Guest post: “This must have been a communications problem”

Written by Manitoba communicator Greg Burch

I think every professional communicator has been on the receiving end of this kind of feedback at one time or another. If you have not, let me assure you it is just a matter of time. It comes with the territory. When I saw this article, I felt strongly for the poor communications folks at public health agencies across Canada who must have put in a major communications effort in support of the public vaccination campaign to combat the H1N1 influenza virus. Melanie was gracious enough to allow me to share these thoughts with the readers of her outstanding blog. So here we go…

The article implies that the H1N1 vaccination campaign was a “bust”. Based on the statistics cited, the resources expended and the outcome achieved, it’s hard to argue with that conclusion. In the list of the three key failings of the H1NI campaign, the communicators get top billing for failing to communicate that the vaccine was safe. Ahead of inter-governmental dysfunction, no less. In Canada, that’s saying something. Ouch.

Don’t get me wrong, like any other profession, PR practitioners can make mistakes. We’re human, after all. There were several policy errors that contributed to the challenges faced by the vaccination campaign too. Inconsistent policies lead to inconsistent messaging, and in any situation this will cause confusion. The article definitely touches on this.

But even without these problems, the H1N1 project would have been in trouble before it even got off the ground. In fact, I am surprised people thought it would do any better than it did. You can debate whether the $2 billion for H1N1 mass immunization plan was worth it in hindsight (personally, I think it was), but given the context this project was launched in, it was a miracle the vaccination rates got to the level they did. I know there are those who question the safety of adjuvants for whatever reason, but this was hardly the key factor.

Why do I say this? To succeed, a communications plan must start with the facts as they are, not as people wish they are. Anything else breeds confusion and a major gap in credibility. It seems obvious. When it comes to H1N1, it was missed in a big way.

The context established by officials of the World Health Organization early on in the pandemic created a serious credibility gap and no PR professional was going to bridge it. WHO officials were making statements, speculating and taking policy steps that simply were out of touch with the experience of people. Did people get sick? Yes. Did people die? Yes, and it is very sad. One simply has to look to isolated communities in Northern Manitoba to see the impact the H1N1 strain had on some communities.

I would never want to minimize the loss or impact on anyone who was affected. But the fact is that influenza does take lives every year, quite a number in fact. H1N1 never got to the point in the public imagination where it appeared any worse than regular, seasonal influenza. This is a testament to the hard work of many, many health care professionals. But it is also very clear that H1N1 was not avian flu, and certainly nothing like the Spanish Flu.

WHO officials, with their speculation, ominous announcements and invocations of “level 6” and other emergency-ese were wholly out-of-step with the general public perception. The liberal invocation of worst-case scenarios by the WHO (this article has a nice summary of some of them) caused fear of the worst. But the worst never came, spawning opinion pieces like this one. What a surprise that vaccination rates did not hit expectations. Throw in the other challenges experienced by the clinics, doubts in the populace about vaccine safety, and the sheer inconvenience of the lineups, and of course rates were low.

The credibility gap around H1N1 issue was very significant from the outset. Doubts filled the vacuum. To discount this, and feel instead that the safety of the vaccine was not communicated is seriously flawed conclusion in my opinion. You cannot communicate effectively without credibility. You have to be grounded in reality. Even now, the WHO continues to employ their unduly threatening, still-a-pandemic approach in interviews, prolonging and enlarging the credibility gap they have established. The safest adjuvant in the world will not overcome this.

So to the PR professionals of Canada’s health field: keep your chin up! You frankly did a great job given the circumstances. I hope national and international decision makers will find a way to look in the mirror as well as looking at the messenger, and draw lessons that will serve us better in the event these policies and plans are needed again in the future.

Greg Burch is Director, Corporate and Employee Communications at MTS Allstream in Winnipeg. He can be reached at greg.burch@mtsm.blackberry.com.

Want credibility? Credit your sources!

At Red River College, where I teach public relations and freelance business management, we have strict rules around academic integrity and honesty. We're in the business of training future professionals here, and professional integrity is at the core of success in any field -- especially PR.

Presenting someone else's ideas as your own is plagiarism, and it's not treated lightly in academia. Here at Red River, students caught plagiarizing others' work can be flunked out of a course and/or suspended from their studies altogether.

http://tweetthief.tumblr.com/

But what happens in the professional world?

