by Josh Bernoff

The quote is remarkably hard to track down (even Yahoo answers and WikiQuote don't have a definitive answer) but best I can tell it's Mark Twain who said:

Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Today's topic is how automated tools and email in the hands of the lazy can make you look like a fool. And as you well know, with today's connected world, the slightest foolishness (say, a snoring cable installer) can make you famous for being clueless.

I've deleted the names in most of these examples, not because the perpetrators deserve protection, but because there are so many people making these mistakes, it's not fair to single out individuals.

As an analyst I get a lot of PR-type email. 90% of it is harmless -- of no interest to me or, sometimes I think, anyone, so I just delete it. Someone is spending a lot of PR money telling me that their CEO is talking at a conference, or that they finally got a customer. I'm sorry you spend the time to tell me what is not news, but that's okay.

5% is actually interesting to me and I ask for a followup or mark it in some way. My 5% is not the same as your 5%, but email is free, so why not send it to all of us. Figuring out which stuff I should get would take a lot more time than just sending me anything. Hey, I'm sure your time is much more important than mine. In 12 years as an analyst I've gotten on a lot of mailing lists.

The other 5% is the stuff that is actively harmful to PR clients' reputations. There are the sloppy mistakes, like the press releases with the MS Word edit markups still in there (why did they cross out that sentence about having GM as a client? Hmm. Must be a secret). But by far the most interesting are the people who, in an attempt to say "Good morning Josh" and get me to look say something else instead.

For example, I received a missive about a music festival (who put me on that list?) that began this way:

From: [Name deleted to protect the guilty]
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 3:32 PM
To: Bernoff, Josh

Subject: Interview Inquiry- [Deleted] Music & Arts Festival

Hey 617 613 57nn

I wanted to let you know about the [Deleted] Apple Music & Arts Festival . . .

Let's do the math. Let's assume that putting my name in the body of the email makes me 5% more likely to read it. So, is it worth that 5% boost when (based on the releases that land in my inbox) there is also a 5% chance you'll make an error and say "Hey 617 617 57nn" and prove yourself to be too lazy to figure out how your own mass email program works? This stands out way more than my name. And you have just "removed all doubt." (The real one had my actual phone number in it.)

Then there was this:

From: [Name deleted]
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:00 PM
Subject: Dinner Invite

Just in case you were planning on attending the CCBN Cable Show in Beijing at the end of this month, I wanted to extend an invitation to you to join [deleted] at a Dinner Banquet on Saturday evening, March 31st, at the . . .

Warm regards, [name deleted]

This sounds nice enough, but notice there is no "To:" line. It was sent to a blind mailing list. I and an unspecified random collection of people must be pretty important to get this dinner invitation, but apparently not important enough to get mailed by name. But I know they think I'm important anyway, because of the "Warm Regards" at the end. By the way, this vendor makes a piece of communications equipment that I use in my house that needed to be rebooted yesterday, maybe they knew this was coming . . .

If you're still reading, good, because I saved the best one for last.

The Consumer Electronics Association sent me a mailing a few weeks ago (they mail all of us who attend their conferences with all manner of stuff, it seems like weekly). They were testing a marketing program for their international conference (CES) next year. Sure, 140,000 people go to CES every year so I don't know why they need to work so hard to market it, but they deserve credit for checking in with us. So I took a little Web survey. One of the choices we were being asked to evaluate in their survey was the graphic shown here.

Charitably, this graphic is a reminder that when you go to CES, the taxi lines are 45 minutes long. Is this really the image they want to reinforce? It's so bad that for the last two years I rented a bicycle.

Uncharitably, look at that graphic again. Doesn't it create an image in your mind that's more closely associated with crowds of World War II era Germans than consumer electronics? Nah, it can't be, after all, she's smiling . . .

Now the Consumer Electronics Association will tell you that this was just a test, and the kind of connotations I'm talking about would never have made it into their official marketing campaign. But they just emailed it to thousands and thousands of people in their survey. How much more public could it be than that?

