Steve Jobs, Apple and Alfred E. Neuman: “What, Me Worry?”

By Chris Scott

If you’ve never had a front-row seat at a corporate communications debacle, just Google “apple jobs illness” and pull up a chair for a lesson on how not to work the media when it comes to a serious health issue with a company CEO.

The results page generates everything from “Do shareholders have a right to know?” to “It’s a nutrition problem” to “SEC review under consideration.” Is this the image that Apple, or Jobs, wants to dominate headlines versus continued trumpeting of the success of the new iPhone 3G S?

There’s no doubt that Steve Jobs has persevered in various health issues: a cancerous tumor in his pancreas diagnosed in 2004; a speech at Apple’s 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference that raised serious questions about his unusually gaunt frame; and this year’s “hormone imbalance” that prompted a six-month leave of absence ending this month. Finally, there was the disclosure of a liver transplant in April that took several days to confirm.

There’s also no doubt that Jobs deserves a certain amount of privacy when it comes to dealing with these serious medical issues. But the wunderkind who founded Apple in 1976 — and spearheaded its stunning comeback upon his return to the top spot two decades later — appears to be following the standard script for Apple when it comes to disclosure. And the Securities and Exchange Commission has definite regulations on disclosing situations that could affect the company’s financial health.

Apple’s legendary secrecy about products and new developments, of course, make sense. (The company has no problem quickly firing employees who blab about new products in development and even successfully shut down the Web site www.thinksecret.com over its leaks of what Apple considered proprietary information.) But investors, the media and federal regulators are correctly questioning why Apple has repeatedly failed to provide accurate, timely information on the status of the person who is often hailed as being personally responsible for driving the computer maker to its current successful state.

SEC rules prompted Coca-Cola to report in 1997 that its then-CEO, Robert Goizueta, was suffering from lung cancer, the disease that killed him that October. And following the sudden death of McDonald’s CEO Jim Cantalupo of a heart attack in 2004, successor CEO Charlie Bell decided to resign less than a year later before he died of colon cancer. Tragically, Bell was forced to have surgery a little more than two weeks after taking over as CEO, a fact that was prominently, but appropriately disclosed by McDonald’s at the time.

These multinational companies were able to meet federal requirements while protecting the privacy of the individuals involved. The evasive nature of Apple’s corporate responses to inquiries into its CEO’s health could be attributed to a corporate culture that is used to keeping secrets. It also might be part of the orders from the top that Jobs’ medical condition is his and his alone to be concerned about.

But Jobs decided to come back to work and that complicates the already troubled public relations effort. (Some reports put him on the campus of One Infinite Loop in Cupertino last week, before his officially scheduled return on Monday, June 29.) If he had decided to retire, his medical condition and prognosis would have no public component unless he decided to divulge their status himself. Unfortunately, his corporate communications team continues to work between a rock and a hard place with a sick CEO who sees no reason to adhere to SEC rules and Wall Street investors who rightfully contend that disclosure from Apple is appropriate and long overdue.

Alfred E. Neuman, clearly, has nothing on the keepers of Apple’s current public gates.

Bad customer service: Don’t get mad. Get even.

Sally Saville Hodge

Many years ago, I shocked my then-doctor’s officious nurse when I told her, in setting up my next appointment, that I’d be sending a bill for my time if I was kept waiting for over an hour again. And…by the way…my hourly fee was $200.

After she finished sputtering, she thought about it for a minute. “Okay, let’s get you in first thing in the morning, then, before he has a chance to get backed up.”

I never had to wait again.

Good customer service is, arguably, perhaps one of the most important contributors to a strong brand. It’s integral to the total customer experience that really defines a business’, professional’s or individual’s brand. But this fact must not be getting through. Why else do so many botch it?

We, as consumers, have many, many options on ways to spend the time allotted to us. An hour wasted waiting for the doctor to fit you in, on hold while questioning a bill, or trying to figure out where that order placed three weeks ago has disappeared to is lost forever.

For those that don’t care about their reputation, perhaps hitting them in the pocketbook is action they will appreciate.

