Andrew Lark

Something to Say...

Why is it that those who have something to say can’t say it, while those who have nothing to say keep saying it?
               —Anonymous

I recently sat on a CMO Council panel in lovely Monterey. It occurred t me as I sat up there with my fellow panelists how different this was from keynoting an event. And, that we really only train our spokespeople on how to deal with keynotes.

Guy Kawasaki's latest book - The Art Of The Start - is indispensable for anyone looking for proven counsel on communications basics. If you are too cheap to buy a copy, take a look on Always On - he covers the basics of sitting on a panel really well. Here are the first four:-

1. Control your introduction. Bring a copy of your bio and hand it to the moderator to introduce you. Don’t depend on what the moderator came up with. And, like in speeches, cut the sales pitch about your organization. To make your organization look good, be an informative panelist not a loudmouth braggart. (Note from me ~ write this in a single paragraph. I'll often hand my biog to the moderator and rather than reading the first para they go on, and on, and on... do as I say, not as I do).

2. Entertain, don’t just inform. Answering the moderator’s or audience’s questions is only half the job of a panelist. The more important task is to entertain the audience. You can do this with a penetrating new insight, humor, or controversy. Always be asking yourself, “Am I being entertaining?” (Note from me ~ this goes for keynotes as well. Scott McNealy and Steve Jobs probably have this down better than anyone. Too many CEOs forget that in most instances - the audience paid to be there!).

3. Tell the truth—especially when the truth is obvious. Most people expect panelists to lie when they encounter a tough question, so if you don’t lie, you establish credibility for your other answers. (Note from me ~ and don't talk about anything you even vaguely think you shouldn't talk about. It's just amazing to me how often an executives brain disengages from the mouth and all kinds of things that really shouldn't be said pop out.)

4. Err on the side of being plain and simple. Often a moderator will ask a technical question, so the temptation is to answer with a technical statement. This is usually a mistake. Keep it plain and simple: Enough to show that you know what you’re talking about but not so much that it makes you incomprehensible to 80 percent of the audience. (Note from me ~ that means if you have to read your slides you shouldn't use them. If the audience is reading while you are speaking then you just introduced a level of complexity you don't need.)

Get to Always On our Barnes & Noble for the rest... I'll drop my full review of The Art Of the Start up here when finished. In the meantime, also get a copy of The Highest Goal by MIchael Ray. A real stunner. Hey - you might even get free shipping for buying both at once.

Control Room...

If you haven't seen it, Control Room is well worth a look. Revealing look at Al Jazeera. This reinforced my view that news is a product rooted in the ground from which is was birthed - it's biased and subjective. The more extreme the reporting, the less objective it becomes. And, it's a product subject to as much manipulation by media relations pros as ever - many of whom are seemingly oblivious to the trade they ply.

Communications Opensourced...

A NYT Article on Newton fanatics got me thinking about how the blogsphere is effectively the open-sourcing of communications.

As ''The Cult of Mac'' notes, Newton loyalty has attracted the attention of the academy. Albert Muniz, an assistant professor of marketing at DePaul University, has been studying ''brand communities'' for about a decade. Our real communities, it has been said, are disintegrating. We don't know who our city councilman is; we shun P.T.A. meetings; we've never met our neighbors. But Muniz argued in a paper on the subject (written with Thomas O'Guinn of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) that brand communities, ''based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand,'' are real communities. He acknowledges that it's more typical to cite the culture of consumption as something that undermines social togetherness rather than creates it. ''But our point of view is: This is a human phenomenon, we are social beings,'' Muniz says. ''If community gets lopped off over here, it will emerge somewhere else.'' Groups of Saab, Bronco and Macintosh admirers -- all studied by Muniz and O'Guinn -- even possessed ''a sense of moral responsibility'' (albeit a ''limited and specialized one'').

As communicators we foster both communications within and to our communities - internal and external. Increasingly though, (at least in high-tech) the most important communications aren't occurring from the company but by it's communities. There is no question constituents turn to company web pages for basic information such as news releases, financials, etc - by important I mean in a deeper way than just information. The dialogue that shapes the way this information is perceived is increasingly occurring outside the company firewall and domain within the community through blogs, wikis and other vehicles.

As the NYT story points, this will inevitably lead to our communities transcending our brand lifecycles and corporate directions.

Some companies will do everything they can to manage the dialogue - to shut down dialogue on dead products. At best all they will be able to do though is enable it.

Blogs Are Better For Business

We interviewed Tony Perkins of Always On - you'll need to log on for the full story but its worth a read. We absolutely believe blogs are better for business. Better conversations with the market. Better transparency. Better feedback. What more could you ask for?

