MBLog

I walked past my local Dollond & Aitchison this week and had a flashback of their brilliant opportunism when opticians were first allowed to advertise a few years ago.

For an advertising spend of £100 they achieved acres of media coverage.  How?  They bought a local radio advertising slot at midnight, thus becoming the first opticians ever to advertise, a fact which they released to the media, who of course love nothing more than a first. Nice one.

And talking of what the media like, I'm still chuckling over the latest PR Week headline announcing the appointment of Matt Tee as the government's communications supremo:

MOST INFLUENTIAL COMMS JOB IN GOVERNMENT GOES TO TEE

Harmless enough when you read it but unfortunate when said aloud.

In the past week I’ve met two people, each of whom gave me both a fascinating insight into a past event and an example of  “Thinking Inside the Box,” or “I don’t know why I’m doing this but it’s the way it’s always been done around here.”

The first was an ex-girlfriend who used to work in the movies and found herself locating, selecting and handling the puppies for 101 Dalmatians. You can imagine the utter chaos, but by far the biggest challenge was that the little buggers grew faster than filming could keep up with them; so they were frequently changed in mid scene, and for continuity purposes their spots often owed more to blobs of black make-up than to Mother Nature.

And her example of box thinking was that, apparently, Dalmatians are sometimes born with no spots and are put down because they don't sell.  What a waste, not only of baby Dalmatians but of a great commercial opportunity! With a little PR fairy dust, spotless Dalmatians could be sold at a premium; they could be a talking point and a status symbol.  And  just think, with a little black make-up of your own you could design your own dog as often as you like.

The other person was the senior civil servant who came up with the idea of the now famous Downing Street e-petition. It was fascinating to hear first-hand what it was like to be on the receiving end of 7 million e-mails.  At one point the traffic was so intense that a data cable caught fire from the overload.  And the box thinking, I well remember from the time, was the way that the media - and even some PR professionals - regarded the initiative as a PR disaster for Tony Blair, just because he received a few million complaints.

What they failed to understand was that a) it takes a lot of heat out of the situation when angry audiences feel they have been given a chance to have their say and get things off their chests and, b), the exercise gave Downing Street 7 million e-mail addresses, which meant they could now put their side of things direct to the disgruntled public rather than having to communicate via the vagaries of the media.

Finally, the above theme has reminded me that a trade association representing funeral directors - and I promise you this is a true story - once approached the CBI for a course that would, as they put it, help their members to "think outside the box." My source tells me that they didn't see the funny side to their request.

I suppose you could say they were in dead earnest (sorry, that just slipped out).

I've just taught a crisis communications course in Singapore, where I had a sense of déjà vu on opening the Straits Times on the first morning and seeing a report of a political punch-up involving the former Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

For when I first visited Singapore 15 years ago Dr Mahathir was in the news then over a huge investment in a new factory in Malaysia by Otis Lifts.  With building about to start, the Otis President flew over for the ceremony and, with characteristic American sensitivity for matters foreign, said that they had chosen Malaysia because of its high immigrant Chinese population, who made very good workers.

Not surprisingly taking umbrage at this remark, Dr Mahathir said that if Otis wanted Chinese workers for their factory they could build it in China.  "They have a lot of Chinese there," he said, and promptly chucked Otis out of Malaysia.

I don't know how the dispute ended but it brought home how quickly and easily a small slip can tip the most promising of enterprises into full-blown crisis.

And if Otis is one of those companies that believe in detailed crisis plans covering every eventuality, with comprehensive standby statements at the ready, I wonder if it contained a section on the President opening his mouth? 

 

" Sing our destruction,

That we gain new life."

(Tagore)

These are scary times but it doesn't all have to be bad news.  Often it is the nasty shocks in life that dislodge us from our old ways and set us on new ventures with exciting new opportunities. Everything in nature goes through the cycle of growth, consolidation and destruction - even the earth itself does a kind of backflip every 13,000 years and loses the odd continent in the process.

This whiff of recession has stirred up painful memories for me of the last serious recession - in the early 70s -  when I was a stockbroker and the market was not only at an all-time low but totally stagnant for month after month after month.

Partly out of boredom, and partly to supplement my paltry income, I took to writing articles for the city press on erudite financial subjects.  This led in turn to writing feature interviews for an accountancy magazine, which led to my interviewing the new director-general of the Institute of Directors, who invited me on to the senior management team to help with his mammoth shake-up.

