Taliban Rapid Response PR Keeps U.S. on Defensive

The U.S. just replaced its commander in Afghanistan because the war on the Taliban is going badly. There is another front, though not mortally deadly, that is just as important - the ruthless PR war.  We’re not talking live combat, unless you consider public relations a blood sport (as some do), but it could determine the outcome of this protracted and critical battle. 

There is a lesson here, learned by skilled PR people, successful politicians, guerrilla fighters and chess players: he who strikes first has the advantage. The Taliban, unencumbered by bureaucracy or scruples, are usually first to condemn U.S. air strikes and frame the story for journalists and their constituents.  That leaves U.S. spokespeople to deny or condemn initial reports, sounding defensive or evasive.

Winning the “hearts and minds” of the people has always been an important element of war - bomb them, then console them, tear the country up, then be a hero by re-building it. Precise messaging is not enough, especially in the digital age. Speed of execution is key, using technology wisely, developing a strategy beforean event - this all helps, although it does not assure success. Bottom line - foreign forces never know a country as well as locals and will always be seen as demons telling lies for their own benefit.  I wonder if the Taliban have invaded Twitter yet?

The official spokesperson of the Taliban Movement is Mula “Ma’soum Afghani” - no photos of him are available.

Key tactic: be first to comment.Homayoun Shuaid, a journalist based in Kandahar, says that when he called Qazi Yusuf Ahmadi, the militants’ southern spokesman, to get a reaction on the US claims, they were dismissed as a “bunch of lies and propaganda.”

“It’s usually the other way around,” with the US rejecting Taliban reports, says Mr. Shuaid.

After an attack or errant US airstrike, Taliban representatives usually text message or e-mail reports to him “within minutes,” giving their version of what happened, Shuaid continues.

Their claims are almost always exaggerated, he says. But because they arrive first, he says, they take on the currency of truth among a populace that receives most of its information via radio or word of mouth. US fights Taliban on another front: public relations,  Christian Science Monitor

Communication, Transparency, Participation

Those are the three by-words of Barack Obama’s PPR (Presidential PR) strategy.

Precisely the minute Barack Obama was sworn is as the 44th President of the United States (noon, Jan 20, 2009), Macon Phillips (left), Director of New Media for the White House, published his first blog post, titled Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov.

“President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history,” wrote Phillips.

Communication is the easy part. In the blog/twitter/text era anybody can ‘communicate’ with virtually anybody (but are they listening?). Transparency can be faked or at least the law can be complied with and a public display of ‘transparency’ can lead to the appearance of open government (an improvement over the previous administration).

The most difficult element of this new communication equation is ‘participation.’  To foster citizen involvement in the federal government Phillips announced in his first blog post that “we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.”

It didn’t quite work out that way. The Washington Post  reported that the Obama administration did not heed its own mandate on recent legislation.  Of course, running a new media program to reach and engage 380 million Americans is a huge and seemingly impossible task (trying doing it with an organization of a few hundred with a few thousand constituents). They have run into technical issues, as reported in the Washington Post, and you have to wonder - is anybody really reading 5,000 character comments on pending non-emergency legislation, or is this simply a futile exercise in mass venting for the appearance of ‘participation’?

The White House YouTube channel currently has over 30,000 subscribers. The quality of the videos is excellent and they are nicely segmented into easy to search categories. The main White House social media communication channel is WhiteHouse.gov, a blog, or rather a blog portal that leads to many other blogs, according to agenda items, government agencies, etc.  The Obama Twitter channel has been mostly dormant since Jan. 20th, except for an alert on March 25th to join an innovative Open for Questions session through the Internet.  93,000 people submitted 104,000 questions and cast 1.8 million votes on which questions Barack Obama would answer over the net. Obama promoted the event through web video.

The White House has inevitably faced many problems in its rush into social media. By using YouTube are they favoring a third-party provider, rather than serving the videos themselves?  Why not use any of the other video servers? “It’s an ongoing experiment,” said Phillips. Our experiment in democracy has survived wars, economic depressions, man-made and natural catastrophes over the past 250 years … but hey, this federal government social media experiment is close to 100 days old. Where’s the results? Welcome to the 140 character or less, immediate gratification Twitter age. No wonder Phillips is burying his head in his hands.