It worked for Howard Schaffer. This Colonie, NY publicist found himself without phone service for a full month after moving offices last fall. He used stop-gap measures (borrowing a phone line from his landlord and having employees use their cells) while putting up with promises and excuses. It took an article by the consumer advocacy columnist of the local Times-Union to eventually shame his carrier, One Communications, into fixing it.

Nine apologies, however, were really not sufficient for lost time and, one can assume, lost business. Smartly, he kept careful track of the time and money he expended in trying to resolve the problem. He sent them an itemized bill for $5,481. Incredibly, One Communications paid.

You ask me, they got off cheap. And the rest of us learned how tenacity and moxie (with some help from the media) can pay off.

Any PR is not, in fact, good PR

Sally Saville Hodge

There’s an all-too-common school of thought that “any PR is good PR,” and Illinois’ soon-to-be-deposed Governor Rod Blagojevich is clearly a leading advocate.

His whirlwind New York press tour this week only succeeded at underscoring the fallacies of such thinking. If anything, his frenzied “I am not a crook” and “they’re denying me my rights” proclamations made him more of a caricature than he was prior to his arrest in December on charges of trying to sell the President’s former Senate seat.

But it’s too easy to riff on Blagojevich. My beef is with the flack he hired to trot him out to the press. Did he (or she) warn the Guv of the dangers of this course from the perspective of an image that has already been battered to hell?

What’s been wrought is not good PR. Good PR doesn’t further decimate an already shredded reputation. Good PR practitioners counsel their clients in the interests of creating positive buzz. They ask what the client’s end objective is with the media outreach. To change minds? To shape or re-shape a brand? They coach their clients – especially vigorously if television is a primary target– on their key messages, and how to segue back to them. They learn their clients’ tendencies and try to head them off at the pass to avoid situations like the use of bad analogies (cowboys and revered religious leaders, for example) that may provide fodder for derision.

Okay, Blago was probably not inclined to listen to wiser (saner?) counsel on these matters. When his estimable attorney Ed Genson threw in the towel in disgust, it gave a pretty clear signal that the Guv was intent on bulldozing his own path – rightly or wrongly.

But still. Many perceive PR folks as generally ranking right up there with used car salesman when it comes to ethics and honesty. In this instance, someone just took the money and ran, perpetuating many myths in the process.

Municipal PR, Chicago Style

By Chris Scott

There are 34,264 metered parking spots in Chicago and by 2013, the per hour rate for meters that charge a quarter in 2008 will rise to $2, a 700 percent increase.

Chicago residents know this because Mayor Richard M. Daley proposed that the city follow earlier fundraising strategies and lease control of the city’s parking meters — and the money they collect — to a private company for the next 75 years.

You would think that such a serious issue would be managed through the experienced PR machine in place at City Hall and its departments, with residents and news organizations aware of the bidding process and the proposals. Chicago citizens would then be able to attend Town Hall meetings where residents and business owners could voice their opinions on how such a deal might affect their quality of life in the Second City.

But you would be wrong.

In the space of less than one week of the Mayor’s proposal, drivers who will be forced to pay the higher rates — as much as $6.50 per hour in certain areas like downtown — were told that a City Council committee had passed the proposal and that it would be voted on by the full City Council within two days. And faster that one could say “Get your 26 quarters together!” the $1.15-billion deal was sealed. One bidder, one contract.

It’s not that the infrastructure to get the word out to the press and the public in a timely manner didn’t exist. The city of Chicago spends an estimated $4.7 million each year to pay for 50 public information officers in a variety of city government offices and agencies. Additionally, weeks before the parking meter lease agreement, the Daley administration announced contracts with 10 outside PR firms for services that could net each firm as much as $5 million per year. Those contracts were announced at about the same time that city officials revealed an anticipated $469-million budget gap for fiscal 2009 along with layoffs of 929 city employees and the elimination of 1,346 vacant positions in city government. (A reduction in city services and higher fees for other things like parking tickets also will be implemented to save money in these troubled economic times, the mayor said.)