Within days, his PR consultant advised him that he needed to appoint an in-house PRO and I was summoned.  I had no idea what PR was -  I wanted to be a stockbroker; I wanted to be stinking rich; but I was denied my chosen way of life by the effects of a long and deep recession and thus found myself embarking, 33 years ago, on a new career that I absolutely love to this day.

I wonder what will happen this time.

It is a curious fact, apparently, that while a frog will have the sense to jump out very quickly if dropped into hot water, if you place the same creature in a bowl of cold water and heat it up slowly it will stay there and allow itself to be boiled to death.

I haven't tried this at home but I can believe it as something similar has happened with a particular bowl of water called CPD (Continuing Professional development).  It's one of those motherhood concepts that sounds like a good thing at the time but which doesn't stand close scrutiny or actual implementation.  Thus did the few professions - like medicine, accountancy and the law - that really did need their practitioners to stay abreast of a burgeoning body of knowledge impose schemes which soon showed up the nonsenses.

For example, even in such highly professional areas we now see practitioners going on spurious courses (is a training in public presentation skills really an essential part of a medical consultant’s development?), reading marginally useful magazines and snoozing peacefully through evening seminars simply to obtain a certificate of attendance which pays no heed to whether they have actually learned anything.  And because of the otherwise prohibitive costs, the schemes are mainly self policing.

Undeterred, the virus spread to more marginal professions like marketing and public relations where the year-on-year increase in the body of knowledge is insufficient to justify a CPD scheme in the first place and where a Darwinian marketplace soon weeds out those who fail to keep up to speed with best practice.  By now an evening of eating, drinking socialising and hearing a half-hour presentation on power dressing (this is an actual example) was counting as a major contribution to a PR practitioner’s professional development and it was left entirely to the individual to determine his or her own self-improvement plan, filling in an annual form for random checking by a 12-year-old who he or she has never met.

When I inquired how my own institute’s CPD scheme worked, an example given was that I might want in a given year, for example, to improve my knowledge of employee communications and therefore read a book on the subject.  I asked, irreverently perhaps, if it would count if I read the book I had written on the subject.

It would have been all right if CPD had been left as a voluntary activity to be pursued by those who like that sort of thing, but by now the HR people were firmly in control of the asylum and, increasingly CPD is becoming compulsory.  And forgive me for suggesting it, because they never raise the subject themselves and are no doubt driven entirely by pure motives unsullied by  fiscal considerations, but trade and professional bodies cannot be unaware of the massive gravy train that has serendipitously pulled into their station.  First you tell a few thousand members they have to do CPD or else; then you say that only certain types of courses qualify for the scheme; and then you, er, just happen to lay on these particular courses… it must be the closest their FDs have ever come to an orgasm.

I could go on, and will indeed do so in future blogs, but for now the exciting news is that I have stumbled across, would you believe it, an Institute of Continuing Professional Development, a body devoted to keeping the myth alive and brainwashing millions of blank-expressioned members and officials of quasi-professional bodies into believing that if you go on a few courses and fill in a piece of paper once a year it somehow makes you more professional.

Presumably, as the CPD Institute describes itself as a professional body, it has its own CPD scheme and I feel an almost morbid desire to watch a bunch of CPD practitioners doing a CPD scheme in CPD.  The snake is indeed eating its own tail.

They are based in Grosvenor Gardens, and now that I have found the nest I shall call Westminster Council’s Pest Control Department today without fail.

A further lesson to emerge from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): 

Whether it was intentional or not, those clever folk at CERN have provided an excellent example of managing expectations about an issue.  Listening to the radio shortly after zero hour yesterday, there was a great air of “Phew, they’ve switched it on and we're all still here, so it must be okay after all."

Now, if there ever were going to be any danger it wouldn't be at start-up; it would begin when they actually start colliding particles on October 21 - and even then it could take up to four years for a resulting mini black hole to gobble us up.

I've not seen the results of any efforts by CERN to make this point and - forgive my cynicism, but they've always been outstanding at public relations there - it must suit their book not to do so.  If our sensationalist media and physics-illiterate public all think the danger has now passed, CERN can happily get on with the LHC experiment in peace and leave us to panic about something else.

