Tiger Dissappears

Does an 800-pound gorilla leave a shadow ?

Accenture, the global consulting firm announced this week it had the perfect plan for solving its current public relations problem, i.e., commercials, ads, billboards, posters, etc. touting its close and paid association with the world's most recognizable professional athlete, Tiger Woods. The plan, undoubtedly cooked up over several high priced meetings between management and corporate PR consultants, is a simple one...eradicate the cheating philanderer from our corporate life and pretend he doesn't exist! I can't imagine the number of high-priced hours that were charged against this winner.

Accenture, as if Tiger Woods Were Never There

How exactly...by removing the "Tiger brand" from all advertising, web sites, posters, internal displays, T-shirts, caps, tchotchkes...and, I assume from all jokes around the water cooler or board room table.

"The company's advertising campaign is about "high performance" and Mr. Woods 'just wasn't a metaphor for high performance anymore,' a spokesperson for Accenture said." Really? Juggling thirteen plus affairs while being married... and winning Athlete of the Decade, might cause some to doubt that, but that's fodder for others to debate.

Ironically, Accenture's Orwellian decision has caused even more focus to be put on the company's decision making and not for its decisiveness, but for its silliness and perceived pettiness. Rather than suffer a little self-effacing embarrassment, stand by their original decision, or at least judiciously move to a new marketing strategy, Accenture has chosen to come across as humorless, self-righteous, and a shade petty. Just the traits we all want in our high-priced corporate consultants, I guess.


For the record, I'm one of those naysayers that actually do believe that Mr. Woods' does not have a "public obligation" to come clean...to open his broken personal life to the public hordes that may or may not have purchased consulting services, a watch, a Buick (which he obviously doesn't drive personally) or a razor because of his face and scripted word. Mr. Woods is one hell of a golfer, arguably the best that ever lived...and as a golfing role model with his picture perfect swing, power, and single-minded on-course competitive intensity, he should be admired and imitated...and well-paid as a professional athlete. If these same attributes...some God-given but most learned through hours and years of practice...also attract advertisers, PR-types, corporate hanger-ons, fawning sports writers, and yes, beautiful adoring women...does that present an obligation for him to "go public" with an explanation or act of contrition so all can feel better about their own foolishness. The corporate sponsors and their PR minions are no different than the women that threw themselves in front of him...hanging out with Tiger so they can feel better about themselves and maybe add a little value to their lives (products, services, etc. etc.) They all got something in return.

The only people that Mr. Woods has an obligation to are himself and his family...and maybe his golf game that brought him the fame in the first place. The rest of us self-righteous souls need to get back to work.

Not Again…Burson Takes it on the Chin

Mark Penn makes it easy to violate the 11th commandment...

Let’s get this on the record and out of the way early…I like to think of myself as politically semi-independent. I lean a little toward being more fiscally conservative as I approach retirement but definitely to the left on social issues. But as the politics of 2010 go, I would definitely be considered a liberal latte-sipping leftist. Ok that being the case, then why am I constantly criticizing Mark Penn, the self-anointed political PR guru, advisor to Hilary and other Democrats, and head of one of the great old PR institutions and my alma mater, Burson-Marsteller?

Why…because he makes it so easy. Burson-Marsteller supposedly under his expert guidance continues to make dumb decisions…not necessarily for the clients, but for itself.

The latest is a recent report that federal records show that Burson and sister company, Penn, Schoen & Berland, were paid $5.97 million by the FCC to promote the national switch from analog to digital television last Spring. Granted, $4.36 of this amount was spent on paid advertising through it’s parent, Young & Rubicam, but Burson readily and proudly admits that it was compensated $1.3 million in “professional fees for the work of a team of professionals.” Considering that the entire program supposedly lasted less than three months, that indeed is a team of at least very expensive professionals. And if I remember my days at Burson correctly, they all carried hefty titles and more importantly, even heftier hourly billing rates.

