I have been working in public relations for the past 20 years. Part of that time, I have done work in crisis communications, having been called on for crisis counsel with an online influencer/star, working with a consumer-packaged goods company on messaging and plans, and others that I will not even vaguely identify.

There's a lot of smoke right now in the technology world, and there are more fires that will soon need to be put out, on the rampant sexual harassment for which women are now coming forward. Today's New York Times article was both shocking and yet not surprising - especially as I read friends' and acquaintances' names in the article. And the NYT is not the type of publication that goes to print based on one or two accusations. They had a half dozen women willing to risk their own reputations, and two dozen more with whom they confirmed stories behind the scenes. That's why this is both smoke and fire, and we will see many more articles.

Based on what I have noticed in the past, many of these companies have junior PR people who have never had to deal with a crisis. They don't have the background or training, and typical in today's PR world, they just do what their bosses tell them to do and neither question nor push back.

Today's article was preceded and followed by Medium posts, tweets and corporate statements by identified people and companies. But all were off on their timing, and all were off in a way that makes clear to readers that they were trying to contain the story or change the dialogue.

Putting out a Medium post hours before the New York Times runs its story was an attempt to change the story from "I have been caught" to "I have chosen to 'confess'"; but it fails if the post has no explicit mention of the woman/women or incident quoted in the Times. Publishing a company blog post to put out a statement about changes claiming the CEO had stepped aside months ago, on the day of the article, is a terrible strategy that calls every word before or since into question. And for some of the accused, their silence speaks volumes.

Where were the apologies? Where were the non-apologies -- the usual "I'm sorry if you were offended"? Where were the apologies to the families, the wives and the children to be putting them through this as well (is that another issue in how tech treats women, that the wives are afterthoughts?) Overall, the public reactions by people and companies called out in the Times give the impression that, as claimed by the article, this is a well-known practice in tech and the article is not a revelation but a temporary annoyance. We just need to let it blow over.

Of all the apologies, it is interesting that it was the lead of Binary Capital who did apologize to his family but at the same time, there was something insincere about the apology - especially coming after the first statement that was more attack and denial than ownership.

By contrast, look at what crisis handlers do when a politician gets caught philandering. The apology tour begins with an apology to the wife and family, usually seen standing at the politician's side, for putting them through the airing of dirty laundry. To leave off the people closest to you shows a lack of empathy, or an entitled sense that they signed up to be put through this.

This might be a watershed event for technology and the VC community. As the second story to break the past few weeks, the growing list of statements from the VC firms involved show more attachment to the status quo and concern for what the other VCs think than a desire to see change or do the right thing for the people affected. "We should have done more" and "we regret the oversight" are woulda, coulda throwaway lines.

Based on good crisis communications, an apology - and there needs to be more ownership and apologies - is a necessary start. But if it is just more lip-service and messaging, and is not tied to a major break from past behavior, it means nothing and nothing changes.

Technology companies love April Fools’ Day (too much). The marketing, public relations and other departments seem to invest good time, money and (some) creativity to their efforts to fool customers and the public into thinking some outrageous thing is real. Or to get the laughs.

Rarely are the April Fools’ Day jokes funny, even with all the effort. So why do it all? Well, maybe for the lulz but also it seems to get media coverage and brand awareness.

Think about that: it is for media coverage and brand awareness.

We see companies ranging from startups to established Fortune 100 companies all attempting to pull off an April Fools’ joke. I even saw a tech reporter’s Facebook update noting that he was pitched multiple April Fool’s Day jokes on embargo. On embargo.

Why are PR people pitching these stories? Why are those same PR people not pushing back and saying no? Don’t PR people have much more important stories to pitch for their companies/clients than such unoriginal and not creative crap? Really, at the end of the day, are we not better than this?

But let us ask a possibly even more important question: in the era of fake news, is it smart to be pitching fake news to business and technology reporters?

We are in the middle of a time where technology journalism keeps seeming to take a hit. It's a time when VCs are attacking journalists and stories on Twitter and making claims of hidden agendas or hit pieces, merely because good journalists are actually investigating and exposing bad companies and bad players.