What’s wrong with this picture? Absolutely nothing from at least one perspective. Anyone who engages a PR firm is essentially free to utilize or ignore the vendor’s capabilities or advice as they see fit. If the city believes — as Mayor Daley expressed when questioned about the new contracts — that these relationships with the outside PR firms are necessary, so be it. But don’t the agencies with relationships with City Hall have an obligation to advise the client that it might be a good idea to remove even a whiff of impropriety in the ways “The City That Works” generates an anticipated $1.15 billion in upfront revenue through solid, proven PR strategies (community forums, press conferences, more transparency)?

As it turns out, the city suspended the contracts with the PR firms until the budget crisis “is over.” It’s apparently the same old story: Chicago citizens don’t hear about City Hall decisions in advance. What do you expect from an administration that destroyed a municipal airport’s runways in the dead of night in 2003 with no public relations effort or public comment before the bulldozers rolled? At least City Hall is consistent in how it delivers its message, regardless of the number of agencies it hires to consult on such matters. And that counts for something to taxpayers, doesn’t it?

Don’t try this at home. Seriously.

Chris Scott

We get the idea that businesses are trying to trim their budgets in these economically challenging times (and are there any other?). And we’ve all heard that old saw that economic downturns are when businesses can least afford to reduce their spending for marketing and PR efforts. (You risk being forgotten when client dollars begin to flow again, etc.)

But a larger issue comes into play a lot more frequently (at least on an anecdotal level, so far): The “Do-it-Yourself” phenomenon. You probably know the drill – or at least have seen it. The head of Company X taps the human resources chief or the head of sales to develop a quick-response effort that can keep Company X’s name before prospective clients. (Or, in some cases, someone at the company’s cousin “knows someone” who “makes stuff” and can “do something” on the cheap. It’s a poor-man’s approach to PR and marketing and comes with consequences.)

Whether it’s a Web site, a promotional piece, an overpriced ad or an “e-mail blast” (so early 2000s!), what you’re likely to get is “something” that stands far apart from your previous efforts like a wallflower at the orgy, to borrow a phrase from Nora Ephron. It probably fails to support your brand, doesn’t look like anything that came before it, carries messaging that falls short of advancing your position and carries that patina of “this wasn’t done by a professional.” Inappropriate paper choices, bad design, clunky navigation, poor graphics all combine to threaten all that positive messaging Company X had built up in one fell swoop.

And if there are failings on the marketing side, let’s face it. On the PR side, most businesses don’t know how to get in touch with the media – much less speak with reporters. They don’t know how to provide that expert source quote or convince a relevant publication to write a feature story about how Company X is faring during tough times. And who has the time when there are so many other fires to put out on an operational level?

So resist the temptation. You might save a few dollars on the front end by not hiring an agency or laying off your in-house pros to help guide you through the process (if not manage nearly all of the actual PR and marketing work involved). But your reputation may end up paying the price if you try to tackle these specialized functions yourself or on the cheap. Even the most experienced do-it-yourselfer knows when it’s time to throw in the towel and call the electrician, plumber (or PR and marketing agency).

Why risk the company’s image and progress by taking on jobs that do not fall under your areas of expertise? You’d be amazed at the number of companies that wind up hurting their reputations with the exact people who could help them survive (or event thrive) as the economy shakeouts continue.

Managing the viral spread of bad customer experiences

Sally Saville Hodge

You may have heard this factoid mentioned when it comes to customer service: A satisfied customer is likely to share the experience with one person, while one who’s dissatisfied will share it with ten.

Now, think about the implications of those numbers in a Web 2.0 world, when anyone and everyone has a voice and can make it heard resoundingly around the world. Whether through a blog, a Twitter, a YouTube feed, or a MySpace post. The possibilities for sharing positive, but (human nature being what it is) more often, negative experiences have exploded.

Any business that understands the value of a strong brand is going to do whatever it takes to consistently deliver a superior customer experience. Part and parcel of the deal is monitoring the conversation and seizing any opportunity to identify any disconnects – real or imagined – in the way the business is delivering. And find ways to make it right.

