Somehow, the press takes "The American Mustache Institute" seriously

Whoever oversees H.R. Block's public relations, please give them a raise.

Although taxing mustaches is about as long a logical stretch to doing your taxes as me being nominated for President in the fall, the press somehow has been taking this very obvious PR stunt far more seriously than it warrants.

Last summer, Abercrombie & Fitch offered "Jersey Shore" star The Situation a boatload of money not to wear their clothes in a press release. It was treated as seriously as Ben Bernanke issuing a statement changing the interest rates. The story appeared everywhere as if A&F was really going to do this, including the NY Times and other publications. Gossip rags will publish anything that is fed to them, but high-standing reputable news sources?

So kudos to Business Insider's Laura Stampler for calling out CBS (!) and The Weekly Standard for treating the Million Mustache March as if it is real. Let's see, the event happens on April 1st, which is, uh...

For God's sake, the H&R Block logo is all over every single thing about the Million Mustache March.

It's competitive in the tax preparation business. Turbo Tax and H&R Block have been offering all kinds of freebies since last year to lure customers. Somebody had to think of a new trick, so why not try to abolish the fictional tax on mustaches? Will this actually help H&R Block's business in the end? We'll know in a few months. I personally don't see the connection between mustaches and tax preparation.

But why do respectable news organizations fall for this very transparent stuff?

Stephenson Group -- please stop spamming

New Jersey public relations firm Stephenson Group doesn't seem to have received the widely circulated memo about how people hate spam, especially journalists.

For some reason, one of their staff people, Richard Virgilio, keeps sending me pitches about Western Union and small business. I don't write about either topic.

I sent Richard a note last time pointing out that this is irrelevant material and spam gives PR a bad name. I cc'd his bosses, who are listed on their web site.

But here is Richard again, sending me his spam pitches about Western Union and small business.

The company seems to offer a number of services, but they really should add "Spamming" to their capabilities.

They have definitely earned their place on my blocked domain list.

Sorry, Mark, but many startups DO need PR help... and desperately

Dallas Mavericks owner, investor and tireless blogger Mark Cuban posted a defense of his "Why startups should never hire a PR firm" statement this week after he got blasted by various publicity folks. He backtracks a bit, but I have to say, a lot of what he says is rather disingenuous.

So let me turn things around and say, Mark, if you knew many of the startup executives I have known, if you were in my shoes, you'd be crazy not to think they didn't need a publicist. They desperately needed one.

Granted, there are some startups that should not hire a PR firm. I've been hired by a few myself. They have so many NDA's or what they do is such inside baseball, that journalists aren't going to get much out of them or they'll not be interested. So why even try to move that mountain? Don't bother.

Cuban talks about publicists having plenty of contacts but not being able to do the "vulcan mind meld" of understanding the elements of a growing business. Well that's pretty sad if you've been burned by some lousy PR firms. If all you're doing is hiring firms who excel at burning lots of money sending out press releases over paid syndication wires, have some good contacts and act like hovering control freaks, frankly, you deserve to be upset at the profession. But hey, you hired wrong! Not all PR firms are alike.

Did you examine the brains upstairs at these firms to see if they think strategically, know how to tell a story, have some genuine creative genes, and have passion for who you are? Do they rely excessively on sending out press releases for every little thing? If you didn't, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Cuban says that any executive writing an unpretentious letter to a journalist will likely get a response:

It’s amazing how often a simple email to a writer for a trade publication or local media will get a response. The key to getting a response is being short, sweet , hyperbole free and to the point.

If you're Mark Cuban, sure. But you'd be surprised how many startup execs don't know how to write or spell. Really. They are great at what they do, but they're not exactly Robert Browning or Elizabeth Barrett. Weirdly enough, the subject line Cuban uses in his sample letter to the press -- Tracking Traffic to Reduce Vacancies -- looks like spam or a press release. Not personalized. Upper and lower case, like the headline of a press release? C'mon, that's bush league and a good, smart publicist wouldn't let that happen.