On the flip side, as it was put to me recently, all technology news now seems fake. Tech media are writing shallow technology stories and not digging into deeper issues.Or, maybe worse, the push to publish and be first is causing them to outright miss the real stories and the bigger picture.

On that note, the technology and business press would better serve the readers by skipping the April Fools’ stunts this year, and not give corporations the press they desire. Yes, I understand that the April Fools’ stories get clicks and readers, the wonderful click bait … but in this new era of fake news, shouldn't we all strive to be better?

As the PR person, just say "no" when the marketing people come in with their “great” idea for stunts and jokes. Because, if we are being honest, the ideas are not that creative or clever and we do more harm than good pitching them to reporters.

And no, this is not my April Fools' Stunt - this is too serious a time to joke.

Photo copyright: grgroup / 123RF Stock Photo

July 2, 2003.

That’s when I started this blog. I have been writing - off and on - for almost 14 years now. When I started, there were a handful of public relations bloggers and social media was not yet a term. Yes, some of us were doing online PR (remember that quaint term), and some were already doing digital work and coding.

We were a pretty close-knit group, with not much drama or jealousy, and mostly egos were kept in check. What we did was try to learn from each other and help each other out. I still talk to many of them and think of them as friends.

During that first year, the focus of the blog changed. I started with the issues of starting my own firm but grew really bored with that, and focused on the issues I was seeing - and still see - in the industry. And that industry has expanded to be social media marketing, marketing communications, communications and more.

Or is that the lines have become so blurred in all the practices out there, that they are all bleeding into each other.

Also, during the past almost 14 years, I have seen many in that original group stop writing and blogging, wholesale delete their old blogs, or just move on. The deletion makes no sense to me, it is like being afraid of having your past views and thoughts held against you; I pretty much stand by what I have written, even though some of it is embarrassing as shit, because as a professional and a person, I have grown and evolved. Or I believe I have.

This space has gone through a Blogger template, to a custom-one designed by Josh Hallett, back to a basic spartan Blogger template. But as I started blogging again this year because the same issues seem to come up again and again, I have gone in with a new redesign.

Here is the new look. I hope you like it, but it is also a rebirth or refocus for me to consciously make an effort to blog at least twice a month; originally it was weekly but hey, I am nothing if not realistic.

There are a lot of things I see out there that make me scratch my head and wonder why we are seeing and writing about the same crap, the same issues, for the past 10-plus years. Friends joke that I should just republish old posts, because I wrote what is being said now by others … but five-plus years ago.

It is an oddity that our industries do not seem to learn, that the large agencies are stagnant and afraid, and clients are looking elsewhere. And that there is an overall lack of understanding of just what is public relations.

So I am back. And I am writing. And I am hopefully getting people to discuss things, or at least having a few friends read what I write. Enjoy the new journey.

When I first started this blog, I would do what seemed to be the de rigeur thing to do for a blog: write about how others were doing it wrong.

I had a full series that ended after a few posts - the Clueless Train, based on The Cluetrain Manifesto. If you search for the posts, you will be amused by the Technorati tags. The irony here is I never fully bought into the manifesto as it seemed to crap on public relations and dismiss what public relations did for a company, but I digress.

Anyway, I started doing what I believed (and still believe) social media bloggers and writers should all do: I did research and called up companies. You know, fact check. And grow up.

And when I called out others for spreading wrong information, fake information, dare I say alternative facts and fake news - I was told that “I’m not a reporter, Jeremy, I’m a blogger.”

Or as I call it, the laziness of wanting to be a pundit without doing actual work or thinking.

In other words, I grew up and matured and remembered what goes on behind the scenes. And having watched people go on the offensive against Kryptonite (for doing the right thing, just not the extended audiences) or against FedEx (it still boggles my mind that I was the only journalist or “journalist” to call up FedEx for a comment) or Red Lobster (ugh, shut up) or Wendy’s (she’s too snarky!) or any other brand that is doing a good job and jealousy rears her ugly green head… .

