Should PR pros take white collar crime more seriously when developing crisis communications plans?  Have we been failing our clients by not doing a better job of warning them upfront of the potential reputational hit resulting from knowingly breaking the law?

Ever since I read about the recent Walmart debacle in Gini Dietrich’s Spin Sucks blog, I couldn’t help but think how the role of crisis communications may need to evolve.

The usual formula goes something like this: Company X does wrong. Company X gets a call from a reporter with a major North American daily that is going to blow the lid off the transgression. Company X picks up the phone, calls their PR agency and cries, “Help! We’re all over the New York Times! Now what?”

And of course, we are there at the rescue. Developing plans, key messages, Q’s and A’s….doing our best to clean up and hopefully resurrect a reputation.

But has the time come where we need to talk about serious corporate wrongdoing to our clients/C-suite as part of our regular crisis planning?  Do we need to be more articulate about ‘laying down the law’ so to speak?

We tend to gloss over the really bad stuff.  I’ve even been part of those conversations.  “Well, if (heaven forbid!) somebody dies, or you’re caught bribing someone…well, the crisis plan would kick in and we would follow best practices.”

I think we need to go further.  We likely need to work with legal experts to develop awareness around ‘extreme crises as part of regular crisis planning.  This would be beneficial on a number of fronts:

• Create a heightened awareness with the client, especially those in the Fortune 50 bracket, of the severe ramifications of white collar crime
• Involve the client/company’s Board of Directors in these discussions; they are often complicit with decisions that serve as a catalyst for wrongdoing
• Better prepare in-house counsel and the communications team with in-depth response mechanisms in times of crisis

I may be dreaming in Technicolor to think that PR could actually make a corporate giant think twice before trying to deke out the law.  But I do think its incumbent upon those of us in our profession to at least try.

 As a died-in-wool Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan, PR veteran Elissa Freeman jumped at the chance to guest blog for a guy with the last name ‘Esposito’ from Boston.  A 20+ year PR veteran, she was named one of Twitters’ Top 75 Badass Females and Toronto’s Top 150 Social Media Influencers.

Image - watchingfrogsboil

Public relations professionals are constantly tasked with building up buzz for products, brands or particular advertising campaigns.

Much of this hype building is focused on being short-lived and based on specific dates. While this is good for the specific product launch or event, it often leaves me with a sense of wanting more from the company.

So when I see a company leveraging PR as part of a longer-termed strategy, I get excited. The most recent example of this is the National Football League. Sure the 2011 season was exciting, but the league is looking to make its fans forget about the nasty lockup that dominated the headlines of last offseason with hit after hit.

About a month ago, they gained a lot of exposure with the launch of their new uniform contract with Nike. To follow up on that performance and its social components, last week the NFL rolled out a series of movie trailers to hype up some prime time matchups coming this fall.

While the league calendar year starts with the Draft on Thursday night, these movie trailers do a pretty good job making fans forget about the other major sports leagues currently in play. Take a look at the video above and tell me that you aren’t ready for some football.

On the one hand, it’s pretty ballsy to think anyone can control the media’s distribution of a story—especially if you’re a reporter or working the general assignment desk.

To be sure, the use of an embargo is a contentious strategy, used only when a story has significant industry or community impact. Yet, it’s still my favourite weapon of choice to ensure an important story receives a tsunami of nearly simultaneous news coverage.

For an embargo to be effective, you need compliance from all parties involved: designated spokespeople, clients and their stakeholders, all of whom may be privy to important information. And yes, it can be difficult to keep everyone quiet.

But more importantly, it also involves the media’s acquiescence. And that can be a complicated transaction.

What happens when a media outlet breaks an embargo early? Depending on the strength of the news source, there can be serious consequences. Reporters have  been blacklisted and their privileges of receiving advance information revoked. There was also the recent embargo break by The New Yorker’s movie reviewer David Denby.

Here are my tried-and-true ways of making an embargo work:

1.     It better be good.

Only use an embargo if:

• Your story is truly significant (this could be significant on a local or national level).
• There is a press conference accompanying the release of the news.

2.      Don’t cry wolf.

Don’t mis-use an embargo hoping it will entice reporters to cover a weak story.  You will lose all credibility with the media who will be even less likely to cover your next initiative.