Sure, a casual toss-off letter to a total stranger may get a reply, but more often than not, they don't. Mark, have you ever seen the inbox of the average blogger at a popular tech site? Good luck not getting deleted or overlooked altogether!

Besides, what happened to picking up the phone? Whoops, no mention of that in Cuban's advice.

Let me tell you about some of the startup execs I run into. A good deal of them need third party guidance on how to shape their story and message because they've been living inside it for so long, they can't get to the point. They may put their foot in their mouths by talking about things they shouldn't. Sometimes they don't know how to be confident when speaking with a reporter, or just too confident and get carried away, going overboard.

Some of them have brilliant complex concepts for their companies, but need another person to boil it down to something a journalist can easily understand and go "aha!"

Some have harangued me about going on video casts, but then when they are in front of the camera, they need somebody like me to tell them, "hey, maybe you should be enthusiastic about what your company does?"

Some have incredible delusions of grandeur, thinking the world is going to beat a path to their door. I have to break the news to them that if they don't walk before they run and think strategically over time, the only people arrive at their door will be the moving men to clean out their offices.

Where would Mark Zuckerberg be if somebody didn't bring him out of his shell and explain how to come across as less geeky and more approachable and humane?

Here's some more reality from the front line: a lot of startups are just plain afraid of approaching bloggers, and many of their top people are so busy, they don't have time to write nice little notes to them either.

It's really easy to say "startups should never hire a PR firm" and pontificate about some fantasy world where reporters answer all your emails and are dying to hear about what you're doing, and where all startup executives are Brad Pitt and infinitely quotable and articulate.

But they are not. Far from.

P.S. Isn't it ironic how some journalists jump on the bandwagon and say, we agree with Mark, don't hire PR firms, but then are inaccessible when startups approach them. Or better yet, when some executive goofs up publicly, maybe by accident, and they can't say tweet fast enough, "where's their publicist?" or "they should have had a better publicist!"

Is Cision enabling publicists to blast e-mail spam?

You would expect that with the highly-irate journalist backlash against impersonal publicist-driven spam and blast e-mails these past few years, database companies such as Cision and Vocus would bend over backwards to educate its users on avoiding this despised tactic.

Quite accidentally, I seem to have stumbled across a troubling practice at Cision that may be in fact enabling it with their users.

Let's start with this premise, as this is the reason why publicists and companies pay thousands of dollars to Cision for their database: to know what journalists, bloggers, producers, hosts and bookers want to be pitched, how they want to be pitched (if at all), and how to contact them.

Then take this rather unique situation: I am both listed in Cision's database because of this blog, and I am a subscriber because I am a public relations practitioner.

Now let's explain how this all came about...

In mid-December, I received an e-mail from Cision's Kristen Sala.

Hi Drew,

I hope this email finds you well.

Cision produces media directories in which we have a free listing for you with the title of Blogger at Drew Kerr's PR Rock and Roll. This listing with us allows PR and Marketing professionals to find out about you and your areas of expertise, helping to ensure that you receive relevant material from them.

I would therefore like to check whether we currently have up-to-date information around your contact details, contact preferences and journalistic interests.

To ensure your listing is up-to-date, kindly confirm and amend the below as necessary.


Best Regards,

Kristen


My entry was quite bare bones, so sent back this amendment and asked it to be confirmed:

Please read the blog thoroughly first before contacting me, as I will ignore anything that is irrelevant to exactly what I write about. Not all public relations blogs are the same. Please do not send me blast e-mails or irrelevant press releases. I have no problem embarrassing you by posting about you if you don't heed this advice. Don't say I didn't warn you. Thanks.

The next day, I received a confirmation from Cision, stating "I've added your additional comments to this listing, verbatim."

And that was that, thinking I was informing the people who want to pitch me to read my blog first and don't blast me the same garbage as everybody else.

