Wanted: New PR firm needed to cap the well on #BP Chairman's Mouth and Shut-down Email

I'm sorry, but for a global company that produces close to $20 billion a year in PROFIT, its almost unbelievable to read/hear about the ongoing and obvious errors that keep spewing from the company's PR machine.

Oh, that's right; they have Dick Cheney's former PR wizard on their payroll now. Makes perfect sense to..who?

Who allows a guy that, even though he's the Chairman of the Company, to speak to the US media, despite not having a perfect grasp on the English language and related nuances.?

Yesterday, BP's Swedish-born Chairman appeared before the press as he exited his meeting with President Obama, and said (paraphrase), "Of course we have compassion for the little people in the Gulf area, and we're doing everything we can to help those little people.."

What about the big people?? What? He believes that the only people impacted are a handful of local residents and businesses?
Oh..maybe he thought that only children and dwarfs have been impacted..?
OK, so it was a language nuance, and no doubt that he was trying to articulate that BP is sensitive to the devastation that's flooded the area..

Rule #1 re: PR/Crisis Management. No matter how fluid a crisis (pun intended), make sure that whoever speaks to the media is someone that speaks the local language fluently.

Rule #2. Investor Relations. In connection with implicating emails attributed to BP's investor relations senior exec; NEVER...(can you spell n-e-v-e-r) use email to communicate messages that are guaranteed to be misconstrued, taken out of context, or incorporate opinions such as "Yeah, 15 people got killed when the refinery blew up, but the good news is that it happened on a Friday in front of a long weekend. By the time Tuesday rolls around, it'll become a non-issue with the media; we've got nothing to worry about. 

Here's an idea: Do not allow PR/Investor Relations executives with access to email, unless they have a certification in best practices and use of email within a corporate environment. Period.

While we're on the topic, I'm inclined to suggest that President Obama issue an executive order that turns off the Internet for 6 hours per day. That'll slow down the distribution of un-confirmed, unsubstantiated, or completely false news reports, and in turn, reduce the world's anxiety levels.

Oh..I guess Pfizer wouldn't allow that type of thing to happen.

To Sarah Palin and your fans:

While inadvertently tuning in to Bill O'Reilly (I was looking for the World Cup Channel), I heard you say " We need to bring in experts from Denmark to help with the BP crisis; after all, they have all of that expertise plugging dikes in dams!"

Sarah, I'm often apolitical, and just want to vote for the person that I think will do the best job; but in all due respect, with all of the money that you're minting these days, do yourself and your party a favor: hire an elementary school tutor before you go back on the road, and certainly do it before you speak to the media again..

Wanted: New CMO for #Chevy; I'm Sorry!

Chevrolet, not Chevy?? By now, most marketers have commented among themselves re: yesterday's leaked internal memo from GM's marketing guru Jim Campbell, the one that instructs every GM employee to stop calling Chevy a Chevy, and to only refer to that brand as Chevrolet.

Adding insult to injury; the memo suggests that going forward, any GM employee that uses one of the most memorable names in world history is required to contribute a quarter to a 'cuss can'

What a surprise the "new marketing strategy" was ridiculed by close to 50 million people within five minutes after the story hit the news wires and twitter pages.  But, we really gotta love how GM's Marketing czar shifted gears, and threw the car into reverse by saying "It was just a draft memo, and I was just kidding!"

Since I doubt that anyone at GM is going to engage me to counsel them on PR Crisis Management, for everyone else that's reading this:
Rule #1. NEVER email a document that you don't want to appear on the front page of the New York Times.
Rule #2. Read Rule #1 ten times. For the people at GM, make it twenty times.
Rule #3. "I was only kidding when I said that.." is a line that BP has already secured a patent for; anyone that uses it going forward is subject to an infringement suit.

I've crossed paths with Jim before; he's a good guy. I can only guess that somebody above him is sleeping with someone at the ad agency that recommended this new strategy.


TO: ATT CEO Randall Stephenson
When a customer emails you and appears to be frustrated with your pricing structure, its really not a good idea to respond with a letter that threatens him/her with a cease and desist order and civil action in the event said customer sends any more correspondences.