3.     No exclusives.

For an embargo to work, I never offer exclusives. Everyone gets a shot to cover the story, especially if you’re holding a press conference. Plus, I never want to be seen as favouring one reporter over another.

4.     Pre-releasing embargoed information.

TV reporters covering a specific beat (eg, health) often create longer pieces that require more shooting and more editing, but also get more airtime. I do pre-release embargoed information, but only after the reporter signs a confidentiality agreement.  These are also reporters with whom I have developed strong and trusting relationships.

5.     Get an embargo agreement signed

I have reporters sign an embargo agreement; one that prohibits them and all their outlet’s extensions from pre-releasing the story. Not only does it underline the potential importance of the story, but it creates a bond of trust between you and the reporter. And no, I’ve never had anybody not sign one.

 6.     Stick to your guns.

Reporters can get aggressive with you when they see the word embargo.  “You know, we may not run the story at all,” says Reporter from Major Media Outlet. Uh, yes you will if the story is good.

 Have you ever used an embargo?  Was it successful? 

 As a died-in-wool Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan, PR veteran Elissa Freeman jumped at the chance to guest blog for a guy with the last name ‘Esposito’ from Boston.  A 20+ year PR veteran, she was named one of Twitters’ Top 75 Badass Females and Toronto’s Top 150 Social Media Influencers.

Embargo image - tvanhoosear

You see, aside from the improved coverage and relationship angles for companies, social media gives PR folks an easy way to insert themselves into the story.

Over the past few months I’ve been disgusted seeing an increase in blog posts and even a PR chat surrounding that very notion, often called building a personal brand. These posts have championed the mercenary mentality of caring only about yourself and giving your services to the highest bidder.

Having a good reputation, both online and off, is vital to every professional, so what I find interesting about these folks touting of the personal brand is that they are ironically offering advice to tarnish your professional brand. While it is great to have aspirations of getting your name on the door of the corner office, it does not happen overnight. The folks sitting in those chairs worked their asses off learning hard lessons along the way to get there.

So to me the notion of jumping from job to job, simply because you aren’t moving up fast enough is laughable to me, especially coming from the social media echo chamber. This is mostly because the advice given out there is peer-to-peer coming from folks that for the most part have not reached the ripe old age of 30 yet.

While having 10,000 Twitter followers or 25,000 subscribers to your blog’s RSS is nice, they are meaningless unless you can produce meaningful results for your company.  And if you can’t produce results and continue to improve, no amount of job-jumping can help you more than it can hurt you. Not only does it look bad to recruiters, it also can burn bridges within the industry.

At the end of the day, PR practitioners went into the field to promote businesses or clients. The job entails being in the background, a puppet master if you will, not to be Will Smith or Tom Cruise with your name up in lights.

So before you go burning a bridge in putting yourself first, think about how much being your own publicist pays compared to your current 9-5.

Image -  slworking2

Have you leveraged social media to boost your PR output?

The entire public relations industry is in the last spasms of a loud and painful demise. PR is useless in the 21st Century because everyone is their own personal brand and their own personal media. The gatekeepers took a permanent vacation the minute the media world hit the web and John Q. Public became John Q. Citizen Journalist. Why bother hiring someone to chat up a reporter for you when you can email them yourself? Even better, why bother with the reporter at all? Just write up what you have to say and blog, Tweet, Facebook and Flickr until you get the word out.

What is disturbing is the way that the PR industry is doing everything it can to hold on to their piece of the pie. Instead of adapting and offering clients something they can use, and put value in, they are throwing up a smokescreen. The PR industry is building up a wall of half-truths, scams and frauds to make sure the billable hours keep rolling in.

There are two big areas where PR firms just won’t let go, and are screwing their clients in the process: media relations, press releases and connecting with the media.

Until recently, reporters and PR people were the best of friends. It was a give and take relationship. PR people gave reporters a story that placed their clients in the most favorable light possible, along with a little bit of lagniappe. Some tickets to the game, a nice dinner, an expensive bottle and a good time were frequently provided to grease the wheels of journalism. The reporters wrote about the publicists’ clients in a way that made them look fantastic. A great PR person would have relationships at all the big publications going back years, and having a Rolodex, meant just that: having a bunch of hard to get contact information for how to get in touch with writers.

