When should a charity refuse a donation?

One of my students in this fall’s PR Major tweeted me last week with a suggestion for a blog topic.

Her link led me to Lindor Reynolds’ column in last Wednesday’s Winnipeg Free Press, “Hooters, cancer drive a bad business combo.”

In a nutshell (this is my summary, but click the link for the full story), Reynolds feels the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation shouldn’t accept donations from Hooters, and that doing so will turn supporters against it.

Monique Levesque-Pharoah, Development Officer for the CBCF’s Prairies/NWT Region and a friend of mine, clarified a number of points in Reynolds’ story for me. For example, while Reynolds' column suggests the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation approached Hooters looking to “team up,” in reality, Levesque-Pharoah says Hooters simply entered a team in the upcoming CIBC Run for the Cure, which benefits CBCF. The Hooters fundraising activities Reynolds discusses in her column are in support of the Hooters Run for the Cure team.

At any rate, regardless of how casual CBCF's involvement with Hooters actually is, this post is about Pamela’s question, and whether accepting a donation from Hooters (even if it’s just money raised by their team in the CIBC Run for the Cure) is “bad business” for CBCF.

My opinion

I dislike Hooters. I agree with Reynolds that Hooters encourages the objectification of women, and that that objectification does a disservice to women in general, not only breast cancer survivors and patients.  I hear Hooters serves excellent chicken wings, but I won’t eat there – it’s my personal choice.

I am also fortunate enough not to have suffered from or lost anyone close to me to breast cancer (yet). But that doesn’t stop me from being terrified of the disease, or appreciating any fundraising done to support the fight against it and all other fatal illnesses. I've been lucky, but millions of others haven't. And every penny counts.

Do I personally like Hooters? No. But if Hooters is going to be in business anyway, am I just as happy for some of its energies and resources to be spent fighting a disease that kills people every day? I don’t even have to think about it: of course.

But that’s just my opinion.

Whose opinion matters?

Lindor Reynolds predicts that “many” CBCF donors will feel “ill will” toward CBCF as a result of the Hooters donation. While some may find it distasteful that an organization that promotes such positive things for women accepts money from Hooters, I hope many would feel the way I do: we may not like Hooters, but we’ll take the money to fight breast cancer, thank you. I assume this is how CBCF predicted its donors would feel, too.

OK, this is still my opinion. Time will tell who's right, I suppose.

Know your audiences

In fundraising, like in all other areas of PR, there's always the chance someone will be unhappy with what you do. Sometimes that person will be a columnist whose opinion gets wide distribution, sometimes not. 

What matters most is how your audiences will see the issue.

Reynolds’ column accurately points out that fundraising professionals “walk a tightrope without a net.”  

In everything they do, they have to be creative enough to break through the noise of all the competing messages out there, and persuade us to give our donation money to their cause. 

While we don't think of charities being "in competition" with one another, in a way, they are. We only have so much money to give, and there are endless worthy causes. So the question of where "the line" between aggressive and offensive lies is important: they need to raise as much money as they can, but without doing anything that could risk donor support in the long term.

And it isn't just about whose donations to accept: everything charities do goes under the donor microscope. Is this the right celebrity spokesperson? Can we be sure he/she won't be involved in some embarrassing scandal next month? Is this marketing campaign too edgy? Will we draw the wrong kind of attention? These questions are discussed and debated in non-profits every day, as they try to find a way to capture our attention, and be compelling, and do the best fundraising job they can, without offending badly enough to lose our donation. 

To do that well, they need to know their audiences: both what makes them tick and what ticks them off.

I hope Lindor Reynolds is wrong, and that most current and potential CBCF donors see the organization’s efforts to raise money for what they are: an aggressive fight against an even more aggressive disease.

And that they open their wallets.

If you would like to make a donation to the CBCF, please click here.

Arizona state senator learns: no such thing as a small potatoes interview

A YouTube video of high school student Keith Wagner's recent interview with Arizona state senator John Huppenthal about cuts to education funding reveals a politician who likely believed a student journalist interview to be low-stakes, not worthy of much preparation.

I'll bet he sees it differently now.



The three versions of this video I found on YouTube (one longer, one shorter) have attracted, so far, more than 281,600 views -- far more than Huppenthal likely expected to be reached by the student's assignment.

Before the Internet, politicians (and other public spokespeople) did interviews with large media outlets and small ones, each of which had a relatively defined audience.

An interview with a reporter from a small-town newspaper would normally only ever reach an audience in that small town -- or maybe a few bored out-of-town visitors. And an interview with a high school student might even be seen less as a serious interview than as a community relations gesture.