The problem is that social media punditry seems to be built on Monday morning quarterbacking. And seeming to willfully ignore that it is about the message (or messages) and not the medium. Sorry, pundits, social media is not an end-all, be-all but it is more about the messaging being on point and right for the audiences. That means any platform (gasp, television or radio or others).

If you have worked on the agency-side, you know the planning and strategies that go into a program, you know that you take the bullet if the program goes badly - we go down for the client, and you know that there are things you just cannot talk about.

If you have worked in-house, you know the processes for approvals, the voices that you strive to recreate in social to give your brand a personality and try to reflect the corporation as a whole.

And you know if things go badly, you fix on the fly and prepare for the crisis or crises that are coming from consumers.

The fake crises, though, are the ones that are brought up by others in our industry. You know, that whole professional courtesy thing seems to go out the door when it is easier to go on the offensive against someone else’s creative. And yes, we see it in the advertising trade publications all the time - and pointing out really bad campaigns is necessary, especially if they fall into the sexism, misogyny, racism or the sort.

And I get it; I did it too. It is easy to be snarky, but then I grew up. Meaning I am still snarky (just look at this post) but I know what goes into the campaigns and managing social. I know what it takes to find voices - a different tone for different platforms - and how hard it is to manage and find that right balance. Do I think and know I can come up with some better campaigns? Yes, but I also know I am not creatively bankrupt and immature enough to think across all generations. Or is that called both young at heart and old?

I rather have the attacks on colleagues in the industry than the viral ones I see against small, local businesses. Oh, you pundits who do this, you’re so better than them it is amazing that your egos are able to fit into anywhere you go. The reality is social is not easy, most local and small businesses do not have the budgets to hire professionals - or if they do hire someone, they’re a “professional” that has not explained the true costs and issues with social that likely learned from some online course that taught them nothing.

Instead of making the industry a better place, though, it is easier to attack others. Yay, go social.

The next time you see this happen - and we all see it happen - channel your Eddie Murphy from Raw.


Ask what they have done lately, ask what campaigns or work they have done. Or are they just too busy doing the speakers' circuit to have any idea what it is like in the trenches and on the front lines?

Back in January, Jeremiah Owyang posted about the need for a Presidential tweet crisis contingency plans. This spurred a good number of (threaded) comments on my Facebook post, and I noted that I had pitched a SWAT team at a PR firm, but nothing ever happened with the idea (good idea 10 years ago, even better one now - and with better tools). And a few of the comments noted that most PR people nowadays do not have crisis communications experience or skills, especially the startups with young “senior” practitioners.

Yes, I know, I need to blog more often and faster since others are having these conversations now … when I was having them in early January.

And, in an informal survey of friends, those that are qualified to have plans noted that they do not have a social media crisis plan written out, nor the talent or bandwidth on the social team to be able to write one that would actually work.

That makes sense to me - not a good thing, but it makes sense. The skills and soft touch for crisis are a dying skill, and on social things get blown up so fast and quickly, it IS hard to separate and not take it personally. Having operated an early Twitter account for a corporation, it is hard not to take it personally when you’re called a liar, get hate on the brand and worse. (The better fun is leaving and watching the contributions get Orwelled - but that’s the PR life!).

But back to Twitter. I have been bearish on Twitter for the past few years, looking at it as a necessary evil for brands and public relations. Necessary as it is nothing more than a customer service tool for brands - especially consumer - as consumers move to Twitter to bitch and complain and expect immediate response. Necessary for public relations because the latest generation of media loves to be on Twitter in a ego-gratification world where they believe their tweets are important and should be read (yes, there is a whole other rant there, and part of why I would like to see Twitter just die and go away).

Now, it is even more important or a necessary evil for brands because you never know when it will be your turn in the spotlight. And as has been noted by others out there, everything is political now, and while politics is personal, everything is personal too. And having that social crisis plan in place should save some headaches, heartburn and gray hairs.

Brands are now personal, are personalities and people have a connection to them. And personalities are brands, with people following some like they matter. So brands - especially tech companies that have been beating their chests on changing the world for better - are being called out to take a stance in politics, and that leads to another crisis or two or three. And personal brands are being called into question and on the mat for not necessarily taking a position.