This world ended with the onset of the social media world. Want to get a hold of a reporter? There is a hot link to their email at the end of every article. In many cases there is even a working phone number with an extension. As for long term relationships,   these are mostly a thing of the past. First, what journalist do you know has kept a steady gig at one publication, on one beat for any length of time in this current media climate? It’s a rarity. Most journos are desperately doing their best to keep enough writing gig balls in the air to keep the lights on. The idea that a reporter will stick around in one place long enough to help a PR person again and again is becoming quainter by the second. Why not type that up on carbon paper while you’re at it?

The expansion of the web into every corner of the world has also made readers much more informed. It’s nearly impossible for a flack and a journo to collude and pass off something slightly dishonest or spin worthy. The truth to just about everything is a quick Google search away. Journalism has never had to be more honest and truthful, and people know when they commit something to be published, it will be checked out from every angle. If a reporter fudges something to make a company look good, and help out a PR buddy, they will be called out for it.

However, it is just as simple for a business owner to send something nice to a journalist, as it is for a PR person. Still, most reputable publications now have gift policies, or at the very least the writer needs to declare if they were setup on a media tour, or a given something free to review. Then again, if you try to buy off a journalists these days, you might just as easily end up on the wrong end of a vicious tweet or blog post calling shenanigans on your shady dealings.  What it all comes down to is the inter-connected media world we live in has made relationships between journalist and PR people practically worthless.  Even at it’s’ best, nothing you should be paying $450 an hour for.

Take a good look around the web at your favorite publications. Can you find an article that was written because of a press release? It’s doubtful. You might dig up something here or there, where a writer was feeling lazy, but it’s uncommon. With all the information in the world at their fingertips, journalists can research and find whatever they like. The chance the most wonderful thing they stumble on out there in the great World Wide Web is your press release can be quantified in decimal points. It’s like hitting that half-court shot when they pull your ticket at a Nets game. It could happen, but don’t spend that prize money just yet.

Those being the case, why do PR firms still recommend, create and bill for press releases? Good question. I still hear people talking about putting releases out “On the Wire”! Really people? Did Thomas Edison rise from his grave to assist you in sending out your news release? Press releases are a relic from a time when information was a hard to come by commodity. That is not the case in 2011. In fact, we have the opposite problem. Too much information and not enough filtering. It’s absolutely egregious that supposedly reputable PR firms charge an arm and a leg to recommend that their clients send out news releases, and a further two limbs to create and distribute them. It’s an out and out fraud.

PR firms know that a press release isn’t going to get any traction, or get any pickup. They know that they’ll have an intern or the most junior staff member write it up. They know they’ll charge you a ton to “distribute “it through a service that is a glorified email list serv. Yet they still do it. From where I’m sitting, that is a first class scam. It’s a way to tack on additional billing for doing work that they know will be ineffective from the get go.

It’s never easy hearing that you’re lively hood is on the way out. I imagine fletchers, blacksmiths, telegraph operators and typewriter repairman have all felt the way some PR firms feel right now. The work you’ve been doing for years has been crushed under a wave of technology. Is there a place for PR firms in the 21st Century? Certainly, but they need to be looking at Public Relations from a 21st Century point of view. It’s time that firms took a long, hard look at what they do for clients, and why they do it.

About Michael Dolan:

I’m a Geeky PR strategist and online troublemaker for hire. Writer. I love designing social media and alternate reality games. Up for creating an online ruckus? Me too. Bike Racer. Cyclocrosser, BMX’er and reluctant roadie. Photographer. Atheist. Book Nerd. Resident of Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn patiently awaiting The Singularity.

My writing, photography, media work and creative projects have shown up in the NY Times, Time Magazine, The Guardian, Wired, Crain’s, NY Post, Mashable, Gothamist, Time Out NY, PR Breakfast Club, Oprah, Travel and Leisure, Fox News, New York Magazine, NPR, Kinky Jews and many other fine media outlets worldwide. I like to document the oddities and bizarre moments of modern life life on Flickr, Twitterand Foursquare.

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire…@EvilPRGuy.

Image - *tomasrotger.com 

On August 23, Tuesday for those of you playing along at home, I will be part of Cision’s The Future of Media. The event is free and is a rapid-fire platform of 30 speakers in 60 minutes on the future of media, public relations and social media.

I am part of a cast that includes Gini Dietrich, Heather Whaling, CC Chapman, Deirdre Breakenridge and many more.