Well, you can flunk out there, too.

As you may remember, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper came under fire a couple of years ago for having delivered a speech that appeared to have been plagiarized from one given by former Australian Prime Minister John Howard two days earlier. His speechwriter quickly admitted to the plagiarism and resigned his position, having publicly embarrassed himself, the Conservative party, and the Prime Minister -- not to mention many Canadians.

While cases this high-profile are few and far between, plagiarism happens all the time. While some may get away with it for a while, many don't -- and when that happens, whether the plagiarists realize it or not, their reputations suffer.

Why am I writing about this now?

Here are two tweets that turned up in my Twitter timeline last week from two different users, in the order in which I received them.


Note the date/time stamps -- the second followed the first by more than a day.

Do you believe it's coincidence that these two Twitter users had the same witty thought and expressed it in exactly the same words? Or do you think maybe the writer of the second ripped off the first, adding the little winky face for originality?

My first instinct is the latter. I may be wrong -- maybe the writer of the second tweet just forgot to add the "RT" and had no intention of presenting someone else's thought as their own. Had that been the case, a quick follow-up tweet saying something like "oops! I forgot to add the RT!" and crediting the original author would've done the trick.

It so happens that the author of the second tweet is an established PR professional in a major American city. I'll admit to having been shocked to see this from him/her; I'll also admit I've stopped following him/her on Twitter as a result. This one little Twitter indiscretion has torpedoed this person's credibility, at least in my mind.

The social media community expects better.

In the communities that have grown in and around social media, like in most communities, there are wackos, there are silent watchers, and there are everyday people from all walks of life who share their thoughts, ideas and observations. While there are dishonest people who take advantage of the opportunity for anonymity to spread vitriol and take advantage of others, social media culture is overall open and honest, and relatively intolerant of bullsh*t.

Just have a look at the content on many blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, and you'll see posts calling out politicians, organizations, celebrities and companies on perceived unfairness, dishonesty, and disingenuousness. Numerous major companies know the misfortune of social media users having aired evidence of their poor customer service for the whole world to see. In many ways, social media participants take up the role traditionally played by mainstream media in challenging the powers that be -- in the words of CNN's Anderson Cooper, "keeping them honest."(Interested in the pursuit of social media plagiarists? There are Twitter accounts and blogs devoted solely to exposing them.)

Be honest.

While we read all the time about how basic English grammar is being destroyed by SMS texting, Facebook and Twitter, don't think the same laziness is accepted with respect to personal integrity. (I'll argue all night long about how grammatical laziness isn't acceptable either, but that's another post.)

Because so much of the exchange in social media takes place online, where people can hide behind false identities if they choose, honesty and integrity are just as important for legitimate members of the community here as in the "real world." Without those, the information and exchanges made available through social media are worthless, since no-one knows whom to trust.

So if you come across something on Twitter (or a blog, or Facebook, or MySpace, or anywhere else) you'd like to share, do so: but make sure you credit its author.

Otherwise, like Aesop's boy who cried wolf, you'll soon find no-one believes you about anything.

Ann Curry: How to recover from a public gaffe

I caught a Yahoo! News story today about NBC news' Ann Curry having given a commencement speech at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts last Saturday, in which she created a bit of a PR problem for herself.



Oops.

As a respected journalist, Ann Curry's reputation takes a bigger hit over this kind of error than someone else's might; she's expected to do her research, and to get the facts right. That's why we listen to her.

But with that said, we all make mistakes; and the more public our profile, the higher the likelihood they'll come with public embarrassment. So, if you (or your client) is a public figure, what's the best strategy? Do you make excuses? Do you pretend it never happened?

In the social media age, neither of those is going to work.

As far as making excuses goes, they rarely get you any sympathy. It's entirely possible she had a researcher put notes together for her -- or even employed someone else to write the speech. But when you're invited to give a speech, the audience expects that you're providing your own insights in your own words. Laying the blame somewhere else won't cut it: the buck stops with you.

And as for pretending it never happened, you could, but you'd be the only one doing so. A quick Google News search on "Ann Curry Wheaton" this afternoon returned 435 news stories.

So, what do you do?

Own it.

