The Wax Blog

First of all thanks to the adorable @dlarson15 for suggesting this week’s ‘How to Pitch’. Honestly you can ask me how to pitch any show and if I don’t know, I’ll find out for you. SO ASK!

Local TV is probably one of the most desired media for small businesses. Like so much of PR, local TV works primarily through relationships. Get a reporter or producer interested in you or your business and eventually, something should happen. It’s important to understand the different ways you can get TV coverage. I covered pitching events, your breaking news or getting included as an expert source in the How To Pitch Assignment Editors post. The other ways you can get coverage are through feature stories (sometimes called “packages”) and as guests on the morning shows. (more…)

Did you know that it takes as long to get to Crawford, Nebraska from St. Paul as it does to get to London? If you’ve noticed a brief break in posts, it was because I was paying respects to my late Aunt Dode at her memorial last Friday. I’ll be back at it mid-week, after I’ve recovered from hanging out with my wild Western Nebraska relatives!

Earlier this year I was horrified that brilliant public relations tactics at Toyota were able to cover up the fact they’d known about potentially deadly defects – and lied about them – for years. Now I’m horrified yet again. This time not because I’m watching people who are too good at manipulating the media – this time I’m seeing how traditional corporate communications practices are helping destroy a company’s brand rather than mitigate the damage during this awful disaster. A New York Times article yesterday discussed the satirical twitter feed @bpglobalpr and its impact on the messages being sent regarding the oil spill. So far the feed has 133, 000 plus followers. BP’s real feed has a mere 12,000, showing how clueless they are in terms of the PR 2.o and its impact.

BP is accused of many things in this disaster – lack of urgency, poor testing, circumventing the process, the list goes on.  I’m not sure we’ll ever really know what happened at BP from a corporate standpoint because their communicators seem buried in the Dark Ages of public relations. Stilted press releases, bland twitter feeds and stiff spokespeople reading messaging points are only going to drive BP further down. Come on guys, don’t hire some old fogey from the Bush administration. Go hire Chris Brogan and let him tell the world what’s really going on. It can’t get any worse than these 1950’s messages you keep sending out.

What do you think? Who would you hire to run PR strategy at BP right now? What would you do if you were in charge of their public relations right now?

Assignment editors are key to the success of a broadcast television station – many people consider them the “air traffic controllers” of the newsroom. I think an article that originally ran in the Communicator described it best when they said assignment editors “monitor scanners, manage news crews, make beat checks and generate stories.”  If you have a story that’s timely, or can provide expert commentary on current, or better yet, breaking news, the assignment editor or person working the assignment desk could be your best bet for getting a story.

Assignment editors are notoriously busy, always stressed and never have a minute to spare. Remember, whether or not you get covered depends on a million different factors that day – the importance of other breaking news, how many camera crews the station has, weather, station politics…don’t be discouraged. If you’ve got a good story with strong visuals, you’ve got a chance. And if you’re lucky, it will be a slow news day. (more…)

I got so involved with answering comments on my Toyota post I neglected to write a new post before I took a long weekend. Interestingly enough, that’s the time I’ve gotten the most comments! Thanks to everyone who is reading this blog – please don’t hesitate to ask if you’d like to exchange links or do a guest post. I am grateful and honored by your interest in the Wax blog. Back at it tomorrow…I’m going to dump all my secrets now. I promise!

Bonnie

100 million years ago I worked as an executive at a publicly held tech firm. We knew that in order to bury bad news (ie a poor quarter) we would send the release out at 4 pm on Friday. By the time Monday rolled around there would be two to three more days of news covering ours.   Now more companies have become much more ingenious ways at burying their bad news – rather than addressing it properly. (For more on that, read my post on  “Crisis Communications in a 2.0 World“)

Wondering how they do it? Here are just a few methods I’ve seen. Comment with more examples, please!

1) Flood the Internet with alternative messaging. Piling on the social media releases, blogs and Twitter posts can help bury a negative opinion or story quickly by using SEO. Studies show about 60% of Internet users click on a result in the first page. Keeping that page inundated with positive information – particularly if it appears to come from sources that are not your own – can easily bury negative opinions. I agree with the Online Marketing Blog, though, that using this to address a real crisis is not a long-term fix.

2) Bury it on a holiday. At the end of 2009, a story came out about Goldman Sachs selling mortgaged-based CDO’s to clients and at the same time  selling the securities short themselves. Goldman Sachs supposedly made it quite hard for reporters to reach executives for comment and further blocked the story so that it came out Christmas Eve in the New York Times. Thereafter it’s received little press.

