PR Resource

This article on the Harvard Business Review web site is something PR practitioners have said all along. Public relations is what you do and not what you say about yourself. Good PR might not have a media component at all. There is less need to defend oneself publicly if one is doing the right things for employees, customers and investors. The challenge is structuring and implementing an organization that achieves the purpose it is proclaiming. Intents go off the rails over time. Business gets in the way.The profit motive supersedes a desire to do good. CEOs gauge themselves against share price rather than customer and employee satisfaction. It is a normal course of events but one that distorts the published goals and mission of a company. PR in its best implementation should be a constant reminder of what an organization wishes to be and of its progress in achieving that.

There are code words to denigrate individuals and groups. One is the word “monkey” applied to African-Americans. That is why this statement from a white political candidate about his black opponent was objectionable. If he used the phrase without thought, it was serious enough. If he used it deliberately, he is a racist. The word isn’t common as a verb, so it is not a situation in which he used slang from everyday speech. His communications people must have winced when he used it. If they didn’t, they are as insensitive as the candidate who claimed he was taken out of context. Any way one looks at it, the candidate lost votes with one word. He deserves it.

You have a PR problem when the White House comes after you. Just ask Google. Trump accuses the company of biasing the news in its search engine. Google has responded and denied that its algorithms are bent. Given the credibility of the current occupant of the White House, one would side with Google. That, however, doesn’t change the seriousness of the allegation. Google’s search engine and business is under pressure from all sides. The company has upset its own employees by deciding to work with China’s censors in developing and offering a search engine there. The EU has come after the company for monopoly power. Because it is big, it is a target. The company needs continued good PR and strong lobbyists. Chances are it will work through the latest accusations without having to change, but it means more work on top of all that it is doing already.

It is little things that define character in a person. This story highlights the sense of selfless duty that Senator John McCain brought to the office.  McCain had cajoled airlines for years to get a direct flight from Washington DC to Phoenix AZ. When airlines finally followed his wishes, critics charged that McCain only wanted a direct flight home. When McCain heard this, he decided  he would not use the direct flight lest he be accused of self-interest. Instead, he continued to book connecting flights back to Phoenix for years. It is that sense of duty that is missing in many Senators and Congressmen. They are in the political game for self-gain and the process is all about me. A perfect example of that is this reaction to his death announcement. No wonder citizens are cynical about behavior in Washington.

A Tesla semi truck is making its way across country alone without escorts or backup chargers. This is welcome news for the company, which has been receiving blows lately, especially for its ill-starred production of the Model 3 sedan. Elon Musk has been on the edge of losing control. He has been doing too much for too long, starting companies and attempting to run them while perfecting a highly complex manufacturing process.  Bad news has come in spates, and he is in debt in the billions. Tesla is upright but it is on the thinnest of ice. Any more bad news and it can plunge into bankruptcy. Musk is well aware of his position, and he is in dire want of good news. The journey of the semi might be what he needs to fight another day.

As PR practitioners we depend on newswires such as PR Newswire and Business Wire to be secure. To learn they were not and hackers walked away with at least $100 million through front running press release information is shocking. But apparently that is the case, as this story reports.  It means releases held until after the market closed or before the market opened were being read and acted upon minutes to hours before investors could react. It is not that the newswires were unaware or negligent. They were busily plugging security holes, but they could not keep up with hackers. The Securities and Exchange Commission is well aware of the problem, but the SEC also was compromised. It seems there is no good way to stop intrusions, especially since they come from outside the US. This might mean practitioners need to revamp the way they handle news releases, such as sending them with instructions for immediate publishing to cut down on the time hackers have to react to them. It also might mean practitioners need to find other ways of information dissemination that are less vulnerable. Newswires owe it to their subscribers to tell them what they are doing to enhance security.

Lowe’s, the home improvement retailer, isn’t doing well these days, but it is engaged in some smart PR. It is testing an exoskeleton with its employees. These devices support the back and legs while one is picking up and moving things. The type the retailer is testing comes from Virginia Tech, and it is not elaborate. It consists of carbon fiber rods that bend when one stoops to pick up something then snap back into place as the person straightens up. Lowe’s is well aware that employees are paying attention to its test. Many combat sore backs and legs as they spend 90% of their time in the store bending, grabbing and lifting. Should the company decide to provide these exoskeletons to everyone, it will become a recruiting tool for the company. The message is “Why work for the competition when we watch out for you and your health.”

Who would think that culture change would affect something as ubiquitous and lowly as the straw? Yet, that is what is happening. The plastic straw is disappearing and the paper straw is making a comeback. The reason? To reduce the amount of trash in the world and plastic pollution.  It is a little move yet significant since billions of straws are made and used each year. They are finding their way to landfills and oceans where gyres of plastic cover thousands of square miles. Banning plastic straws is a first step. Next should be plastic food boxes used by restaurants for take-out meals and leftovers. We are going back to the future, and that is good. It is also smart PR.

Few things turn off the public more quickly than a fake. It’s bad PR to attempt to deceive consumers. That is why this is so wrong. Huawei clearly didn’t trust the images from its own mobile phone camera for use in advertising. So it faked an image using a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera to take the picture. The company should have known that it wouldn’t get away with the switch. It became news in the tech community as soon as the secret leaked. Huawei looks bad and the company deserves it. Maybe next time it will trust its own technology.

T-Mobile is running an old-fashioned PR campaign to gain support for its proposed merger with Sprint. It is writing pleas to smaller competitors to pen letters and op-eds. The company is offering to supply talking points to help the process along. One wonders in an age of e-mail and internet whether such techniques still work. We’re about to find out. The Federal Communications Commission is collecting comments and will rule on the combination in the weeks to come. The argument against the merger has been too much power in the hands of the top three mobile vendors if T-Mobile and Sprint combine. The counter has been that the merged companies can roll out 5G networks more quickly. A question to ask is if the FCC will discount letters of support in light of the PR campaign.