But, we love how quickly ATT did switch lines (pun intended). An official ATT statement issued shortly after the news media got hold of the story: "Because of this incident, we are reviewing our entire process to ensure a situation like this does not happen again."

Insiders are rumored to have said the new process will include automatically turning off the service of any customer that writes or calls to complain about service. That'll show 'em!  (Thank G-d I'm not an ATT customer!)

#BP and Bad #PR-#Parody Burns The Brand

We can only smirk when reading Noam Cohen's piece in today's NY Times; the one in which the Times belatedly belabored the story of a Twitter-er(?) lambasting BP with parody tweets since May 18. [Jane Wells over at CNBC spotlighted "BPGlobalPR" on May 25th, and even if Janey wasn't the very first journalist to trip over that parody tweeter, she was certainly two weeks ahead of the NY Times!

Why are we smirking? Simply because on May 17th, the day before "Leroy Stick" began sticking his virtual pen into the eyes of BP executives with his parody press releases, this very blog posted a missive directed to BP's crisis managers, and any other "crisis management guru" advising what they needed to do, before the likes of Leroy could gain traction.

What? You don't believe that we were in front of the curve? Just click here to read our May 17th posting

BTW- We apologize for the crazy "hash marks" in the title posting; the grey beards here aren't busy smoking the stuff, but simply following the current "rules" for the best way to get heard in the crowded cyberspace.

In deference to Noam, click here for his article.

And, since we're a big fan of parody (lol to the fake bernie blog), we necessarily agree with Leroy Stick when he says "Satire on its own can't get bad actors to act better, but it can attract attention and direct people to those actors and their actions.."

Click here to tune in to Leroy's BPGlobalPR twitter feed.

Bravo to Bravo!

I don't watch the Bravo Channel often, or not intentionally. I know that many people like being distracted from the reality of the world by watching Reality TV, but that doesn't make much sense to me. To me, "Real Housewives" is scary, and shows like that one probably illustrate why the divorce rate keeps climbing. Me? If I want to be distracted from reality, I'll tune in to TMC Classics.

But, as profiled in today's NYT, the reality is that Bravo has their finger on the pulse on what sells, when most entertainment content companies are still guessing and hoping that whatever latest idea the "head of creative content" buys into, will actually take home a trophy at the Up Fronts.

And, Bravo to Bravo for proving that entertainment companies that use risk analysis tools, actually research what their consumers want before manufacturing it, and remaining flexible enough to make changes to their product as their audience taste changes is a recipe that every media company should emulate.

Here are the take-away's from today's article..click on the title link for the full article.

The network, which finds and tests stars in much the same way that consumer products companies develop and market shampoos and mascaras, 

Viewers’ opinions, carefully observed and culled on the Web and pinpointed through more traditional market research, tend to dictate which Bravo stars graduate from ensemble reality shows to their own programs. The thinking is that they’ve already been vetted by the Bravo audience and the research team, and that they’ve already built brand awareness — so Bravo is, in marketing terms, just extending its product line.

But Bravo, aiming to minimize creative risks and maximize profits, is now taking these business practices to their logical extremes. Shows on the network aren’t introduced on a hunch about a strong creative concept. Instead, Bravo begins by studying its audience’s lifestyle and preferences — what is the market need? — and then creates shows and stars that reflect them.

Over the last year, Bravo has also begun relying heavily on social media to fine-tune story lines in its programs, so that each episode is even more efficiently tailored to its audience’s taste. The network asks its stars to blog, encourages viewers to comment on its Web site and post to Twitter during episodes, deploys text-message campaigns and Facebook pages for shows, and even studies search terms that viewers use, collected by research firms like Hitwise, to parse what viewers are most interested in.

Bravo just made consumer preferences the entire centerpiece of its programming mojo as it traded art for commerce.

“Bravo targets a niche audience rather than the mass audience of the old broadcast days,” notes Lynn Spigel, a professor at the School of Communication at Northwestern University. “Bravo is an example of the high degrees of standardization and consolidation cable networks need in order to compete.”

