PR Chicago

Marilyn Monroe in Chicago: Eyesore or Tourist Attraction?

Tacky, tacky. The 26-foot tall statue of Marilyn Monroe (in the iconic blowing skirt pose, of course) recently installed in Chicago's Pioneer Court on Michigan Avenue makes a statement. The one that says Chicagoans have no taste. Or maybe that the private investors who are paying for the beyond-ugly Seward Johnson sculpture to decorate the plaza until next year are hardly discerning art patrons. 

I love Chicago's sculptures. The Picasso, the Bean, the giant eyeball, even the 106 cast-iron figures of just legs and feet at Grant Park. Quirky, creative, thought-provoking and fun. But this huge statue, one that invites tourists to take photos up Marilyn's skirt, as columnist Richard Roeper says, "is not an upgrade." This giant souvenir Marilyn belongs at Grauman's Chinese Theater in LA. Where's the Chicago connection? There isn't one. 

This is kitsch, not art. 

And what's next? A 50-foot rotating hula dancer? 

PR spin: Do new job titles make an agency more relevant?

Just read David Reich's blog post about the title changes at Golin Harris. It seems that new titles, like Strategists (people who devise PR strategies for their clients), Creators (people who write, design or produce materials), Catalysts (account people) and Connectors (social media types) were created to denote specialization. 

A rose by any other name? 

Is this news? Apparently the New York Times thinks so. 

In the Mesozoic era at the Big Agency where I worked, we had your Account Executive (Catalyst in the new PR Speak), who did virtually everything: wrote copy, developed PR and ad campaigns, supervised the design team. The creatives (Creators --which makes them seem somewhat Godlike) were upstairs, creating and trying to fill their portfolios with good samples. The Strategists were the honchos -- the VPs who made us stay over the weekend thinking of Big Ideas and then pitching them to clients and prospects. The only ones missing were the Connectors, who didn't exist in the pre-Internet age. 

There should be specialists at a PR agency. Some folks can make copy sing; others are great persuaders. But they ALL should be pretty proficient at PR and that includes strategy, copy, social media, client contact and at least recognizing good design when they see it. By creating specific niches for everyone, you limit your employees' ability to move around the agency and learn new skills; by keeping tasks isolated, you limit their view of PR and how campaign elements intersect to get the right results.

PR agencies should have better ways to garner attention than to devise new titles for jobs that have existed virtually since PR's inception. 

Doing PR for ordinary products: Three ways to get results

Those of us who are plant enthusiasts scoff at those who live in this country's more temperate climates and brag about their gardens. Throw out a handful of flower seeds in, say, San Diego, and you'll be rewarded with a profusion of flowers in no time. Live in the Chicago area as I do, and your garden is subject to blazing heat and freezing cold -- all in the same day. You have to carefully nurture your plants -- and then pray for good weather.

PR's a lot like that. If your client is a local charitable cause, you'll likely get media attention with some good spokespersons and interesting stories to tell. If your product is sexy or involves celebs, reporters are welcoming, even friendly. But what if your client offers a service in a category that exhaustively pitches the press -- lawyers, book authors and management consultants come to mind -- or offers a pretty average product that has no distinguishing characteristics -- a household appliance, for example? The response can be non-existent or negative, despite short, pithy pitches and polite pleas for coverage.

That's where PR pros can shine.  Doing PR for the commonplace takes some creativity and a dogged refusal to give up. It's where the PR rubber meets the road. Some ideas:

• Timeliness. If your client can respond to local or national news very quickly, there's a chance that he/she can speak to a situation or a problem and get some coverage. You'll both need to work fast on a plan and talking points.
• Something wacky. If your client's product does have a distinguishing feature, make it stand out! Blendtec was just an ordinary, if high-powered blender, but a YouTube video series garnered all sorts of media attention, with Tom at Blendtec pureeing cell phones, an Ipad, Old Spice, XBox 360 and just about anything you could imagine. The company even has a web site devoted to these adventures.
• Slow and steady. OK, you're promoting a product that's good, but not exciting. And sometimes you can't make it more than it is. Something solid, dependable, quality. That just means that you'll need to brief your client appropriately and plan for regular media contact and making sure that your client is included in the inevitable round-up, review, or profile. It's not a matter of scads of clips and online mentions, but coverage when and where it matters.

Have you promoted the ordinary in a creative way and gotten extraordinary results? 

 

 

Local Market PR: Avoid These Five Pitfalls to Ensure Profitability

PR and ad agencies are subcontracting to local market PR pros for one-time projects more and more these days. These "quick hit" product launches or special events are fun to do and can showcase a PR firm's local media and events planning skills to great advantage.

What can benefit the client, however, can sometimes severely impact the local firm's bottom line because of the extra time and out-of-pocket expenses, not to mention the aggravation. Pay special attention to potential pitfalls and a PR firm can ensure great results AND a profit. 

