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Writing in The Guardian, Anthony Horowitz gives his take on how the PR disaster impacted at ground level:
“I knew we were in trouble when the man in the shiny suit appeared with a trolley of bottled water and granola bars. Our British Airways flight from Vancouver had already been delayed twice - trouble refuelling and trouble finding somewhere to dock - but even as we walked into the crowded but strangely inactive baggage hall in the new Terminal 5, nobody was telling us that we had just flown into the sort of fiasco that the British seem to do so particularly well. Queues had already formed at the customer assistance desks but the smiling, slightly wild-eyed staff had almost nothing to offer. Even after six hours of chaos, nobody had been briefed. Nobody knew anything. The desks, probably knocked together by a carpenter some time during the night, were bare. I’m not even sure they had telephones.
“Why can’t you give out some proper information?” I asked a BA manager. “We can’t,” he wailed. “We don’t have any - and anyway, they haven’t given us a Tannoy.” Read more

Melissa Cavanaugh writes me from the mediabistro forums where she’s just posted this piece. Melissa tells of how a North Carolina agency manages to portray its client (TharpeRobbins) as ludicrously hypocritical, by announcing their commitment to environmentally sustainable operations with a really wasteful mailing, replete with eco-unfriendly plastics, styrofoam and excess packaging! Melissa says:
“I just got a FedEx, marked urgent, from a company in North Carolina called McNeill
Communications Group. So I opened (and discarded) one medium FedEx box, transported
from NC to New York. I removed (and discarded) some packing paper that was securing
a cardboard box. I opened (and discarded) the cardboard box to find a plastic box
wrapped in styrofoam. I threw out the styrofoam and opened the plastic box to find
more paper packaging, a plastic bag of styrofoam peanuts, a plastic swizzle stick,
and a three-page press release. The title of the release? “TharpeRobbins Celebrates Earth Day by Leading the Way with Environmental Initiatives.” The gimmick is that the styrofoam peanuts dissolve in water. My jaw just dropped. Read more

Basically, they think their counterparts are a bunch of clowns…

Research of 100 cross-sector practitioners, by e-consultancy and webitpr, found 55% of respondents – either agency, inhouse and freelance PRs – thought their fellow practicioners were “incapable” of performing comprehensive online PR campaigns.
Some other key stats:
99% thought online coverage was important to their organisation or clients.
99% said the web was either important or very important for PR purposes.
90% said online coverage had become more important in the last 12 months.

Pic above courtesy of bigfoto.com

This is Lee Hopkins’ high horse, not mine (but he has a very good point). Lee asks: “How come Australian PR companies still play ‘hide head in sand” when it comes to Web2.0 and social media.
Alarmingly, Lee reckons that his experience of Aussie business and PR-types (in regards to Web 2.0) is that in the majority they are clueless. Not sure they are Lee; it may simply be that most can’t figure out how to prove its value proposition within a corporate or client environment. UNDERSTANDING THE REALITIES OF CORP BUDGET ALLOCATION IS ESSENTIAL FOR ALL SOCIAL MEDIA ADVOCATES!! In this, soc med PRs are where PR was before it embraked on its many evaluation crusades.
At the recent adtech seminar, Lee and his mates asked: Do you have a digital PR Strategy?
Yes - 32%
No - 68%
Seven out of ten in the room had no social media strategy.

As worryingly, Lee relays that there was very little presence from pr agencies at the Conference, and just the one panel session on Digital PR moderated by himself.

QUICK!! Copies of Dan Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence to Port Stephen’s Council.

Ross Monaghan spotted this example of inventive stakeholder relations where a local council has deliberately stacked two empty shipping containers (at a cost of $10,000-plus) on a clifftop to spoil water views for householders suspected of illegally cutting down trees. the Council’s Group Manager, facilities and services, Mike Trigar gave a few tasty soundbites:
“But it’s like if you can’t find the perpetrator in school, so everybody is held back for detention.”
“We’ve told people that chopping down trees is selfish and criminal, but that hasn’t worked, so we’ve had to go to the next level.”

CAN YOU BUY OR SLASHDOT YOUR WAY OUT OF AN ONLINE CRISIS??

Daljit Bhurji - a social media PR similar to yours truly - brings news of a growing PR disaster for tech innovators Phorm and its PR associates who include Citigate Dewe Rogerson, Freuds, Burson and crisis manager rottweiler John Stonborough. Phorm is an ad-serving company which has signed deals with leading UK Internet Service Providers including BT, Virgin and Talk Talk, which allows it to track the browsing behaviour of customers and display better targeted ads - with the ISPs collecting a share of the ad revenues.
From what I can see from Daljit’s and other’s posts, Phorm may be acting “illegally” in intercepting browsing histories; however, while the jury is out on this point, online jurors are venting and condemning Phorm’s PR reps (notably CDR) for:
Trying to engage and counter negative posts (is that really such a PR sin??)
Being inauthentic and dishonest (inept PR’s trying to pass themselves off as Phorm’s ‘tech team’)
Forum firefighting (PR’s monitoring comments then trying to douse criticism with ‘one-liners’)
Misrepresenting the client and your PR paymasters (see above)
Creating unfavourable impressions (see all of above)

One way traffic at newcommreview

I’m getting the Aussie ‘irrits’ with newcommreview; they carry a review of ‘Public Relations Disasters’ where Eliz Albrycht says she enjoyed it yet points out where she thinks the book comes up short (mainly lack of disastee explanation and deep crisis comms insights). Thing is, newcommreview has had a site redesign and in the process the critique has stayed up, but my response comments have gone down. I asked Elizabeth to help redress this over a month back - she passed it onto Jen McClure - who says she asked her ‘web guy’ to sort it and reminded him again - but still nothing. C’mon guys; right of reply is fundamental to blogging ain’t it?<br />
For the record: I answered Eliz’s points - mainly by saying PR disaster people were (understandably) reluctant to share with me as they didn’t trust my ‘angle’ (ie to promote better PR practice). I reiterated that the book’s aim was to entertainingly show how PR disasters can alarmingly pop up from almost any area of comms or business, and suggest some commonsense practical avoidance or reparation techniques.
Fair play to Elizabeth - while she honestly admitted she wasn’t in any way a crisis PR practitioner, I was able to assure her that Jonathan Bernstein - a former Ruder Finn crisis frontline guru -declared the book to be worth it for the ‘lessons learnt’ sections alone.

Pic above courtesy of bigfoto.com

Pic courtesy bigfoto.com

No telecoms provider would be happy with research suggesting their site has serious user issues, but that’s what Telstra’s Trujillo and team are facing up to, after Netherlands-based monitoring firm WatchMouse measured 51 ASX listed websites between 11 February and 13 March this year.
Combining the errors, load time and availability measurements, WatchMouse gave each website a Site Performance Index (SPI). Those with a score of 1000 or less are classed as well performing, 1001 to 1999 is regarded as acceptable and a score of 2000 means a site has serious user issues. Telstra was the worst performer with an SPI of 8018, AGL Energy was the second worst performer at 5129, Perth-based Westfarmers, owners of the Coles Group, had a score of 4207, while Westpac came in third at 3639. While there’s been no response on Telstra’s sometimes-lauded blog: http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/Home/Default.aspx (not talking??)
a WatchMouse spokesperson commented: Read more

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