As a result of a) being involved in PR, b) being interested in physics and, c) having a long memory for the wrong things I'm sitting here looking at a SundayTimes screamer headline: BIG BANG MACHINE COULD DESTROY EARTH. I say "having a long memory "because it's a piece I cut out when the Americans did a Collider experiment back in July 1999 as an example of how the media will ignore a great science story until they can find an angle to put the wind up us.
Those who have attended my courses will know from my EP human motivator checklist that adding a frisson of fear is the number one successful device for getting attention. The Large Hadron Collider has been coming for years and is an awesome achievement and an absolutely fascinating experiment - and the man behind the main particle they're hunting for, Peter Higgs, is an unsung (and, unbelievably, un-knighted) Brit.  But the great British media yawned and looked the other way until someone gave them an ultra-remote whiff of the journalist's dream headline: WORLD ENDS TOMORROW - OFFICIAL.

Still on the Olympics,while I am as overjoyed as anyone at our success it is mildly depressing to see an increase in the volume of the "only gold will do" mantra. If the price to pay for more gold medals is ending up like a lot of American and Chinese zombies then I'll stick to enjoying life and being an also-ran thanks. 

I commented back in July on how PR shapes history, a point which has been vividly brought home to me during these Olympics. As a certifiable sports fanatic, I have been in seventh heaven for the last few days - but also a little saddened that whenever there is discussion in the media or from the commentators about who were the greatest Olympians we hear the usual list of names - Owens, Lewis, Spitz, Redgrave etc - but not a peep about the likes of Stephenson, Juantorena and Zatopek.
Theophilo Stephenson was probably as brilliant a heavyweight boxer as his gold-medal winning predecessor, Mohamed Ali, but as a Cuban under Castro he was not allowed to turn professional and, like his countryman Alberto Juantorena, who simply massacred the 400 and 800 m fields, sank without trace after setting the world on fire.
But it has saddened me most to hear the question "Who?"on the many occasions that I have reverently mentioned the name Emil Zatopek. His virtual disappearance from the Hall of Fame is a triumph for the Communist Czech regime against whom he bravely mutinied. Although he was too famous in his day for them to execute or imprison him, he was sent to work in the mines and starved of media oxygen until the world had forgotten him. His death in 2000 passed almost unnoticed.
Yet was there ever an athlete to match his achievements? In his day he broke 18 world records and held every single record from 5k to 30 K. He invented interval training and featured in three successive Olympics, the highlight being Helsinki in 1952. Diagnosed with a gland infection and advised by his doctor not to compete, he ran two heats of the 5000 m before taking gold in the 10,000 m in Olympic record time. He followed this up with gold in the 5000 m, also in Olympic record time. Then, having never run the distance in his life, he entered the marathon and won the gold medal in, you've guessed it, Olympic record time.
He had also, by the way, won gold and silver in the 10,000 m and 5000 m respectively at the previous Olympics.
How can even the experts not mention his name along with the other great Olympic athletes?

You tell me.

In October, I'm teaching a two-day crisis communications workshop for Marcus Evans Conferences in Singapore. I didn't take much persuading as it was Marcus Evans who rescued Ipswich Town Football Club last year so it will be a pleasure to do something for him. This week the very conscientious sales team gave me a conference call grilling on every aspect of the workshop, including a question that I found difficult to answer: "What are the differences in crisis management between Europe and the Far East?"  I used to focus on a number of differences when teaching the subject in different parts of the world (for example, one of my favourites exercise scenarios is based on real-life case of massive corruption and intimidation - but when I first presented it to delegates from a certain African nation they couldn't understand the problem!).  But all that has changed and the globalisation of communications and media, not to mention the proliferation of huge global PR companies, has, apart from a few minor nuances, turned the world into one universal PR mush and I found it very hard to answer the question.  Does anyone know any different?

I am pleased to include Nando's as a client for occasional advice and training - and my eight year-old daughter is equally pleased that I work for them as it is one of her favourite restaurants.

Being female, she wanted to know the details and asked me this weekend: 'What do you do foro Nando's - are you a waiter?'

 

 

Scratching around for material for an after-dinner talk I'm giving this week, I came across an old favourite - a list of books that really have appeared in print, including:

 

Handbook for the Limbless

Whippings and Lashings (published by the Girl Guide Association)

A do-it-yourself submachine gun

Who's Who in barbed wire

What to say when you talk to yourself

How to be happy though married

How to avoid large ships

Nuclear war: what's in it for you

 

I suspect I already know the answer to the last one!

