From Tolstoy to Twitter…short form reporting.

Where have all the words gone…long time passing.

My apologies to Bob Dylan, but in listening recently to his anthem to the Sixties, I was reminded how differently we communicate today than when I began in the PR business. No, not quite in the era of the famous Russian novelist, but yes, in the same days Dylan was still acoustic. And contrary to many of my generation, I’m thinking in general, it’s a good thing. I agree it would be hard to imagine “War and Peace” rendered down to 160 characters (letters not people), and not nearly as enjoyable for a long winter read. Some things do continue to be best communicated in the long form as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs.

But when it comes to reporting breaking news, and breaking it fast to a global audience, even if in 140 characters, news organizations have new competition from the general citizenry as reported in Sunday’s NY Times coverage of the attacks in Mumbai. “At the peak of the violence, more than one message per second with the word “Mumbai” in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years.”

It’s not just the news organizations that need to fear being replaced by Joe and Jane average citizen with a cell phone and a quick dexterity, it’s also the PR practitioners that feed them. We’d better learn to not only understand the new technology of communication, but the new short form reporting it demands of us. Communicating shorter doesn’t have to mean ‘pigeon or license plate English.’ It means being more concise and succinct while still being literate. It might be as simple as sparing us all the gratuitousness and jargon; and just telling something straight and honestly. No, not eliminating entirely that which makes the English language so beautiful in its description and imagery, but to simply cut out the superfluous and proselytizing…to inform and not to sell. One of my favorite scenes in the movie, “A River Runs Through It” is where the father in teaching his son to write, admonishes him to halve in length the essay he is proudly shown…then to halve it yet again until it is its most succinct and powerful in its impact.

But perhaps the best example of a communication where less is more is the Gettysburg Address. President Lincoln was actually not the featured speaker on that cold November day; and asked only to say a few words prior to a gentleman named Edward Everett giving the main speech. Lincoln spoke for approximately two minutes and said exactly 238 words. Everett spoke for two hours and rambled off thirty-nine thousand words…enough said…truly, enough said.

The lesson of short form reporting and choosing one’s words carefully could never be more important than in this time of a shrinking economy and the shrinking number of traditional news outlets along side the proliferation of online outlets where brevity is at a premium. And while I disagree that “what are you doing now?” is reason enough to take someone’s valuable time, it’s obvious these new communication tools are now being used in far more important journalistic ways as well. If all business and world leaders currently communicating the mundane on Twitter can convince their PR departments and themselves to be as succinct and honest in communicating to the general public as the general public is in communication with each other, what a powerful impact it might have…maybe not for the ages, but at least for the passing.

The lost art of story telling…

I couldn’t help but be struck by Stuart Elliott’s column in the New York Times The Power of Storytelling

“TELL to sell,” once a mantra on Madison Avenue, is making a comeback as marketers seek to engage consumers with compelling stories rather than peddle products in hit-and-run fashion with interruptive advertising like 30-second commercials…”

Having spent considerable career time (as well as a chunk of my hard earned dollars) in advertising, I am hesitant to be overly critical of my brothers and sisters on the ad-side. But the idea that consumers can be engaged through compelling story telling needs to be rediscovered, tells volumes about how far advertising has drifted from it’s origins…and how distinct it’s become from public relations. If in fact, the advertising industry is resurrecting the soft tell rather than the hard sell, I applaud it; and welcome the change certainly as a consumer and as a promotional partner.

Truthfully however, I’m not entirely sure that PR, where the good and interesting telling of a client’s story went to flourish when the ad-side abandoned it for the “interruptive 15 to 30-second blaring spot,” hasn’t also drifted from a good tale to a snappy press release or email subject line. Now, we write press releases and media alerts with precisely crafted message points and hyperlinks to maximize and optimize a web site. Yeah, ok, so…where’s the story? Just because the media as well as it’s audience’s attention spans have been reduced through a generation of MTV edits, doesn’t mean that there is any less need for a tale to be told. Something with a beginning, a middle, an end…a problem, a discovery, and a solution…all told with languid embellishments or compressed to bare essentials, but with intelligence and irony intact, for the new generation of listeners and readers…i.e., a story.

We in the PR business had better get back to it. It would be sad to let the ad guys beat us at our own game… one we should be so much better suited for, considering that the best of our breed come from the news business where truth has always been stranger and more interesting than fiction or the puffery passed as “strategic messaging.” Plus, we grew and advanced our careers not on snappy jingles or two word billboards, but on knowing how to recognize a great story as well as tell it…with all its tension, controversy, irony, pathos, and humor intact. Try packing all that in to your next media alert or 30-second spot.

Our clients all desire to see their name and message become ‘viral’ or to be old fashioned, to have ‘legs.’ What better way than to wrap them in a good tale…told with passion, integrity, and maybe even a hyperlink or two.

Failure is divine and good for the mind…

To paraphrase Ol’ Blue Eyes… “When I was twenty-one, it was a very good year…” It was actually at twenty-three, but why hassle a year or two when you’re young and naïve. Fresh out of school with a graduate degree, a beautiful young family, a dream PR job in New York, and an unlimited future laid out before me...and most important, an attitude of nothing but success. Failure? Not in my world. No way. Businesses didn’t fail. Marriages didn’t fail. And certainly, personal failure (as in getting fired) was not even a passing thought. Failure was for losers…and to be shunned and buried.