Everything you do is public. Everything. Every support rep answering a phone call. Every email, mass or individual. Every customer contact. So check it first. Better to keep your mouth shut and remain a fool . . .

Tags: PR blunders, CEA, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff

Postscript to the story about The Lactivist, Jennifer Laycock who was asked to stop selling a T-shirt featuring the slogan "The Other White Milk" by a lawyer for the National Pork Board.

The National Pork Board recognized it made a mistake and reversed course instantly. You don't mess with motherhood! Because of its corporate structure the Pork Board can't donate to charities but its employees are now supporting Jennifer's charity, a human milk bank in Ohio. Which is why she was selling the shirts in the first place.

And Laycock, who "respects copyrights" according to her latest blog post, will no longer sell the infringing T-shirt. Her substitute is shown here.

Is there a lesson? Sure. First, everything you do is now public. Every customer support call. Every lawyer's letter. Every sleeping cable guy.

Second, you can make amends if you move quickly. Kudos to the Pork Board for doing so. Now that Laycock isn't in the crosshairs anymore, she's unlikely to try to make this any bigger.

Tags: PR, breastfeeding, lactivist, National Pork Board, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff
I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. I had to weigh in on this one simply because it's such a mismatch.

Jennifer Laycock, a mom and blogger in Ohio, is a "Lactivist" -- that is, a mother who wants to support and promote breastfeeding. I know a litte bit about this -- I've been helping out La Leche League, an international organization that promotes breastfeeding because it's better for babies.

To raise money, Jennifer made a promotional T-shirt for "The Other White Milk." I'd like to show you a-picture but I can't find one. Why? Because the National Pork Board sent her a cease and desist letter because they felt she was infringing their slogan, "The Other White Meat."

by Josh Bernoff

Seth Godin and Chris Anderson are among those now talking about what PR should be in the world of social media. Part of this debate stems from a description of something new called the "social media release" or SMR, as described by Brian Solis.

Now an SMR as described by Solis looks to me like an advance on the old-fashioned press release, but if you really want effective PR you need something more. And with due respect to Anderson, the editor of Wired, I don't think the answer is to train your executive to know the ins and outs of social media. (Although if your company wants help with that, call me!)

As a frequent target of PR pitches for the last 11 years -- and occasional helper in development of our clients' media plans -- I think I have a right to an opinion here. (News flash: blogger claims right to an opinion!) Anyway here is the prescription for success.

1. Have a good product (or service, or Web site, or whatever). (I know, PR can't influence this. But more coverage of a lame product just kills it faster.)

2. Figure out what it is about the product that actually improves the life of the customer. And what makes it different. (Gee, this is what marketers and PR people were doing all along. Still valuable.)

3. Approach influencers and journalists that actually care about and know about the topic. This includes bloggers. If it's about TV, talk to Lost Remote. If it's Web 2.0 talk to Michael Arrington. Now these are trivial examples, but if you're a half decent PR person you have to know who these people are in your client's space, the same way you know who the analysts, trade journalists, and business journalists are in that space.

4. Use these press/social media releases, phone calls, personal contacts, emails to get ahold of those folks, hook 'em, and then put them in touch with the executives at the client. Clearly this also involves coaching those executives.

If your metric is how many articles you get written and how many analyst briefings you got taken, this isn't the best way to do it. But that's a stupid metric anyway in this day, since it doesn't reflect the influence of the people doing the coverage on the product's image and sales.

If, on the other hand, your metric is how many influential (= read by your customers) people say interesting (= thought provoking, original) things about your client's product, then this ought to work fine. Becuase the more influential people are saying interesting things, the more reverberation you get in the blogosphere, in mainstream media, in discussion groups -- this is what gets things rolling. Then the PR person has done their job.

So, the long-suffering PR person still has to do much the same job, plus knowing about social media in the client's space, and helping the client with that. That's what I mean by using your brain. Many PR people do have them, you know.

To all the PR people reading this blog -- did I get it right?

Tags: PR, social computing, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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