What to avoid:

Information Deficit: Initially, the agency promises to send you a pitch letter, news release and backgrounder to use. Unfortunately, all you end up getting is regurgitated pablum based on ad copy and you're forced to scour news articles for any useful tidbits. What to do: Hold out for the information or send an estimate for press material development.

Endless Conference Calls: You get a reasonable budget for a local project that suddenly gets severely eaten up with lengthy conference calls, even lengthier emails and complicated reports. What to do: See if a project manager can be appointed if it's a multi-market effort. The manager can present any questions or problems to the agency and save time for everyone in the process.

Project Creep: What starts out as a simple event can suddenly grow to gargantuan proportions. If you're just paid for staffing it, make sure that the venue is selected; permits are applied for and all out of pocket expenses are covered. We've had to find event locations with no funds and no advance notice, warehouse pallet loads of materials, drive for hours to deliver items in person and shop for props without compensation. What to do: Make sure that you clearly indicate what you will do in a scope of work document; then stick to it.

The Paltry Pitch: You're given an enthusiastic project description by your agency contact, with promises to supply loads of local stories. These local angles don't materialize, and the media folks aren't interested in something that is happening 1,000 miles away. What to do: Establish in your initial confirmation and scope of work document that success, while never guaranteed in PR, is virtually unattainable without a local story to tell.  

The Vanishing Spokesperson: Oh, joy. You pitch a celebrity spokesperson to the media and then find out that she's only available for 15 minutes between 6 and 7 pm. Or she's booked for the top morning show and she can't POSSIBLY get up that early. What to do: Again, indicate in your scope of work that getting interviews will depend on the spokesperson's availability. 

We've all been there, but by determining needs and expectations way ahead of time,  you can ensure that your agency clients get great media results and you reap the appropriate monetary rewards.

 

Smear Campaign Backfires on Facebook, Burson-Marsteller

In addition to Google's informal corporate motto, "Don't Be Evil," "Don't be Stupid" is also the lesson here, as TechCrunch and others are reporting that Facebook hired PR agency Burson-Marsteller to get the media to run negative stories about rival Google. Apparently Facebook was concerned that Google was violating some privacy rules and was also making use of Facebook data for its own social networking service. 

Unfortunately for Burson-Marsteller, when blogger Chris Soghoian was pitched, he asked who was paying B-M.  When he didn't get an answer, he published the email exchange. The media proceeded to throw Burson under the bus, and after Facebook admitted to hiring the agency, Burson-Marsteller was forced to come clean.

While PRSA and other PR spokespersons were busy providing well-worn quotes about PR ethics, this is also about ham-handed tactics that were bound to backfire. The media isn't sworn to secrecy,despite what the movies and TV tell you. And bloggers, particularly those who deal in controversy and social activism, are, by nature, an unpredictable lot. When it comes right down to it, the project was pretty shady. If the client asks you to do something like this, no matter how big the payday, just say no. And look for a better client. 

The Royal Wedding: No commentary, please

Plain Dealer writer Make Dawidziak said it best in a column today: "Royal wedding TV coverage was best when the anchors shut up."

I managed to wake up early to view coverage of the wedding of Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton, and although I'm not a follower of the royals, it was a spectacularly beautiful and inspiring ceremony.

Not so inspiring was ABC, which had the venerable Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer on the job. When Barbara wasn't yakking about Kate's Alexander McQueen dress and the fact that the designer had committed suicide, she was talking over the ceremony. Quiet please, ladies. Sometimes the news doesn't need constant commentary.

 

What's wrong with PR? What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

Great post yesterday from PR pro Gini Dietrich on her blog, Spin Sucks, about some serious perception issues between PR agencies and clients. She references a recent rant in the NYT blog from a restaurant owner who hired and fired not one, but two PR firms. He got the publicity he obviously craved, and on the NYT blog, no less. Too bad he was whining about PR firms and not waxing eloquent about wining and dining at his eatery.

But it's clear from Spin Sucks and the numerous blog comments that followed that many clients think that PR is the "golden ticket" to instant success, to recognition, to worldwide acclaim. In fact, I got a call the other day from a prospect telling me that an agency told him that it would cost $10k to get him on Oprah. Hell, I told him, go for it! And for $10k I want to be on Oprah, too.

So many PR firms are entranced by a shiny new client and the attached dollar signs that they ignore the red flags raised by prospects with unreasonable expectations, no clear plan and zero focus. Add in some nutty off-strategy tactics, infinitesimal budgets and the need for off-the-charts ROI and you have a recipe for disaster. And I'm not defending PR agencies, either. Between overpromising and underdelivering, or underpromising and overdelivering, the PR agency and the client are both bound to feel shorted at one time or another.