Everyone has a right to express themselves in their own way on social, and just like it is not their place to tell me what I should or should not be posting, it is not my place to tell them what to post or not to post. Social has ruined most discourse between people - and that was before this election - so I will keep my friends all over the spectrum and listen to what they have to say. Until they go on ad hominem attacks.

Social has devolved into a tiring experience for people with all sides being draining, and leading to many (including me) taking Facebook off mobile. I have even been off Twitter for the most part because it has become such a cesspool of politics and attacks, that I am just following and focusing on things that are related to work (yay B2B enterprise technology) and not posting anything on my Twitter accounts.

But back to the original point: in a time where almost anything and everything is devolving into a crisis - including Presidential tweets - and other issues on news out there, it is best to have a fully updated and polished crisis plan that includes traditional and social strategies. Those range from the traditional press release, prepared messaging for all the platforms that are written in those platforms patois. Every platform has its own voice, and audience and you want to write and speak in that voice.

That is the key here: crisis work is about planning and preparation. In the days of yore with the traditional news cycle, you had time to plan and respond. In a digital world, that time to plan and message is gone - you need to be immediate and that is where planning is key and having the experience sets apart crisis from CRISIS. Plus, the timeline is accelerated on everything, including the share of mind for people. The public gets upset immediately, but also moves on faster to new things.

Plus, crisis usually starts in places that a company least expects it. With the focus on social selling and employee engagement, every single employee is now a representative of the company. We have seen crises started at the lowest level employees at fast food restaurants that blow up through social. And we will see more and more crises start with employees sharing their personal political views - personal is political, political is personal - and the corporations and businesses needing to clean up the messes. What we have seen so far are corporations firing those employees, but is that really the best way to solve the issues?

Even with the best crisis planning and execution, the key thing is to make sure that the people in charge actually listen and understand the counsel, and are supportive of what needs to be done.

Sometimes, though, nothing is the best strategy in social as social is a short-attention span theater, and people over-react. Plus, well, lesson number one should always be “don’t engage trolls.”

Since the beginning of this blog 13+ years ago, I have hammered on one thing consistently: as professionals in public relations and communications, the collective group has to go above and beyond the conventional blogging or social media norms to act above reproach and set standards.

This call to establish better standards never really caught on, as the desire to be the first to publish was – and still is – more important than the whole truth. I argued with others in this industry that as professionals in public relations, we have an obligation to allow our fellow industry colleagues to get facts on the record before making claims or debating issues in public forums.

The fact that I wrote about this 11 years ago and things still have not changed is just sad. Back then, FedEx Furniture was all the rage and FedEx was vilified in social media dialogue. I called up, and interviewed the communications person at FedEx and got the full story from both FedEx and the furniture builder. Plus, I was the only person – blogger or reporter – who called FedEx. Everyone else, including morning television shows, just went with what was being said online.

It was not hard to do; after one quick email to FedEx, I got a response and an interview. And I think – no, I know – we have a responsibility as contributors to this industry to always strive to get the full story.

Now, there isn’t one week that goes by without a declaration of a social media fail. Whether it’s the “digerati” making statements on social or blogs, or reporters from marketing and advertising news sites, everyone is quick to proclaim that Brand X totally fucked up.

This weekend was no exception. People got their knives out for Red Lobster (full disclosure: I did email them with a question but have not heard back).

The quick story: Beyoncé dropped her new song, Formation, on Saturday with a line about going to Red Lobster (in a not family-friendly line). Red Lobster didn’t immediately respond on social, and then when they did respond 8 hours later, it still wasn’t good enough for the crowds. The company was in a no-win situation, because no matter what they did or did not do, the “wisdom” of the crowd would say they did wrong.
 
I mean, we must know better than Red Lobster’s own corporate marketing or social media team because we’re so much smarter sitting in our coffee shops and not actually in the trenches. And that is the issue with these posts and declarations: it is 100 percent conjecture. Armchair QB’ing is fun, it is way too easy, and it is usually wrong.

Think about your work at the start-up, consultancy, agency or wherever you are. How would you feel or react if someone came out to attack your work, usually commenting little more than “FAIL,” and then say how they could do it so much better than you? It’s easy to INTERNET RAGE, and give your two cents without full knowledge or a backstory.
 
