CustomScoop Blog

Proof You Need to Proof

West Virginia can't stay out of the news lately. Earlier this month, the state's tourism department executed a creative little marketing campaign with their "Whatever you do, don't come to West Virginia!" ads featured in Oprah magazine.

This week, they will need all the self deprecation they can get, as the glaring typo featured on the West Virginia Mountaineers' National Invitation Tournament T-shirt makes the rounds in the blogosphere:

 

As I advocated in my post about writing, a second set of eyes is vital to avoiding embarrassing typos like this--even if your document is a simple T-shirt design. 

Which actually begs the question: just how many people did this design go through from conception to printing? And no one noticed?

Technorati tags: March Madness, writing, Oprah

Crisis communications: Hold the gravy, please

  Their recent recall of tainted pet food has been and continues to be a PR nightmare for Menu Foods, and one thing is clear: the company’s crisis communications strategy needs work.

Opening a communications stream and getting information out quickly needs to be part of any crisis communications plan, and every company needs to have a crisis plan in place prior to a crisis occurring.  The “It won’t happen to us” mentality doesn’t cut it.

With media images of cute puppies and cats with IVs in their forelegs and heartbreaking stories of pets dying due to this tainted food fresh in their minds, panicked pet owners scrambled to call their vets, many of whom were caught off guard about the recall. A regularly updated blog continuously feeding information to concerned pet owners would have done wonders for public perception of the crisis. Blogs like Pet Connection and Pet Sit USA are filling the void left by the lack of timely information and responses from Menu Foods.

Trader Joe’s grocery stores scored major points with me and many other pet owners when it opted to pull all wet style foods manufactured by Menu Foods off its shelves as an “extra precaution.” Other retailers have not been as responsive as Trader Joe’s, nor have they had the foresight to determine the concern level of pet owners raised by this recall. By pulling all Menu Foods products even beyond the recalled product, Trader Joe’s said to pet owners: we know you are concerned, and until we know more about how this happened, we’re not taking any chances.

The issues raised for Menu Foods by this recall are multiplying by the day.

For example, how many premium and super premium pet food brands are going to have a tough time explaining their pricing when it has been revealed that Iams and Old Roy are coming out of the same factory? While I don’t expect the food I purchase for Ralph, my wonder dog, (UPDATE: photo added) to be individually batch-prepared by a chef in a white hat, I do expect the additional cost I pay for premium dog food to account for something other than more expensive ad placements in pricier magazines. It had darn well better go towards better nutritional content and better manufacturing controls.

Every company that has a product manufactured by Menu Foods now has significant branding issues to overcome. The products (formerly) associated with high quality, respected brands will face the biggest hurdles in overcoming consumer skepticism in the weeks, months, and perhaps years to come.

This also raises questions for those who sell pet food. A colleague mentioned that at least one of the lines affected by the recall is sometimes sold in veterinary offices, so the recall now calls into question even the safety of what your pet’s doctor’s office sells. I can’t imagine that vets’ offices are happy with that aspect of this recall, as they too now face a PR problem.

Also, why wasn’t there a better strategy in place to remove the affected food from store shelves? I’ve read several accounts of major retailers still having the products in stores days after the recall was issued. In one case a consumer so concerned by this purchased $1,000 in tainted pet food just to get it off the shelves.

 

The PR issues brought to light by this crisis are multi-faceted. If there’s one major take-away from this, it is the necessity of a solid crisis communications plan that takes into account that people now expect instant responses and reliable answers from all parties involved.

One would hope that after scares involving E. coli in spinach, salmonella in peanut butter, and now this, that every manufacturer and distributor in the food or medicine chain (human or animal) would decide that the time is ripe (sorry, couldn’t help it) to get a plan in place.  That plan needs to be flexible and recognize that consumers are no longer content to wait and see what the latest company press release discloses on the evening news.

Divide and Twitter

In trying to look at how the Twitter phenomenon might translate to business applications, I do think that there is a place for it in informing or tapping the collective wisdom of a team/group of employees. I see it as potentially replacing the ‘all staff’ emails of “there are bagels in the break room” or “Jim is having car trouble and will be late today.” Or, more to the point my example for this post: replacing the email I sent to two employees asking if they remembered where the quote “about the 14 year old and her cat” came from. These emails clutter the inbox but are more efficient than separately IM’ing each member of the team—Twitter logically fits between the two of these.