The problem, to paraphrase a line from Cool Hand Luke, is a failure to communicate. What PR people need, what each PR agency needs, is a concise, clear explanation of what PR can do, given time, commitment on the part of the agency AND the client and most important, conversation every step of the way. A manifesto, if you will. Often we're too busy trying to get a firm in the door to check and see if we're a good match for the client. Yes, sometimes we want to date the bad boy, even though we know it can't end well.

One of the best recent posts I've found on the new client "pre-nup" subject is from Lori Taylor of Rev Media Marketing on Jay Baer's Convince and Convert blog. Lots of sit-downs and paperwork, which we hate to do, but necessary to make sure that the PR agency and the client are on the same page. Do something like this, and you may live happily ever after.

 

 

Don't quote me on that: What not to say in an interview

 

Ad Age today ran an article about a CCO hire at Deutsch LA. Of course, the prominently-pictured creative guru was appropriately attired in the now de rigeur t-shirt and jeans. What started as a basic story, however, descended quickly into parody. The CEO hiring the new guy used an interesting yardstick for the decision: "someone I could sit on a plane with for six hours and enjoy myself." And then....the new CCO told Ad Age that "I think it's such a f******* amazing opportunity."

We always caution our PR clients that if they don't want it to show up in print, they shouldn't say it. And although some might think that a comment like this is more refreshing than the usual pablum quotes about new jobs, it signals a declining professionalism in our business. What do you think?

Mark of a Good Agency: Support Your Client's Products

When I was at the Big Agency, we supported a client's products 100 percent. That meant that when we did PR for a beer brand, we didn''t dare go out and drink a competitor's brew. I still cling to old habits. With a retail client, I won't go to a competitor's store. I figure, hey, if they're paying me to do PR for them, the least I can do is show my loyalty.

That's why I''m baffled after following the buzz about adman Alex Bogusky and his exit from Crispin Porter + Bogusky to form his FEARLess Revolution, what he calls his consumer advocacy group. According to Fast Company, he "left the world's hottest agency to find his soul." It seems he had an epiphany some months ago, and has decided that the millions he's scored from selling pizza and burgers to America is, well, wrong. Eating fast food is really, really bad and he must tell us all about it. In fact, he wrote a book on the subject while still doing advertising work for his fast food clients.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bit disingenuous? If you don't believe fully in a product, why would you do advertising or PR for the company? And if your clients are paying you for your work, is it right to say negative things about them while collecting a big fat check? Perhaps there's no loyalty these days. There should be.

How to Measure PR Effectiveness: The Debate Continues

How should PR be measured? How do PR agencies provide evidence of ROI to clients? Some of PR's big thinkers from around the world debated the issue this summer and came up with....a box of nothing.

PRSA and several other PR and communications organizations met at a PR measurement summit in Barcelona and produced "The Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles." Far from being a stunning scholarly work, these basic principles are blindingly obvious, for the most part. And they don't tell us anything new.

PR agencies and in-house operations are constantly being challenged to produce results that look good to corporate financial types. Well, PR isn't exact. And it's not science.

Here are the seven principles with my comments:

1. Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR programs. True. Most of the time our clients ask us what can be expected as the result of a program, and they should. We should have goals to reach.

2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality. Again, pretty obvious, although not exactly true. Sometimes, in a niche market, you don't have lots of media out there. Two or three great articles can get you where you want to go.

3. Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity. I agree with this one. Measuring PR results against ad values is a ridiculous comparison. Ads provide the exact message the client wants to convey, where and when the client wants it conveyed. We don't have that option in PR and are subject to the availability of the media and the timeliness and newsworthiness of the pitch.

4. Social media can and should be measured. Yes, it can, if you have lots of billable hours, or a big budget so you can hire the big measurement firms to do it for you.

5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results. Not sure what the distinction is here.

6. Business results can and should be measured where possible. If PR is being measured against sales, no! No matter how good the PR is, we can't produce an uptick in sales if: 1. The product doesn't fill a consumer need 2. The consumer can't get it easily 3. The consumer has a poor purchase/customer service experience 4. The consumer feels the product is of poor quality 5. The budget doesn't allow PR to reach the audience numbers/demographics

7. Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement. Uh huh. Buzzwords.

In the real world, we don't have absolutes. As PR professionals, we seek to inform the public about our clients' products and services and create positive public perceptions. We can't sell the product for our clients, but we can put them in the mood to buy. And while I don't always agree with Jack O'Dwyer, his blog post on Barcelona (until some rants at the end) was practical and to the point. He says that the "Barcelona Principles" position PR as marketing when "that's only one aspect of PR." He's right.

I'm not sure why PRSA and other organizations feel constantly compelled to justify the need for PR. Enlightened clients know it's important. Media people, although they complain, know it's important. PR, badly beaten down of late, needs a shot of self-esteem, but this sort of "summit" isn't helping. What do you think?