 

 
 

Potty Mouth PR: Yahoo!!#%*&

Those that have visited this blog more than 2x, and/or have spent more than 15 minutes interrogating our archives might have discovered that we're trend-spotters. Once or twice, we've even been credited with starting tidal waves.

We could only smirk at today's headlines profiling "Potty-Mouth" Carol Bartz, and her latest bombing with the F-word.

Yes, smirking at the below video will offend certain sensibilities. But, even at the consternation of my #1 fan (who is not an advocate of expletives in advertising, or anywhere else), we say Yahoo! to You, Carol!!

Your latest guffaw, captured by the news media and now widely-available across the Planet Earth, demonstrates the observations that we made right here barely one week ago; that Potty is becoming the norm across all forms of messaging, and proves the point we made: its a great shock and awe strategy.

Since the news of your most recent F-bomb attack has now spread faster than swine flu, you've become a top-ranked search term on Google (oh, the poetic irony!) and your stock traded up 2% today. Now, you need to turn on the PR machine, cync it up with your ad sales division and get the f**king share price back to $17!

Sh*t That We've Said..Prove Prescient

Five days ago this blog profiled the increasing trend in shock and awe advertising by using expletives within product marketing messages. A great test of this 'new genre' will take place this week, during the CBS upfront presentation, during which they'll unveil the upcoming "Sh*t My Dad Says" sitcom.

With Mad-Cow icon William Shatner starring in this new series, the theme of the show is in deference to the viral mania of Twitter; the story line is based on the real tweets of a self-described "shlebby kid" in which he spent less than a year tweeting his potty-mouth Dad's wittiest risque comments before the kid's twits vaulted to Top10 ranking on Twitter..with an audience of 1.3 million followers.

Presuming CBS maintains the same title for the show as the twitter page (which is also the title to the coffee table book that's now a NYT bestseller),  CBS is betting on the growing audience appetite for potty-mouth content.

Can't wait to see which advertisers pony up in the upfronts to advertise during this show--and whether any of them will be running their own potty-centric promotions.

Screwed By Crude; Slick Talking Down a Slippery Slope; BP's Pipe Dream?; Federal Agency Facing PR Fiasco; Moguls Muck Up Marketing Communications..Lessons Not to Live By..

For those that have stumbled on to this posting consequent to seeking a creative and crafty corporate communicator, the views expressed below do not (necessarily) represent the views of this blog's publisher. The following submitted piece is merely illustrative of our appreciation for witty, and thought-provoking prose.

Screwed By Crude; Slick Talking Down a Slippery Slope; BP's Pipe Dream?; Federal Agency Facing PR Fiasco; Moguls Muck Up Marketing Communications..Lessons Not to Live By..

wow...The headline (however run-on), tells a whale of a tale..and should be a case study for any studious (or film studio) marketing communications consigliere.


Sure, last month's Deepwater Horizon oil rig collapse off the coast of Louisiana, and subsequent environmental tsunami has (deservedly) remained a front page story since the tragedy first unfolded. Millions of gallons of oil leaking havoc on Mother Nature, billions of dollars in environmental clean-up costs and businesses lost, and most incalculable; the tragic and unnecessary loss of 11 lives; oil rig workers whose families will never be able to replace their lost loved ones.

And each chapter in the continuing saga reads no differently than more than a handful of previously-published, billion-dollar, Corporate Greed-Meets-Foggy-Bottom best sellers. The ones where truth is always stranger than fiction.


Or, as a good friend of mine likes to say, "Yo, LD! You can't make this sh*t up!"


In this case, we've even got a chorus-full of whistle blowers, perhaps saner, but just as prescient as Madoff-Buster Harry Markopolos. Each of whom were apparently trumpeting the "alarm" well in advance of the portending Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster; an event that proved the sky really is falling.