Topics covered will include:

• Is advertising dead?
• What is the new marketing mix?
• How has social media changed our ability to generate earned media?
• What does success look like in the era of radical integration?

Over the past few weeks, I have really been questioning what is wrong with PR people. Now, I am no journalist or and I’m not going on a rant about communicating with reporters. I am alarmed at two things: “the state of ME” and coverage.

The first is “the state of ME”. While social media is a really powerful tool that all PR pros should know, lately it seems as if folks in the industry have had their vision clouded by social media. Instead of making the company or client the story, many flacks have made themselves an integral part of the story.

Sure, we could easily say that the Brian Solis’ and Peter Shankman’s of the world have fostered the appearance of PR pros turned media darling pundits, but that is just stupid. At the end of the day both Brian and Peter have busted their asses and I am pretty sure that when either worked on a client, they made sure that it was the client that got credit and didn’t try to make the success about them.  They also made it possible for many to see PR as an important corporate cog. At the end of the day, as a PR pro, you took a selfless job to make others see their name in print, remember that. The C-suite signing your checks surely will.

My second beef with the PR industry is what folks are calling coverage nowadays. In a few recent online chats, I have seen people note that pay-to-play coverage opportunities and Tweets from agency or company representatives qualify as coverage.

When you look at a paid piece of editorial, it is nothing more than an ad and should be handled by an advertising department. By going this route as a PR person, you lose the credibility of earning media. These paid opportunities also cloud your measurements as they are often looked at as needing to bring in a positive return on the money spent on placing them.

Counting agency and company Tweets as coverage is also as foolish. The main reason for this is that no matter what the audience or Klout score of a flack in this situation, the Tweet is worthless unless it causes an action. For example if you do fashion PR and your friends and network are all into NASCAR and hunting, what good does a Tweet announcing Coach’s new line of hand bags? Sure adding a couple thousand impressions on paper may look awesome, but if they aren’t leading to someone checking out the release or purchasing, then you are just padding stats for the sake of padding.

I could go on and on about either of these topics, but I won’t. I want to hear what you think about this. Am I way off base, or is this something that gets at your craw as well?

Image - PropagandaTimes

Fast forward to today, as many of you know an Amazon cloud went down and mucked up a lot of heavy hitters in the social space including foursquare, Hootsuite and Livefyre. Now I use many of these services, but did not receive or expect to receive notification of the issue or how it impacted my by any of these companies. It was a glitch that sucked but was something you deal with – no biggie. Well all that changed when I received the email below from the CEO from Livefyre:

Hi Jeff,

At roughly 1:00AM PST on Thursday morning, the Amazon EC2 server hosting service that Livefyre uses suffered an outage due to network errors, effectively disabling Livefyre as well other companies such as Foursquare, Quora, Reddit, and Hootsuite. The Livefyre team is currently working with Amazon to have this issue resolved as soon as possible.

Your comments have been written to your database thus preserving your data, and if you’d like, you can revert to the WordPress commenting platform and all comments will be synced with Livefyre once you reactive our plug-in. We will contact you as soon as we have more information. If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail us at support@livefyre.com. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Cheers,

Jordan Kretchmer, CEO
Livefyre, Inc.

Now this email wasn’t necessary but it was awesome from a user and a PR perspective. As a user, I loved that there was a solution – this downtime was probably a pain for blogs with more comment flow than this blog. From the PR side it showed that the company was on top of things and ready to help in any way they could.

Great work guys.

I am pissed off. The PR industry has recently received one black eye after the other – and you know what? It’s our own damn fault.

Yes, I said it. The recent bad press for the PR industry (and individual practitioners) in TechCrunch, Forrester and the New York Times came from the work of horrible PR people. These ranged from bad pitches to scamming a small business.

That pisses me off even more than anything. Instead of being a source of news and information from the media – our industry is being looked at as nothing more than a bunch of snake oil salesmen.

While every industry has its share of bad apples, it seems like we’ve had more than our fair share. Sure bad news and our symbiotic relationship with reporters makes our follies easy fare to sell papers, but it’s still no excuse to promote shoddy workmanship.

So how do we fix this?

Well, some suggestions I have heard include standardizing the industry with some kind of licensing certification, like lawyers or accountants. I will leave those kinds of fixes to smarter folks. I think we all need to do some self policing -if you see someone acting shady or blatantly spamming, give them a kick in the ass or point them to better ways to do their jobs.

