Your PR Architect

Last week, my pal Dresden Engle invited me to a big reveal: the re-branding of the Ad Council of Rochester to Causewave Community Partners . The old Ad Council organization, founded decades ago by an advertising manager at Eastman Kodak Co., orchestrated community-wide campaigns that grew awareness for water pollution, distracted driving, and other important issues. And it helped dozens of not-for-profit organizations earn visibility in regional media. The fresh branding helps Causewave differentiate itself from other regional Advertising Councils, as well as the national Ad Council. Now, about the organization's causes: At the event, I met a few PR professionals who are on the high side of age 50. They had that look ; they were networking, looking for contacts who might help them find job opportunities. These pros were in the minority; most of the Causewave celebrants were much younger. As a demographic snapshot, the job seekers were older, with salt-and-pepper hair an...

When you need to drop 2,000 words on "what PR Is not about," as a recent online opinion piece does, you're too much in love with the sound of your own words. And losing readers with every sentence. By Joost J. Bakker (Flickr: Do The Right Thing graffiti Amsterdam) [CC BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Is this really a checklist? It feels like a rant -- a  long-winded epistle about what PR is not about that strayed into TLDR* territory after 300 words.  So, in the interest of brevity and casting PR in a less-defensive light, here's a much shorter list of what public relations is: 1. Public relations is about building trust between an organization and its stakeholders: customers, members, employees, investors, partners, and media. Do this by telling the truth.  2. PR is  about helping organizations and their leadership act and sound smart, innovative, and authentic.  3. PR is about doing th...

Sailor. Skipper. Cruiser. Crew. A man for all seasides. Disney Wonder, at port in Nassau, Bahamas A few personal nicknames, all reflecting my interest in nautical pursuits. None of these, however, makes me an expert on cruise lines. Experience on watercraft provides only modest preparation for events that can threaten even the most casual of seagoing experiences: I've taken two commercial cruises on those giant floating hotels masquerading as "ocean liners." The Disney Cruise Lines ' crew on the Disney Wonder did a better job than Norwegian Cruise Lines' Norwegian Dawn. Both were mostly trouble-free but I helped prevent a potential shipboard fire on one trip. I sailed the Abacos with a Boy Scout troop aboard a 20-year-old Beneteau whose skipper struck a submerged rock on our first night at sea. We limped through the rest of the week-long cruise. I've skippered a small sailboat and a powerboat, wrecking the powerboat engine's prop on a semi-subme...

TV news websites often repurpose their on-air scripts as web copy. It's quick and inexpensive. Trouble is, it often makes the reporter and his or her subject sound foolish. Read WHEC-TV's online account of the Mayor Warren/Reggie Hill story's finale:  http://www.whec.com/news/stories/s3296454.shtml?cat=565 Does Amanda, the reporter, sound like Thorndyke, the snarky reporter in "Die Hard?" Honestly, taxpayers aren't clamoring for Mayor Warren's comments on this tired story of a retired state trooper whose niece gave him a retirement job without first telling him: "Obey the traffic laws." (Warren apologized on a local radio station earlier in the week.) Does the mayor's spokesperson sound annoyed and defensive? Of course.  She started out by claiming Warren's uncle wasn't speeding as fast as officers said he was. She got into the weeds very early and likely never had all the facts. A PR strategy that most closely resembles "dodge ...

Blame Paula Deen's implosion on a slow news cycle. And no PR strategy for dealing with criticism. The absence of legislative newsmakers this week -- the Supreme Court killed DOMA and left for the summer -- leaves an overabundance of unspent media wattage. Where did it turn? On TV food celebrity Paula Deen. In a few short days after the disclosure that Ms. Deen had used the "N" word, she's been ditched by Wal-Mart, Ballantine Books, The Food Network, and Smithfield Farms. And probably had her Exxon-Mobil card cancelled. (Curiously, you can still obtain Ms. Deen's recipes on the Food Network's website.) Here's a different perspective: Everyone over age 30 has used the "N" word. Everyone. Often in jest. View Mel Brooks' 1974 comedy "Blazing Saddles," and you quickly lose count of the number of times it's used. (Borrow a DVD; when it airs on cable, every potentially offensive word has been bleached from the film.) Ms...

An effective PR strategy requires leveraging social media to drive visits to richer content: blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc. Create great content, and you give a human identity to an otherwise faceless business or organization. But, the content must be rich and active . And, if you once used Alta Vista for online search, you know that, like early roses, nothing online is forever. Recently I revisited my list of links to blogs and other websites that carry content I’d created. To be certain the URLs were accurate, I clicked each link. More than a few articles – mostly posts I’d written for company blogs – had been vaporized. Broken links? Worse. After digging, I discovered the hosting service that managed the blogs had folded. The client company (the one with their name on the website) hadn’t restored its missing content, or explained where it had gone. With the hosting service’s servers inoperative, a large chunk of their blog content – the “real...

How many hats do you wear in PR? Counselor? Writer? Media negotiator? Strategist? Here's one more: ethicist. we need more authenticity. In PR. On Facebook. And maybe in life. Brian Solis, who blogs about the impact of culture, technology and business, thinks there's room for much more transparency online. Brian had an interesting take on authenticity in public relations and social media, which you can read here . He argues for disclosing your relationship with a client or company if you write a personal blog or reviews about that company's products. Brian's post doesn't directly talk about the 2006 "Wal-marting Across America" scandal, captured here . But the connection's clear. Fast-forward; in 2013, authenticity is on the ropes again. Facebook and Twitter, in particular, enable unbridled "liking" and "following" of products, brands, and services. When we cheerily agree to use a Facebook app, we often give it permission t...

Great communications means building relationships: leveraging the right message, in the right voice, with the right audiences.  You may have a working PR strategy. But, if it's not yet interwoven with building relationships via social media, content marketing and event presence, you're only doing outbound, one-way messaging. Are you listening to your customers and stakeholders online? Can you look them in the eye and be unafraid of what you see? With 20+ years of corporate, academic, and not-for-profit public relations successes, I'm starting a new chapter. I've broadened the definition of PR via executive presentations, video podcasts, media relations, government affairs, social media, content marketing and event management. Please let me know about your marketing, social media and communications challenges. You have marketing and revenue targets;  I can audit, align, refine and implement your communication strategies so you're building relati...