Q: When did blogging strike your interest, and why?

TP: I've been in the publishing business for more than 15 years and, during that time, I noticed a grassroots media phenomenon called blogging. It was incredibly fascinating, because it allowed individuals to easily publish on the Internet using open-source software, and to create a dialogue with their readers.

Blogging is similar to the open-source software movement, in that the original author puts out a piece of information or a perspective, and the viewers can add to that, creating a potentially interesting dialogue for the benefit of everyone who reads it.

Q: OK, but do businesses benefit from blogs?

TP: Yes. In spite of the Internet bubble — which unfortunately partly discredited the business value of the Internet — it was clear that business people were increasingly moving online to gain information because information is the currency of the technology industry.

The quicker you can gain access to information, the more competitive you can be in business. Clearly, the trend was business people going online to gain technology, business, and strategic information.

"Information is the currency of the technology industry."

All great companies pay attention to what their customers are saying. Getting a perspective on how their company and products are perceived in the market, and whether they have any market positioning or public relations issues is extremely valuable.

Blogging is a powerful way to communicate openly in a market. We call it "open source media" because you can have that direct dialogue and understand why a customer may or may not want to buy from you.

Yet executives like Jonathan Schwartz, who has been brave enough to start his own blog, are very much the exception rather than the rule. Smart executives will realize that blogging allows them to communicate directly with users, potential customers, and strategic partners and to create a direct dialogue with those people without the media getting in the way.

More online at Always On

Illumintating...

Dan Gillmor's latest post is illuminating. I recieved a similar note from a different PR firm pitching their blog 'manipulation' - sorry, 'influencer', and measurement services. It's in the round file on the floor.

We would all be wise to spend time understanding what the blogsphere actually is. It's a conversation. And a rich one at that. It requires listening as much as it does 'speaking'. If you can alter the debate by participating in it - more power to you. But I fear that the communications tool-kit used by most to shape and respond to online debate is going to be of little use in this new world. I'm more and more convinced that you don't manage the blogsphere - it's unmanageable. Your only hope is to embrace the sphere, participate in the dialogue or watch from the sidelines.

Media tracking services are as much a commodity as blog tracking services - with a difference. Blog tracking services are actually less valuable in that the dialogue moves at light speed. Your tracking is out of date before your report on what is happening. Aside from that, tracking is much less valuable than participating.

Just as traditional journalists (thanks for the link Dan) point to their role as the gatekeepers of news, I hear more and more PR people complaining about their declining role as the transmitters of the news. Get over it. We're at about an hour before daybreak for a new era in public relations and news reporting. It will be interesting to see the impact on traditional news wires as we reach the inevitable tipping point where news comes to us first through the blogs in our RSS reader.

This new era is going to place a greater onus on PR folks to really know their content, position and evidence. It's going to require that they have a point of view - not just their executives or product people (maybe they'll align, maybe they won't - maybe it would be nice if they didn't from time to time?).

And, I don't say this lightly, it's going to require agencies really raise the bar. To participate in the blogsphere they will need more than experience, executional savvy, content and writing skills - they will need content and subject matter knowledge. Agencies will then need to free their pros from the tyranny of hourly billing rates to engage in the dialogue - not just for their clients, but for themselves. What a new business tool that is going to create.

OK, so now I've upset a whole lot of people off I'm going to get back to work...

The game is afoot.

A quick one from Hong Kong...

Here's a really smart speech on the power of blogs from Alan of the Command Post. A clear case for the evolution of communications inside, as much on the outside, of organizations. A must read for all communicators.

Winging my way back to the US today all going well.

For The Record...

Awhile back Dan Gillmore made an interesting suggestion. Steal a leaf out of the playbook of Don Rumsfeld and post all interview transcripts to the web. This was a terrific move on his part and I think sets the standard for all public officials.

Aside from delivering total transparency on what actually happens in interviews - which, surprise, surprise, generally bears no relation to what gets printed in the article - this would have the added benefit of leveling the journalistic playing-field. So to speak. And we get to see not just what the media what to print, but also what the interviewee wants to say.

Quick segway - what will also happen is the slightly less savvy PR pro will alter transcripts and post them to the web as the official record - as Mr Rumsfeld's team did - thereby creating a whole new news cycle and story. (thanks to my old colleague David Chamberlin for shooting over the link).

Now, nearly every journalist I've polled on this idea has been vehemently opposed to it (except Dan of course). No surprises there. What is surprising to me is some of the more the extreme views. For instance, you can't post the interview even after the article has been published because it's (and I quote), "my intellectual property". Um, yeah, right...

