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From the PEW Project for Excellence in Journalism: "People are spending more time with news than ever before, according to Pew Research Center survey data, but when it comes to the platform of choice, the web is gaining ground rapidly while other sectors are losing. In 2010, digital was the only media sector seeing audience growth. And cable news joined the ranks of older media suffering audience decline."
Read a good blog post with some thoughtful pros/cons asking if Chrysler's social media firm overreacted for firing its employee and if Chrysler overreacted or not for firing the firm. Without all the private details, hard for me to say sitting way over here - though both clearly had good reason and the full right to take such strong actions.
I'd want to know how firm was doing overall prior to this, was this an otherwise strong employee/troubled employee, etc. Did everyone own up or try to cover/avoid blame? Chrysler could have taken a higher road approach to make a teachable moment, esp. since the employee was already let go. Either way, might have slept on in for a night, which perhaps Chrysler did as the firm firing was not announced until next day. The zero tolerance world we live in can be pretty unforgiving - especially when it comes to a company's reputation management. As an aside, one would think anyone working at a social media firm would know better than to launch an F -bomb online, even if they thought it was their personal Twitter account. Not such a simple error in that context. Your online personal and professional personas are one - whether you like it or not. You can do what you want, but so can your employer.
Finally, as others have noted, 'twas a bit ironic Chrysler mentioned its "Keep Detroit Beautiful" ad campaign in its blog about the incident and firing the firm. You'll recall Eminem is front/center of the ad campaign...and he -- of course -- makes millions dropping the F-bomb in songs primarily downloaded by kids (I know because it's a challenge to find "clean" versions of nearly any Eminem song to allow my 6th grader to download to his iPod).
This week I received an out-of-the blue email saying hello from a woman I'd not worked with in nearly a decade. Working with her was one of the things of which I'm most professionally proud...but it also was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Back then, she had a story to tell the world, and I and others at Stratacomm helped her tell it.
She'd been driving an SUV and slid off the shoulder of the road, flipping it. Her precious four year old son Anton slipped from the adult-sized seatbelt, was ejected from the car and died. She had done everything right in terms of buckling him up as required by law (her son was too big for a baby seat and booster seats were little known and not required), but it was not enough. At the time I worked with her, one of my sons was just about Anton’s age, and another was even younger. My role was to pitch the national and local media, prep her for the interviews and often to sit with her during the interviews to offer support. She trusted me and others here to do right by her and to leverage our PR skills to help her make a difference. She took this unspeakable tragedy and spoke about it to anyone who would listen.
Our client was Ford Motor company, who yes wanted good PR, but yes, also invested significantly in this lifesaving campaign (if it was only about image, they could have just as easily opted to invest those funds in a single Super Bowl ad instead). So we used PR to engage influential media outlets to target target lawmakers, regulators and parents (as but one of many examples, our national kickoff event was carried live on CNN). As Ford's strategic communication partner, Stratacomm helped concept and launch “Boost America!” which gave away one million free booster seats via the United Way to lower income families, and to customers at dealerships. We worked with mega stars Will and Jada Pinkett Smith to do an educational video for schools and we led a series of localized press events with Governors at state houses coast-to-coast. Looking back, we unquestionably played a part in a larger effort to jump start a lasting behavior change in child passenger safety.
Flash forward to today. While most of our client work may not be so personal and emotional, every day we still use PR to make a positive difference in the lives of our clients, their employees and the public. Stratacomm educates people about the deadly dangers of jaywalking, drunk driving and texting and driving – and publicity we generate helps change behavior and – in some cases – change laws. We've helped promote mine resistant vehicles to protect our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we promote more mundane, but important qualify of life issues like alerting motorists to avoid the Beltway for a few hours as our client shut down this key East Coast interchange as part of a bridge construction project. We help promote the virtues of high speed rail, solar technology and hybrid vehicles to hopefully accelerate wider adoption for each. We’ve helped one well known university deal with a major crisis and helped another bolster its alumni association ranks to raise money that goes to building a better institution for future generations of students. Yes, much of our work simply helps a company or an industry sell more product. But that entrepreneurship in ingrained in America’s DNA. So our PR efforts to help an automaker sell cars, the aluminum industry sell more metal and cellular phone companies reach more customers all help drive the economy, maintain or create jobs and generally improve the quality of life in America
And yet, the PR industry often takes a PR hit of its own, with bad publicity and with the term “PR” seen by some as pejorative. Yet for every bad example (as all industries face), there are countless more good examples that more accurately reflect the majority of PR work that most of us love to do while adhering to the highest of ethical standards. At its core, PR is how we tell the stories of individual clients. They are important stories – some more than others perhaps – but they do make a difference.
For the millions of children who now ride in booster seats – in part – they and their parents owe a debt of gratitude to one mom who simply went out and told her story. She was backed by a big company and their PR team who came together to help her tell her story to the world.
If you wonder how PR can help one individual make a difference in the real world, 49 of 50 states now require age-appropriate booster seats. Moreover, federal booster seat legislation, aptly named “Anton’s law” was signed into law by the President of the United States in 2002. PR indeed made the difference.
So, yesterday General Petraeus met Secretary Gates on the tarmac as he was deplaning in Kabul, Afghanistan, and an open mic caught these two rightfully guarded men in an unguarded moment, privately joking about bombing Libya. So what can this teach us (besides the obvious Media Training 101 admonishment that "the microphone is always on"):
Now, I realize this was a trivial point and not the main issue (Our military leaders joking about bombing Libya was the issue, not what was said about the size of the Secretary's plane), but what does this tell us about the credibly of information we receive and what does this say about countless other stories we take as "fact" on any given day?
Strange parallels from the 1980s: This is reminiscent of President Reagan's quip on an open microphone where he joked about outlawing Russia and starting the bombing in five minutes [While Reagan never did bomb Russia, and unlike the joking Gates and Petraeus, Reagan actually did bomb Libya]. Like Petraeus joking with Gates, however, Reagan's gaffe also was just a joke, not intended to be heard by the the masses...or maybe -- in Reagan's case -- since he was joking before an assembled crowd (and a good actor always knows the mic is live), he was using a little head game to mess with the Soviets. After all, this was just as the first visible cracks were appearing that led to the ultimate crumbling of the Soviet Union, and right around the time time when the Russians were distracted by a protracted ground war they ultimately lost. And just where was the Soviet army fighting? Afghanistan, of course. And who were the allies the U.S. armed to fight the Soviets back in the day? Yep, the radical Mujahdeen, to include a then bit player by the name of Osama Bin Laden. All those players have shifted around now, except Gaddaffi, who is still in Libya...at least for now.
