PR's Great Reporting Gap

Media: "Don't bring me no stinking nuance...."


It struck me this last week watching the State of the Union address and later the President's give and take at the annual Republican Retreat, the rather enormous gap between reliable reporting and the communications of the complex issues being reported. We live in a world of nuance, both singularly and plural, but the media does not...particularly the broadcast media. Subtleties, complexities, enigmas...? Media's got no time for them and no budget to cover them...just bring them straight facts based on some kind of convenient authoritative source in the form of a talking head, or short of that they'll settle for a good repeatable short sound bite.


And, it's not always based on which side of the political spectrum the media is suspected to lie. The truth be told, except where openly stated, the largest percentage of the media likes to believe they are "independently centered" because they believe that is not only being "unbiased" but also where the largest audience and therefore the most advertising dollars linger.


This President, not as unlike his predecessors as we'd like to believe, is extremely difficult to define through simple labels like left, right, liberal, conservative, etc. This lack of a simple definition certainly adds to the difficulty of the media reporting on his presidency and his own inability to simplify his narrative to quick sound bites. "Change" and "Yes We Can" were simplistic campaign slogans, not detailed policy statements. Now we're into the real world of governing and legislating where simple is impossible and nuanced compromise reigns...not exactly the forte of the modern media. The instances I cite above are the latest but perhaps clearest examples of why it's still good to hear the long form position from the source, agreeable or not, rather than just its simplified reported interpretation.


We in the PR world unfortunately seldom have the advantage of presenting our clients, unadorned and transparent, direct to their chosen audiences like the President. We must rely on gaining the attention of the media through cleverly worded pitches and releases that pique their interest and turn their budget and time conscious bosses into backers. And remembering that it's the simple, not the complex, the clever sound bite, not the nuanced long form statement, is what is desired and used, we adhere to this formula. The sad, but good thing for us in PR, is that this formula continues to work at least with most modern broadcast outlets where time and cost are at such a premium. The sadder thing is that these same broadcast outlets do so at the behest of their audiences...us.

Time is Not on Your Side!

The Stones got it wrong….

Around my PR firm we’ve never believed that classic Rolling Stones’ song about time being on anyone’s side…and certainly not clients’…not when it can cost as much as $300 and up per hour for little to nothing in return! We thought it was about time to break the clock watching habit and billing by the hour. Don’t believe me…watch this






“No flacks were injured in the filming of this video.”

Healthcare Reform Has Nothing on PR

You think the healthcare debate is polarized...try pay-for-performance PR

I recently joined what I thought would be a reasonable sedate professional group on LinkedIn, the Public Relations and Communications Professionals. I thought it might be another way to expand my company's network for both discussions and recruitment. After all, we're always looking for professionals in this industry that might be in a position to join our virtual world in sharing client experiences, media tips, or even some insight on exactly how each of us define being a "professional. And given that I represent one of the largest PR firms specializing in being paid for results and not just billing hourly for effort, I thought it appropriate I join in on a group discussion centered on a group member asking about firms utilizing the "pay-for-performance" model.

That's when sedate became debate.

I've been practicing the model successfully for nearly twenty years so I've obviously known for a long time that pay-for-performance PR is the ugly stepchild of the profession and considered by a few in this industry as akin to selling tin siding to the elderly on a pension.But I guess I didn't realize the depth of both the misunderstanding of the model or the resentment and anger that it can foster in a "professional discussion. After one or two comments to the group extolling the benefits to the client of paying for tangible results after-the-fact, I soon found out. The level of the discussion quickly went to the shouting level of a town hall meeting last August on healthcare reform.The pay-for-performance model was labeled with everything from "devaluing PR," "being dishonest" and of course, "unethical." The only thing missing was an analogy of "pulling the plug on grandma."

