Corrupt Bloggers Kvetch - Where’s the Swag?

There’s a very revealing guest rant by professional ’lifestyle’ blogger Krizia in Pro Blogger: PR People Getting Pushier with Bloggers Since the Recession.

Krizia is perturbed that PRs are now asking questions about the value of all their free giveaways; the cash, the swag is drying up for product placement on Krizia’s EatSmartAgeSmart blog. Before bestowing gifts and favors PR people are asking pesky questions like: 

• “How many unique users?”
• “How many page views?”
• “How fast can you get our review on your site?”
• “Have you won any awards in the past?”
• “Send us links to past reviews you’ve written.”
• “What angle will you take with this feature?”

In other words, publicists were getting hip and demanding the same standards they apply to legitimate media. When we get a hit inthe Daily Newswe know the circulation, target readership, ad equivalent value - in print and on the web.  Why not with bloggers? 

EatSmartAgeSmart has all the markings of a commercial enterprise that treats ‘content’  like ad-filler. Where’s the PR value in editorial in an outlet that obviously crafts stories as thinly-disguised ads to pump individual blog traffic and ancillary business for a larger blog network? (see Glam Media description below).

I know this is beauty/fashion/lifestyle blah blah, and that’s the way it’s done in these industries. But these sprung-up-on-the-web media properties are competing with established, verified, legitimate media outlets that are converting their readers to the web.  If you’re a publicist you’ll choose mass media or Trade pubs before spending billable time on corrupt bloggers who publicly kvetch about the lack of swag coming from PRs. 

Blogger Relations - a credible pitch

A few days ago I got a perfect pitch. I hope Alex doesn’t mind if I reprint it verbatim here:

Hi Mark,

My name is Alex King and I’m the Director of Marketing at a small MIT startup called WebNotes. Thanks for your post on Mandy Stadtmiller- I just read her column and thought it was hysterical!

Anyways, my firm is building research tools for PR firms to help out with the daily news scan process and I was curious if you might be interested in writing about us. I’d love to show you a demo and even give you access to the software.

I hope all is well,
Alex

We did a Go-to-Meeting Demo. I asked questions and I signed up for the same two week free WebNotes Demo vailable to everybody. No free giveaway. No PR. No hustle. No quid pro quo. No money changing hands.

A couple of days after the Demo Alex followed up with email to see if I needed assistance.  Be professional, be personal, be persistent. In PR, media relations, blogger relations, bottomline, that’s all you can do. If you do that, you’re way ahead of the game.

EatSmartAgeSmart is in the Glam Media network.From the Glam Media site: Glam Media is the pioneer and global leader of Vertical Media—a revolutionary new media model that connects premium brand advertisers with millions of consumers with like-minded passions online through large and growing vertical content networks. With more than 1400 publishers worldwide, we cover the topics people are passionate about. We know how to find and engage these audiences with the right content at the right time—and brand advertisers are taking note. In the past year, 23 of the top 25 brand advertisers have engaged with passionate consumers on one of the Glam Media Networks. With a reach of 55 million unique monthly visitors in the US and more than 125 million uniques globally, it’s no wonder Glam Media is in the comScore Top 20 Web properties and a Top 10 AdWeek Display Ad Publisher.

PR/Media Week in Review 10-11-2009

Letterman started the week on a guilt-trip with his wife about all the creepy things he has been doing, including ‘the women’ - not just ‘woman’ -  he has been sleeping with. His on air confession/campfire funny story was widely seen as a PR masterpiece but it was his subsequent stumbling and bumbling and fear - will I lose my job? Lose my marriage? - that played like a real life serial drama, fueled by media speculation, that boosted ratings and kept advertisers in place. Remember Johnny Carson also had brief - very brief - moments of on air intimacy, a breaching of the late night show game face, that played well.  It doesn’t help Letterman that the protagonist in this story, the would-be extortionist, has a pit-bull media hungry attorney who is avery aggressive about spinning ‘the rest of the story.’ Meanwhile,  Letterman is virtually muzzled by his position and, presumably, his wife. How many times can you say you’re sorry?  It’s been reported that Rubenstein is representing Letterman, of course. It’s now in the stage of PR for a highly-public legal case. Maureen Dowd nailed it in her op-ed column Men Behaving Madly.

So much of baseball is PR. On field quick interviews. Long, post-game press conferences. Crisis communication - the latest steroid story, moving a team to another city. New York is the media capital of the world and the Yankees are the #1 sports franchise in history and they have been supplying drama, making news, all season long and now big-time in the post season. Manager Joe Girardi calls Yankee Stadium, and by extension any ballpark the Yankees play in, ”the big stage.” We’ve been waiting for A-Rod take take his star turn on the big stage and this could be the year.