When you make a mistake, admit it, apologize, take the hit you earned, and move on: just like Ann Curry did. As the Yahoo! article reported,

"For her part, Curry penned an open letter to the Wheaton community expressing that she was "mortified" by her mistake. She wrote, in part:

So it is with a heavy heart that I ask you to forgive me for mistakenly naming graduates of the other Wheaton College in my address.

I now know I should have named National Medal of Science winner Dr. Mary Ellen Avery, former New Jersey Governor and former EPA Director Christie Todd Whitman, literary agent Esther Newberg, Oscar-nominated actress Catherine Keener and Ken Babby, the youngest senior officer in the history of the Washington Post, among others. Thank goodness I got Leslie Stahl right.

I am mortified by my mistake, and can only hope the purity of my motive, to find a way to connect with the graduates and to encourage them to a life of service, will allow you to forgive me."

Then, she used her Twitter account to proactively own up to her mistake (her tweet links to the news video above).



I don't know whether she addressed it on The Today Show this week (I couldn't find any video online), but I wouldn't be surprised if she did. (If you can answer this question, please do so in the comments!)

Now, to add embarrassment to embarrassment, a commenter on Gawker.com noted that Curry had misspelled Lesley Stahl's name in her apology... but still.

Curry's apology letter (sent on Monday) is humble and sincere and makes me, at least, feel badly for her. In this situation, I think that's the best she could have hoped for.

We all make mistakes; the rest of us should just be thankful ours don't become fodder for 435 news articles.

How do you choose a social media consultant?

The Beast.

In my office at Red River College, we have one of those amazing do-everything-but-make-coffee photocopiers, which also act as scanners and fax machines.

These days, I'd wager the fax is just "might as well throw it in" functionality, since the machine already has a printer, a scanner, and broadband access for emailing the documents we scan. The fax is rarely used; the only action it usually gets is the occasional transmission of a hand-signed contract, and a smattering of junk faxes (for the young'uns, that's what we called "spam" in the olden days).

Though we get far fewer faxed sales pitches now than business faxes used to, I'm always amazed to see there's anyone still marketing anything by fax; today's technology allows us to create communications that are so much more compelling and persuasive, and can be so much better-targeted, without spending much (if any) more money.

I saw one such generic sales pitch fax this week. It looked like an unfolded print brochure, and was addressed by the sender's fax machine to my predecessor here in the PR program at Red River College, who retired a couple of years ago.

The sender?

A consultant offering a $1000 one-day course in Strategic Communications.

The first rule of strategic communications is that you build your program around what your target audiences want, what they like, what they respond to; that's what's most likely to motivate their buy-in. While I could be wrong, in 2010 I think you'd be hard-pressed to find the audience that wants, likes, and responds to generic black-and-white unsolicited faxes.

If that audience does exist, it's not hanging out at the receiving end of my office's fax machine.

This particular consultant has been offering short workshops and seminars on topics like strategic communications and media relations in major Canadian cities for years. His course outlines appear to reflect our changing times: nowadays, his "Strategic Communications" course includes "Using Social Media and other online technologies to spread your message."

I agree wholeheartedly that any good course in strategic communications in 2010 should examine social media and how they can be used to help organizations build and nurture relationships with their audiences. But I'd question whether a businessperson marketing strategic communications courses in 2010 by fax is the right person to teach it to you.

How could a consultant use social media to sell PR workshops?

Success using social media is rooted in engaging in conversation, providing something of value, and building community -- not the hard sell. To be successful using social media for PR purposes, you have to make people want to listen to you, so they'll hear what you have to say.

• For starters, a PR counselor could use Twitter to share his/her insights on PR issues and provide links to content of interest to PR people... building a following that could become a target audience for his/her courses.
• (S)he could use a Facebook group to build a community among people who've attended his/her courses in the past, to keep the in-class conversation going... providing a platform for discussion about PR topics and a networking opportunity for past clients, as well as another vehicle for reaching new ones.
• (S)he might participate in PR discussions on LinkedIn, adding valuable perspectives that could lead other participants to view his/her profile and learn about his/her courses.
• (S)he could write a blog providing his/her perspectives on PR issues in the news (using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and his/her website to publicize it), creating a valuable resource to both past clients (whose online referrals could help with marketing) and new audiences (s)he may not even be aware of.

While it's a start, having a website and placeholder accounts on social media sites does not make someone an expert in social media.