Until this morning, when I received a press release from the University of Missouri about "Emotional News Framing Affects Public Response to Crisis, MU Study Finds." Not relevant, so I replied asking to be removed from their mailing list. A few minutes later came this surprising retort:

"You are not on a mailing list. You have been identified by cisionpoint.com as a journalist interested in PR releases."

Huh? Not me. I clicked to my Cision listing and lo and behold, it was still the sparse entry from before mid-December. What happened? It's like my spam filter was never installed.

I tracked down Cision's Kristen Sala, who sent me the original e-mail asking to update my entry. She said she saw my amendment on her computer screen. I told her it was invisible on mine.

Then came the disturbing part: she said my additional comments were on Cisionpoint's "premium service," not basic.

In other words, the people who pay all that money to get the basic information on the do's and don'ts of how to contact the media were not going to see my entry. Only the lucky "premium" level spenders would know to read my blog first and not to send me blast e-mails and press releases. It seems the "1%" were going to get that privilege.

I didn't want to get all "Occupy Cision," but I had to make my displeasure known to Ms. Sala: does this mean lots of other journalists and bloggers listed in Cision don't have their communication preferences listed in "basic" service and it's only available for those who shell out more money? What's the point of asking me to update my entry if only the "premium" caste were going to see it? And if this advice and warning information about contact protocol was not there for all the "basic" users, weren't they helping make it a blast e-mail spam free for all?

She unhappily admitted my points were right, and offered to make my information available to all tiers of Cision, which I gladly accepted.

Publicists shouldn't have to pay extra money to Cision, or any other competing database company, to get rudimentary information about communication do's and don'ts with the press.

Lord knows what "premium" level gets you in additional background -- shoe size? favorite color? preferred Powerpuff Girl? -- but playing favorites with essential data is not a game Cision should be running if it wants to preserve healthy relationships between journalists and publicists.

Mashable's Todd Wasserman wants to kill the word "excited" in press releases.

If executive quotes are the black hole of press releases, then their repetitive choice of words is the big cosmic shovel that digs them down there.

Mashable's business and marketing editor Todd Wasserman decided the world needs to be rid of unimaginative quotes in press releases. After being on the receiving end of probably thousands of these numbing missives, Wasserman decided to launch a Tumblr blog called Everyone's Excited In Press Releases as sort of a tribute and warning. He posts actual quotes from current press releases, linking back to their original location.

Let's face it -- if you weren't "excited" about the new partnership, acquisition or new hire you are announcing, would you be issuing a press release in the first place? In my opinion, and what seems to be the overriding view of many journalists, nobody cares if you're excited, happy, doing cartwheels, or breaking into song. The news is the thing.

In January, 2009, I wrote on this blog about the words "excited," "thrilled" and "honored": "It is the duty of every public relations professional who is called upon to conjure quotes for executives to remove these three words from their vocabulary immediately.

This habit is far worse than buying Aramis cologne for your dad's birthday 30 years in a row. He can impress his neighbors at Boca Vista Village in Florida and wash it off at the end of the day, but your name is stuck on that press release forever."

What I love and depresses me at the same time about Todd's new Tumblr blog is that it takes a veteran journalist to mock the non-stop follies of one annoying, lazy inanity that many publicists and executives can't seem to shake out of their systems.

I interviewed Todd about his new side project:


Q: What gave you the idea to turn this into a Tumblr? Was there a breaking point?

Todd: Yes. Netflix's Sept. 5 press release about moving to Latin America included CEO Reed Hastings' quote: "We are excited to be bringing Netflix to Latin America and the Caribbean." I thought "That's it. I can't let this go on anymore."


Q: Why do you think quotes in press releases are so lame?

Todd: Because they have to be approved by 19 different people. The best quotes are off the cuff and when people aren't 100% aware of what they're saying, sort of like the subconscious mind speaking. A quote that's been worked over by everyone in the legal department is the opposite of that.