This year A-Rod has learned that despite the $25 million a year he gets to work, his pimary obligation is to HAVE FUN. He learned that from Mark Texeira, who is an aw-shucks, hard running, uncomplicated, un-pretty home run banger who is also a dazzling fielder - a guy who full-throttle loves playing baseball. And Texeira does all this for a measly $180 million over eight years, $2.5 million a year less than A-Rod. As long as the Yankees play like this, nobody will quibble over those salaries.

The real story is that you can now Twitter the Yankee game right from the MLB site. Always be Twittering, pitch to pitch, that great swell of Yankee tweets if you can’t pay $1,000 a ticket to be there in person.

This week we launched Who is Worth Following, a continuing PRBlogNews series based on random scans of intelligence, original thinking and personality in the PR blogosphere: #1 tomforemski - batting cleanup | #2 occamsrazr - the Leonard Cohen of PR bloggers | #3 #4 and #5 coming next week.

P.S. - There in no truth to the rumor that Barack Obama is up for the Cy Young Award, based on the pitch he threw out opening day.

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Hyatt PR Hell a Lesson in Open Media

Hyatt Hotels is making all the wrong moves in its PR disaster that is spreading across the country.

The Hyatt Regency Boston, the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and the Hyatt Harborside fired 98 housekeepers on Aug. 31, replacing them with $8-an-hour employees from Hospitality Staffing Solutions. Many had been cleaning rooms at the chain’s hotels for more than 20 years and earned about $15 an hour.

The criticism unleashed at Hyatt Hotels has been unrelenting and merciless, fueled through social media channels.  The Consumerist, Executive Nomad, and the Harvard Business Review (Lessons From Hyatt: Simple Ways to Damage Your Brand)  have weighed in, along with national news outlets, since the story broke on Sept. 17. Facebook groups have cropped up to “Save the Hyatt 100.’ On Tuesday, Massachussetts Governor Deval Patrick threatened a government boycott of the hotel chain. Taxi drivers are boycotting Hyatt and the protests have spread to Chicago.

Hyatt originally stonewalled any inquiries into its actions. Lately they have become belligerent in fighting what they consider outside intrusions into their business affairs. Public relations cannot fix a company or right wrongs. In this case, top Hyatt executives who are calling the shots are doing deep damage to the brand and probably costing the company many millions over the pittance they are saving over the ’Hyatt 100.’ 

USA TODAY: Reader to Hyatt Hotels: “Shame on you” for outsourcing housekeepers

“I understand first-hand how difficult it is to manage through the current economic challenges without compounding the disruptions the times have caused,’’ Massachussetts Governor Deval Patrick wrote. “But surely there is some way to retain the jobs for your housekeeping staffs, as other hotels have done, and to work with them to help the company meet its current challenges, rather than tossing them out unceremoniously to fend for themselves while the people they trained take their jobs at barely livable wages.’’

Hyatt faces other challenges: Union workers stage sit-in to protest cuts to Hyatt’s health insurance coverage

LaFrances Rowell, 26, is taking chemotherapy for breast cancer and is supporting three children, ages 1, 2 and 7, but it was no question that she would join 194 other unionized hotel workers and their supporters in sitting in the street Thursday at the height of rush hour in front of the Park Hyatt hotel on North Michigan Avenue. The union workers are protesting Hyatt Corp.’s attempt to negotiate cuts in their health-insurance coverage. They also fear other hotels will follow Hyatt’s lead.

PRNewser Blames Victim in Mugging by Journo

It’s not quite on the scale of Ahmadinejad denying the holocaust, but PRNewser ganging up on a wounded PR pro smacks of waterboarding for a minor offense.  See Former Lord & Taylor Publicity Manager Confronts Forbes Reporter Via Blog

The thumbnail: Out of work PR pro Judith Lederman cooperated with a Forbes reporter on a story called When Work Doesn’t Pay For The Middle Class. She was either mis-quoted, taken out of context, or ‘un-quoted’ - treated badly by a reporter who basically used her to support his storyline (never happens, right?) - and she called the reporter out on her blog.

I immediately admire Judith for this. We get paid to be aggressive advocates for our clients - that sometimes means confronting the media. She is willing to do it publicly for her own news.  A legitimate blog post is treated as news by Google. She is using the power of her blog to be on par, in this instance, with Forbes. Maybe it’s because she’s willing to stand behind the courage of her own convictions, something you rarely see in the PR business, that so offends PRNewser.  What about all this warrants such snide editorializing. Does the author know the PR business?