What’s amazing to me, though, is the number of businesses that still don’t get the power of the Web as more than just a messaging channel du jour. It’s also a great, grassroots way to keep the pulse of changing customer perceptions and to respond in real time and in authentic ways to shape them.

Or not.

Consider Brenda and Gerald Moran. These folks love cruises. They were such fans of Royal Caribbean that they booked two trips a year and even bought stock in the company. This despite a customer experience that was less than ideal for each and every trip.

Some of their complaints were laughable: Her birthday greeting was delivered to the wrong cabin. (Get over it.) Others? Not so much. On their most recent, two-week Alaska/Northwest cruise, their cabin reeked of sewage, which was blamed on other guests flushing everything from oranges to diapers. With no more rooms available at this floating inn, their balcony door remained open in 40-degree weather to offset the odor. Yet the Morans were happy with the cruise line’s offer of a 20 percent discount on their next cruise.

But here’s the deal. Brenda wrote, as she always did, a post-cruise review on Cruise Critic, which sparked an active viral dialogue. Royal Caribbean responded by offering the Morans an additional discount for their next trip…and, oh, by the way, now will you pull your review?

Brenda declined. Cruise Critic later declined to pull or modify it. And Royal Caribbean soon thereafter banned the Morans from its cruises – for life.

Even in the olden days before the Web boosted the power of word-of-mouth, such heavy-handed tactics would have been ill-advised. Royal Caribbean would have been much better served with a variety of other courses of action:

• Apologizing in the discussion forum for the Morans’ experience and detailing steps being taken to make it right (and remember, it’s not always about money!) and create a consistently positive customer experience for all its guests.
• Identifying the Morans’ (and others’) specific complaints about the customer experience, their relative degree of importance, and possible fixes besides discounting that would create goodwill.
• Identifying and cultivating other satisfied customers (which the Morans really were, overall) who could serve as brand ambassadors and encouraged, among other things, to share their own positive experiences.
• Monitoring the conversation and employing an ombudsman, perhaps (see what Comcast is doing), to run interference in real time as a means of enhancing customer satisfaction.

The Web’s current role and future potential to help make or break brands is only growing. For those that don’t like the way the conversation goes, killing the messenger isn’t the answer. Finding better ways to keep the negative word of mouth from spreading virally to hundreds or even thousands more is.

Verbal vs. written: The same but different

Helena Bouchez

I just received 1to1 Marketing’s e-mail previewing the May/June issue. I like this magazine a lot and read most of every issue – unlike many others, which barely graze the top of my desk before sliding into the trash. In the e-mail was a link to a podcast titled “Can Online and Offline Channels Get Along?” I’ve been writing a lot on the importance of marrying online with offline channels for one of our clients and so it piqued my curiosity. I fired it up.

Oh. My. God. The sound that screeched forth from my computer was nails-on-a-chalkboard bad. Noise cancellation anyone? Tone control? Moreover, whose idea was it to pass off this recording of a phone interview as a podcast? I listened for a few painful minutes and then bailed out.

This had to be a writer’s idea. Writers are used to communicating in relative silence. We type the words and others read them in similar solitude. And when we read, we “hear” the words inside our heads. Good writers know how to control this; good business writers, for instance, aim for an internal voice that is confident and authoritative.

Once words move from the page onto the airwaves, however, the rules change. That’s because the perception and comprehension of writing and speech are not the same. Written and spoken English are different.

Here are some guidelines for creating good audio assets.

1. To maximize comprehension, spoken words must sound good. Sounding good is the responsibility of the speaker. If you are a writer who is required to express your ideas verbally as well as in written form, get training. If you need a vocal communications coach, call mine. She’s fabulous. (Surprising bonus: Vocal communications training also will make you a better writer. You’ll see.)

2. Trust your ears. Someone must have listened to this recording before it went up. If this were my shop, my response would have been “Gee, it’s a little rough, we really need to fix it. Let me find some software or a partner who can help.” I wouldn’t have let it go up as is. No way. Someone like me might blog about it!