3) Make it impossible to fact-check the article. Although bloggers can write pretty much whatever they want, traditional media still needs to check facts in order to run with a story. Keeping CBS or as in Goldman Sachs “allegedly” keeping the New York Times from verifying aspects of a story can bury it too.

4) Divert the issue.  Although most of the messaging surrounding the Toyota recall focuses on sticky floor mats, the real problem may be the pedal or as Steve Wozniak asserts, it could be a computer glitch. (If you haven’t heard, the Woz ’s Prius gets stuck at 97mph while in cruise control) Although Toyota states there “may” be a problem with the pedal in its latest update, much of what we’ve seen in our media is concerning the floor mats. The Woz asserts its a software problem, not a pedal or mat issue. Since the main issue is sudden acceleration – something we haven’t seen in any of Toyota’s messaging – this is probably a good example of a diversion tactic.

5) Lie. It almost worked for Martha and it definitely worked for OJ.

Bottom line is that the organizations with true investigative journalists are dwindling. TV and print media no longer has the budget to spend months on uncovering stories ala Watergate. Companies have learned the game and crisis communications firms have become much more adept at the spin.  And that could be a very bad thing for us.

Toyota announced a recall of more than 3.8 million vehicles last week and today announced it was halting production on eight models.  Ah, responsible Toyota, right? Think again. This is a great example of how a powerful public relations teams, with the weight of advertising dollars behind them, are able to smother news that the public really needs to know. Toyota’s PR department has been pumping out misinformation on this issue for months now and it makes me ashamed of my profession. In December, the Los Angeles Times reported that Toyota had been covering up these problems way back to 2003.

The issue is that the accelerator on these models can stick. Here’s a bit of background on this stuck accelerator…the problem has been apparent to Toyota since 2007, according to USA Today and other publications. Toyota issued a statement yesterday that said the problem had not resulted in any deaths. Yet tell that to the family of highway patrolman Mark Saylor, killed with his family last August after his accelerator stuck on his loaner Lexus. That story was all over the news, as were four other incidents resulting in deaths. Even yet, in November of 2009 Toyota issued statements that blamed the problem on bad floor mats.

But we really aren’t hearing about that too much until this week when national TV news picked it up- could it be because network news relies so heavily (or did) on car manufacturing advertising? It’s not a stretch. Back in 1993 a Dateline producer rigged a Pinto to explode for a segment. Well, that’s been happening for a long time according to Walter Olson and the National Review. It’s part of the ‘magic of TV’. But with the Pinto, unfortunately GM decided to pull its weight with NBC. The producer was exposed and fired for something the rest of his colleagues had done for years.

I’ve only had to lie like this once for a client.  I felt like crap and I’ll never do it again. Somebody needs to blow the whistle over at Toyota and it should be one of us flacks that does it. I realize that it’s the corporation’s responsibility to be honest, but in this case the messenger should bear a great deal of the blame as well. And that’s usually the public relations department.

Comments? Do you think Toyota covered this up?

Watching the Golden Globes last night and hearing all the references to Haiti made several questions come to  mind. Were they really “sad” to be there chugging champagne and getting awards? Did they really (like director Lee Daniels of Precious) think their work was suddenly ‘unimportant’? Or were most of them spewing talking points from their publicists so they didn’t look selfish in the light of a disaster? (more…)

We’ve had some juicy celebrity crisis’ lately that make writing this post lots of fun. When your company, product or personal brand encounters a crisis it’s important to decide what ‘voice’ you’re going to use.  Choosing the right approach is one of the reasons little-known (but uber-powerful) flacks like Marty Chalmers and Eliot Mintz make the heavy wood.  Let’s take a look at some of the characteristics of voices being used most recently – as well as a few thrown in from the past.

Above It – How can I write this post without addressing Tiger Woods’ current situation? As I write this, he has refused to meet with the police and has posted a note on his website thanking his well- wishers and telling everyone the rumors are all lies and he wants to keep this ‘private’. First of all, not cooperating with the police right away sends the message that the guy has something to hide. Second, he doesn’t tell us what happened. Apparently we aren’t privileged enough to hear the real story. How would we feel if Oprah showed up 50 pounds thinner and refused to tell us how she did it? This voice implies arrogance and an attitude that Tiger’s above it all. Not a good move for America’s favorite sports hero and NEVER a good move if the law is involved. (more…)