For those that think that investigative journalism has no shoes (as in The King without clothes), and the profession has become a calling that's notorious for disconnects, and has been vanquished to the realm of impotency, we invite you to bookmark the CBS 60 Minutes broadcast from May 16; the one that will be remembered as the catalyst to a multi-billion dollar, multi-head-axing episode in the long-running history of Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar Winning Musical Comedy, HBO Series:  "Corporate Greed-Meets-Foggy Bottom."

More importantly, to the current and up-and-coming Marcom and PR crisis managing spinmeisters: heed the cry of yet another case study in which the defending team continuously punts instead of passing, bunts into balks, and has so far duffed every shot before Tiger Woods had to step in and suggest shoving all of the (golf) balls down BP's slippery chute.

Yes, the stories about BP whistle blowers have been leaking out for weeks; faster than the gush of as much as 25,000 gallons barrels of black gold that's been leaking every day not far from our coast line.

And all of opposing teams, including BP, Halliburton and rig operator Transocean have been doing a comical job of punching and jabbing each other along the way. Certainly no blame taking, just flame throwing accusations at others. That's usually a recipe for disaster for PR Crisis managers.

But, to disprove those that insist Big Business has become adept at sweeping the tar under the carpet (Toyota not included); crisis managers managing the Deepwater debacle are finding themselves in deep doo-doo. Marcom Maestros Take Heed! Don't do as they're doing; do as we say.

Within less than 500 minutes after 60 Minutes revealed the lead whistle-blower telling his story to the media for the first time, the first head has fallen: Chris Oynes, the Federal Government's senior executive in charge of overseeing the safety of offshore oil rigs coincidentally "retired" on Monday.

Hellooo??..Quitting your job now?! Amidst a national catastrophe and a firestorm of allegations? Sorry to tell you, but quitting your job isn't going to protect you from losing your government pension if you're ultimately convicted of a crime related to your role in this disaster.

Didn't you hear? Politico is breaking a story that documents the long-cherished history of your agency, and your office, of covering up safety oversights, knowingly failing to collect fees owed by drillers, and otherwise cozying up to oil industry lobbyists like panhandlers on New York's 10th Avenue.


There's a two chapter lesson to be learned from what's going on. Its in the latest edition of Marcomm 201 and Elementary Crisis Management. Here are the bullets:

1. To BP: Of course you're going to deny, deny (and deny some more) any culpability for what some fear is Exxon Valdez times ten. Two critical mistakes: 
i. Asserting your innocence in the face of expert testimony (and corroborating emails) from multiple individuals that seem to prove that you knowingly skirted all safety guidelines in pursuit of a faster buck
ii. Placing all of the blame on your subcontractors.

Positive positing is what sells, or at least saves the day. Stay away from the dart-throwing; your message needs to be controlled for sure, but you need to focus exclusively on all of the proactive steps you are taking. Put boots on the ground with bucks in their hands and win over the locals. You scored $5 billion in profits last quarter, so you can afford to spread some cash around in the name of Good Will.

2. To MMS. The tide is already coming in, and its carrying a flotilla of feisty ombudsmen that have already portrayed your agency for having a culture of ineptitude that makes the SEC look down-right capable in the course of regulating their industry. May G-d have mercy on your souls if it turns out that you let Chris Oynes retire with a get-out-of-jail free card in hand.


What you should have done is immediately suspend Oynes without pay, and without his ability to collect his government pension, pending the outcome of an independent investigation into the agency's alleged oversights of its oversight obligations. How can you justify such a draconian tact, you might ask?

Duh..how about the fact that despite the Deepwater disaster, in the days and weeks following, MMS continued to blatantly print out off-shore drilling approvals for the same area!  BTW: why didn't MMS collect more than $1billion of fees owed to Uncle Sam by the drillers that haven't been regulated?

3. To Sarah Palin: That new song of yours, with you teasingly moaning "Drill, baby, Drill!" is in bad taste, and bad for your brand image.

#Marcom#OrthoCenter# For#Crisis Management#PR #SEO Tips#Courtesy of #BP#Celebrity Apprentice and#Tradworx

For those of you that skipped the Sunday NYT, and went straight to Scott Turow's new book, you missed the latest digital news primer for today's world: one where journalists' (and marketing pundit) words are worth little (unless they're audited based on number of web visits to the author's article).