Do your research

Before you turn over any money to a consultant offering to teach you how to use social media, do a bit of investigating. Luckily for us, experience with social media is relatively easy to research: quick looks at Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a Google search are all you'll likely need. Even if your consultant has participated actively in social media on behalf of clients (i.e., not under his/her own name), chances are slim (s)he isn't also using social media to market his/her own business, too. That's where (s)he will have learned the ropes.

While the fundamentals of strategic communication haven't changed, the communication environment has; you want a consultant who can help you leverage social media to their greatest potential in this new environment.

Understanding them starts with using them. So if your online search doesn't show your social media expert to be an active participant, I'd suggest you keep looking.

Manners 2.0

A tweet I saw a couple of days ago from Toronto PR pro Judy Gombita got me thinking about manners.This followed a couple of situations lately that underlined, for me, anyway, how Web 2.0 and mobile communications technologies are eroding our manners:

• At lunch with someone who checks the BlackBerry multiple times over the course of our conversation, every time we meet.
• During an awards dinner, as I watched people use iPhones and BlackBerrys rather than listening to the recognition of students who'd produced excellent work.

It seems people feel that because they can check online messages anywhere, they should.

But they shouldn't.

Of course, if you're with someone and you're expecting an urgent email, you can explain that you'll have to keep an eye out for it; people will understand that. But if it's just a question of "I wonder what's going on right now?," whether you intend it to be that way or not, it's an insult to whomever you're with.

What does this rant have to do with PR?

Everything, I think.

PR strategist, author and Help A Reporter Out founder Peter Shankman published a great blog post this week about our overall decline in manners, and called on us all to reverse it. Is this the kind of thing we need to be told? Well, it shouldn't be... but it seems to be. Being polite should be a no-brainer; it's nice to be polite. There's no valid argument to be made for being rude.

And, like many of the lessons your grandmother taught you, manners will help you in PR.

It's simple: public relations is about people, and how they feel. If people feel good when they interact with you (or your organization), they will want to interact with you (or your organization) again.

When you constantly check a mobile device during a conversation, or a presentation, or any event at which you're supposed to be paying attention to someone else, your subliminal message is "what you're saying is less important to me than what someone else might be saying online."

That may be true; but it's not going to make the person you're with feel very important to you, and they'll walk away from the exchange remembering that.

In PR, we build and nurture relationships. With people. Sure, we develop strategies and we use tools and technologies to help us do that, but at the root of effective public relations is the recognition that we have to make others feel good about us and our organizations, if we're going to build healthy relationships.

If you treat other people like they're unimportant, no news release or tweet or Facebook fan page or report or speech or white paper or any other public relations tool will win them over.

So be polite. Show respect. When people are talking, listen.

And say thank you.

Thank you!

Insights from Ketchum Chicago

Ketchum Chicago's Kyle Rosenbaum shares insights

with CreComm students.

Image courtesy Kenton Larsen.

Last week, Ketchum's Chicago office hosted 20 visiting Red River College Creative Communications students (and my colleague Kenton Larsen and me), and gave us a two-hour glimpse at life inside a major international PR agency.

Ketchum's Kyle Rosenbaum kicked off the session with a great overview of the firm's Corporate practice, Britta Olson and Danielle Spellman shared their insights on its Brand and Research practices, and Elizabeth Stanula talked about how a major PR firm goes about finding new business, before Masha Rykova gave our students an interesting look at life as a PR intern.

The first thing that struck me about these presentations -- aside from the generosity of both the agency and its people in taking the time to give them -- was how different the presenters' experience was from what our students will likely know if they stay here in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg doesn't have any large PR agencies. While there are smaller consultancies like Dooley Communications, not to mention my own, and PR capabilities within mid-sized marcomm and advertising agencies, like Changemakers, the major PR agency just doesn't exist here: there simply isn't enough business to sustain them. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver do have large PR agencies (again, often related to advertising agencies); I'd be interested in hearing how their business model resembles Ketchum's.

In Winnipeg, PR work is generally managed by an in-house department (or, in the case of smaller companies or non-profits, person), with freelance specialists brought in for specific expertise or added bench-strength as the need arises. Some major companies (including large PR agencies) headquartered in other cities use local PR consultants to manage specific projects on-the-ground here, but few Winnipeg businesses rely on a PR agency-of-record to manage their PR for them.

What does that mean for the young PR pro in Winnipeg, just graduating from college?