In a classic 1990s episode of Seinfeld, Jerry learned the hard way that, even before the Internet, an interview with a relatively small media outlet didn't necessarily mean the story would be confined to its audience, if the news was interesting enough. And now that we have all the tools of Web 2.0, interesting stories are that much easier to share.

This summer vacation, Sen. Huppenthal might consider catching up on his Peachtree TV viewing, familiarizing himself with YouTube, and getting some media training.

"Media training? Nah, I'll just wing it."

As most PR people, most broadcast journalists, and all our students in Creative Communications know, it takes hard work to look natural in front of a camera (for most people, at least).

On camera, every little tic appears exaggerated. Every hesitation or stumble seems amplified. A frustrated or embarrassed facial expression can overtake any message you're imparting verbally.

And yet... PR people debate with their clients and executives every day, in offices around the world, about the need to practice before going on camera for a media interview. Executives tend to be confident people; but even the greatest of confidence isn't a substitute for some basic techniques that can help you come across well on camera.

"I'll just go on and be myself."

Here is an example of a fellow who may well have felt he could just go on camera, be himself, and win over FOX News viewers. I'd be willing to bet that Jon Christensen, founder of slashgamer.com, uses services like Skype to have videoconference-style conversations online all the time -- and figured that doing an on-camera interview would feel much the same. (His interview begins around the 0:48 mark.)



If that was the case, I'd also be willing to bet he feels differently now.

Practice makes... better

Being on camera can be terrifying the first time. Even if you feel confident, and you know your material like the back of your hand, something can happen when that light goes on that can strike you dumb on the spot.

Professional media training, delivered by a media relations expert, can help. It helps you understand the media's needs so you can better-prepare your messages, making them more likely to be used; it can also help you get more comfortable -- and be more effective -- delivering those messages on camera.

But even if there isn't time to bring in expert training, practice makes better. Have a colleague do mock interviews with you, so you can practice your responses. If you can, use a video camera or even the webcam built into your computer to look at your own body language, so you can identify anything you need to change before you -- and, potentially, millions of others -- see it on the news.



Thanks Dustin for the tip!

A head-scratcher

I followed a Twitter link this evening to the Ragan Communications website, where I found what Ragan billed as "The Worst Example of Media Relations EVER."

While I don't know that to be true, the report, which the Ragan site says was filed in 2002 by reporter Elliot Davis for KTVI television in St. Louis, Missouri, certainly raises a few questions.



1) Could a "County Executive" really think this tactic would produce a positive story?

2) Could a reporter really get an interview like this one and then play it straight? Neither the reporter nor his colleague in the studio makes any comment on the... let's say... unusual nature of the County Executive's response.

3) Does this interview remind anyone other than me of Stephen Colbert's "Better Know a District" bits (except this time, it's the interviewer getting punked)?

I've never had reason to doubt anything I've seen or read on a Ragan site before. But this? I just can't imagine it's real. Let me know what you think!

Exclusive!

Wendy's founder Dave Thomas
(photo: Wendy's International)




Earlier this week, Wendy’s International and its PR firm, Ketchum Inc., reportedly gave The Wall Street Journal (“WSJ”) “the exclusive” on the fast-food chain’s new marketing campaign.

The WSJ’s story with all the details appeared on Thursday, a day ahead of Wendy’s official campaign launch on Friday; as PR Daily pointed out, however, The New York Times (“NYT”) was on to the story on Wednesday, but was unable to get Wendy’s to comment. In its “Media Decoder” blog Wednesday evening, the NYT outed the campaign and the PR launch strategy:

"Wendy’s declined to discuss the campaign because executives at the company and at the Ketchum unit of the Omnicom Group, the outside public relations agency for Wendy’s, arranged to give the story exclusively in advance to The Wall Street Journal."

There are many reasons for which an organization might choose to give one particular media outlet an “exclusive” on a story.

Granting an exclusive can be a way of attempting to ensure either a minimum amount of coverage, or early coverage from a certain perspective: for example, you might choose to give a particular story to a certain reporter or media outlet ahead of all others, because you anticipate the resulting coverage could reflect well on your organization, and you want coverage that follows it to reflect the same positive image. Or, you might give a reporter an exclusive story as a relationship builder. Other times, it might be because the journalist or outlet was on to the story anyway, and agreed to hold off on reporting it until the organization was ready, in exchange for the assurance they could break the story.

