Hill+Knowlton Strategies

(courtesy of Joe over at ProPR)

Following on my recent post about Canada’s military and blogging soldiers, The Canadian Forces have unveiled their online (blog) policy… basically, don’t.

The guilty party – protocol #4:

4. CF MEMBERS ARE TO CONSULT WITH THEIR CHAIN OF COMMAND BEFORE PUBLISHING CF-RELATED INFORMATION AND IMAGERY TO THE INTERNET, REGARDLESS OF HOW INNOCUOUS THE INFORMATION MAY SEEM. THE CHAIN OF COMMAND HAS ACCESS TO EXPERT ADVISORS, SUCH AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND INTELLIGENCE STAFFS, WHO WILL ENSURE THAT SUCH PUBLISHED INFORMATION IS NOT ULTIMATELY PREJUDICIAL TO CF OPERATIONS AND PERSONNEL

You can read the full policy here. To get an idea of my own views on this, go to the Torch. I couldn’t say it any better.

Leo talked a lot about listening in a recent CSI post. As an aside, and while his Twain quote hits the nail on the head, my own favorite “listening” blurb is by Hugh Elliott:

“Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn’t hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor.”

Needless to say, listening is important, and plays a big part in our role as trusted advisors. But I’ll add to that by recalling a lesson I once learned in my journalism days:

Everybody has a story in them. However, it’s up to us to find it, and coax it out of them.

To say that our role as communications advisors is similar to that of an investigative journalist may be a stretch. But too often, I find myself realizing that our clients (who clearly know their business better than anyone else) haven’t yet figured out what their story is. And that’s our job.

“It’s such a part of me, I assume everyone can see it.” (Another Elliotism)

Bingo. Too often, we put ourselves in our clients’ heads rather than in the heads of the audiences they’re trying to reach. Which is fine when we’re looking to better understand their business. However, our clients also rely on us to examine their issues and challenges from the perspective of their audiences, and to help them communicate their story with those perspectives in mind.

And while there is no proven formula, much of the criteria we use to determine newsworthiness is the same criteria that makes a great story no matter who you’re talking to, whether it’s one or all of the following:

• Timeliness
• Proximity or relevance
• Consequence and impact
• Human interest

On any given day, I go out of my way to find interesting stories in strangers I run into. I recommend it; it’s a useful exercise for the business we’re in.

As you may have noticed from an earlier post, I like words. With the right words, people and organizations can tell extremely powerful stories. At the same time, I’m also a believer that less is more when trying to communicate a message with impact. Which is why I like “One Sentence“. It’s a great example of individuals telling powerful stories in very few words.

In our business, storytelling is an important element of what we do. By themselves, messages, vision statements, and taglines lack the human element that make people want to listen, and to learn more, and to believe. Stories give context and meaning to what might otherwise be meaningless soundbites.

Not only are many of the stories in “One Sentence” very funny or very clever, a lot of them have incredible impact. In my view, that’s because they reveal something about the people behind them. They are an instance in time that we connect with. As we craft the our pitches, or create the talking points our clients use when speaking to customers, employees or other decision-makers, we need to focus as much on the story as the message itself.

We may not always capture our client’s story in one sentence. But we must always strive to think about the story behind the messages. We are the storytellers. 

Rather than harangue the mainstream media for playing all lovey-dovey with Mattel over it’s TMX Elmo, perhaps the ”cup half empty” folks at the CJR should be applauding the blood, sweat, toil and tears of the nameless PR team that executed such a coup.

I mean, c’mon. Anyone who can, acccording to CJR, get a “toy” (even if it is the super rad - yet kinda scary - TMX Elmo) mentioned on “four separate shows… including multiple segments of CNBC’s own (Good Morning America) equivalent, Squawk Box — segments that were teased incessantly, with help from a stuffed Elmo peeking around the camera and regular announcements (“In an hour and a half, Fisher-Price [a subsidiary of Mattel] will unveil the new Elmo right here on Squawk Box“),” — deserves a Daytime Emmy in my books.

As Squawk Box anchor Becky Quick replies when fellow Anchor John Kernan states (gasp!) that “this is definitely a gimmick”, “I think [the gimmick] is working … It’s making us pick it up.”

The horror. The horror.

If you haven’t already signed up, don’t forget to join 30+ of your closest PR friends, colleagues and competitors at Fresco Cielo in Ottawa tonight (6 pm EDT) to confab with, confound and cajole ”Naked Conversations” co-author Shel Israel (likely in need of a drink or two).

And yes, you might even make it home in time to see the opening kick-off at the newly refurbished Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.

243 words about Shel (ripped mercilessly from the OCRI website)

Shel Israel
Author, Speaker, Consultant

Shel Israel writes, speaks and consults to business on issues related to blogging and the Web 2.0 phenomenon. A self-described “recovering publicist,” he is co-author, with Robert Scoble, of Naked Conversations, How Blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers. He recently started his second book Global Neighborhoods, about how geography is becoming irrelevant in the connected world. He is regularly interviewed by the media and has spoken to business audiences extensively in North America and Europe.

Israel is a champion of changing business communications from the monolog of broadcast marketing into the dialogue between companies and customers that the new tools enable. His talks are filled with recent real-time examples of companies that have risen-or fallen-through their use of social media.

For more than 20 years, Israel was a PR consultant working with more than 100 technology start-up companies, mostly in Silicon Valley. Among them were the early-phase teams behind Sun Microsystems, SoundBlaster, PowerPoint, FileMaker, Paradox, MapInfo, Virtual Vineyards and Napster. More recently he has worked with some of Web 2.0 start ups including Riya, Krugle and Foldera. Focusing on Web 2.0 communications strategies, he has expanded beyond start-ups to work with larger companies including CNET and Hitachi Data Systems.

