Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

One quick note before I get into the actual post: Michael Phelps (aka The Man From Atlantis) is one ridiculous athlete. I mean he just toyed with those guys in the 200 Free last night. I think his competitors should be allowed to strap on Evinrude 250s just to make things fair.

Okay…

I’ve been watching a great deal more of the XXIXth Olympiad than I was expecting to, and it’s been great. The Olympics is the one time outside of the Super Bowl and the Oscars (and possibly the “American Idol” finale) when advertisers can count on millions of eyeballs glued to the TV, and their work reflects this fact.

I’ve been especially impressed by the Coca-Cola spot featuring Lebron James and Yao Ming and the Oreo commercial featuring the two little girls on the trains. Both spots are eye-catching, reflect the spirit of The Games and do a good job of pitching the product.

Mass media advertising is on life support, no doubt, but big brand image stuff still makes sense, provided you’ve got enough people tuned in to notice.

A rather alarming story in this week’s Advertising Age regarding the disappearing line between advertising and editorial—also known as “church” and “state.”

According to a recent survey conducted by Manning Selvage & Lee and PR Week magazine, nearly one in five chief marketing officers report that their organizations had purchased an ad in return for a news story about their companies.

It gets worse.

According to the article, “[m]ore than half (53 percent) say that marketers are not following ethical guidelines in the online world.” (Forgive them for using “marketers” and “ethical guidelines” in the same sentence, but some of us are holding out hope.)

Maybe it’s because I’m approaching my 40th birthday (August 16; iTunes Gift Certificates would be great), but this whole development really depresses me.

It used to be that the fastest way to get a reporter to hang up on your pitch call was to say, “you know, my client is an advertiser in your publication…” Now, it’s not uncommon for a meeting with a journalist to include a representative from her publication’s advertising department.

And one business publication here in Kansas City has one very well-known editorial rule: buy an ad, get an article. It’s not even subtle; they often run the ads on the SAME PAGE as the editorial.

I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that as a PR man, I get paid by the hour to do often unsavory things. I can handle being a prosty, but at least I know that I’ve always been honest. When the news is for sale and everyone knows it, the system breaks down with horrible consequences.

Q:  If you can’t trust the media and you can’t trust the marketers, whom can you trust?

A:  Each other.

As I’ve previously reported, consumers are most likely to believe the opinions of total strangers when formulating opinions or making a purchase decision. This is a good thing, but it requires all of us to engage our various publics in an open forum and without armor. In theory, the free flow of information on the Internet requires us all to heighten our truthiness quotient and improve customer service.

Every statement from your CEO and every customer experience are now subject to the scrutiny of anyone with half a brain and Internet access…and the average person is four times as likely to believe some random crank’s blog post than

she is to believe your multi-million-dollar ad campaign or the carefully crafted statements from your PR department.

That’s actually a good thing (I hope). Perhaps we’ll all be forced to tell the truth and actually respond to the wants and needs of our customers. Maybe we’ll see some actual news reporting. Or….not.

I’m stockpiling fresh water and canned goods just in case.

Dear Mr. Cohen:

Thank you for your insightful commentary on CBS This Morning this morning.

Having a member of the legal profession slam the public relations industry for its (lack of) truthfulness is right up there with the pot calling the kettle black. Are you freaking serious?

Did you—a lawyer—really just call me a liar in front of millions of viewers?

And to think you’re a fellow Boston University Terrier. WTF, man?

Seems to me we walked the same stretch of Commonwealth Avenue in the late 80s but I’ll be damned if I ever met you. Or you me. But you call me a liar?

You don’t even know me. You don’t know what I stand for or how I’ve conducted my business for the past 20 years. You don’t know my clients or what we’ve been through together. You don’t know my standards or the standards I’ve established for my company and my people.

And you call me a liar?

Calling all PR professionals liars is akin to any ethnic slur you can pile on any race of people. I don’t suppose anybody’s ever hurled a blanket statement at a person named Cohen, have they?

But I guess the rules of decency, fairness and ethics don’t really apply to you as you say in this 2002 interview:

“I have a little more leeway as an analyst. I try not to say, ‘This is outrageous,’ because people who offer more heat than light tend to tick people off. I’m held to standards of accuracy and fairness, of course. But provided my legal training, role and experience, fairness is defined a little more broadly than a correspondent’s position would be.”

How broadly would you define fairness in this instance, Mr. Cohen? Are you suggesting that lawyers have a broader standard fo fairness than the average journalist? And how do your standards of fairness for journalists and lawyers stack up to those governing PR pros?

I’m curious. 

Give me a call sometime and we’ll talk about it.

Yours sincerely,

BP 

Anyone who’s ever worked in the KC marketing communications industry should take a moment to remember the late Herb Valentine, who passed away last week.  You can read his obit here and a related article from my girlfriend, Jennifer Mann, here.

Along with childhood friend and partner Earle Radford, the late Mr. Valentine founded Kansas City’s first great ad agency, Valentine-Radford, in 1946. For years, “V-R” was Kansas City’s flagship agency, and many of us trace our careers one way or another back to Messrs. Radford and Valentine.

I never met Mr. Valetine, but I did get my start in advertising in his offices back in junior high, when I went to V-R to interview a man named Dave Holt (who was running the Pizza Hut business at the time) as part of a “career day” assignment.

Dave Holt later gave me my first job in advertising when he hired me as a summer intern at Hickerson-Powell-Phelps in 1987. I returned to what became Hickerson-Phelps (Powell left in the late 80s) in 1994 as an AE in their PR division, Henderson/HP.

Reading about Mr. Valentine in this morning’s paper, I am truly sorry that I never had the opportunity to meet him. He was a special person and I’d like to send a special shout out to his family, most notably his son John, who’s been kind enough to share his wisdom with me from time to time, and grandson West.

Rest in peace. 

The Journal has an interesting piece today, courtesy of those nice folks at the Sloan School at M.I.T.

Although their research focuses on free trade coffee and organic cotton T-shirts, one could easily extrapolate the data for just about any business, product or service. The bottom line: consumers care about how you conduct business and “doing the right thing” matters.

And doing the wrong thing will hurt you worse than doing the right thing will benefit you. While consumers express a willingness to pay a premium for ethically produced products, they assign a much steeper discount to unethical companies’ products. 

One other tidbit of note: consumers have come to expect some level of commitment to ethical behavior, be it in the form of environmental responsibility or fair labor practices.

Incorporating “good behavior” into your everyday operations and actively promoting your good deeds is no longer optional.

Your brand promise now extends to every action your company takes. And rest assured that your failure to make or keep your promises has a more profound impact on your business than ever before.