Granting exclusives can have a number of advantages for the PR pro – but it has to be done carefully. While the media outlet receiving the exclusive will likely view the transaction positively, not everyone else will; so the PR pro must weigh the short-term value of giving the story to one media outlet against the potential for burned bridges or soured relationships with others.

If you Google “Wendy’s real campaign,” you’ll find the WSJ story, the NYT’s Media Decoder blog entry, and a number of stories in smaller market publications – the story never appears to have made it into any of the other top US newspapers post-announcement.

Did Wendy’s burn its chances of coverage in USA Today, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and others by giving the exclusive to the WSJ? It’s possible, given that one of the NYT’s reporters must have been interested enough to call Wendy’s on Wednesday, looking for the story.

Or maybe, on the other hand, Wendy’s and Ketchum correctly predicted the story wouldn’t attract much ink at the level of the major papers, so threw in the appeal of an exclusive to get the WSJ to bite. It’s tough to say.

Related notes:

If you’re interested in seeing Wendy’s new commercials, you can see one here, on the company’s website. And for an interesting look behind-the-scenes at a major company’s branding and marketing strategy, check out Brandweek’s “Why ‘Freshness’ is Wendy’s New Marketing Ingredient.”

There is no such thing as “off the record”

President Obama has provided us with another “teachable moment.”

Just before an interview with CNBC yesterday, the President was chatting informally with the various broadcasters, technicians, PR people and other assorted handlers on set, and was asked his thoughts on Kanye West’s stunt during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards.

Said the President, “I thought that was really inappropriate… The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person, she’s getting her award… what’s HE doing up there? He’s a jackass.”



Immediately following the jackass comment, Obama jokes “where’s the pool?” referring to the pool microphones (assumedly the very microphones which recorded the clip now playing on TMZ), and then asks the assembled group to “cut the President some slack” – in other words, “this is off the record, don’t share it.”

The whole exchange is very casual, and while I'm sure he'd have preferred the recording not get out, I highly doubt the President will suffer much PR damage as a result of its release. (Frankly, I suspect a large majority of American voters agrees with him.) While not all that "presidential" sounding, the statement didn't betray any national secrets.

Some seasoned PR people have relationships developed with certain journalists over time, which give them the confidence they can provide information off-the-record and have it kept that way; they have to accept, though, that they are taking a risk every time they do it. While this example involves an off-hand remark as opposed to strategically leaked information, the lesson is the same: the only way you can guarantee you won’t be quoted saying something is not to say it.

Sometimes, though, PR professionals feel their clients would be well-served if certain information was made public, even though it might not be politically or otherwise expedient for them to release it under their own (or their client's) name. In those cases, and if they feel they have a strong enough relationship with a journalist that they can be fairly certain their anonymity will be protected, they'll elect to provide information off-the-record.

Off-the-record agreements, when they must happen, should be negotiated in advance; the PR professional should ask for the journalist’s assurance of confidentiality before providing the sensitive information. It isn’t fair to a journalist to provide tantalizing information without their having agreed to keep it anonymous, and then expect them to do so. Their job is to report on what they find; you can't give them something and then half take it back. (Also, in that case, they have no obligation whatsoever to keep it confidential; so if you want to risk going off-the-record, make sure to get the journalist's agreement first.)

Obama's comment wasn't included in the CNBC interview, but it was published on Twitter by ABC’s Terry Moran, according to a story on politico.com last night. While Moran’s tweet was taken down soon after having been posted, the fact that Moran has more than a million followers on Twitter allowed it to reach many eyes before it was taken down.

POLITICO’s story provides an explanation and apology from ABC as follows:

In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again.

So. If you don’t want to be quoted saying something, don’t say it.

On the topic of good PR, toward the end of the recording you can hear someone in the background joking about having a fly queued up for release at a certain point in the interview (a reference to an earlier unscripted Obama moment that earned lots of mostly positive attention, which I blogged about here) – and asking whether he has his chopsticks ready.



Wax on, wax off.

How not to not answer a question

Over the last day or so, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have taken some heat over their response to reports they’re in talks with controversial NFL player Adam “Pacman” Jones. [Update Wednesday evening: the Bombers have reportedly decided against bringing Jones on board.]



The fact is, sometimes you can't confirm something for the media (even if it's true). It could be because the information is protected by privacy legislation, or because it's competitively sensitive, or because it's material to a company's stock price, or because there's a contractual agreement not to talk... there are a number of reasons. And the media generally understand that, if it's put to them that way in good faith: "I can't talk about that because..." It doesn't mean they'll stop asking (after all, that's their job), but they'll generally get it.