If we don’t, well, we might just use this Metallica song as our greeting cards…

What are your thoughts on fixing the space? We’d love to hear below.

Should be a good story right?

Well I thought so until I heard a commercial on the radio in which a Louisiana business owner was touting BP living up to their promise to be there until the end of the recovery. I wasn’t sure that I heard correctly until I saw a similar commercial on TV.

It would be one thing if bought a commercial to support these local small and micro businesses, but seriously having these business owners say something like:  “BP asked you to keep me informed” and keeping the BP branding was in poor taste.

If it wasn’t for the company’s mismanagement and corner cutting in the Gulf, this incident could have been avoided. To me these commercials are kind of like Bernie Madoff paying for commercials for his victims and adding in “well hey Bernie isn’t all that bad, he helped me get $20 grand back out of the three million I lost.”

I just don’t see how anyone in their right mind could approve of a commercial that capitalizes on a disaster that was created by the advertiser, but I have a habit of overreacting. So I decided to reach out to my friend Justin Goldsborough for his take on the subject. He offers a bunch of great insight in this counter-post. What say you? Was this a good marketing tool or is it just distasteful.

I think the new BP ads show how slowly companies actually change and how big of a hill the company has to climb. In this case, the combination led to what someone who does marketing for BP probably thought was a genuine, smart advertising campaign. I’m sure smiles, handshakes and maybe even a fist bump or two were exchanged when these ads were first revealed inside BPs walls. But the public is not going to be so quick to smile at or shake hands with the brand that mishandled so many things in the Gulf last year, most notably the disaster itself.

Image - Wikipedia

BP did some things right here. Sure, the commercials are self-serving, but I now know they financially compensated some of the people whose lives and livelihoods they ruined. And BP gave about 10 seconds of each ad to the small business owner they featured in the commercials to promote their brands. That was cool. But there were also things about the ads that weren’t cool – most notably the line in each commercial you alluded to Jeff: “BP asked me to keep you informed.”

Not exactly. The line should have been written as follows: “BP paid me some money and gave me some free airtime on their commercial if I agreed to try and make them look good and their legal team, which obviously doesn’t have any understanding of public perception, made me say this line like a this-medicine-can-cause-internal-bleeding-and-you-may-even-die-if-you-take-it-but-have-a-nice-weekend line in a pharma commercial.” Of course they couldn’t say it that way in the ad because, well, the ad was only 60 seconds among other things.

In situations like this one, I always like to ask myself the “What would you do?” question. BP might tell you they took a lesson from Dominos and tried to make things right and then do an ad campaign around it. But that’s pizza. This is peoples’ lives. And Dominos dove into the listening and engaging pool head first. BP has not gone that route yet. But I digress…What could BP have done differently? Well, here are some ideas:

• Why not give these small businesses the full 60 seconds during the commercials? Just put your BP logo in the bottom corner; kill the corny music as our friend Shonali Burke said, and let the citizens of the Gulf who had their lives changed by the oil spill tell their stories.
• Forget the commercials and spend the advertising budget organizing community events in the Gulf. Provide the citizens an opportunity to network, tell their stories and help each other. Bring in counselors, educators and entrepreneurs who can share advice on how to rebound your business when you have to start from scratch.
• Crowdsource. When you’ve screwed up royally and then screwed up the apology – and several subsequent apologies – royally, there’s one move you can make that will always be seen as disarming. Ask for help. I don’t care how badly someone screwed up. If they come to you and ask for help, it’s hard to go online and rip them to shreds or do so to their face. What if BP took the Dominos route on social media by building their accounts and saying they were listening? Then, what if they posted that they were setting aside part of their advertising budget for 2011 to help the families affected by the oil spill, but that they wanted some advice on the best way to help that would have the strongest impact and really make a difference?

Change is hard. Always has been, always will be. Egos are involved, people are stubborn, businesses don’t want to make another mistake while they are trying to recover from the first one. But look at the brands that rebound well from crises. Usually they are in one of two situations – 1) The company has already built up goodwill and strong consumer relationships so customers are willing to give the brand a second chance or 2) The company steps way out of its comfort zone, listens to what its customers are saying and realizes the only way to win back some credibility is to change the culture, the way they do business.

