Month: July 2016

This former Fox news anchor is hoping to get her sexual harassment case tried in public. The titillation and revelations are sure to embarrass Fox and its chief, Roger Ailes, and could cost Ailes’ his job.  Transparency works on her side of the case, as I’m sure her attorney has told her.  Whether or not she settles or wins, the damaging information is out there for the world to see.  This is why Fox news will work hard to bring the case to arbitration where allegations remain secret.  The case is an example of how lawyers use the media to their advantage and why over the years programs like 60 Minutes have depended on the tort bar for many of their juicier stories.  Even if a defendant is innocent, he is smeared before a trial begins.  His reputation is in tatters.  Is it fair?  No, but that is how the system works.

We expect members of the Supreme Court to speak from the bench through their opinions.  Otherwise, silence is golden.  That is why this Supreme Court justice is being hammered from both the right and the left for commenting on the election race.  She broke the code of silence by discussing Donald Trump.  In her interview, she thrust herself and by extension, the court, into the middle of politics.  This broke the perception that justices are above the messy, day-to-day business of governing.  There is no doubt about her feelings, but typically justices keep their emotions to themselves unless it deals with the law and the constitution.  Justice Ginsburg has committed a PR gaffe, and her fellow justices are tainted by it as well.

Pokemon Go is sweeping the nation and millions are playing the game in the eight days since it has been released.  The game and public reaction have all the hallmarks of a fad.  Fads usually come and go fairly quickly.  The public embraces a consumer offering en masse then tires of it and moves on.  In this case, a hard core group of players will remain and the question for Niantic will be whether to keep supporting the game.  There is no good way to manage a fad.  It blows up like fire in dry tinder.  One is under immediate pressure to support it and to stay abreast of its popularity.  The mistake companies can make is to assume a fad will remain at its peak.  They gear up for it only to watch its popularity fall.  Pokemon Go may last for days, or even weeks at a fever pitch, but it will subside soon enough into just another game.

There are places in the US where unemployment seems embedded, but the reality is that the idle choose not to take available jobs  — like lawn mowing.  That work is reserved for immigrants who don’t mind doing it.  Where I live, nearly all landscapers are Italian but the workforce is Hispanic — day laborers who congregate at prearranged spots and hook up with passing trucks.  A perception of unemployment is offset by the fact that jobs are there and workers are taking them — just not Americans.  It is one more reminder that issues are rarely black and white, and one should do research to clarify what is happening before writing or speaking.  Sometimes it is a matter of observing the environment and asking questions.  It is easy as PR practitioners to get lost in a web of issues and to take pat answers for starting points.  It can be difficult to find reality in a circumstance.

Here is a zombie company whose death is weeks away, if not days.  The company was built on fraud and its misdeeds caught up with it.  The heart of the company was a hagiographic publicity campaign focused on its magnetic CEO, Elizabeth Holmes.  When the facade cracked, the ugly truth spilled out to smear not only her but vendors and employees.  It is unlikely she will perfect her technologies while working outside of the company she founded.  Her best choice now is to retire from the scene and from Silicon Valley and start over somewhere else, if anyone would touch her.  The flame-out might not have happened if she had been more open about the troubles with her products.  But, she was secretive and her lack of transparency allowed a bubble to expand until it popped.  She is not the first to have done this, and she won’t be the last, but she is an object lesson for PR practitioners.

Legislators in New Jersey haven’t come to an agreement to raise the fuel tax in order to pay for road and bridge repair.  In response to inaction, the governor has shut down all non-essential road and bridge projects in the state.  There are hundreds of them.  This is an old political and negotiation tactic, which was — and maybe, still is — known in Washington DC circles as the Washington Monument Ploy. When Congress threatened to cut the National Park Service budget, the agency immediately made preparations to shut down the Washington Monument.  This would create ill-feeling and political pressure from tourists on the Mall — something Congress does not want.  The Park Service learned to protect its money through tricks like that.  The governor of New Jersey is no less a student, but he has gone one step further in the tactic and turned political pressure on the New Jersey Statehouse to its highest level.  The betting is he will get his way.

China is using negative PR to defend its role in the South China Sea.  It is telling the Philippines and the world that it will not stop building bases on the tiny islands there to project its control.  it has dismissed the international court’s decision over its right to build these military bases even before the court has ruled.  It has warned the US to sail carefully in these waters.  It has said it will not sit idly by when there are provocations such as foreign warships passing too close to its possessions   China’s belligerence has deeply upset countries bordering the South China Sea, but there is nothing they can do.  They are too small and weak. Negative PR isn’t designed to win friends, but it is fashioned to warn people that an organization or individual will not tolerate actions against it.  It only works from a position of strength, which China has in abundance.  No one wants to go to war with China, so it is getting its way.  That is the result of negative PR.

Hillary Clinton received a slap on the wrist from the FBI yesterday but no recommendation of charges against her for her misuse of an e-mail server.  This fed immediately into a campaign message from Trump that the system “is rigged.”   Make no mistake.  The public will be tired of hearing about Hillary’s carelessness soon enough because the Republicans will thrash the message endlessly.  Hillary will apologize and say, “Let’s move on.”  Given the Republican candidate and his ego, the media might give her a break and do as she requests.  It is hard to say that Bill and Hillary Clinton were too dumb to recognize when they were flouting the law and perception.  They are bright people.  So, why do they persist in putting themselves in harm’s way by using private equipment and making impromptu visits to the Attorney General?  One conservative commentator summed the impression by writing, “Laws are for little people.”  This might be the message that the Republicans will send over the coming weeks — a perception of arrogance on the part of Hillary and Bill that would be hard to accept in the top office.  But, for the fact that the Republican candidate with his preening and narcissism is even worse.

ISIS has gone a step too far in its effort to communicate terror to the Islamic world.  Blowing oneself up in the parking lot of the sacred site of Medina strikes at the root of what it means to be a Muslim.  Maybe now, those who subscribe to the arch-conservative beliefs ISIS proclaims will understand that it is not a religious sect but a terrorist group. Every bombing against Muslims is a step away from gaining acceptance from them.  The horrific Baghdad carnage, which cost the lives of 175 people can only embitter both Sunnis and Shiites.  Bombs are indiscriminate.  America can’t say anything to ameliorate the situation.  We stand accused of killing hundreds of civilians through drone and bombing attacks.  We can excuse ourselves by saying it wasn’t deliberate, but that rings hollow to a survivor who has lost a child or spouse.  There is no good answer to the Middle East’s angst other than peace.  All sides have to choose to get along and work hard at communicating with each other.  That hasn’t happened for more than a thousand years.  It will be hard to start now.

In Washington DC political circles, perception is called optics, and this is a case in which the optics were bad.  Former president Bill Clinton visited the Attorney General of the US while waiting in their planes on the tarmac at the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.  The visit was described as friendly with no discussion of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail kerfuffle, but it looked disgraceful.  Some critics are pointing to Bill Clinton as the primary offender here.  He should know to keep his distance when there is an investigation involving his wife.  That he didn’t smacks of indefensible ignorance or arrogance — law and perception don’t apply to him.  Other critics are pointing to the AG.  Loretta Lynch should have known not to have taken the meeting as innocuous as it might have been.  There are politics involved in the flap.  Republicans are looking for any way possible to slow Hillary’s march to the White House. Hillary, of course, doesn’t need this flap before she is nominated as the Democratic Presidential candidate.  However, she put herself into the mess by deciding to use her own server for her State Department e-mails rather than the officially designated system.  Chances are good she won’t be charged, but the optics of that situation are similarly bad.