It’s hard to fathom the stupidity or frankly, the immorality, of such billing and even harder to understand in this supposed age of “change in politics as usual,” the hypocrisy of allowing it to happen. I had hoped that this new administration would at the very least be more diligent in its management of the sycophants who follow new leadership into office if not less inclined to such behavior. If not however, then we loyalists need and should not shrink from criticizing those of our own…PR profession or political party.

Burson itself is not without blame in this. Is it the recession or Penn’s greed that has clouded Burson-Marsteller’s judgment to such a degree that it cannot afford to turn down what is an obvious conflict of interest at worst, or at best a sketchy communication strategy…to haul in a few more million?

But my real question to the board of Burson-Marsteller or to whomever Mark Penn answers to these days, is why he continues to enjoy their loyalty when he continues to abdicate his responsibility of sound judgment and even, God forbid, good PR sense…

“Managing” without Lou Dobbs

It will be tough, but I’ll try…

This year we’ve lost Walter Cronkite and Don Hewitt…two giants of broadcast journalism. Now we’re losing CNN’s Lou Dobbs. Well…not quite. He certainly is still among the living; and while he is leaving the cable network, he has vowed to “go beyond the role at CNN and engage in constructive problem solving.”

I’d find this amusing given his last several years on the air except it seems there are a lot of devoted followers of Mr. Dobbs out there who professed this devotion on his radio call-in show the following day. (Yes, he has one too.) Not surprisingly most of the devotees hoped he would be joining their favorite “news source,” Fox, or even running for political office. "We need you in the Senate, Lou,” one caller exhorted. Now there’s a thought…next speech before a joint session of Congress, he could join Representative Wilson in shouting down the President over immigration issues.

In his on-air departure announcement Dobbs said, "Each of those (major) issues is, in my opinion, informed by our capacity to demonstrate strong resilience of our now weakened capitalist economy and demonstrate the political will to overcome the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C. I believe these to be profoundly, critically important issues and I will continue to strive to deal honestly and straightforwardly with those issues in the future." Those issues, he added, are defined in the public arena "by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous, empirical forethought, analysis and discussion," and he vowed to work to change that.

In my humble opinion, Dobbs’ first step in changing the fact that partisanship and ideology are defining the issues in the public arena is his leaving the bloody CNN pulpit he’s been using for the last several years. Amen.

Ironically and once again for the sake of full disclosure, fifteen years ago Dobbs was hosting a weekend half-hour CNN business show from New York titled, “Managing With Lou Dobbs” on which I was a featured guest one week. While I admittedly enjoyed the attention the show focused on my PR business, I was underwhelmed by Dobb’s lack of preparation for the interview. Ok, I admit managing a national PR firm is not the same as being the head of the Federal Reserve, but a little professionalism would have been nice. (For those of you devotees, this show was prior to Dobbs’ previous departure from CNN in the heady days before the tech bubble burst. He left then to start his own dot-com devoted to space exploration. Alas, the bubble burst and Lou, perhaps a little less flush but no less humble as the journalist/advocate, returned to CNN.)

It may not be CNN next time, but Lou Dobbs needs the adulation of the multitudes and not the clubby Senate camaraderie of Al Franken. He’ll be back on the air soon enough.

Failing Up

Some of our best and the brightest…

The monthly jobless report came out again this week and the picture was bleak enough to flatten the earlier upward movement of the markets. Double-digit unemployment…ten point two percent…not since Reagan was well into his second year had we had this many of our citizens standing in line or looking for jobs. And many of those standing outside looking in are us…journalists, agency types, marcom pros, PR practitioners, and even whole small firms just not able to withstand the tightened or withdrawn budgets or credit squeeze. And while I’m enough of an optimist to believe that I see a faint glow at the end of this nightmarish tunnel, it still is a personal tragedy for those directly among the “jobless.”

But then I read a piece in the Sunday NY Times and was reminded again that sometimes real positive growth comes from being forced to re-evaluate our circumstances of employment…nice way of saying, “being canned.” Or, as the Times puts it, “The Benefit of a Boot Out the Door.” In the column, Jeffrey Katzenberg, elaborates on how his forced departure from Disney “fueled him to get on…etc.” Hey, I recognize that most of us that get laid off or fired, do so without the warm fuzzies of a Disney multimillion-dollar severance package to help us cope. But the point that being fired, whether from a seven-figure position or twelve-buck an hour job, is not necessarily always a bad thing…and good things can actually come of it.