And there’s the issue. Amongst all the hoopla around Red Lobster screwing up, I have yet to read anywhere a statement or comment from Red Lobster about the situation. All these people writing articles and social posts have no inside knowledge of how Red Lobster handled this internally. One post, which I will not link to for traffic, made conjectures about the agency (who may or may not have been involved) and the corporation.

The reality of it is that Red Lobster is a corporation that is owned by a private equity group. In corporations, there are processes in place for these types of things – and social media, along with the mass public that uses it, tends to lead to short-term issues and “crises”. When you work with large brands – either internally or through an agency – things take time. Issues are looked at from all sides. All the pro’s and the con’s are weighed before decisions are made – which is never fast enough for the demands of the “digerati”. When you work for large corporations or clients, things are different. When you are just a someone blogging or commenting on Twitter or Facebook, you are really just showing that you aren’t in the game.

Now, I do not want to ignore the elephant in the room that people have been dancing around. And it is a big elephant, as this is a great example of the lack of diversity in public relations, marketing and social media.

The Beyoncé song touches on many issues in the POC community, and #BlackTwitter is a huge and strong movement on Twitter (one that Twitter still does not seem to embrace, and one I said they should in AdWeek). Was the response delay a cultural issue? Maybe. Is there a need for more diversity in social media, marketing, public relations and the like? Absolutely. It’s a need that exists now, and it’s a need that existed since even before I started in the industry.

Do I think a lot of the complaints about Red Lobster on both sides were not fully addressed as it was broken down by color lines? Very much so – and it was an issue that most people seemed to dance around.

I have no answers nor solutions for that. I want to look at this whole thing from one lens: people condemning Red Lobster have no idea what goes on inside the corporate office, or in the thought processes of a corporate team. It is easy to scream FAIL, but without being in the Red Lobster offices, you have no idea what went on. All the rest is pure conjecture.

Next time you get ready to attack a corporation or brand for its processes, realize you just do not know what goes into them. If you want to attack for a lack of cultural awareness, that is a different issue that the whole industry needs to address.

On Thursday, right before the start of the Fourth of July weekend, Reddit let go of its communications person, Victoria Taylor. Beyond running communications - or as part of running communications - Taylor appeared to run point on the iAmA (Ask Me Anything) subreddit.

In such a tight-knit community as Reddit is, there's no surprise it turned into a shitshow with various subreddits going dark in support of Taylor. And not surprisingly, it also turned into blaming Interim CEO Ellen Pao for Taylor being let go, although there's no proof it was Pao or someone else who made the call.

Gawker has a good run-down with time-stamps of the whole debacle, including a statement from Pao sent by a PR executive, Heather Wilson. Who happens to be an executive vice president at Abernathy McGregor, a crisis communications specialty firm. And the firm has been working for Pao since her sexual harassment lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins.

So let's put that all together: traditional crisis communications firm is working with the interim CEO for a large, vocal, often controversial / free-speech debating community and lets go a well-liked communications employee hoping that the Fourth of July long weekend will hide the news.

Because that IS a traditional public relations trick. Got bad news or bad earnings? Release on a Friday! It's such a well-known trick that even The Atlantic wrote up a story on how ... it doesn't work anymore. That old PR trick just doesn't do it for clients anymore.


Should this be surprising? No, not at all.

The news media moved into a 24-hour cycle years ago with the Internet and social media. With social media and the Internet, communities popped up and cover everything and anything, and with the ease of publishing there are tons of niche news sites and news can be broken anywhere.

The PR industry is a bit slow to follow, but with its current love affair for all social things, it realized that the cycle isn't what it was, but nonstop. Being in-house PR counsel means always being on, always have the phone available. Doing crisis communications means always having that phone on, and email ready for situations that pop-up. This isn't new but for some reason it seems like it is.

With Reddit, there was no reason for its executives to think that the news of a well-liked executive and community member who handled one of its most popular and mainstream subreddits could be hidden. And, it's beyond obvious that neither Reddit nor the PR crisis firm had no plan in place for when it all did blow up. Come on, that's Crisis Communications 101, and for Reddit to ignore it is quite amazing - plus, for Reddit not to have its finger on the pulse of its own community is quite mind-boggling too.