Q: What can be done to prevent lame quotes in press releases?

Todd: Either don't put one in, which is fine, or only put one in when the quote is actually funny or adds something to the announcement.


Q: Will you encompass other bogus quote words such as "honored" and "thrilled," or will those be other Tumblr blogs?

Todd: Actually, someone pointed out to me that the word "leading" is used much more than "excited," but excited seems to be especially funny to me because adding the quote "I'm so excited" actually seems to drain the announcement of any excitement at all. So no, though I am interested in starting a "taglines in quotes" blog that will feature stuff like "Suffolk County's leader in HVAC since 1988."


Q: How will you know if your Tumblr blog is effective?

The day I can search PR Newswire and Business Wire and not see a quote about being excited, I'll know it's done it's job.


Q: Have you heard from any of the people who wrote those press release you posted? If so, what did they say?

I heard from one woman who said "Guilty as charged," meaning she'd used that quote in the past. I'd like to hear from others. It's no different than if I used a cliche in a story and someone pointed it out. It's constructive criticism.


Q: Vote for lamest quote in a press release?

If we're dealing with "excited" quotes, I think it gets lamer if you add qualifiers like "extremely" and such. Otherwise, really bad puns would probably make the cut, like if someone got a job at Chevy and said they really hoped to "rev sales" or something along those lines.


Q: If a publicist is forced by gunpoint to write a quote for an executive, or if an executive insists they give a quote in a release, what would be your advice to prevent them from sounding like a cliche?

Todd: I'd ask them how they would explain what happened to their wife or friend outside the business. Then I'd find a new job where they don't use guns at work.

Gas to the fire: how not to respond to angry customers

Sometimes companies gamble on a product or idea, whether they aware of it or not, and the results can possibly backfire. At those times, you have to suck it up and admit you may have been wrong, and here's how you will fix it for the immediate future. It's crisis communications 101.

Here is a story of a publisher who rolled the dice on a very sensitive topic, felt the backlash, but bungled the response.

Westchester magazine, a beautiful, slick suburban publication which I regularly read, did the equivalent of waving a red flag in front of an angry bull last month: it published a cover story on the "21 Best Looking Residents."

Before I even cracked the first page, I thought to myself, "Uh oh."

My gut reaction was: we have enough shallowness in our towns, much less the world... do we really need this when adults and children are battered with self-image issues from the media and peers... middle school kids go through the anxiety ringer with cliques and cyberbullying -- is this something they should see... how the heck can you pick 21 people out of a county of 955,000 and say they are the "best looking?

According to the article, here's how they picked those 21 best-looking people: "We asked dozens of beauty pros, put out a call for nominations, queried our neighbors, friends and family to come up with this bevy of beauties of all ages, from all walks of life. Yes, we know that true beauty comes from within, yada, yada, yada -- but sometimes you just have to take these things at face value. Enjoy the scenery."

Who are these beauty pros, how many nominations were sent in, were they of themselves, who are the friends and family -- nobody knows. Thankfully, the youngest person profiled was 25 and not in school. While I'm not expecting Pulitzer-nominated investigative stories in my county magazine, you could see from 100 miles away that this was not going to go down well.

The next month's letters section of Westchester magazine bore that out. Here are excerpts:

• My jaw dropped when I saw your May cover. Are these 21 people really worthy of being singled out from the nearly one million Westchester residents, or is this simply an exercise in flattering a few connected individuals? Have we in Westchester become so shallow that we are actually interested in who your editorial staff deems to be beautiful? I’ve thrown the issue in the trash so that my children don’t get the wrong impression that who is or who isn’t “beautiful” is worthy of this sort of attention!
• Given Westchester’s great diversity (one of our most valued strengths), I was eager to see how your team would celebrate this great attribute. Now, I am stunned, having just thumbed through the feature’s 16 pages and seen not a single African American woman! Not one! Depending on your source, African Americans represent between 13.3 percent and 14.4 percent of the county’s population... I have a 14-year-old daughter who is beautiful by any standard. Unfortunately, I cannot let her see this issue because, by the standards of the editors of Westchester Magazine, which comes into our home each month, she isn’t beautiful at all. Or at least no one who looks like her is beautiful enough to be so recognized. And that’s a shame.
• Your May issue is why the suburbs are considered soulless, vapid, and uninspiring. Westchester County is rich in history and natural beauty, although anyone who reads your magazine would be hard pressed to find little more than articles dedicated to shopping and advertisements for cosmetic surgery. I’m canceling my subscription.
• Your magazine has reached an all-time low. What’s with your feature story about “21 Best Looking Residents?” Who cares?!!!
  

There was not one letter published in favor of the cover story.

Here is your classic scenario of a company gambling on something a bit edgy with distinct possible pitfalls, and getting whipped by some of its customers for it.

What would you expect as a response from the editor? An apology of some sort, right? We all make mistakes, and even if you didn't think this was one, you want to make some kind of amends with the offended customers. A little humbleness, perhaps?

But this was not the road taken in the editor's response (which I have to reproduce entirely here because of its breathtaking scope):

To think we were worried about engaged readership…Okay, you got us, Westchester: we’re suckers for a symmetrical face and expressive eyes.

We feel good admitting that, though, because we know we’re in good company. After all, the nominations for the article came from you and local experts in the beauty biz. That’s right. We may not be able to promise that these 21 lovely people are the absolute best-looking Westchester residents, but you certainly seemed to think so.

Frankly, we would have gone crazy if we’d had to make the list ourselves. We think you’re all so darn hot and wouldn’t imply for a second that anyone who wasn’t chosen is anything less. Of course, beauty isn’t everything. So, like a lot of the beautiful residents profiled in our pages, we urge you to “look under the surface,” i.e., our Table of Contents. In just the last two months, you’d find stories on the history of Westchester’s bridges, profiles of barrier-breakers like Dr. Yvonne Thornton (the first African American woman to be board certified in maternal-fetal medicine), a feature package on our LGBT community, not to mention a nod toward the natural beauty of our county’s common fish. You’ll see references to Malcolm X, Stravinsky, Yves Tanguy, Nabokov, and Shakespeare, who certainly never turned up his Elizabethan nose at “beauty too rich for use.”

Yes, Westchester is rich in history and natural beauty. It’s also rich in creative designers, restaurants on the cusp of environmental movements, and, yes, a gaggle of people fairer than a summer’s day. We love it all; we want to celebrate it all! And that brings us to diversity.

Our 21 beautiful residents (who run the gamut, Leo, of five different decades in age) and included one Puerto Rican, one Pakistani, one Irishman, one Siberian, one Chinese-Jamaican, one Dominican, one Indian, one African American man, and, yes, and one African American/West Indian woman. In striving for broad diversity without adhering to strict quotas (which don’t always capture the realities of our increasingly mixed heritage), we do hope that—unlike so much contemporary media—we communicated our firm belief that beauty flourishes in each of our communities.

So take a look at yourself in the mirror, Westchester: you’re lookin’ good.

I don't know how this editor's response is going over with the readers, but to me, this is what's known as a textbook excuse, not an apology. In the editor's mind, this seems to resolve the controversy, but perhaps in the minds of the readers, I'm not sure it did, and it could have possible made it worse.

There is no resolution, no "peace pipe," and no humbling.

I sent an e-mail to Westchester magazine Esther Davidowitz, asking her why there was no apology in her response, how many nominations were received as part of the voting process, who were the local beauty experts who voted, what kind of feedback did she expect from the story, and would she do the story differently the next time around? She did not reply.

Companies face irate customers all the time, sometimes more than others. Take a good look at that editor's reply because this is exactly what not to do.