Before someone out there says, “sure, easy for Mr. CEO to say,” it’s best for me to come clean. I’ve been fired, terminated, laid off, and generally just jobless on not just a couple of occasions, but several. And I’d like to believe that each time I’ve learned something about myself, and others. I also learned that losing your job whether self inflicted or not, is only failure if you fail to grow from it. I had a boss once, a man that had started three companies with the first two ending upside down…the third, highly successful. He believed strongly that only those that have tasted failure were worthy of employment consideration. His reasoning was that sooner or later most of us will stumble and fall, and he wanted to surround himself with those that had that out of their system and had grown accordingly.


I’m not sure I would go that far, but I certainly understand his thinking. My hobby is motorcycling and I must admit I prefer riding with those that have respect for the inherent dangers of the sport and ride accordingly. And more often than not, this respect is gained through a close call or even an accident…’going down’ as we say. The same can be said for a business enterprise…be it a news organization, corporation, or agency. Having a couple of close calls or even a job loss on your resume’ can be a positive…if you can demonstrate how you’ve grown from the experience and gained respect for the warning signs moving forward.

Yes, some may skate through life perfectly attuned to success and never be bothered with life’s annoying little stumbles…never being tested by a touch or two of failure and self-doubt. But come on, how many people really fit this description, and those that do…do you really trust them…or even like them? Me…I prefer to see a few scars on my associates and employees. To me, these are by far the best and the brightest.

What's in a name?

Shakespeare might have got it wrong …

As Juliet says to Romeo: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Well…maybe. I’m not sure Shakespeare would be so sure of his prose if he were to deal with today’s law firms, advertising agencies, and PR firms. I was reminded again of the difficulty and the egos involved when I recently read Stuart Elliott's
 In Advertising column in the New York Times. He answers a reader’s question Q&A section about the famous ad agency, BBDO, and its name being associated with a famous quote that the original name of the agency -- Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn -- “sounded like a trunk falling down a flight of stairs.” Indeed.

The story reminded me of the name of my second place of employment, N.W. Ayer & Son, often referred to as the oldest advertising agency in America…or affectionately (and despairingly) as “the old gray lady of Philadelphia.” The story goes that when the agency was founded in the late nineteenth century, yes, in Philadelphia, old N.W. had nothing to do with it. In fact, he was already deceased. His son, whose name escapes me as well as most advertising historians, decided that an enterprise as auspicious as America’s original ad agency needed more gravitas than his name alone bestowed. Thus, he gave the lion’s share of the letterhead to his deceased father and he took up anonymous residence to the right of the ampersand.

Naming an advertising or PR agency with just the right combination of gravitas and ego…mixed with trendy creativity is not an easy task as I learned when faced with just such a task a few years ago when I founded my own firm. (I cannot speak for law firms since they seem to be dedicated to gravitas and ego alone.) I ran through the usual boring suspects like…RH Grove & Associates, Grove Communications, and my personal favorite, Gordon, Geotz & Grove (or G3 as in “cubed”.) Gordon and Geotz, both being deceased high school friends, to add “size” and the gravitas while the “cubed” hit a note of ultra cool creativity. Thank goodness my daughter and experienced communication professional herself, stepped in to save me and the new firm from such an embarrassment. Her frank assessment…”why not just name the company for what it does, not who founded it. Call it, INK…that’s what you do for clients…get them ink.” Indeed.

Not as much gravitas, little to no ego, trendy creativity…maybe. But INK by any other name after all these years wouldn’t smell nearly as sweet.