3. Test and learn. If this was recorded over the analog phone line and it didn’t come out very well, next time try Skype. Or ooVoo. Experiment. And even if it’s meant to sound homegrown, keep the standards on the high side. Today’s professional information consumers (read: marketers) have very sophisticated ears. That means your recording is probably not good enough to post unless it’s pretty darn good.

Good: 1to1 Marketing Magazine, a well-written and useful source of information for readers. Better: Well-produced audio-based communications vehicles that match the publication’s high standards.

Don’t assume lazy means loyal when customers stick around

Sally Saville Hodge

I’m the kind of customer that businesses love: I never seem to be able to find the time to seek out a better deal. So I stick around. For a while, at least.

Please don’t think less of me for it. I don’t think I’m alone in this. I have a lot of stuff on my plate and the last thing I want to do is get on the phone and wrangle with customer service folks for a better deal. But I’m not the loyal customer they may think I am. I’m just a lazy one. And it’s loyal customers that ultimately make or break a brand.

All I’m hurting, I know, is my own pocketbook. But still. At its root is a deep-seated irritation with those companies that can’t see all the implications of the “your next best customer is the one you already have” credo. That means you make them happy. You study your relationship with them. And you anticipate their needs. Anticipate is, of course, the operative word.

Why do I have to go to them to beg for a better deal? Why are the bargains geared to new customers? Do they expect me to have loyalty to them when they don’t have any to me?

The whole customer relationship thing is a two-sided coin, of course. In “The Bad Table,” Seth Godin comments on its other side. As a new patron to a hot new restaurant, he and his group were given the worst seats in the house even though the place was only a third full. So, he asks, who gets your best effort? The newbie who might be converted into a loyal follower? Or customers who have already attained that status?

Marketers are challenged to master the balancing act between the dual mandates for volume (short-term growth) and quality (the kinds of loyal customers that drive sustained growth). By and large, I don’t think they do a terrific job at it.

Here’s the deal. Ultimately, as Godin puts it: “You can’t have a bad table.”

Indeed.

Fun with typos

Sally Saville Hodge

Back in the days when I was a journalist, at one publication we maintained a “wall of shame” where we gleefully tacked the worst press releases, pitch letters and other sorts of fan mail. It was littered with pieces where the lead was buried at the end, new entrants to the “world’s longest release” category, and, well, let’s call them “unfortunate” typos.

That was way before the Web made it so much easier to share the wealth. Our friends over at The Bad Pitch Blog led the way on this front, and recently have taken typo ridicule to a totally new level.

They recently called out a most egregious typo, spotted on a Monster.com job post for a VP, of er, well, you sort of have to see it to believe it. TBPB invites you to leave your best, one-line response to the job description. Don’t wait to play; the winner(s) will be announced soon and receive fame and some swag.

To play, go here. May the best, uh, candidate, win.

PR’s world: bad writing, bad pitching and PO’d journalists

Sally Saville Hodge

One of my more mortifying moments since hanging up my PR shingle 20 years ago:

I was having lunch with a former colleague who was the editor of a local business publication when he pulled out a news release, liberally doused with red ink, that had been sent out by my firm.

“I was really surprised, Sal, to see this coming from you,” he said. And he proceeded to itemize why: A variety of typos had, er, slipped through – including our phone number and in the spelling of the name of our business. There were grammatical errors. The run-on sentences took my breath away.

As these things went, he told me kindly, this was not one of the worst press releases he’d ever seen. He (as I in my journalism days) could cite example upon example of purely dreadful crap issued in the guise of “public relations.” Ten-page releases chock-full of irrelevant information (like where a business owner’s oldest son had graduated from college). Pieces that were only marginally veiled sales sheets. Releases where you might find the point if you had the patience to read through to the last page (most journalists don’t).

Mortified, I still thanked my friend, telling him that I was just as surprised as he was, as this was the first time I was seeing the release myself. Yes, the account executive had broken my cardinal rule that I see everything before it is distributed. And, yes, she would have been fired immediately upon my return to the office had she not resigned as soon as I confronted her.