I sensed real fear of a threat of the unknown. But isn't that always the case.We tend to fear that which we don't understand. The PR establishment of which I was and continue to be a part of over the years has done an excellent job of downgrading pay-for-performance PR firms as little more than ambulance chasers in a world of professional consultants. After all, we now can even be certified with initials following our names.

After a brief defensive stand where I raised my own voice in protest, I realized that as in most arguments, you're not going to change anyone's mind with a point, counterpoint kind of debate. And I know this may come as a shock to my fellow professionals and group members, but what we're talking here is PR, not rocket science or cancer cures.We provide a service.Sometimes there's a science in it and sometimes there's a lot of creativity in it; but mostly it's just using good sense to assist our clients to reach their communication goals...whether commercial or altruistic.And since we all proudly carry the label of professional, that assumes we charge for this service.If we're providing this service successfully and consistently, then how we charge should not be that big an issue as long as our clients believe they've received value.

But value is in the eyes of the client whether we like it or not. And in this age of tight budgets and reduced spending, accountability is very much a part of the client's evaluation of our services.To believe that different compensation models like pay-for-performance or a small base retainer plus bonuses for benchmark achievements, that appeal to these clients, are a threat to standard billing rates is accurate. But if a traditional billing firm can objectively demonstrate the value in their model to their clients, it has nothing to fear.

To all the others however, that rant against accountable billing in this profession, to borrow a phrase, "me thinks you doth protest too much"

The Grove Report: Time to Reinvent Our PR Selves

The Grove Report: Time to Reinvent Our PR Selves

Time to Reinvent Our PR Selves

Yet again...

The beauty of the end of the old year and the beginning of a new one is that it gives a perfectly good and timely excuse to do something for ourselves and our profession that we should have been doing on a continual basis all along...re-evaluation and reinvention. Forget the clichéd New Year Resolutions thing...they never seem to stick beyond a few days or weeks at best regardless. We're talking wholesale reinvention, not some minor personal tweaking like quitting smoking or losing ten pounds. (For the sake of honesty, I must fess up to the fact that twenty-three years ago, a new year resolution to quit smoking not only held but also was the best thing I ever did for my personal health. Now, that ten pounds thing has been a bit tougher...)

Re-evaluation? Reinvention? Ok, the re-evaluation is the easier of the two...but not always. It's tough to take a hard look at ourselves and how we've conducted ourselves professionally...and be brutally honest in the examination. The PR profession is an easy target for others and most of us are used to being on the defensive against criticism. However most of this criticism comes from outside our professional ranks from those that have the least knowledge of either the business framework or the processes employed. The criticism generally falls in the category of some kind of "devious manipulation of the truth or the public good" through some nefarious campaign designed and executed by a bunch of suits in a corporate boardroom. There are times that every PR pro wished that that kind of absolute control were possible, but in my forty years I've never seen it...zip, nada.

But on a smaller more individual scale there is not one of us that cannot look back on shortcuts we've made, clients we've taken with less than noble causes to promote, disingenuousness (lies?) to get a reporter interested, or my continuing favorite...client fees (both hourly and otherwise) inflated for the bottom line (ours, not the clients'.) These, plus the one most abused...an exaggeration of our own self-importance...are the critiques we need to make upon ourselves and note. Ah, but correcting them, therein lies the real problem. Making and committing to that effort in a tough economic time when clients are scarce and PR budgets even scarcer is no easy challenge.

Given that each new year and decade opens with an attitude of self-renewal and a positive vibe for what can yet be accomplished, and that this year being even more so because of the depths of negatively from whence we have just come, why not give it a shot? I'm personally betting on the future more than ever... that my and our collective actions together can influence change this year. That clients, the media (old and new) upon which we depend for so much, and others in this profession will respond to difficult, but oh so simple, changes... like fairness in billing and in payment, promotion and coverage of real news not opinion, and a little humility and civility in our interaction with each other.

As my favorite politician said a long time ago...."Some men dream of things that never were and say, why? Others dream of things that never were and say, why not?"

Sounds like a good way to start this new year.

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…