Former Burris PR Guy Throws Fuel on Fire

Did Bud Jackson really need to issue this self-aggrandizing memo yesterday?

Concerning Senator Roland Burris

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Members of the Media:

As many of you may recall I actively helped my former client, Roland Burris, during his run-up to being successfully seated in the United States Senate.

Since that time, well … his team’s public relations efforts have been less than stellar. Turns out that, because my business is political communication, I need to let folks know that I have not been involved in the decisions that have led to the public relations fiasco over the past week. In fact, I actively counseled his team to take very different actions, to no avail.

I have not returned countless calls from my friends in the media, partly because my role no longer includes responding to media queries, now that the Senator has his own official staff. If you are a member of the media, please contact Jim O’Connor, the new communications director (being shot out of a cannon) for Senator Burris at his Washington, DC office (202) 224-2852.

I know based on my own private conversations and experience that Senator Roland Burris has been the victim of bad advice and, when set-up to fail, he certainly shall we say, has had less than adequate attempts to better and more clearly inform the public at a press conference, or two. It has been painful to watch. Regardless, the senator has more than 30 years of public service and his integrity has never been questioned. I know that he has done nothing inappropriate despite the impression that has been left.

Despite what may or may not happen as a result of the mess that has been made, I stand behind my former client. To quote the movie Oh, Brother Where Art Thou Senator Burris is “in a tight spot.” It’s an unfortunate distraction for Illinois people who are most concerned about their jobs and their homes. It’s not so bad if you’re a Republican, a Democrat gunning for his seat, or if you’re trying to sell newspapers — they all benefit by painting everything in its worst possible context.

So to sum it all up: it’s complicated.

Sincerely, Bud Jackson

PR/Media Week in Review 02-22-2009

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are a vexations to the spirit … Ben Franklin said. Fair bet that ol’ Lightnin’ Ben would not have sidled up to Rick Santelli, the over caffeinated CNBC financial pundit. Santelli’s rant on CNBC this week about the unconscionable stimulus for the loser homeowners who are dragging down capitalism with their wasteful ways, hit a nerve like dentist’s drill in a root canal. 

It is not that Santelli ranted, he does that often. It’s that the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded in a press conference very specifically, with calculated emotion and a touch of humor. This sent CNBC financial pundits into bloviating glee as they circled the wagons to protect their own.

What this is really about can be summed up in a single word: ratings. The Santelli rant was supposedly the most emailed video in the blogosphere for the week and Santelli landed on the morning talk shows. The greatest insult to a ranter is to be ignored.

The Obama administration also boosted its ratings because of this episode. Gibbs did not respond to Santelli entirely off the cuff. He periodically peered down as if he was reading message points. His nearly five minute response to Santelli was clear, concise and specific. On a broader scale he was answering all critics of the homeowner mortgage stimulus. Despite a sudden rash of attention, Gibbs neutralized Santelli, who will sound like a hurt kid in the schoolyard desperately vying for attention if he continues this tack.

Cogent Santelli slapdowns have come from an unlikely source - SeekingAlpha, the most popular finance blog. See a couple of posts: CNBC’s Specious Reporting on the Housing Plan and Rick Santelli: Critic or P.R. Man?

PR? It’s murder.Can U.S. public relations influence the outcome of a murder trial across the Atlantic? The battle over Amanda Knox, dubbed Italy’s ‘Trial of the Century,’ ramped into high gear last week in a courtroom in Perugia, Italy.  This story has it all  - a vivacious American coed from University of Washington in Seattle, an alleged drug-fueled orgy that led to a grisly murder, conflicting testimonies and relentless spinning of stories to paint the accused, accomplices, prosecutors and legal authorities in a bad light.