In this case, though, we have one official essentially saying "we can't talk about it, even hypothetically, because of CFL policy," followed by another who immediately engages the reporters’ questions and then tries to cover himself by saying he wasn’t talking about any player in particular.

In media interviews, there aren’t any “loopholes.” Perception is reality, and trying to be too clever can backfire on you.

There are times when you can talk about an issue in general terms, to give reporters enough information to write a balanced story without breaking any non-disclosure agreements. For example, if a company was accused of mishandling a customer's account and that particular case couldn't be publicly discussed, a spokesperson could help media paint a balanced picture by discussing, in general terms, what the company's policies are with respect to customer accounts. The discussion couldn't touch on the current allegations against the company, but it could help provide some background information. "While we can't discuss this case, this is how we generally handle things" can be far more constructive, from a PR perspective, than "no comment;" and it helps with your relationships with the media, too.

That isn't always possible, though, when your situation doesn't lend itself to discussion in generalities. In the Pacman Jones story, the reporters want to know whether or not the Bombers are negotiating with him. Period.

If there’s a legitimate reason you can’t comment, you can’t comment – fair enough. Don’t, and explain why. But you can't tease media with the whiff of a response, and then refuse legitimate follow-up questions on the basis that you’re not commenting – and maintain your credibility in the briefing room.

Gene Simmons' uncharacteristic bungle

KISS legend Gene Simmons is – and has for decades been – a master of publicity. If you haven’t seen evidence of it yet, just watch a single episode of his A&E series, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, and you will.

Which is why today’s Canadian Press story, “Kiss frontman Gene Simmons blaming media for spoiling Oshawa surprise,” surprised me.

As the CP story reports, KISS invited fans earlier this year to go to its website and vote for their hometown to be included on the band’s upcoming “fan-routed” tour. Oshawa, Ontario beat out all other “hometowns” large and small, and came in at #1 on the list.

But when KISS published its tour schedule earlier this week, Oshawa wasn’t included – with no explanation as to why – and its devoted KISS fans and politicians were outraged.

The Sun Media story reporting Oshawa’s absence from the tour schedule provided KISS’s official response on the matter:

While the makeup wearing performer could not be reached for comment, a band spokesman said "a few situations" required locating shows in neighbouring market concert venues.

"This was necessary to make sure that all regional fans get a chance to see KISS with the band’s full stage production," said spokesman Erik Stein.

The band is however, planning "something special" for the city of Oshawa itself, although Stein wouldn't provide more details.

Fans and politicians in Oshawa were outraged that they were skipped over, and the backlash eventually forced the band to announce it would play a show in the city after all on Oct. 7.

Simmons was reportedly “pissed off at the media for creating this nonsense,” annoyed that coverage of the snub had fanned the flames of fan discontent. From his perspective, according to the CP story, fans “should have trusted the band wouldn't let them down.”

"Respectfully, the fans aren't qualified to understand how things are done ... (they) don't know how things work," he said. [A side note: when you hear "respectfully" or "with all due respect," get ready to be disrespected!] If the issue was who was right, and who knows best, Simmons might have the basis for a debate.

But the issue here is making customers happy. How did Simmons do on that front?

Now, spend any time following Gene Simmons and you’ll soon notice that he is incredibly confident. After decades of thrilling KISS fans with music, shows, and merchandise, he knows that he has a cult-like following.

But I think the problem he’s (maybe, maybe not) discovered here is that while his fans may adore him, people are unable to simply “trust” that a mega-star will “do the right thing” without some indication that he will. The hints the band gave when pressed about Oshawa were far too vague – they sounded less like “just hold on, wink wink, there’s something very special in the works for you” and more like “we’ll figure something out once we’ve got our real priorities dealt with.”

Simmons now says KISS had planned all along to have a show in Oshawa, where the band would launch its new album. If that was the case, all KISS had to do was include in the schedule announcement that Oshawa, the contest winner, was going to be the centre of something big, which would be announced in the coming weeks. Oshawa fans would've known they hadn't been forgotten or ignored, and the excitement and anticipation would likely have continued to build.

As for blaming “the media” for the debacle, Simmons is wrong (and uncharacteristically out of touch). First, Simmons ignores the impact of social media like Facebook, Twitter and blogs, which alone could have sustained the fan protest. Secondly, the media's job is to report on things that matter to their audiences; here, their audiences were insulted (and, some felt, cheated) by a rock legend.

That’s news, no matter how you slice it.

