years left.  His skills fell apart when his body did.  He has had both knee and back surgeries and it was painfully obvious before he left golf that his magic was gone.  This created a PR problem for fans and the game.  TV viewership declined and no one rose from the ranks to take his place.  The sport has become ever more competitive with golfers trading places at the top, but no one staying for long.  The dominance that Woods had over the golf is gone and might never return.  The sport needs a Palmer, Nicholas or Woods to differentiate itself.  It needs a personality that looms over all and creates excitement on the links.  The game will idle until another one comes along.  It might wait a long time.

Happy Columbus Day or happy Indigenous People’s Day.  This Italian-American holiday is being transformed.  States and cities are voting to commemorate peoples living in the Americas before Columbus.  The argument is that the lands were settled before Europeans arrived and Columbus launched the predatory behavior that decimated aboriginal populations, enslaved them and slaughtered their women and children.  In a meeting between civilizations, there was no melding.  It was conquering with the negatives that implies.  Yet, one can argue that the countries that arose from the ashes of native tribes are greater than what the Incas, Aztecs and other indigenous nation states could have achieved on their own.  The vast number of indians were engaged in subsistence living.  They understood the land and largely lived in harmony with it.  Europeans, on the other hand, brought the belief that man was to subjugate the earth, its living things and its minerals.  Greed was at the core of their experience.  So, whether you celebrate Columbus, native tribes or neither, recognize the points of view toward this controversial holiday.  It is a complex communications mixture for which there is no middle ground.

I will be away tomorrow, Oct. 7 and will not post.

True PR is what a company does and not what it claims without backup.  This then, is an example of true PR.  Blue Origin demonstrated an emergency escape system for its New Shephard rocket and crew capsule, and as an added plus returned the reusable booster to a perfect touchdown.  The company wasn’t expecting the rocket to land safely as it did, and mission control was thrilled when it settled upright on the desert floor.  The entire sequence was recorded and sent to the world for all to see that Blue Origin is a serious player in space flight.  It let the successful test speak for itself.  The rocket with capsule fired, climbed to tens of thousands of feet, the crew cabin separated and floated to earth on parachutes while the booster kept itself upright as it retreated back to land then fired its rockets to stop its descent.  It couldn’t have been better, and it is true PR.

The CEO of Boeing and the CEO of SpaceX have both claimed they will be the first to Mars.  Such chest beating makes for good publicity but it ignores the reality of the situation.  For humans to reach Mars and return safely requires much more than powerful rockets.  The psychological and physical challenges are enormous.  For example, how do you provide air, food and water for astronauts for a full year?  How do you protect them from solar radiation?  How do you select individuals who will live in claustrophobic isolation for a year?  How do you repair machinery should something break?  No one will win an award for getting an individual to Mars unless that individual returns safely to earth.  Hype around a Mars mission has been growing in recent months, and NASA is part of it, but the budgets are not there. The reality is that a Mars mission is decades away, if ever.  There is no particularly good reason for man to travel to Mars. Robotic missions have told us much of what we want to know about the barren and icy planet.  There is a limit to going places because they are there.  Outside of earth, there is no good place to live in the solar system.

A town facing the cost of a $10 million parking structure has decided to use the services of Uber.  At a cost of $167,000 a year, it can pay for subsidized rides for 60 years.  The town of Summit, NJ, has created a clever PR solution for its citizens.  It helps them travel the last mile from home to station and is saving money at the same time.  One wonders why other municipalities have not been as successful in finding creative solutions for transportation.  Granted that this is a test and could fail in the execution, but it is has an undeniable flair.

This opinion piece discusses a “Lehman Moment”  in relation to Deutsche Bank.  A “Lehman Moment” is a time when the entire credit system seizes and participants stop making loans because of uncertain counterparty risks.  It is what happened when Lehman failed in 2008.  It switched the system from trust to panic and was a singular moment when the core principal of banking was exposed — trust.  One has to have a reputation of trustworthiness to participate in global banking. Lehman had it and lost it. Deutsche Bank is teetering and the banks of Europe are fragile.  Trust and reputation are at the core of public relations.  PR seeks to protect both by telling the positive story of institutions and individuals. It isn’t “spin,” although some would call it that.  It seeks to marshal facts that support the claims one makes for oneself.  The best PR is truth presented persuasively to build trust and reputation. There is fact-bending among unscrupulous PR practitioners, but the majority try to do an honest job.  They are regularly challenged by the noise of the marketplace and a public that doesn’t want to hear, but they keep at it because they know what can happen.

Elon Musk is a publicist’s dream with bold announcements and big ideas.  He must be a PR practitioner’s nightmare with his auto company still not making money and with the pending merger with the solar panel company.  Musk’s galactic ambitions threaten to get in the way of his earth-bound duties.  Yes, he has a successful rocket company, but one of his boosters blew up recently on the launching pad, and he is bogged down building a battery factory in Nevada.  Yet, here he is speculating on the way to get to Mars and predicting a Martian population of one million in a hundred years.  He would be far better off if he narrowed his vision and focused on businesses he has started.  He wouldn’t be as exciting, but he would prove to the business community that he is one of them and to the public that he can make and sell mass market products.  Today, he is a juggler keeping multiple balls in the air.  If he slips and lets any one of them fall, his act will be ruined.  That’s high risk, too high it would seem.