Gullibility… media is thy name

The stunt worked and that’s what’s so pathetic

Face it. We all got sucked into the drama last week played out on the nation’s TV screens. Those at home paused to listen or watch. Those at work were interrupted by co-workers either attuned to breaking alerts on the Internet or an office television. But we all paid attention…even if just momentarily. We all paid attention. Why? It was a hot breaking news story with all the elements that we’ve learned make our senses prick up. It had a child in terrible, immanent danger. It had distraught parents. It was highly visual and perfect for television. And, it had gained the instant gravitas of CNN and Fox, with the other networks soon to follow. Perfect!

Except for one minor problem… it wasn’t true.

Then, of course, came the backlash of what Frank Rich in Sunday’s NY Times (In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad) referred to as, “a warm bath of moral superiority. No matter our own faults, we could never top Richard Heene, who mercilessly exploited his child for fame and profit. Nor as craven as the news media…”

I don’t believe the broadcast news media to be that craven. Gullible, sloppy, and driven above all else for the scoop in this age of the 24/7 news cycle, yes. Open to exactly this kind of a misfortunate publicity stunt by the same kind of individuals that are pathetic in this instance (and yes, smart) enough to feed off their kids to satisfy their and the media’s needs, yes. But I do agree with Rich in his Times piece, that we in the watching audience must share in that gullibility. Did we all suspend all sense or common sense while watching that over-sized Jiffy Pop floating over Colorado? The answer to that is also, yes. And it’s that secret knowledge of our own gullibility that adds to our outrage. “A massive fraud!” so thundered Bill O’Reilly.

However we in the business of publicity must also applaud…no, not the sad use of one’s own kid to exploit for fame and profit…but the execution of the stunt to gain the incredible primary coverage as well as the secondary and continuing coverage. This story has great legs…not in spite of its falsehood, but now because of it. Amazing! The media can’t help itself.

“They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it,” the local sheriff said last weekend.

And, we are continuing to do so.

Is it blessed to receive?

From random fax-spam to blogger freebies …

There’s something strangely comforting about still receiving faxes in the age of the Internet and email…even if the faxes are solicitations of the absurd. My favorite this week was from Presidential Who’s Who, addressed to “Dear Company Owner” and exclaiming that “my information had been reviewed and accepted for inclusion in the 2010 edition.” Hot Damn! After forty some years I am finally being recognized for “outstanding business and professional achievements.” Well ok…it’s about time.


But wait. It then went on to ask me to fill out and return an attached form that asked my name and title, my company’s name, its industry, our principal product or service, and personal specialty. Hmmmm…just a random thought, but if my company and me have “reached the distinguished level of success in my chosen profession,” as stipulated, and I’ve already been reviewed and accepted to be in this fine edition, why ask? On further review, I choose to continue in anonymity.


Of far greater import than my personal recognition in yet another bogus edition of Who’s Who, was the piece in the New York Times Ad and Media section this week, "Soon Bloggers Must Give Full Disclosure", that the FTC has decided to crack down on bloggers plugging products sent to them by companies hoping for a favorable review. The FTC rules governing endorsements and testimonials in advertisements are going to be studied and possibly expanded to cover bloggers and social media like Facebook and Twitter. This kind of “freebie spam” has been a stable of marketing for just about forever; and certainly long before the invention of the Internet or social media. According to the Times, “For bloggers who review products, this means that the days of an unimpeded flow of giveaways may be over. More broadly, the move suggests that the government is intent on bringing to bear on the Internet the same sorts of regulations that have governed other forms of media, like television or print."

We all know that one of the beauties and really cool things about social media and blogging in particular, is the freedom of everyman or every woman to express themselves without the impediment of commercial or organizational restrictions…other than their sense of good taste and social mores. But all the FTC is now institutionalizing is what we’ve all known for some time was destined…that the Internet and social media have become tools for enterprise. Yes, on a macro level it’s still a great new way to communicate, share, and expand our worlds, and without doubt the phenomenal transforming tool of at least the early Century. All well and good…but it’s also a great way to push diapers or a cell phone. And it’s probably time to recognize that as well.

As one mommy blogger said, “I think that bloggers definitely need to be held accountable. I think there is a certain level of trust that bloggers have with readers, and readers deserve to know the whole truth.”

Accountable….there’s that word again.