Why don’t PR people always answer questions immediately?

A reporter friend once told me this joke:

Q: How many PR people does it take to change a light bulb?

A: I don’t have all the facts at the moment; let me check into it and get back to you.

Yeah, it’s funny, because it’s true. But not for the reasons journalists sometimes think.

I once interviewed a newspaper reporter who wanted a PR job I had advertised. During the interview, he said something like: “And don’t worry, I know how it works. When a reporter calls, you put the message to the side and work on everything else first.”

His purpose in saying this was to reassure me that he wouldn’t put the media first just because that’s where he’d come from. But instead, it served to underline how little he knew about what goes into responding to a media call.

When a reporter asks a question, (s)he knows where (s)he is coming from, knows the basis for the question, and has a certain amount of background information on which (s)he has based the question. It’s entirely possible the reporter has spoken with others on the story, and has been given a number of different perspectives on the question, each of which comes informed by a bias of some kind.

But when the reporter’s question comes to the PR professional (especially when it isn’t expected), the PR professional doesn’t necessarily have the benefit of all that information. So (s)he has two choices: answer the question based on what (s)he may know on the spot, or take some time (taking the reporter’s deadline into account) to gather some information and ensure his/her answer is based on the most up-to-date facts. Yes, that takes time – sometimes only a matter of minutes – but it’s time well spent, and most reporters understand it’s a worthwhile investment in an accurate story.

Case in point: President Obama vs. Cambridge police

This evening, President Obama will reportedly share a beer and (hopefully) a laugh with Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at the White House, in an effort to clear the air after Obama’s “unfortunate” comments about Gates’ arrest in his own home in Cambridge last week. (I put “unfortunate” in quotation marks, because that’s the word Obama used to characterize his own comments; I might have chosen “ill-informed” or “poorly-considered,” but that’s another blog post.)

Don’t get me wrong – I think very highly of President Obama as a communicator. But he's not immune to making mistakes, which he did by answering a question about something he didn’t know enough about, and using inflammatory language that made the issue worse.

Here is the initial out-of the-blue question, and Obama’s answer, on Gates’ arrest.



Obama knew of the incident and obviously felt that prefacing his comments with “I don’t know all the facts” would cover him in case he had any of the details wrong; but as the ensuing fallout demonstrated, it didn’t. It would seem that Obama was confusing two different charges: breaking and entering (the suspicion of which prompted the 911 call in the first place, but with which Prof. Gates was never charged) and disorderly conduct (for which charges were reportedly laid and later dropped).

The issue of whether Gates was indeed the homeowner was irrelevant to the charge of disorderly conduct – to be able to judge whether that charge had been warranted, you’d have had to have known what happened between Prof. Gates and the police officers at his home. Thesmokinggun.com published the (alleged) Cambridge police reports of the incident here.

Obama’s statement that “I think it’s fair to say… the Cambridge police acted stupidly” ratcheted up the media heat on the issue, so much so that the President had to clarify his intended message, sort of.



(I say “sort of,” because to me, at least, the message behind “I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department or Sergeant Crowley specifically, and I could have calibrated those words differently” isn’t quite right. Saying “it’s clear” that someone “acted stupidly” is more than giving an impression.)

At any rate, this was a “teachable moment.” Obama recognized his “choice of words didn’t illuminate but rather contributed to more media frenzy.” Had he had all the facts, he very likely would have chosen words other than “stupid” – and he may have “calibrated” his message to sound more like it did in the second clip, after he’d been fully informed of what had happened.

We’ve all misunderstood a situation on first hearing, only to see it differently once we’ve had a chance to get better informed; unfortunately, Obama created further problems by answering before getting better informed.

So, what should he have done when asked the initial question?

I don’t have all the facts at the moment; let me check into it and get back to you.

News or no news?

Politician has an extra-marital affair of which his wife is aware:
no (well, likely not much) news.

Politician mysteriously goes missing for days,
Wife says she doesn’t know where he is,
Staff say he’s taking a short vacation and decline to provide further details,
Staff later say he’s hiking on the Appalachian Trail,
Media find the vehicle he drives parked in airport parking lot,
Met by reporter as he arrives in Atlanta on flight from Buenos Aires,
Claims to have decided last-minute to go to Argentina because it’s “exotic”,
THEN holds news conference explaining trip with admission of extra-marital affair of which his wife is aware:
big news.

In PR, the cover-up often does more damage than the original offense.

Here’s the video of South Carolina Governor Sanford’s widely-covered news conference this afternoon.