PR Resource

Tesla, the electric auto company, has a history of over-promising and under-delivering.  Its excuses are for events the company knew or should have known, such as the difficulty of getting parts.  The question now is how long the public is going to let the company get away with its lack of performance before it abandons the vehicle and goes elsewhere.  Tesla has 300,000 back orders for its newest, $35,000 machine, but if it can’t produce its current model reliably, how is it going to pump out that many vehicles with efficiency?  Tesla is still a bit of a “wannabe” car company.  It wants to join the majors but it doesn’t have the industrial knowledge to make the transition.  By that, I mean making tens of thousands of cars with the fit, finish and promised power of its advertising.  Detroit still has an advantage because it makes millions of vehicles to Tesla’s thousands.  Tesla needs to close the credibility gap quickly, but hasn’t shown progress to date. It is becoming a PR crisis.

Navy Seals are grappling with their image of quiet professionalism in the wake of waves of publicity by present and former members.  It seems anyone and anything with the label Seal can be exploited for profit.  This is upsetting to many members of the Seal community who pride themselves on getting a job done without shouting about it from the rooftops.  Unfortunately, there are few ways that the Navy can control former Seals, but it can harness active members through nondisclosure orders.  The challenge the Navy has is that the public is fascinated by these extraordinary individuals and teams.  They have been tested and trained to the highest level of proficiency and they have derring-do that sends them into seemingly impossible situations time and again.  It is that level of spirit and readiness that the public wants to know more about.  One can understand the threat to the Navy and the Seals when individuals start taking precedence over the team, for coordinated action is at the heart of their success and not the actions of any one member.  Eventually, the rampant publicity will die away but in the meantime, the Navy has to deal with the flack.

Power corrupts when it is not checked.  Absolute power is dangerous to the public as well as the state.  That is why this person’s pursuit of total control is harmful to China.  He has stopped listening to the people and pursued a one-way relationship with the media fawning over his decisions and too frightened to criticize.  This is decidedly unhealthy in a country that was ravaged by the last dictator — Mao Tse Tung.  One wonders how the people have allowed Xi to get away with collecting the reins of absolute power.  There should be demonstrations in the streets protesting it, but there aren’t.  Now that he has total control, the outside world can only watch what he will do with it and hope he doesn’t ruin the country as a result.  The precedence is not hopeful.

The media are having a field day pointing out inaccuracies, lies and distortions coming from the mouth of Donald Trump.  Here is yet another area in which he has bent the truth.  The man is addicted to debt and careful to arrange matters so he isn’t personally on the hook for it if his projects go belly-up.  Call it smart business or ethically challenged but neither shows much hope for tackling the US debt should he win the presidency.  Trump has given business a bad name.  The only saving grace is that he is so outrageous, business leaders oppose him along with most middle of the road citizens.  That he has won at all is the result of anger over the stagnant condition of the country.  People vote for him, dishonest as he is, because they detest real politicians who have been unable to help them.  They are tired of promises and want jobs that move them solidly into the middle class instead of its lower reaches and poverty.  But, there is no real good way to put Americans back to work.  The world is in a slump.  Even the paragon of growth — China — is struggling.  Workers blame trade agreements for their loss of jobs, but they would have lost them anyway as companies moved to parts of the world with lower cost labor.  There is no good answer for the stagnation, so Donald Trump can portray himself as a savior when he clearly isn’t and voters have bought his argument.

Washington DC metro officials have announced that they might have to shut down the subway for a month to make repairs.  Should this happen, it will be a PR crisis of major proportions.  Washingtonians rely on the subway to get them to and from work and play.  It is an artery below clogged streets and creeping traffic.  Forcing tens of thousands of them to rely on buses and driving is nearly untenable.  Why must the subway be shut down in the first place?  Because it hasn’t been maintained over decades.  Deferred maintenance has now reached a level where the system cannot go on like it is.  One can spread blame for this but what good would it do?  The system needs repair or it will fall apart.  The best advice one can give is to stay away from Washington during the shutdown.

There are times when perfection in the business world is not good enough.  Here is a case.  In the dicey world of rocket launches, United Launch Alliance has had 106 perfect missions in a row.  But, that is not enough.  Newer, cheaper rockets are on the scene and they are starting to make headway against the incumbent.  There is only one thing ULA can do — cut costs while not sacrificing safety measures.  That is hard enough, but for the long-term future of the space launch business, it must be done.  The lesson here is that good PR might not be sufficient if consumers have options.  Although one can have a wonderful track record, the consumer might ask for more, and the only option for a company is to up the ante or to get out of that line of work.  It must be stressful for employees who work so hard to do well only to discover that a customer is looking around for something else.  There is a tendency to slack off when one is not appreciated.  In this case, internal relations and leadership are essential to maintaining focus.

One would not expect an aging revolutionary to suddenly change his beliefs, especially when he thinks of enemies.  So that is why Fidel Castro’s reaction to President Obama’s visit to Cuba is as expected — negative.  Castro has spent most of his life bashing America, especially after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.  He is a dedicated communist and convinced of his position.  It must irk him that Cubans who left the country and moved to America have largely done well by comparison to those who stayed behind.  Castro lived on the largesse of Russia for many years until the communist empire fell apart.  He hasn’t had an answer for the economy in decades and his brother moves cautiously lest he upset Fidel and his stalwart supporters.  President Obama’s visit was a thumb in the eye of the old man, and he predictably didn’t like it.  One can only hope that a leader with courage will act to open the country economically to the rest of the world.  Cubans have suffered enough.

An Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian who was lying on the ground incapacitated.  The Israeli government is investigating the incident, but many Israelis feel he was justified.  Whether or not the soldier had the right to do what he did, it is suspect PR and a cause for inflaming already ferocious feelings between the two countries.  And, it won’t stop the killing. This is a case where there is no good PR response to the tensions between the countries.  Israel is slowly taking over Palestinian lands and pushing the people into smaller and smaller spaces.  That is poor PR and guaranteed to create more violence.  Israel is powerful and the Palestinians are weak.  That doesn’t help Israel’s cause.  The image is one of a bully, which Israel does not need.  There are no easy answers.  Each side is stabbing or shooting the other and claiming justification for doing so.  It is a mess destined to last for decades.

The day after the Brussels bombing, the pope washed the feet of Christian, Hindu and Muslim refugees and called them brothers.  The symbolic act is part of a Roman Catholic religious ceremony re-enacting the last Passover supper Jesus celebrated with his disciples.  The pope’s choice of people from multiple religions was unusual and was a potent symbol for his vision of how the world should be getting along.  The contrast between the bombings in which dozens died and dozens more were wounded and a spiritual leader bending to wash the feet of strangers could not be more stark.  This pope is given to actions that promote unity even to the discomfort of some of his fellow believers.  He has broadened the meaning of religious action through his inclusiveness and in so doing, has earned even the plaudits of cynics.  It would be interesting if more world leaders followed his example.

Food waste is a problem in the US.  Billions of pounds of edible products are buried in landfills annually because they had reached their “sale-by” dates although they remain nutritious.  That is why this announcement by Starbucks is important and smart PR.  The company will use refrigerated trucks to pick up unsold food from its stores and redistribute it to the needy.  It is a major commitment to fighting hunger and will provide 50 million meals annually when the program is fully implemented by 2021.  This came about through suggestions by employees who saw a way for good food from being thrown out.  If more corporations did the same thing, hunger in America might be an affliction of the past and landfills would have more space for garbage.  There are other services that pick up food from restaurants such as City Harvest, but the Starbucks commitment is an important step for a retail chain.