Israel is a highly interactive public speaker, engaging audiences in the sort of conversations that keep not only participants engaged, but also ensures the audience walks away satisfied that they have received the information, insight or inspiration they came to get.

In the course of my work, I often find myself perusing pages of ”key messages” drafted by organizations either preparing to launch a new thingymajig, shutting down a redundant whojimawhigger, acquiring a multi-billion dollar whatchamacallit, or perhaps simply answering that age old question of “Why for you bury me in the cold, cold ground?” (disclaimer: closet Looney Tunes fan)

What often surprises me, however, is that these message manifesto’s rarely seem to take into account the unique needs of the individual audiences to whom they’re hoping to communicate. It’s as if we’re simply trying to convince ourselves, and we’re the only one’s who matter or who get it.

In many instances, the actions we take — the launch of a new product, the closing of a facility, a merger or acquisition, for example – impact multiple audiences. And yet, too often, organizations either focus their attention on one audience at the expense of others (ie. investors) or, worse, simply create a “genericised” version of key messages that attempt to speak to all, yet ultimately resonate with none.

Be it laziness or simply a lack of effort to understand the people with whom you’re dealing, it doesn’t matter. There is no forgiveness.  An organization’s story will be viewed differently by different audiences. Motivations are different. Relationships are different. How investors perceive an announcement about a re-structuring or an acquisition will clearly be viewed differently than by employees, communities, governments or others. As such, messages must be viewed from those perspectives also, and delivered accordingly.

Our job as PR professionals is to understand each and every audience that depends upon, or is impacted by the actions of, our clients. To paraphrase Kevin Smith, communications is a subjective experience. “Universal Truths are few and far between,” he writes. How you perceive an organization’s story or message may be completely different from how other perceive it… much like when two people share a common experience such as this… 

In addition to counselling on web-related issues and helping clients create more compelling and engaging personalities online, I write. A lot. In fact, I am perhaps at my most professionally content when I am challenged to create a document required to capture the attention of a certain audience. Without question, not all my efforts are successful. But ever since beginning training as a journalist back in the mid ’90s, I have been driven largely by the thoughts and writings of two individuals: John Maynard Keynes and George Orwell. They have helped me immeasurably.

It was Keynes who wrote: “Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.”

Particularly in this business, it seems, we try too hard to be pretty or we reject any attempt at making our writing truly engaging lest we risk offending our clients or challenging the intellect of our / their audiences. Likewise, I find we are too often attached to some traditional variant – notably, the press release format – which constricts our creativity and ability to influence, so much so that most of the releases I now read appear almost a parody.

Above my desk are four pieces of paper of which one is a variation of Finagle’s Law of information, the other being the quote by Keynes, a third being a re-affirmation that meetings tend to be a “practical alternative to work” rather than an enabler and should thus be avoided at all cost, and George Orwell’s six rules for writing, which are included below. This is apt, particularly considering my colleague Leo’s focus on what Junior Consultants can do to improve their work and deliver better client service: 

1. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
2. If it is possible to cut the word out, always cut it out.
3. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
4. Never use a foreign word, scientific word, or jargon word when you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
5.  Never use a metaphor, simile, or figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Kevin Dugan’s piece on Ikea’s decision to build a store in Ohio is a welcome respite from some of the more prevalent corporate bashing (particularly if you’re an Ikea fan, or at least a believer in the positive implications of social media from a PR perspective)… though I would suggest the headline is a tad misleading.

More accurately positioned in Kevin’s earlier Fast Company article, it still stands as a powerful example of how positive relationships can be built between corporations and their most ardent fans, specifically bloggers.

I was particularly interested in the comment by OHIkea blogger Jen Segrest that Ikea (and others in the know) were actually leaking information to her ahead of the announcement. Who said social media and PR couldn’t be fun?

The fire alarm went off at my hotel last night. It was 3:30 in the morning. Luckily it wasn’t raining or cold. So as we all waited on the street while the firemen did their firemen-y things, I had time to think.

Assuming it was a false alarm, and knowing how long it would take me to get back to sleep, my first reaction was to raise hell at the front desk (as others eventually did) and demand a refund. Then I figured that even if it was a false alarm, I couldn’t really complain as this exercise, painful as it was, was intended to save my life. I’m OK with that.

Fifteen minutes into the exercise, however, tired, discombobulated and feeling somewhat foolish shuffling around Bloor Street along with the rest of the evacuees, what struck me was how much I wanted to know something – anything – about what was going on in the hotel. And I could tell from overheard conversations and by the looks of others, that many around me had similar feelings. Had there been flames shooting out of windows, we might have reacted differently.

As insignificant as this crisis was, it reinforced the importance, I believe, of feeding a steady stream of information,  regardless how minor, meaningless and repetitive, to your most important audiences. We hunger for it, particularly at a time when we’re not at our most understanding or mentally zippy. In this case, I would’ve been satisfied being told by a bellboy that the firemen were still investigating (as obvious as that fact probably was – it’s still nice to be told rather than be left in the dark – proverbial and real). A simple expression of sympathy and affirmation (and re-affirmation) that the actions being taken by the hotel to rectify the situation are still underway, would have – in my view – provided some degree of mollification – in acknowledging my discomfort yet telling me that something’s being done to fix it.  

This morning I found an apologetic letter from the hotel management slipped under the door.  Although sincere, I would’ve thought the offer of a discount on a future visit, or additional reward points, would’ve made a much greater impact. But, then again, I tend to get cranky when I haven’t had enough sleep.