1) PUTTING THE BLAME ON THE CUSTOMERS: Let me get this straight -- you're blaming us, the readers, for voting these 21 people in? Again, who did the voting? Who are the beauty experts? How many votes did you get out of the 955,000 residents of Westchester County? How many times did your friends and neighbors vote?

2) DIVERSION FROM THE CORE ISSUE: We admire you published articles about many different ethnicities and gender preferences in the past. You name dropped Shakespeare, Malcolm X and Stravinsky. OK, so you went to college and can refer to those people in the magazine. But what does that have to do with a dubious vote for the 21 best-looking people in the county? Those people and your other articles have nothing to do with this article.

3) TREATING THE TOPIC TOO LIGHTLY: "Take a look in the mirror, Westchester, you're lookin' good?" Put the pom-poms away. I don't know if anybody is laughing. If we're all "lookin' good," why are you singling out 21 of us? This kind of cheerleader talk is as plastic as the notion that there are 21 people who look better than the other 955,000 in Westchester. Good way to add fuel to the fire.

4) NO APOLOGY: Customers are ticked. There are some unhappy people and they've written in to tell you how they feel. As a matter of fact, there is not one positive letter published. Even if you think you are right, you owe an apology to those angry readers. You don't have to make a big deal about it. At least say "if you felt our story offended you, we are sorry. It was not our intention." You save face, you don't seem above it all, and perhaps you don't lose customers.

Hacks vs. Flacks: when the pot calls the kettle black

Publicists have their flacks. Journalists have their hacks. Yet neither profession seems to smell their own stink.

What public relation giant Burson-Marsteller did for Facebook, trying to plant negative stories on Google's stand on privacy, was really business as usual in some corners of the profession. Facebook could have taken out an advertisement pointing out Google's flaws, but score one for public relations, in winning over advertising yet again with its credibility factor. That these two BM publicists found journalists who were not only not buying the Google ploy but willing to spill the beans publicly, well, that's the risk you take.

In every profession, not just public relations, competitive moves -- even ones that may be called "underhanded" -- are done every day. These guys had the bad luck to get caught.

In an un-bylined article this week, The Economist decided to drag down the whole public relations profession, based on this Facebook/Google incident by citing research from Jamil Jonna of the University of Oregon with this juicy nugget: "for each American journalist there are now, on average, six flacks hassling him to run crummy stories."

To which I respond: For every athlete, politician & celebrity (real or not), there are six reporters & TV crew hassling them for crummy stories.

The New York Times detailed the insane stalking done by web sites and magazines.

Entertainment Tonight boasted 77 staffers covering the Royal Wedding. There are countless people who stalk the Yankees' A-Rod every day. How many reporters are tracking every move of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York City, yet all that's happened to him is an accusation?

Bad judgment and inept practitioners exist in every profession, and one is no better than the other. I can tell you stories of journalists who asked me to hold a story for them and then conveniently disappear when it's time to do it. Yet, I also get spammed by people in my own profession, sending me irrelevant press releases, clearly who have not read my blog nor my warning in Cision's databases.

Should a publicist give up his client, as the Burson-Marsteller people were asked to do when their Google pitch seemed fishy, as much as a journalist should give up their source when they call and tell you they heard a rumor about your client?

I've had to deal with a couple of questionably reporters in my career who called me with rumors of discord and declining sales of my clients, but won't give up who said them, even if they were terminated employees? Then when we refute them point by point, they still print the story and put the rumor right in the headline with a question mark, as if that little punctuation trick will get them off the hook in case the truth doesn't pan out.

Yes, it all works both ways, including the dirty tricks.

As Wired's Sam Gustin pointed out to me over the weekend: "When PR takes a hit, the industry as a whole takes a hit. Reporters take a hit, the industry as a whole takes a hit. Neither good."

Instead of bashing the "hacks" and "flacks," it would be a more productive use of everybody's time to uphold standards, keep true to their word and understand what the other guy wants.