BP has taken a step – a SMALL step – in the right direction with these commercials. The brand showed it has a conscious. But so far it’s like the dad who missed his son’s high school graduation and then called to apologize and sent a check to help with tuition.  But BP, like that dad, hasn’t yet decided to change the way it lives its life, or in this case, does business. And without making a wholesale change like that, the brand will never have any kind of meaningful relationship with the public and the Gulf citizens whose lives it disrupted.

Justin joined Fleishman-Hillard Kansas City, where he specializes in digital strategy and education, in 2009. Before that, he was at Sprint for two years where he managed the company’s employee social network, Sprint Space, and led efforts to improve customer outreach via social media, specifically Twitter. He is in his fifth year on the Kansas City IABC board and is serving as president for the 2010-11 board year. Justin is a huge Bon Jovi fan and once won third place in a karaoke contest at Chicago’s John Barleycorn’s with a rousing rendition of Livin’ on a Prayer. He’s also a diehard Kansas City Royals fan, so go easy when talking baseball. Justin blogs here at Justin Case You Were Wondering.

This post originally ran on the PR Breakfast Club.

If you haven’t heard by now, the NFL had a giant game in Dallas a few weeks ago. It brought in buco-bucks, drew the largest viewership in television history and made a lot of fans from a small town in Wisconsin very happy. So one would think that the league left the Lone Star State feeling awesome and without problems.

Well, if you haven’t been living under a rock and you pay attention to sports, or news for that matter, you know that the league is facing a major PR issue that may tarnish their image. This doesn’t concern the looming lockout of the players (a PR conundrum for another day), but rather folks who fill their coffers – the fans. You see, there were over 90,000 fans who purchased tickets to come to the game, problem was the seats weren’t available for over 1,000 of these ticket holders to be sat in during the big game. This was because the seats were not completed and did not pass the muster test of the fire marshal.

The league knew a week before the game that the seats wouldn’t be ready. Instead of alerting the ticket holders, they decided to roll the dice and wait for the fans to find out at the game. While the league did attempt to make amends, the effort was not enough.

The root of this issue is greed. Jerry Jones and the Cowboys wanted to set Super Bowl attendance records in the first Super Bowl held in the new Cowboy Stadium. You can’t blame the guy for trying, but when the seats weren’t completed, they needed to reach across the proverbial aisle to make amends. Their initial response was (via FanHouse):

“Those fans that are affected by this will be directed to the Party Plaza area while the matter is resolved. Fans who are not accommodated with seats inside the stadium will each receive a refund of triple the cost of the face value of their ticket. We regret the situation.”

Fans who couldn’t be accommodated with these moved seats were ushered to lounges within Cowboy Stadium and the neighboring stadium of the Texas Rangers- a higher priced version of the ticket holders’ living rooms

To make this PR headache a wee-bit worse, the fans that didn’t get to watch the game in the seats that they paid $900 (face value) for have now retained a lawyer for a class action suit. They are currently seeking $5 million in damages – roughly $4,000 a fan.

From an outsider’s point of view, there is little chance for the league to come out with at least somewhat of a shiner. One way I could see the NFL winning is to offer these folks Super Bowl tickets for life and use them as some kind of new legacy comparable to the never-miss-a-Super Bowl club. This group could also be facilitated with the means to discuss their experiences in the host city on a platform like NFL.com or SuperBowl.com to maximize their exposure and benefit the city.

To gauge more opinions on how the league could come up like roses, I reached out to fellow PRBC authors Mike Schaffer and Keith Trivitt.

Mike’s take:

Normally, I am a pure fan advocate.  Teams and leagues can always treat their fans better.  But allow me to defend the NFL for a second.  While they NEVER should have sold tickets for seats they weren’t 100% confident in being able to fulfill, I think they did a decent job in this situation.

The fans were moved from virtual bleacher seats to box suites, given TRIPLE the value of their overpriced tickets and invited to next year’s Super Bowl, where I’m sure they will be given world-class treatment.  Plus, they now have one of the greatest stories in sports.

To recap: They are suing for $4,000 when they get $2,700 and the ability to see TWO Super Bowls in person.  Sounds like the league as given the mea culpa and adequate compensation.  Don’t get me wrong, the league dropped the ball, but, in my opinion, they’ve responded appropriately…in this situation.