 

History never happened. History is simply what someone said happened - usually the one who won or, of course, the PR minder. I was reminded of this recently when I heard on the radio that the tradition of eating bacon and eggs for breakfast does not go as far back into our heritage as one might have thought. The ‘tradition’ was, apparently, the creation of none other than the legendary Ed Bernays in the US in the 1920s, when he was tasked with promoting higher consumption of bacon. Bernays, who famously turned down Adolf Hitler as a client, was the first to coin the term ‘public relations.’ he was still working full-time as a PR consultant well into his 90s. I'm working on it; I'm working on it.

Know your audience

Earlier this year I spoke at an event for London members of the Parkinson’s Disease Society. There were about 70 people in the audience, most of them with the disease. The speaker before me, a disability specialist for Transport for London, gave a lengthy presentation on getting around London for people with disabilities. A full 20 minutes of this was devoted to how to use the tubes and buses in a wheelchair: a fascinating peroration, accompanied by innumerable PowerPoint pictures of buses, tubes and wheelchairs, that would undoubtedly have been of invaluable assistance to the wheelchair users in the audience – had there been any! There wasn’t a wheelchair in the room.

Latest hot tip: an update for your crisis resources checklist

My checklists are always adapting and growing, and I’m indebted to colleague and friend Francis Thomas for adding to the ‘Resources’ list some things to have in place for a big media invasion:

Maps – of your site / facility and surrounding area

Parking locations for satellite trucks & radio cars. They will want ‘line of sight’ of the action. You may need up to two football fields worth of parking space.

List of 24 hour supermarkets & chemists (many journalists will be in the field for days without warning. They will need to buy clothes, food and medicines)

Lists of local hotels

Recording equipment for podcast / sound statement (in an emergency use the recorder on your mobile phone).

These are things Francis found he needed last year when, as Comms Director for Suffolk County Council, he was landed on by several hundred journalists for prolonged periods and did such a superb job of masterminding and co-ordinating the communications of the county and its emergency services through (wait for it…) the Ipswich prostitute murders, Britain’s first H5N1 outbreak, Britain’s first Blue Tongue Disease outbreak, a coastal surge and a second incident of H5N1. He’s’ a nice guy but a wide berth is recommended!

As I'm always telling people to learn their crisis management skills by observation and osmosis, what did you take away from the coverage of Primark unwittingly selling clothes made by child labour? Here are some I picked up; if you spotted any others please let me know:

1) Retailers are now into a groove for standardised handling of this frequently recurring situation. Rather like rail crashes with their parrot fashion lineside responses, clothing retailers have learnt the routine – ‘Are we ready now, ha-one, ha-two, ha-three:

• ‘Fess up
• Apologise
• Blame the supplier
• Sack them
• Announce a thorough investigation
• Withdraw the offending goods
• Field a well-trained, media friendly spokesperson to grovel and reassure etc.

Now they've got stage two mastered perhaps they can move onto stage one, ie stopping it happening in the first place

2) Unfortunately for Primark, watching Panorama last night I groaned at their failure, and that of their parent company, Associated British Foods, to field a spokesperson. If anyone knows any of the bosses there please try to get it through their heads that written statements are a very poor, and sometimes counter-productive, substitute for a human being. The standard excuse for not appearing in this sort of programme is the knowledge that you are going to get a good thumping; but what management have got to learn is that even if you are shredded by a hostile interviewer, a couple of armchair experts and an assortment of hysterical campaigners, the audience will still be left with an image of a reasonable, caring human being and not a cold, uncaring-looking statement.

3) Damned if you do, damned if you don't: I reckon Primark handled the sacking of its suppliers as well as it could. It stressed in the statement that this was an extremely regrettable step, and normally they would rather work through the problem with the supplier, but in this case they had actually been lied to and had no choice. But no sooner had they, or rather their

non-human written statement, said this than Panorama slotted in clips of the armchair experts pontificating about how much added misery this would cause and how Primark should have worked through the problem with their suppliers and not sacked them. Yet I can guarantee that if they had indeed not sacked their suppliers but announced that they would keep them on while working through the problem, Panorama et al would have been up in arms about the fact that they were still using the same corrupt suppliers and should have sacked them. They were never going to win on that one.

4) After all that, when Panorama did vox pops with some profile Primark customers it was clear that they didn't give a stuff anyway and would continue to shop there wherever the clothes came from.