Driving the U.S. push for Amanda Knox is a group of students, family and friends from Seattle called Friends of Amanda.  They are offered as  ‘character witnesses’ to the media. They proclaim Amanda’s innocence, present ‘facts’ of the case colored through their prism, and solicit donations through the Amanda Knox Defense Fund. 

The PR battle over Amanda Knox has become so heated that Italian prosecutor in the case Giuliano Mignini is reportedly suing the West Seattle Herald, a small community newspaper, for defamation.

Will these maneuvers impact the trial, expected to last at least six months? Last week the trial began in earnest and the PR spin ramped up. The Beastblogger Barbie Latza Nadeau is covering the case - see Sex and Murder in Italy - and the TV news shows are presenting frequent updates.

“I was asked by ‘Friends of Amanda’ to help turn around this supertanker of bad press over in Italy and get the truth out about Amanda’s innocence,” said Seattle attorney, Anne Bremner. “The prosecution has no forensic evidence at all. Zero. None.” - West Seattle Herald

PR/Media Week in Review 01-04-2009

Israel Escalates PR War. With Israel pushing deeper into Gaza, 512 Palestinians dead so far, the PR war on both sides is intensifying. The Israelis have Pres. Bush and Condoleezza Rice at the White House delivering a well-scripted, well coordinated message:  Hamas invited this incursion with its behavior, and can stop it any time by ceasing rocket attacks.

Joel Leyden, a self-professed ”Internet media, SEO, PR pioneer” is betting that it is all a matter of perception. Leyden has enlisted Facebook to fuel a worldwide propaganda buzz machine that justifies Israels massive and bloody military operation.

This is a particularly aggressive, activist PR campaign that Leyden Communications is running and it is working through social media channels. I get Twitter tweets defending Israel. There are dueling Israel - Palestinian YouTube videos.

“Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday instructed the Foreign Ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel’s international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip. 

Livni instructed senior ministry officials to open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign, in order to gain greater international support for Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip.” See Israel to mount emergency international PR effort in wake of Gaza campaign

Israel’s foreign ministry is skilled at this sort of high-stakes, global perception building.  British PR firm Saatchi & Saatchi helped Israel’s Foreign Ministry “free of charge” in the effort to repair its image after the state lost the Second Lebanon War.

From Reuters: 

“The campaign is a departure from the government’s long-held practice of ‘hasbara’, or ‘explaining’ itself to Western audiences that may have little sympathy for crackdowns on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. 

Now Israel wants to create an alternative image abroad, focused exclusively on assets like tourist attractions and business innovations. In the words of one campaigner and ad executive, the aim would be to create ‘a narrative of normalcy’.”

“The blogosphere and new media are another war zone. The important thing is to get the truth out there,” Major Avital Leibovich, an Israeli army spokeswoman, said.

MORE GLOBAL/POLITICAL PR: Ukrainian infighting gives Russia the edge in public relations war, from the FT, 1/2/09

THIS WEEK’S BEST PR FOR PR: How did this happen?  Image need overhaul? Hollywood PR vet offers help is the title of the incredible Associated Press puff piece on the appropriately named uber publicist Howard Bragman.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

PR/Media Week in Review 12-27-2008

Good riddance to the holiday season. Soon it will be good riddance to 2008, a bad year ending with the promise of a worse economy to come. First in a series of reflections & predictions.

Is this guy really President? How did this happen? He’s young, has a big smile and a thoughful demeanor. A steady hand on the wheel in a choppy sea. Even the most venal right-wing Republican pundits are keeping their powder dry and cautiously adhering to a tacit cease-fire. Rush Limbaugh says that the choice of Hillary for State is “brilliant” and he wholly supports it? Be wary when your enemies praise you, but be thankful. Camelot may be sweeter as a sequel. Will we be let down six months into the new administration because all our problems will not magically disappear? Hope takes self-renewal, the basis of America’s experiment in democracy. Can he inspire us after the election as much as he did during the campaign?