Keith’s take:

I’m not sure the NFL has many options in terms of coming out rosy in this situation. The timing, at least from the NFL’s standpoint, couldn’t have been worse, as it faces a multitude of PR challenges in the months ahead.

Let’s look at it from a macro level. The League is already starting down a potential March 4 lockout, which many in the public, fans and media have pinned on its owners’ greed and egos. Add to that the fact that the Super Bowl is essentially the world’s largest single-day economic booster. With all that in mind, the NFL simply could not afford for something of this nature and at this level to happen, especially on its most vaunted stage. This problem will likely only add fuel to the NFL Players Association’s PR playbook against the league in the coming weeks as a lockout looms.

At the end of the day we’re flacks who happen to be NFL fans and will be interested to see how this plays out. How do you think the league could get out of this incident without further PR incident? We’d love to hear below.

Image – Yvonne Shearer

You see, life is not perfect. We are faced with challenges, hurdles and disappointments on a daily basis in both our private and professional lives. It is a fact of life that we just need to overcome and not dwell on.

During my near decade working in the PR world, fixing things and working with less than ideal situations has been common place for me. Employers and media people don’t want to hear what is holding up a project, they just want to hear the thud of the clip book hitting the table. Results are more important than excuses.

Based on conversations I’ve had with folks who manage social accounts for their companies, it seems like the lemons have rolled into that space as well. Whether it’s lack of funding, staffing, buy-in, time or something else; it seems like there are endless obstacles. Instead of whining about them, folks need to take the carnie approach and make some sweet lemonade for the masses.  So here are some quick tips to tackle some of the biggest lemons that come up in the social space.

Lack of time – No matter how hard you try, there are only 24 hours in a day.  Extending your work day over nine hours will only leave you burned out in the long run. So work smarter not longer. Create set times to check out social sites and stick to it. You can be Clark Kent and should only pull out the cape when you get into a crisis or super awesome campaign. If you are like me and have a tendency to get distracted by shiny things or obsess over your own personal social conversations, turn off your personal accounts during the day or only have them on during dedicated time for social.

Buy-in – Despite meteoric adoption over the past year, some folks still see social networks as a time waste. If this is the case at your company or organization, just start the effort and don’t ask for permission. If you can prove a value, it is hard to argue against it. Just know that you need to find the time to do without slipping on your other duties.

Staffing – Sure the space is blowing up, but the money is not. Unless you work for a company that has already engrained social media into their DNA, you will have to learn to work efficiently with less. It sucks but you can accomplish it by pulling in other people in your organization who are passionate about social media. While it may not be ideal in the short run, getting cross functional partnerships will help you out in the long run.

At the end of the day, obstacles are always going to be there. Overcoming them and making a success despite them is the real reward. How do you deal with obstacles?

Image – Krazy Kake Bakers

Over the past few months, you may have noticed that the weather outside has become increasingly colder. While it might seem alarming, it is actually one of the year’s four seasons, albeit one that comes with some detractors.

Unfortunately, the season has been hit by a lot of bad press lately and has not done a great job marketing or branding itself. For every great story, ad or video on a ski resort or some outdoor hockey game, there are three or four negative mentions. These range from a NYC plowing fiasco to newscasts reporting accidents and the Twitteratti claiming the end of humanity as we know it with hashtags for #Snopacolypse, #snoloko or #snowmaggedeon.

Reading the paper during the latest storm in the Boston area, I came across an interesting job listing for a PR person in the Department of Winter that read:

WANTED – PR pro with 3-5 years experience to serve as manager of communications and community in the department of Winter. The winter season is under attack from the south-facing media perpetuating for eternal summer. The world has forgotten the joys of winter from snowman building to skiing and walking in a winter wonderland as the social consciousness has shifted to the doom and gloom portrayed by news outlets.

Responsibilities include community outreach events to influential media, bloggers and social pundits to build a grassroots movement for the season. Travel is a must between our offices in the North Pole, Vermont, Maine, Colorado as well as some urban area’s for snow day celebrations. Interested parties should email Kris@northpolehappo.com

Do you know anyone who would be game for this position?

Disclaimer – this post is a pure work of fiction and does not represent any job that has a salary attached to it. Kris Kringle, AKA Santa Claus is a fictional character as well. What is not fiction is HAPPO a great group of folks looking to help PR folks find employers, for more information, visit the site here. It also snows in the winter; it is a regular occurrence, not a sign of the apocalypse.