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.

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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.

Red Cross goes digital to speed relief to those who need it – this is a pretty cool story with an accompanying video on how the Red Cross leverages social in times of disaster.

State of the News Media 2012 – I love reading Pew research reports, there I said it. While this may make me a dork, I am willing to bet that some of you reading this are dorks as well. This report takes a dive into how media is being consumed by the public.

There’s sharing and then there’s over-sharing – For those of us that play in the social space, forgetting that we are not that important while sharing everything. This post from my friend Elisabeth Michaud kind of lays it out there for folks to remember what is kosher to share.

The Top Reason PR Pros Should Not Go Off The Record – how many times have you advised an executive or client to never go off the record? How many of you heed your own advice? Shame on you, read this post for more reasons why you should always avoid the whole off the record thang.

40 brands using Timeline Cover Photos on Facebook Pages – This is a great visual aid of some pretty slick things you can do with the new timeline cover photos for those of us dragging our feet with a looming March 30 deadline.

Charlton Library Sends Police to Collect Overdue Books From 5-Year-Old – no you did not read the headline wrong it really happened. I file this one under “Only in Massachusetts,” mostly for the pure absurdity of it. While I find comedy in the story, it is still uber-screwed up, so much so that the cop even felt bad doing it. The real shame that I see in this is that the Commonwealth that I inhabit will waste tax dollars scaring the shit out of an innocent five-year old, but neglect to prosecute a corrupt state officials unless an undercover news unit digs up the dirt and puts it on the 10 O’clock news.

PR Failures: Should We Stop Talking About Them? – interesting post that any PR pro should read from Gini Dietrich. Since we all like to play Nelson and chime in HA HA at every blunder, the real question becomes are we doing more harm or good to the industry we all work in. Hell it has an identity crisis and if it were a child in school, we’d all be bullies. So much like the rallying cry of the 90’s why can’t we all just get along?

IKEA Hosts Sleepover For 100 Lucky Facebook Fans – file this one under oddities from across the pond, while also being a good social campaign and listening to your community. I am not sure about you, but I would not want to spend a night in an IKEA, but hey to each his/her own.

Best Buy Manager Dismisses Best Buy Twitter Customer Service, Says “It Could Be Anybody” – this is a perfect example of how companies should make sure their policies in a public and social space (especially if you advertise one on TV) to the yeoman employees. While I would love to say I feel bad for Best Buy, I do not. Since they lost a business order of mine a few years ago I have not went near their joints.

But My Business Doesn’t Need A Social CRM – In this post, Joey Straw makes a great case for the reasons for companies to utilize a social CRM system. The post is doubly awesome for the usage of the sweet Scrooge picture.

BONUS – LOCAL NEWS Bloopers (Thanks to Kate Ottavio for sharing)

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.

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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.

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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?

10 Reasons I’m Not Going To Talk About Google+ – this past week seemed like everyone was racing to get out a blog post or top 10 list of reasons to use Google+ and to be honest it was quite nauseating. This post is anti-that and also mixes in some good humor with some facts and assumptions.

Unlocking Viral Secrets On Facebook: MIT Study – While I hate the useage  of viral in the title, this article from Fast Company offers some pretty interesting findings on marketing tactics and their results in the social space.

How “Case Study Blindness” Can Kill Innovation – Have you ever had a brilliant idea that was a surefire win to only have it killed because you couldn’t point to a case study of someone who had done something similar? I thought so. Check out this post on what it can kill on top of your spirit.

Me and the mustard – This post from Geoff Livingston puts the spotlight on the “me” and “I” in social media. Are you overusing the condiment?

How to engage and consult your community online -

Social Media is NOT as Popular as You Think – Despite popular belief and the online habits of most readers of this blog, social media is not as popular as it may seem. Well it is popular but is not the end all be all. Don’t believe me? Well then peep out this post and accompanying graphic.

N.J. Town Wants To Ban Facebook Pictures Of Kids – As a new dad, I was kind of wary of displaying Baby Espo on social media sights. I am also from Jersey so this one so I kind of find this one interesting, but not sure the resolution will pass. How about you?

The Weird Thing I Want You To Do On My Blog – This is a guest post on Danny Brown’s blog from Michael Schechter that stirred up a heated debate in the comments on selling premium content and giving things away on blogs. While the post stirred the pot, the heated debate in the comments is one not to miss.

Four Reasons You’re Not a Media Company – Everyone can blog, the real question is should they? This topic comes up a lot now with companies entering the space. Many do it because it is cool and often fumble or leave it dead or full of jargon. So how do you avoid that? Well the answer is to follow these four tips.

There’s an Easier Way to Create Standards: Conform – I love talk about social media and PR measurement. Rebecca Denison talks about the need for pros to adopt and conform to a series of measurement tactics and is definitely worth the read.

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?

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10 Tips for New Community Managers – There is no question that community management is one of the hot job titles right now. The big question on many people’s minds though is what the heck does it mean and what does this person do? In this post from my favorite community manager out there, Janet Aronica, you can get a sense and an education on the topic from her top 10 tips.

Does Google Use Facebook Shares to Influence Search Rankings? – For a while now folks have been debating the value of a like on Facebook. This has ranged from the value of an individual fan to what it is worth in search engines. In this post from SEOMoz, it appears that likes may actually impact the value that Google and Bing put on your sight. While this is interesting it may also have been a test from Google as they rolled out their +1 button.