There are a few things worth noting here. First, is it worthwhile to publicly challenge a reporter on your blog, and do any positive results come out of this practice? Second, if Lederman is looking for a PR job, what does it say about her PR skills that she couldn’t properly handle her own media relations and personal image? Yes, the reporter could have very well taken things out of context, but it was Lederman who agreed to have the conversation in the first place. Perhaps should would have been better served to decline the interview or at least halt it when she felt things weren’t going in the right direction? - By Joe Ciarallo, PRNewser, on Sep 18, 2009 09:47 AM

PR/Media Week in Review 05-24-2009

Twitter scams are proliferating like wildfire on the Net- 100FOLLOWERS A DAY! they promise - and this one, TwitterTrafficMachine, a couple of bozos who say they invented a system to automatically increase your Twitter followers. mytweetfollowers.com is another one that automatically controls your Twitter with re-tweets to their site - @Stock_Tweets is having a hard time turning off those malicious auto-Tweets.

All this supports the false notion that hundreds or thousands of Twitter followers lends you credibility, popularity and the power to influence others. Twitter is easily manipulated and tends to gravitate toward the fleeting inane comment generated by obsessive compulsive Twits whose only purpose is to generate more followers, no matter who they are.

On the other hand - the media is really taking to Twitter and it is proving to be a viable alternative wire service.  Some journalists troll for sources through Twitter: APRealEstateLooking to interview someone who bought or sold a home in the Dallas metro area in April or May. Email asainz@ap.org. Some journalists, who have a conversational style and an underlying mission, manage to convey a real personality in 140 characters or less. My favorite is Nicholas Kristof:

NYTimesKristof @Kholmpartiet Poverty of spirit: people who express themselves not by personality but by displaying the latest i-Pod. 18:15 PM 19th May | NYTimesKristof It’s odd to return to the U.S. from African villages. So much wealth here, yet often accompanied by a poverty of spirit. 16:18 PM 19th May.

Twitter is also proving to be a resource for what journalists are thinking and doing: mattbish Had editorial lunch with JP Morgan ceo Jamie Dimon who was surprisingly upbeat (Matthew Bishop, The Economist). As one client astutely observed- journalists are now openly offering opinions trough social media.

The exploding popularity of Twitter and its usefulness as another information stream is forcing companies to hire in-house or freelance Twitterers. See NYTimes “Tweeting Your Way to a Job“. Wells Fargo is the latest to launch a customer service Twitter stream, complete with several real-life Twitter personalities who answer basic banking questions. Others in the banking business have jumped on the bandwagon: See USA Today story about customer service and banking on Twitter. 

JournalistTweets is the the first (claims Cision) Twitter journo aggregator. You can follow tweeting journalists according to segments - Business | Entertainment | Health | Technology

Follow me on Twitter: @markrose

More and more, my conversations with journalists includes a survey of the PR job market (can’t be worse than journalism!?). This week, editorialists and bloggers debated the blurring lines between public relations and journalism. See Reason magazine column arguing that PR could become the next investigative journalism| And there’s The 21st Century Journalist: PR by Day, Reporter by Night? by Renay San Miguel.

 NYPost: Portfolio.com taken over by American City Business Journals | Worth magazine re-launches June 1. See story here.

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Wells Fargo Launches Breakthrough Twitter Stream

On March 26 Wells Fargo carefully and judiciously launched an ‘active’ Twitter account. By ‘active’ I mean it is actually monitored by a person who is available weekdays, 9-5, to answer basic banking questions. This is a bold move that the bank did not undertake lightly. For months, the bank held an inactive Twitter account, saying it was monitoring the Twitosphere before it would become involved. Usually tweets are one way broadcasts - a company or individual telling its followers a snippet of information. By going a step further - engaging its audience - Wells Fargo is once again proving it is a social media pioneer in financial services.

Leading financial services into social media. Wells Fargo has been blogging for over three years; the company has several blogs in product areas and its own dedicated YouTube channel.  Ed Terpening, VP of Social Media for Wells Fargo, is the kind of buttoned down visionary that financial services neeeds to show how social media can be used for PR advantage. In the top Vator.tv video in the right column of PRBlogNews, Ed talks about how Wells Fargo used a blog to quell a potential crisis.  “We want to use all channels available to get our story out,” says Ed. That means sometimes publishing comments that are harsh and negative- as long as they comply with  strict posting guidelines.  Acknowledging prevailing sentiment to a particular event is often more constructive than ignoring or denying it. By having its blogs set up and running, with thousands of subscribers, Wells Fargo is able to respond quickly to a broad audience.

Social media for mergers.Wells Fargo launched a blog to manage communications for its merger with Wachovia (see bottom Vator.tv video on the right). The objective was to humanize the company, tell Wachovia customers what to expect, and reach a vast audience of constituents with news about the combined company. “Wachovia customers love their bank,” says Ed; there was strong brand allegiance to Wachovia.  Combined with Wachovia, Wells Fargo now has approximately 250,000 employees and millions of customers. A single blog can reach employees, customers, mainstream media, other bloggers and the general public. A blog is an incredibly efficient information distribution channel.