Pissing off journalists is generally bad PR practice so I'm not sure who will make the first leap to doing this, but it will happen. I'm definitely more keen on recommending it to our management team and here's why.

An article by Glasser in the the latest issue in the Online Journalism Review (and Tim Porter's blog) has an interesting piece that points to the attitude of traditional journalists. Seems Mark Cuban felt a little hard done by given an article published by Kevin Blackistone, a Dallas Morning News sports columnist. They'd exchanged emails in March about Cuban's basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks - part of which was published... Mark felt Blackistone quoted him out of context (that's never happened to an exec before!), so Cuban published Blackistone's original email to him... And the story goes on.

Glasser asked Blackistone what he thought of this...

"I didn't think much of being surprised by having what I thought was a private exchange with Mark Cuban posted on a public Web site. That is a reason I stopped responding to readers years ago, because I discovered they started posting my personal responses to them on message boards."

As Tim rightly points out this was a public exchange so he shouldn't have been surprised. What this really points to is a general reluctance by traditional media to open the window to the reporting process and expose their bias towards the story or the subject matter. Why not let the facts shine - someone once said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Today, blogs and web make it incredibly economical and easy to shine sunlight on stories.

This is where publishing transcripts could get really interesting. It would be much better to simply publish all transcripts post publication than selectively address stories that somehow piss you off. Or, here's a novel idea, why don't the publications make the entire transcript available on their web site - in raw form.

Nixon was wrong, the press isn't the enemy. Lack of transparency is.

Nihau From Jiuzhai

Thought I'd give you a quick update from the road. Am sitting in front of the fire in Jiuzhai - Ancient Tibet - they built a resort and airport last year so this is where we are holding our Sun Telco summit. Just called room service - they don't know what Coke is but they recommend the spicy Yak meat and warm milk. Excellent! What's even more amazing is that they have high-speed Internet in the rooms and my "JavaBerry" is sucking down email from our mail server over a China Mobile link.

You can hide from Coke but you can't escape email...

Media Bias & Fair Speech...

This is one of the more popular topics in the blogsphere these days. Tends to peak with every election and then dies down. Now, as a PR pro, anytime I talk about media bias or point out acts of sloppy journalism - which are generally far exceeded by acts of sloppy PR - I'm pretty quickly dismissed, heckled, or ridiculed. In this respect, Bloggers are quickly becoming my people (OK - not really, but you get the point).

Pressthink got me on this train of thought, focusing on Chris Satullo's, editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, story on bloggers... Cries of 'media bias' hide sloppy thinking (Philadelphia Inquirer, Sep. 26, 2004).

Rather's mistake was sad, but no watershed. This aging anchor is no more the embodiment of journalism than Paris Hilton is a typical farm girl. Mainstream media is a term so loose as to disqualify any assertions that follow it. Let's, by all means, discuss how journalism falls short. Let's explore how it can flourish in media new and old. But let's see the screaming about media bias for what it is: at best sloppy thinking, at worst Orwellian poison.

But spare me the chatter about bias. Of course the media is biased. Get over it. Journalists, bloggers, and even PR pros should revel in it.

Media conglomerates are not a synonym for journalism. They employ some journalists, and many who only pretend to be. They enable the craft, but also inhibit and cheapen it.

The great journalists rise above the fray. They report. The product might be biased, doesn't mean all journalists are. And this is where PressThink's manifesto is right on. We need to rise above media and fully comprehend the importance of Press.

Satullo is right ~

Journalism, done right, buoys democracy; hence its place in the First Amendment.

This point is going to play out in the blogsphere. I wonder how many executives are not blogging because they lack the rights to speak freely and pursue absolute transparency? In fact, any enthusiasm they might have for speaking openly is being restricted by new legislation.

Andrew Gordon in PR Week hit on this in a story regarding Siebel -

SAN MATEO, CA: Siebel Systems is defending itself on First Amendment grounds against a charge of violating Regulation Fair Disclosure - claiming it violates companies' rights to free speech. The enterprise-software maker raised the defense in its mid-September motion to dismiss a charge brought in June by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "Regulation FD works an unprecedented and remarkably sweeping infringement of corporate speech," the Chronicle quotes the motion as stating.

Other PR Pros seem to think this would set a dangerous precedent by allowing companies to hide behind the First Amendment. I think the reverse is true. There is less chance of anyone hiding today than at any other point in the history of business. Hide where? Transparency is the new watchword and the requirement of any legislator should be to foster it by encouraging free speech, not limiting it... So to steal and reframe from Satullo:-

Business, done right, buoys democracy; hence free speech for executives should have an equal place in the First Amendment. Or, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

China bound...

Will be offline for a bit as I head to China...