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Reprioritizing PR in Our New Media World These digital zealots are forcing individuals and corporations to behave more responsibly. Interacting with this new breed, we need to remember – and respect – their deep-seated passion and commitment. This is personal publishing like the world has never seen. When the Gutenberg Bible published in 1455 it cost the equivalent of three year’s pay for the average clerk. Think how the barriers of entry keep coming down for self publishing. Access a computer, jump online and you can share your views with the world. For free. Any time. Any day. Anywhere. Operate Your Business Like the World is Watching. No self-respecting PR professional likes the word “spin.” Yet too often clients look to PR only when the proverbial you-know-what has hit the fan. We’re called in to help put the best face on a bad situation. But public relations should be so much more. At its essence it’s about building relationships with your publics. And any relationship worth having is built on trust. Our counsel at Greteman Group has always been to tell clients to be true to who they are, to be faithful to their brands. And when there are problems, fix them. Come straight. Admit mistakes. And communicate how you’re going to do better. Today’s social media provides more reason than ever to make transparency your operational goal. In addition to the watchdog role long held by traditional media, there are new virtual influencers and social networks watching everything you do. No More He Said She Said – It’s All On Tape Meet one of them: Vincent Ferrari. He’s among the 90 million bloggers who are filling the web with a new kind of content. On his blog “insignificant thoughts,” you can find all kinds of random stuff. Political news and opinion. SNL videos. Great, let’s-watch-this-again sports moments. In short, just the random musings of a 31-year-old tech guy. But Ferrari showed the power of blogging when he tried to cancel his AOL service. AOL, famous for giving customers the roundabout, didn’t see it coming. But Ferrari did. He taped the conversation and posted it online. Within days, he was featured in The New York Post, The New York Times and The Today Show, where he reached millions of viewers. His own blog has more than a thousand responses, almost all critical of AOL. The Today Show clip turned up on YouTube, putting even more egg on AOL’s corporate face. Insignificant thoughts: See the Today Show video: As part of its damage control, AOL tried to take a Band-Aid approach by firing the representative who gave Ferrari such fits. Then a disgruntled AOL employee posted the AOL customer-retention training manual online. It revealed that the employee was performing exactly as he was trained. Oops! Yet more egg on AOL. Here’s the training manual: Embrace Change So what can we learn from this? The smart company doesn’t fear bloggers like Ferrari. Instead, embrace them. You want people to seek you out and to write about you. But you had better give them something good to say. That means you need to execute well, offer superlative products or services, and outstanding customer service. You also need to operate in an environment of transparency. If you hide something, someone will find out. When that happens, you could find the entire recounting online. If you’re nonresponsive to customers, for the first time in history, they can now take their case to a jury of their peers. And they can do it within moments and in a global, free medium that operates 24/7.
For a positive, how-to case study we need look no further than Dell. When one of its notebook computers caught on fire – and a video that captured it was posted online – Dell went into hyper mode. And did so all in the public eye. David Frank from Dell Public Affairs helped head up what was then the largest consumer electronics recall in history. Frank, who spoke at the 2007 PRSA International Conference, said on August 15, 2006. just four weeks after the flaming-laptop video hit, Dell announced the recall. (It took that long to identify the issue and to get the battery supplier into hyper production so they’d have product to send to customers.) Dell launched a special website and got 50 million hits, 135,000 phone calls and 140,000 orders for new batteries in the first day. The website’s “Direct 2 Dell” corporate blog (http://www.direct2dell.com) provided almost real-time communication to the news media – which included the mainline press, vertical press and blogosphere. A CNBC reporter came to Dell’s facility in Austin and did live reports throughout the day. Dell also reached out to the NY Times to tell the story. Frank set up a couple of war rooms throughout Dell that did nothing but respond to the crisis for a couple of months. About six Dell employees (out of 85,000 worldwide) were directly involved, Frank said. Dell successfully managed its crisis by dealing with it head on and letting the world see how it was responding. Dell now proactively blogs to keep customers in the loop and to prominently communicate its corporate responsibility information. A senior vice president is one of its main bloggers and the manager of the corporate blog, elevated to near-celebrity status, spends considerable time speaking at conferences and events. Take a Good Look at Your PR Today’s digital environment creates good reasons to reassign the role of PR in a company. Rather than “hire the flack to get some good PR,” build PR into your everyday operations. Good PR starts at the top management level. Now more than ever, doing well begins by doing good.
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