Month: July 2017

A company can react to online trolls in a number of ways. They can pretend to ignore them. They can respond in kind. They can threaten to sue. Or, they can laugh them off their critical game. Arby’s, the sandwich chain, took the last course and made a PR success of it.. First, they did their homework and kept an eye on the twitter account until its author was unmasked. Then, they flew an executive to Chicago to meet with the troll at his place of work unannounced. When the troll came out to greet them, he found several Arby’s staffers, a bag full of sandwiches and a black labrador puppy. The message,“Cheer up, buddy. You live in a world with puppies…and sandwiches.” The PR tactic predictably made a splash in the marketing/advertising community, and well it should. Arby’s had fun with the troll and the troll appreciated it. He told his 300,000 followers about it, thereby adding more impact to smart PR. It is a lesson other companies should follow.

The Senate Republicans’ effort to get rid of Obamacare has foundered and sunk. There is no guarantee any kind of compromise will be developed and enacted. The problem was the Republicans had no plan, just the effort to repeal, and the American public was not fooled. Here was a classic case of the need for powerful persuasion. It was missing for nearly all of the push-and-pull over repeal. The Republicans came off as “aginners” who wanted to replace the law simply because it came from Obama’s administration and not because of manifestly clear faults with its regulations. Nearly everyone was against them from doctors through health agencies to common citizens. Yet, the House and Senate persisted. This kind of coup de main might have worked in a company dominated by a CEO who has also cowed the board, but it is much more difficult in the political realm, as it should be. So, now it is on to tax reform where chances of comprehensive change are slim at best. Maybe this time the Republicans will use the tools of persuasion rather than once again attempting to ram through new legislation.

This article is proof that PR is what you do and not what you say. The company had a great story about making a drone that anyone could use. It collected millions in advance orders. It wasn’t able to make the product so it shut down and left tens of thousands of potential customers in a lurch. It bamboozled everyone, including the media who were only too willing to believe the hype. Publicity is what you say about yourself. PR is what you do and then say. The distinction is lost to most of the world.

When a technology disrupts a market, the fall-out is usually anything but pretty. Vendors, lenders and others are caught in the same whirlwind of change. That is what is happening to the taxicab industry in New York City. Uber and Lyft have cut the value of taxi medallions and left drivers and credit unions under water with no chance of surfacing. The metal badges once valued in the millions are now worth a few hundred thousand, but lenders allowed taxi drivers to take out loans against the previous imputed value. There is no way for drivers to pay these debts back. The taxi industry can communicate with the city council and try to rein in the disrupters, but the damage is done. The monopoly that the taxi industry had over local transportation is destroyed, and a new era has begun.

So, a young, concerned citizen finds a major bug in a public transportation authority’s web site that could cost it millions in lost revenue. He reports it. What does the organization do? It swears out a warrant for the citizen’s arrest. How dumb is that? Were the authority any other entity, it would have at least thanked the young man for uncovering it and maybe, even compensated him for discovering it. But, no. The organization trumpeted the capture of a hacker at a press conference and declared its system to be secure. Outraged hackers have now attacked the authority’s web site for real and discovered holes, which they are publishing on the internet. It didn’t have to be this way, but for a stupid decision in the first place. The transportation authority must be filled with bureaucrats who have little familiarity with the web. They are learning the hard way.

Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, will tell a Congressional investigative committee that the meeting he took before the election with a Russian lawyer was a waste of time. That may be so, but the perception is that he was ready and willing to cooperate if the meeting produced damaging information about Hilary Clinton. The reality was nothing but the intent verged on criminality. Powers smarter than I will determine if intent was enough to transgress the law, but in the court of public opinion, Kushner is damaged. He is a symbol of those who will do anything to win, including walking on the dark side. It is the ultimate in pragmatism and gives no quarter to ethics. It will be interesting to see if Kushner is driven out of the Trump administration. Chances are good that he won’t be. Trump is defending him at the moment, but Trump is mercurial. If Kushner becomes too much of a liability, he will be gone.

As if PR practitioners did not have enough to worry about, science has come up with a way to make convincing fake videos of people talking. They used AI to create a video of former President Obama speaking in a new context. While the researchers see positive uses for the breakthrough, others are concerned that it can and will be used to create fake news. What could be more devastating to candidates or office-holders than a video of them making racist or other derogatory comments. They can claim rightly that they never said the words ascribed to them, but meanwhile the public has video to prove them wrong. It is the ultimate of dirty tricks. One hopes the researchers use their new technology wisely and do not make it available to the world readily. It can distort elections, compromise CEOS and play havoc with one’s reputation.

Experienced PR practitioners will know intuitively the guidelines set down in this article, but it is worth reviewing them before the next crisis occurs. The problem with crises is they rarely come at anticipated times. They tend to blow up suddenly in unexpected places and circumstances. In the frantic first hours, PR is trying to find out what happened while responding swiftly to media inquiries. There is no good way to do it even with machinery in place and rehearsed. Crisis manuals tend to sit on shelves unread and not consulted when an actual event occurs. The best advice in a crisis is to keep the machinery simple and effective. A war room should have the powers to override protocol and bureaucratic barriers to get data it needs. A public or employee response should not be picked clean by nervous attorneys. The CEO should be engaged and not distant. These are simple steps but they are often not followed. It is up to the crisis manager to make sure that basic rules are honored and no audience is left in the dark.  It sounds easy but it isn’t.

Sometimes it is hard to believe the endurance of myths. Here is one that has been disproven by science, but still people believe it. At best there might be microbial life buried beneath the radiation-blasted surface of the red planet. The proof of that is still wanting, but there is no evidence of any kind for an advanced civilization having resided there. Still, people want to hold on to the myth. They don’t want to accept that in this solar system we are alone. They speculate about the existence of rational beings on other planets in distant solar systems. So far, nothing has come of it, but it is early in the investigation of exo-planets. And, even if there is a discovery of some life form light years away, there is no practical way of getting there. We haven’t the rockets or the physics to propel humans at 186,000 miles per second and there is no good way to provision humans for years at a time. Reaching Mars now is testing the limits of engineering, psychology and logistics. And, once we get there, there is no good way to get back. Yet, myths persist because people refuse to face reality.

Does it ever pay to fire back at a vocal and dissatisfied customer? Delta Airlines is finding out. It is in a public tiff with conservative commentator Ann Coulter who is upset that the airline gave her seat assignment away on a flight from La Guardia airport, NY to West Palm Beach, FL. Coulter was given another spot on the flight, but she took to Twitter after landing and began bashing the airline. Delta was not amused. It refunded her $30 seat charge, but it also called for civility. That is not what it was getting as Coulter let loose a barrage of criticism through a succession of Twitter posts. Chances are Coulter will fly Delta again, but the airline probably would be happy if it has seen the last of her. Who needs a disgruntled passenger anyway?