The drek produced by many shops is only one reason why journalists and PR practitioners have a love/hate relationship. The fact is that we need each other, even though many with the media hate to admit it. But too many agencies and their people work in a way that makes it harder for those of us who are more thoughtful in positioning storylines that meet the needs of the media as well as our clients.

Two blogs of note for clients and agencies to monitor to grow their understanding of best practices in media relations – by virtue of negative examples. One is The Bad Pitch Blog, providing appallingly hilarious tales from the trenches. These guys just wrote about another blog that makes for interesting reading, AngryJournalist.com. On this front, I find it very comforting to note that while its contributors are angry at bad flaks, they are equally angry at themselves, their editors, their co-horts and peers, their advertising staff, their advertisers…

Monster Cable response to blog post is scary

Helena Bouchez

Note to Monster Cable Company: Hire someone who understands social media, immediately!

The company recently sent a two-page rebuttal to The Consumerist regarding the article “Monster Cables, Monster Ripoff: 80% Markups,” written and posted on Feb. 7 by Ben Popken, editor of this blog about consumerism. In a nutshell, a Radio Shack employee sent his store’s entire inventory list to The Consumerist, which included the wholesale and retail prices of every item in stock. The blog posted a list of Monster Cable items along with their wholesale and retail prices and then proceeded to rip on the company for over-inflating not just prices, but product performance assertions (especially on HDMI cables made for HDTVs, etc.).

Fair? Maybe. Maybe not. What matters more is that Monster Cable’s response, posted on Feb. 19, may have compounded the damage and also scared away potential customers by its lengthy, defensive and jargon-laden comeback.

The comments on Monster’s post offer insight on how the company might have turned this lemon into lemonade. As Hawk07 wrote:

“If it’s certified to be an HDMI cable, it’ll have the same quality regardless of who makes it since a digital signal is a digital signal.

“I would challenge the President or a videophile of his choosing to have 10 HDTVs setup using content of their choice (blu-ray or a live HDTV feed) and see if they can tell the difference between their top HDMI cable and a generic one bought for under $10.

“If they can pass that test, I think it would certainly give their company a lot more credibility. It’s also deceitful for them to try and pass a white paper off as credible like they did above. Either that, or their marketing department doesn’t know the difference between a white paper and an independent study.”

For a big picture view of just how important it is for companies to get their arms around social media asap, it might try reading Business Week’s Feb. 20 piece, “Social Media Will Change Your Business.”

Incidentally, if I were in PR over at Monoprice (Monster’s biggest competitor) I’d be dancing with joy right now, as Monoprice was mentioned in about every other comment on both posts, a combined 369 to date. Score one for Monoprice – and boo for  Monster Cables.

Another social media snafu

Helena Bouchez

Oops, they did it again. This time it was a non-profit executive for research organization GiveWell. Executive director and GiveWell co-founder Holden Karnofsky masked his identity on an industry Web site while soliciting suggestions from visitors on the best source for comparing charities. Then, he answered his own question – recommending GiveWell, of course. Then he was found out. To GiveWell’s credit, its board of directors took swift and appropriate action. But the damage has been done.

What rock was the guy living under? Plenty has been written about the frequency and speed with which those trying to fake out the system have been caught. Whole Foods’ blogging CEO praising himself using a fake online identity. The Walmart RV Traveler’s flog. Sony’s YouTube-based viral marketing scheme for the Sony PSP.

Social media (forums, online communities, blogs, etc.) are powerful tools that, used properly, can rapidly raise an organization’s profile with its target audience and advance its business objectives. But as some organizations have learned (the hard way), it’s a double-edged sword that participants use swiftly and mercilessly when it comes to anything – or anyone – they perceive to be inauthentic or deceitful.

In fact, the success of any social media program hinges on complete transparency. The more authentic and truthful businesses appear in these venues, the more trust and goodwill they will engender. In today’s competitive environment, where a dozen companies are making essentially the same widget, the way people feel about the widget – and the widget maker – is an increasingly important key differentiator.

Companies that welcome the scrutiny of customers can profit handsomely from the exposure and viral nature of social media. Those who think fakery is a sound marketing tactic may be better suited to a different line of work. I suggest fiction writer.