But to paraphrase, with literary license, Bob Seger…”I’m glad I know now, what I didn’t know then…” As is well documented in today’s economy, businesses do fail, half of all marriages crumble, and people in this industry do get fired, usually more than once. Thank goodness and probably for good reason.

Whoa…before I alienate all the ‘invest in success’ do-gooders out there... I’m not denigrating nor ignoring the pain; or even that much failure could have been avoided with additional diligence or effort. But if I have learned nothing else in my forty years it’s that failure can and should be a precursor to success. I once worked with an extremely successful and wealthy technology entrepreneur that claimed in a Business Week interview that he had won big and lost big in business twice before his latest climb to the top. I had another client from a wealthy background that ended up on the street, homeless and an addict, before making a twenty-year rise to greatness… economically and personally. Most importantly, both these individuals state categorically, they will not hire nor invest in anyone that has not tasted failure. That “failures” ought to be a line item on any resume worth their time to review. For it is failure that tests us in ways not imagined nor taught. Failure teaches and corrects and fills in the unimagined blanks of our youth. Failure is painful and it’s from that pain that learning and change comes, but it should never be dehabilitating. If you’ve never failed, you’ve never been tested. And if you’ve never been tested, how can you grow.

Yes, there are those that seem to always get it right the first time. People that that seem to have the Midas touch in their business life or in their personal life. Someone with a life too good to be true…a well-suited career, great well-behaved kids, a loving devoted life-mate, loyal forgiving friends, a knack for being in just the right time and place for life’s twisting rope of fate to swing in front of them exactly when needed most to lift them from peril.

Don’t waste time envying them… Rather, wish them well and push on down the road you’ve been traveling… the one with the potholes and hazard signs… and that next great growth opportunity around the corner.

Boldness in the time of shrinking violets…

One of the great ironies of the business world is that when times become economically difficult and great voices of leadership are needed the most; the weak tend to withdraw and complain, the mild hesitate, and even the strong tend to go silent. And to add to the irony as this silence becomes more pronounced, it’s compounded by a rush to abdicate operational leadership to those least likely to have long term vision…the internal accounting and legal naysayers to which risk is the most profane of four-letter words. And risk tied to spending on (everyone whisper now)…. PR or advertising is close to sacrilegious.

Let me be clear in this time of crashing stocks, bankrupt auto companies, and failed political campaigns…risk is not inherently bad, evil or profane. Stupid, ill-conceived, and scurrilous risk is…and those that practice it are stupid at best and criminal at worst. But don’t get me wrong. The virtues of caution and hesitancy are well documented and do have a place in a successful enterprise. Our most recent presidential election, for example, where ‘gotcha’ politics could have spelled instant disaster. But even here, I think we pined on both sides for a little more bold, straight talk and a little less circumvention and caution.

But fortunately, we’re in business and not politics; where we hopefully try to appeal to the highest common denominator of our customers and stakeholders and not the lowest. Doesn’t it just make sense then, that when the economics of natural selection begin to dictate fewer and quieter voices in the marketplace, that those that have great products and services needed to move the economy forward, and a positive story to tell, be allowed to tell it…loudly and boldly? Instead, those companies both well-established and just emerging go silent because of a myopic but frequently held view internally, that the first place to cut spending is on those line items that will be the most important for its survival in the long run. Huh?

We have a real live crisis going on in this economy and in our free markets. If you’ve made it this far and haven’t been wiped out or reduced to the point of mere survival, this is not the time to abdicate operational responsibility to timid accounting and legal naysayers preaching the mantra that by pulling back you’re actually moving forward.

This is absolutely the best and most opportune of times to be shouting and preaching, and getting your message out. That is not risk no matter how you spell it and no matter who tells you. Your company can achieve a double positive hit in doing so…. because the channel is less crowded, the message content will be clearer; and bonus points earned with your audiences for bold action rather than timidity.

Change is a five-letter word…

As most of my friends and co-workers would acknowledge, change is not something that comes easily for me. Evolutionary rather than revolutionary decision-making, overly optimistic assessments of the status quo, and every so often a periodic anger based knee-jerk reaction …yes. I always have thought that if six decades of life experiences and forty years of being in an industry steeped in subjective analysis taught me anything, it’s that indeed, the more things change, the more they do stay remarkably the same. I believe however, it’s time that I changed my mind.

So what’s different now? Not the world…not the business cycles of bust and boom and bust again…and not one more presidential election. Rather I’ve come to that realization as probably everyone eventually does, but not everyone admits, that there is a time when younger minds translate to fresher minds and that translates to fresh approaches to the some of the same old problems…and some new ones. And even if the approaches may not always be unique, often the tactical execution of these approaches will be.

This, I believe, is just such a seminal time. A moment when we, once known as the ‘young turks’ of our generation, recognize a changing of the guard, and begin looking forward and not behind. A moment when the wisdom of experience not necessarily always be translated into tactical execution, but rather into counsel and advice to point the direction only and not demand leadership. A time to acknowledge that there are new solutions; or at minimum, new creative thinking not tainted by that old clichéd adage repeated above.

It’s time to let a new generation take their whack at running this country and move it forward on the high end. That’s not going to be easy, smooth or quick so all the more reason to get on with it while the rest of us older and wiser turks get back to making sure the base foundation is secure for them to do so. We’re not going anywhere and we’re not disappearing…at least not yet. We can teach, demonstrate, bestow, and maybe even inspire this new generation of leaders about accountability, about fairness, about compassion…and about making tough, hard and often unpopular decisions when optimism and freshness isn’t always enough.

Alas, the more things change, the more they stay remarkably the same.