ROA = Return on Attention – I like this post a lot. It is not because it just introduces a new measurement that also brings the tried and true long-tail theory back into the picture as applied to social media.

Twitter Users Want Businesses to Answer Them – Would you believe that eight out of 10 Twitter users want brands to answer their questions that they place on the 140-character microblogging service? Well in this latest research from InboxQ it shows that and some other cool stats worth peeping out.

Where Does Social Belong? – I loved this post from my pal Gini Dietrich on where social media belongs within an organization. On top of giving her take, there was a rather intelligent and spirited conversation in the comments that touches all areas of this issue and I suggest anyone in the social space check it out.

Bonus video – Can we Be Friends (click here if you can’t view)

Pixie Dust & The Mountain of Mediocrity – This may be my new favorite analogy for social media. In general there is no amount of magic or spin that can make you rock or be successful in the space it is all about hard work and making meaningful connections that translate into action. This post calls that out in some lovely terms.

Eleven Reasons Domino’s Turnaround Campaign Worked – let’s face it, at the end of the day I love seeing good campaigns get the light they deserve. Many of you will remember that Dominos Pizza tasted horrible and some idiot kids working there did some gross things with their food. To me the only good thing about them was the retired Noid, but recently they made a big PR/Brand/Advertising push to show the changes that they were making to benefit their customer experience. Some people say the ‘za is actually quite good – being allergic to tomatoes, I couldn’t tell you, but their bacon and cheese white pie is delicious.

The Role of Public Relations in Influence – This is a great post from my good buddy Eric Berto (Geek Giant on Twitter) on influence and PR. The part that I like about it is that it touches on areas that we don’t often think about when it comes to influence. There are no rainbows or unicorns, but rather three vehicles of change and influential levers that you can pull that are not on Twitter or Facebook.

Social media’s slice of the marketing pie – This post takes a look at a number of results on marketing spend on social media – definitely worth peeping out.

Why you should be paying attention to the CDC’s tobacco free campaign – I hadn’t seen this commercial or social campaign from the CDC, but I am really a fan of the campaign after seeing this post from Chuck Hemann. In all honesty I am not a fan of smoking, although I do enjoy a cigar a few times a year. The side effects and cancer risk is huge so big ups to the CDC for this campaign.

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Who owns your brand’s social media data? – Every company is looking into the social game in one way shape or form nowadays. Facebook is the hotness that many are using as their community platform to build out oodles of fans (Twitter and LinkedIn are doing this to a lesser extent). Problem with this is that the space is rented and many companies don’t think about who owns the data. If you are curious, read this piece. If you already know, don’t play spoiler

Journalism Vacuum Filled by PR Professionals, or Spin Doctors? – I love this piece from Mark Story. Anyone in the PR space worth their weight in salt knows that newsrooms are filled with bias and also roll their eyes when they hear a fellow flack has jumped ship to a newsroom. My whole take on this is moves to be PR-driven newsrooms or driven by former PR folks is that our news is crap and that we just can’t trust it.

Unborn child has Facebook profile – This is the start of a disturbing trend that I see coming. The child with this page will never be unconnected and to me that is sad. Broadcasting ones actions should be a choice not something you are born into… what say you?

The basics of social media measurement for business – Oliver Blanchard is one smart dude and he knows how to get straight to my heart – measurement. This post gives you some tenets for starting out measuring in the space.

Deploy social media effectively – I liked this op-ed piece from the PRSA on who should own social media. Problem is that it should not even be a conversation point anymore. We should not be fighting ownership, but rather how we can integrate across the organization.

Conversation Agents: Predictive Technology or Discovery Channels? – This is an interesting piece that takes a look at the evolution of tools. As we know, machines and formulas can predict many things. As we integrate more and more with tech the big question will be what role do humans play in setting predictions?

The lost origin of Twitter – This Gizmodo piece made the cut this week, because it took me down memory lane – to a world of less connected and wired in devices that evolved into my favorite social platform.

The New Normal of Work Includes Social Media – Let’s face it – a lot of the time that we spend on social media would have been considered slacking off two or three years ago. In some ways we all have to learn to balance things. This article hit home for me, because social is a part of my job, but it also serves as a think tank and inspiration for me to do practical work throughout the day and to continue to push myself. What is it for you?

Don’t be fooled by the last-click analysis of social media – Measurement is something that everyone wants to do in the social space. There are easy ways and there are more in-depth ways of doing this. Unfortunately many folks take the easy approach and stick to the last-click model. This means that companies only track where the person purchasing came in on, whether it be Twitter, Facebook, email or paid search. Unfortunately this is a very flawed method that misses a lot of the pie; this post from Dave Fleet helps highlight that.

Getting Your Klout Out The site’s social media influence score is showing up on resumes – Not going to lie, this post on AdWeek was not only foolish but it is also tremendously flawed. Love it or hate it, Klout can serve as a measuring stick. Some people and companies pay too much attention to these scores. The notion that Klout will show up on resumes is preposterous to me. The real reason is that while it shows a number and some other fancy metrics, it is not the end all be all. There are plenty of bots and bimbos (see Snooki) that have high Klout scores – would you hire any of them for a position on your social media team?