Caroline Kennedy won’t be NY’s next senator:  She doesn’t impress me, she has no experience in politics or government. If she woke up one day and decided she really wants this then let her run in 2010 and prove it. There are are plenty of other heavyweights who can tag team with Schumer and approximate the gravitas of Hillary. To be New York’s Senator she has to pay her dues.

New York will resemble Blade Runner: The city won’t be run by replicants, or maybe it already is and we don’t know it. Residential and commercial real estate still has a ways to drop, the MTA is a disaster, schools and essential services are being slashed, the city is begging to the state which is begging to the Feds, which is bailing out industries and perhaps soon municipalities. We will never re-visit Summer of Sam but New York on the skids can be dirty, dangerous and borderline overwhelming, separating the survivors from the realists. 

PR Blunder of the Week: You Know Chrysler is Toast Because … Mark Cuban flames the company on his blog and generates a windstorm of bad publicity for the beleaguered U.S. auto maker. Chrysler was so ecstatic that the government is throwing it a couple billion that it took out full-page thank you ads in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and USA Today.

On his personal blog, Cuban called the move “idiotic” and asked, “How does it make the next unemployed Chrysler worker feel that their entire year’s salary just went for a single, ridiculous ad?”

Chrysler’s statement on the Cuban maverick post: ”With the recent announcement by the White House, Chrysler LLC has the initial injection of working capital necessary to help bridge the liquidity crisis the industry is facing and help return the Company to profitability. The ad thanks America for this investment in Chrysler. As the process evolves, many individuals will have opinions. The Company has no higher priority than to satisfy the loan conditions laid out last Friday by the Government. As a result, Chrysler will not comment on individual opinion.” 

You have to pay those internal PR people to say something.

Images this week thanks to Waltz with Bashir, an Ari Folman film perhaps even more relevant this week due to the escalated conflict between the Israelis and Hamas.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Will Obama Transform Government Communication?

Fifty years of tromping through the streets of Manhattan and I never experienced the widespread spontaneous elation that erupted in this city election eve, 2008. At two in the morning the subways were still full of people so overcome with joy they would yell and break into dance with no prompting. In Harlem, where we live, the smiles on people’s faces were wide and unabashed. If you grew up in the 60’s it was a long, long time coming - a feeling that we can actually hope for a better day and we believe once again that we have the power to change the world. It is a sense that individually we can make a difference, and we don’t have to do it through coercion and bullying, it can come through intelligence, compassion and thoughtfulness. We can lead by example, not by force.

As communicators we have to marvel at the transformative nature of the moment. When you expect gloating, Obama chooses humility.  When you expect forcefulness, Obama chooses deference. We know that politics will never cease (enter Rahm Emanuel, the enforcer) but within that is a larger agenda - we all share the same planet, our experiment in democracy never ceases to evolve and survives only by the will of the people.

Today, the day Obama visits the White House of the most unpopular U.S. President on record, a President who has raised government secrecy and intransigence to a new level, the transition team unveils Change.gov, a web site meant to support the open flow of information from the government to its people, and a means for the people to interact with the Federal government.

Does this mean that we can send an email to the federal government and expect an answer? I doubt it. But the intent is there, and a blog, and a method to apply for a goverment job, and the understanding that we are living in the digital age when school age children and middle age executives rely on the web to get their information and stay connected.

The thrill of Obama is that we don’t know what to expect from him. He has the ability to surprise in a way that seems measured and logical, in the moment and playing to history. If we at least have the sense that government is listening to us we believe that our involvement in government has value and can be reciprocated. That is the art of public relations.

PR/Media Week in Review 09-14-2008

JOHN McCAIN’s WEEK OF SHAMEFUL LIES

This was a watershed week in the race for the Presidency as John McCain and his gang of rough riding PR clowns hit us with a blizzard of lies that proved - if we needed a reminder - that the Bush Doctrine of nasty, base, deceitful pre-emptive attacks is very much alive in politics. Fred Thompson and Karl Rove were at their salivating, bloviating best (or worst) but the buck stops with McCain, who made such a rash, horrible decision with Palin that the Republican political mob can only go on the attack.

Read more

Next Page »