Are there exceptions to the rule that you can't hide the news anymore? Of course, there are. In tech? Release bad news the same day Apple makes a product announcement. I've seen that done a few times recently, and while the news doesn't disappear it is overshadowed. But news isn't going away, and bad stuff bubbles up.

For the ironically challenged, I purposely published on Fourth of July (Happy Fourth all!!). And yes, I chose a dog giving that look because it seemed fitting.

Photo by Henry Faber.

As we all get settled into watching the series finale of Mad Men, let's take a look back at the half-season: the good guys of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (SCDP) have been bought by the evil machine of McCann Erickson.

And almost immediately, I started to see marketing and communications professionals on Twitter and Facebook adamantly scream their need to be contrarian (read as slow and followers, those late to everything and never on top of things) and claim that they'll never join Ello.

Which is great. We need more followers in the public relations, social media and overall marcom industries. We don't have enough original thinkers, and it's better to have followers that will not bring counsel, strategy, original thought to clients but rehash old and tired ideas or just knee-jerk follow directions from clients even if they know they're the wrong directions.

If you can't tell, that's sarcasm. To proudly proclaim that you're not going to join a new communications/social network platform to be contrarian shows an inability to jump into new ideas, or try out new things. As marketing communications professionals, you want to be one of the first on a platform to see if it will do anything (most of the time, no) or if it's something that you need to get clients onto, or at least start to monitor.

Are these the same people that said Twitter was stupid (probably) or that Snapchat was just for sexting (um, projecting much?) or that Facebook is dying (always, it's dying - it's almost as bad as the annual PR is dead meme) or that PR should never pay bloggers (how'd that work out for the firms?). Are these the people that are going to miss out and be late to the next platform, or aren't really grokking that privacy is the next hot thing, eg, Snapchat, Secret, Whisper .... (yes, they are.)

There is a middle-ground that seems to be missing in marcom, and a healthy skepticism. Too often, the industry is all or nothing (remember the hype that oversold SecondLife internally at agencies, and the firms/people too weak to push back on the ideas?) and not enough middle ground. So this anti-Ello stream is just pig-headed and wrong without actually being on the platform and playing around.

Now, there are tons of issues about Ello that make it seem like a really fast to burn-out star: nothing mobile (yet), less a Facebook killer and more like the bastard child of Instagram plus Tumblr, the adamant claim of no advertising (remind anyone else of Tumblr?)

On that last point, Greg Brooks has a great point (posted on Facebook):

Positioned as the anti-Facebook, their manifesto reads as a thing born in the fever-swamp mind of an untalented freshman Lit major. So very, very many Big Ideas(tm)(r)(c).

I'd like to say back to Ello:

I don't mind my social network being funded by advertisers. I understand their motives, they understand my browsing habits. It works. Commerce isn't evil -- it's the most effective force ever devised for pulling people out of poverty. 

You claim audacity, beauty, simplicity and transparency. But what's transparent about allowing fake identities? What's beautiful in asking users to pour personal information and relationships into a site with no long-term plan other than "trust us"? 

Simple, I'll give you -- the whole thing does seem simple. 

Ello aspires to be a place to "connect, create and celebrate life." But if that's all it is, then the party won't last long. People -- and companies -- that only focus on the lofty often end up sleeping in bus shelters when things go south. 

I may or may not be a product. But I'm certainly not gullible.

Yes, Ello has been greatly hyped with a great launch (almost seems, well, calculated to take advantage of anti-FB sentiment, like it was done by professionals...) but that doesn't mean it is or isn't worth the time to at least check it out, just don't immediately buy the hype (another issue in PR/SM).

It's a new shiny toy, and to ignore it in the PR/SM space shows a lack of understanding basic tenets in the industry and for your clients. Ignoring it is almost as bad as the "I'm dropping Facebook for Ello!" crowd. It's not an all-or-nothing thing, it's about testing out new platforms and having informed opinions.