You don't need to watch the 60 Minutes story about BP, Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, Lebron James, flash trade at Tradworx, or follow the tragic story of Emily Keyes; but each share one (and perhaps other things in common) for Marcom Savants 

When inserting the top 10 most searched Google-searched names/phrases in an online news story headline (above are the top 10 as of 3 pm EST today, May 17), you're likely to get exponentially more visits to your article, blog posting, or even a time-sensitive company press release. So they say.

Thanks to the fact that I also inserted Twit-friendly hash marks in the title to this posting (and pushed away the hash brownies), the wizards of Web 3.0 proclaim that I'm likely to experience 3x-4x uptick in visitor traffic.
Twit-friendly? Should I have said "Twitter-friendly"? Or, "Tweeter Friendly?"?    

BTW-Orthocenter is a mathematical phrase referencing the center of a triangle. Its now being used as a bonafide buzz word that apparently replaces words that previously described points of convergence.

This product is F- -king Fantastic!

Notwithstanding an April 2009 US Supreme Court ruling, which capped the utterances of "fleeting expletives" on public broadcast airwaves (ironic when considering the same Court recently proclaimed "no cap" on corporate spending for political campaigns--a decision that will undoubtedly cause a tsunami of bullsh**t to penetrate the minds of our masses), we were tickled when reading Stuart Elliott's column in today's NYT; the one that profiled an increasing trend by advertisers to incorporate risque (and perhaps 'rude') verbs, nouns and adjectives in the course of promoting consumer products. 

Shock and Awe. Hat's off!

Although my #1 fan accuses me of having potty mouth (to whom I apologize!), its true that I don't have a problem with risque, easy-to-recall ads; the kind that provoke sensibility.

What? We should be concerned about the impact on little kids, tweens and teens that come across ads that tease with quasi-expletives? Puhlease.

Prime-time Network TV has become no more risque than Playboy Magazine. You say dirty words in ads are"bad,"  but "dirty" images that show everything short of the very short hairs on Beverly Hills 90210 is OK? Don't be silly; The Genie is out of the Bottle.

I can see the banking industry ad now:

"Our Two Biggest Competitors:
1. Sh**ty Bank.
2. Skank of America.
Ta-Da! Its Time To Bank at TD..!"

Or the insurance industry's upcoming ad:  
" AIG = A--Hole; Call AFLAC Instead.."

Or, this new ad from the fast food industry:
"Our Fries Are F**King HOT!"

Financial Industry Finally Gets It: Web Video

Yes, we've been shouting for months (actually years) about the need [and pent up demand] for financial industry firms to embrace web-based video applications.After all, the most compelling content is about sight and sound; the more timely, the better.

Lo and behold, as profiled in today's NY Times, Thomson Reuters, the financial news/content publisher is launching a web-based video platform (described as a YouTube for traders) that combines video clips produced internally by the news service (about 15% of the content), along with clips sourced from a myriad of other news outlets (e.g. CNBC, Forbes, etc.) as well as 'partners' that include Wall Street analysts and trading market commentators from boutique firms.

The service, dubbed Reuters Insider, will only be accessible by those that subscribe to Reuters' desktop service, and presumably, this 'channel' will eventually provide advertisers with yet another way to deliver their brand message to a highly-sought after audience of uber rich eyeballs.

Re-affirming the the wisdom that we've been wagering on for longer than we can remember, Thomson Reuters Markets Division capo says "People are increasingly visual, and they expect to access information in that way. They want to be able to look at a chief executive and see the expression on the analyst's face."

Haven't we been saying that for months? OK..so we're prescient.

One of the frequent visitors to this very blog, a senior partner of the boutique broker Miller Tabak, was also mentioned in the NYT article for their role in serving as one of the content providers to Reuters' new service,  "We're dropping significant time and resources into video programming for Reuters Insider because we have to come up delivering information to a new generation of analyst."

See me; Hear Me. Buy Me.