Social media as PR asset for financial services.  Financial services companies are heavily regulated, highly scrutinized and understandably reluctant to delve into the uncontrolled world of social media. Note the disclaimer on the Wells Fargo Twitter page. As Ed Terpening says, blogs, Twitters and videos are usually the last stop for company information to be disseminated, after it has been thoroughly scrubbed and approved by compliance officers, lawyers or regulators.  In essence, Wells Fargo is simply pushing out public information through added channels that have become available via the Internet and mobile devices.

The economy dominates news these days. Money is an emotional issue. We need to feel good about the company, and the people who manage or advise us about our assets.  Social media helps humanize an institution and offers the comfort that real people are listening to our concerns, offering feedback when appropriate, and are consistent in their approach. Wells Fargo has bloggers, an editor and programmer on staff, and now  Twitter ‘responders.’ Not every financial services company can devote that level of resources to social media. But most could benefit from following Wells Fargo’s lead in exploring the PR advantage derived from deploying a social media program.

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

Chevron’s Aggressive PR Challenge - ‘buying’ bloggers?

Chevron is throwing down the gauntlet - conducting a bare knuckle PR campaign the likes of which we have rarely seen. At stake is a $27 billion judgement in an Ecuadorian court that, if leveled (a decision is expected this year), and if it sticks (it is not clear if an Ecuadorian court can extract payment from an American company with no current operations in its country), would be the largest environmental lawsuit in history.

Such a judgement could severely hamper Chevron and impact its stock. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is demanding a full accounting from Chevron (the state, through pension funds, is a shareholder). Dozens of blogs and web sites are devoted to slamming the company and generating a consistent stream of negative news -  including accusing the company of buying off bloggers. Chevron is aggressively fighting back.

Anybody who does not believe that high-profile civil cases are fought as much through PR as they are in the courtroom should study the Chevron case.

The latest flame-up in this story was the May 3, 2009, ‘60 Minutes’ segment titled Amazon Crude. Silvia M. Garrigo, Manager, Global Issues and Policy for Chevron, was in the unenviable position of facing the 60 Minutes grilling from Scott Pelley. Garrigo’s performance on ‘60 Minutes’ was ridiculed by many anti-Chevron groups although, from my perspective, she is a strong and credible advocate for her client.

Chevron responded to 60 Minutes by hiring former CNN correspondent  Gene Randall to narrate a ‘News” report that tells the story from its perspective. The video, Chevron Texaco Ecuador Lawsuit - Behind the Scenes, is on YouTube and a company web site devoted to the case.

Smack in the middle is a blogger called Zennie62, who, ChevronToxicoclaims, is a paid shill for Chevron. ChevronToxico offers no proof and Zennie Abraham, the blogger, does not confirm or deny payments in his blog posts. He posts prodigiously about the case and seems to have a wealth of information that would only be available to an insider. His blog posts and YouTube videos rank high in Google searches on keywords Chevron, Texaco (acquired by Chevron), and Ecuador.  Daryl Hannah, right, visiting environmental disaster site in Ecuador.

In 2008, Amazon Watch disclosed that Bay Area blogger Pat Murphy was a paid to post pro-Chevron comments on the Ecuador case in his small online newspaper.  Murphy has publicly acknowledged he accepted fees for control of editorial content, according to Amazon Watch.

Chevron’s Garrigo has acknowledged that this is a PR battle. The company claims that it cannot get a fair trial in Ecuador and they seek to sway public opinion in the U.S. if the case is brought here. This is not a ‘cut and dry’ case, despite the entrenched certainty of the opposing forces. There is plenty of villainy to go around. The Ecuadorian government has an atrocious environmental record - the big U.S. oil company is an easy target that reaps enormous political benefit, even if they don’t realize a dime from the lawsuit.

 “Paying so-called independent bloggers to post is just one part of a wide-ranging fraud designed by Chevron to cover up the company’s enormous exposure in Ecuador,” said Prieto. Prieto said Samson, Chevron’s public relations director, has built an “empire” of consultants in the U.S. and Ecuador to put out misleading information about the case.  Chevron’s environmental problems in Ecuador have become the company’s largest worldwide public relations problem. Samson has retained the New York office of the global public relations behemoth Hill & Knowlton — the same firm that represented the tobacco industry for decades– to manage Chevron’s image problems stemming from the Ecuador case. Chevron P.R. Director Donald Samson Behind Secret Payments to Bloggers to Hide Ecuador Liability

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