There are ample opportunities to develop and grow, but they're more likely to be limited to one niche. If you find work in a large corporate communications department, your portfolio will reflect primarily corporate work. In a non-profit, mostly publicity and development, and so on. The experience is great, but you do have to change jobs frequently -- or volunteer a lot -- to get as well-rounded an experience as you might be able to get in a large agency with a wide range of clients.

As our hosts at Ketchum discussed the typical career trajectory of a young PR pro in a major American city -- starting out in an agency to get lots of experience on a wide range of projects for a number of different clients, and then moving into a corporate position or out on their own from there -- I couldn't help but recognize what a great advantage the agency system is to young practitioners.

Here at Red River College, we send our students out on two short internships as part of their Creative Communications diploma requirements, because we recognize that on-the-job experience and feedback are an invaluable part of professional development. But to then be able to head out into a large agency like Ketchum, to work on a range of major national and international initiatives, learning hands-on from experts who've built careers in PR? You can't beat that.

Thank you, Ketchum

One by one, Kyle, Britta, Danielle, Elizabeth and Masha each gave us a different take on life in a major PR agency in a large city, and gave our students useful tips for their own careers in PR. (Use LinkedIn! Follow www.culpwrit.com! Use Google Reader and Alerts! Network! Take advantage of any opportunity you can to get your foot in the door and build experience and credibility!)

They spoke to Ketchum's focus on helping young communicators build careers in the PR industry, and their actions supported their words. Each speaker provided his/her own contact information, with genuine offers to provide any further advice for students after they'd returned home. And I couldn't help but wonder how much billable time Ketchum PR had given up to host us last Thursday, between the time the speakers spent with us, the time they'd spent preparing ahead of time, and the time put in by Linda Gilbert, Ketchum's Midwest Region Office Services Manager, in coordinating the whole thing for us.

Of course I don't know the answer to that -- but I do know it was a great experience for our students. Thanks!

"Please provide your salary expectations."

First-time PR job applicants are often stymied when prospective employers ask: "what are your salary expectations?"

To the applicant, it seems like a cruel test: unless they know someone "on the inside" at the organization, how could they possibly know?

Advantage: psychics?

No. (Well, on second thought, it couldn't hurt!) When employers ask this question, they aren't expecting you to correctly guess what they're planning to offer you. They're wanting to know if you're reasonable, and if you're approaching the opportunity with the right mindset.

Additionally, there is a huge range of jobs in PR, and employers vary from the richest of muti-nationals and governments to the most modest of non-profits; from employers of hundreds of thousands to mom-and-pop shops. As a result, the level of responsibility for a "Director of Public Relations" in one organization can be far superior or inferior to its similarly-titled counterpart in another. The hiring employer may ask this question, in part, to get a better sense of the "stakes" involved in your previous experience, since they can't necessarily assume they know the meaning behind the title.

So... what should I say?

In asking your salary expectations in advance, the employer wants to know three things: a) how you value your own skills; b) how accurate a picture you have of the employer's situation (if you come to a non-profit demanding government-level bucks, you betray a lack of understanding of its business); and c) how reasonable you are with your own demands.

Here's a simple approach that has always worked for me:

1. Do any research you can into the potential employer's business and/or industry, and see if you can find any benchmarks to help you make a reasonable request.
2. Decide what salary you really do expect; there's nothing to be gained in lowballing the request if it's going to result in an offer you can't accept.
3. Tell the employer that, given your education and experience, you'd expect something in the range of [provide a range based on #1 and #2], but that you understand there are numerous factors that go into compensation, from work-life balance, to benefits, to salary, to experiences, to opportunities to grow, so can be flexible on the salary. If you're applying to an organization with a good reputation, you can say so, adding that you appreciate its excellent reputation and know the compensation would be fair.

This approach shows that you've done your homework, that you have a realistic view of your own professional "worth," and that you'd be a reasonable employee... and puts the ball back in their court to make an offer.

Will I "guess" myself out of a job?

Not unless your salary expectations are wildly out of line with their business realities (e.g., asking a charity for the same salary a major corporation might be able to pay) or your own experience (e.g., demanding six figures for your first industry job).

As long as you're in the ballpark and you seem reasonable, they'll make the offer -- leaving you in the enviable position of deciding whether or not to take it.