The one comment I’ve read that really intrigued me was on Brian Alvey's blog. A commenter by the name of Andy Beard posted simply: “Well, maybe the global quality of blog posts will go up because Twitter will take over that part of intercommunication.”

Will Twitter replace blogging for the cadre of MySpace/LiveJournal entries that led an assistant professor of interactive communications to describe in a Washington Post piece as “the average blogger is a 14-year-old-girl, blogging about her cat”?

A personal blog is essentially an online diary, and from my (faint) recollection as a former teenage girl, I can tell you precious few maintain a diary with any discipline or regularity. My guess is that a lot of personal blogs have been abandoned already or will be shortly. Life gets in the way. Twitter might make more sense than blogging for some individuals, as it still provides the connection and sense of community people crave without the long-term maintenance and writing commitment of a blog.

Steve Rubel’s recent post about some readers and bloggers abandoning blogs in favor of Twitter feeds is what compelled me to take a closer look at Twitter. I hope it doesn’t replace blogging for some of my favorite bloggers, as I believe their insights—more than 160 characters worth—hold real value and provide weight and credibility to the blogosphere.

If Twitter becomes the communication device of choice for those who don’t really have the time or interest to maintain a blog, leaving those who do have that discipline, everyone is well-served: the overall quality of blog posts improves, and there’s still a format for the self-expression quality that is sometimes derided.

Beware of the Blog

Growing up, my father frequently discouraged me from keeping a diary. His logic was simple, an oft-repeated chestnut drilled into my brain from grade school onward: “Never put down anything in writing that you wouldn’t want to defend in a court of law.”

(Naturally, I didn’t listen.  And naturally, I wound up in some hot water with him when he unearthed a nasty note a girlfriend and I had traded back and forth about an especially strict junior high school librarian.)

Upon entering the professional world, I would hear the same advice after landing a job at a D.C. public affairs firm, updated with a D.C. flavor: “Never put anything in writing you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing on the cover of the Washington Post.”

In the Web 2.0 world, these words of wisdom ring truer than ever, as prospective employers hit the web to check out applicants’ online lives. I received a call from a former colleague just last week looking for advice on how to unearth a job applicant’s MySpace page and blog history.

Stories pop up daily about college grads’ difficulty landing jobs due to their youthful indiscretions plastered all over the Internet. Indeed, entire businesses have been built on the premise of managing personal online reputations.

As Techdirt reported yesterday, however, we must also stay vigilant about what others are saying about us.  The blogger links to (what else?) a Washington Post story about a law school message board that may be costing some of its subjects job opportunities: only they aren’t the ones writing the comments.  Clearly, inflammatory message board posts or blogs written by others about us can ruin our online reputations as easily as our own words.

What should you do about potentially damaging material turning up on Google?  Be your own PR agency.  Google yourself frequently. Post positively on message boards, start your own blog about a topic that interests you (so long as it is well-written), set up a MySpace page to keep in touch with friends (making sure to only allow comments that you approve first).

Above all, keep that Washington Post test in mind.  The best way to repair a damaged Web rep is to proliferate as much positive material as possible, pushing the “bad” results further down in search engines.

My father might say the best way would be to avoid putting one’s self online in the first place, but in the year 2007 joining the conversation is pretty hard to resist, particularly for those of us in public relations.  We just need to follow the advice of Microsoft’s two-word blogging policy handed down to employees: “Be smart.”

And no matter what, don’t blog any nasty things about your junior high librarian, unless you want an earful from your dad.

Writing is Fundamental--Especially in PR

While compiling today’s edition of Custom Scoop’s PR Blog Jots, I was struck by two very different posts mentioning the same issue: bad writing in public relations.

Believe it or not, message presentation is every bit as important as the message itself; poor writing and grammar can undermine the most legitimate of arguments.

In a post defending a sorority involved in a kerfuffle over a negative New York Times article, Gerald Baron of Crisisblogger praises the sorority’s online response, but makes an offhand note that it was quite poorly written. I could not agree more.

Reading the responses from the national president and the chapter’s members, the poor grammar and construction took me out of their arguments.  I found myself editing in my head rather than absorbing their message.  This is not effective communications, particularly while mired in a crisis.

Over on The Bad Pitch Blog, Richard Laermer posts—and rightly mocks—a press release from a safe-deposit company sent to “Good Morning America.”  The company uses Anna Nicole Smith’s recent death as its hook for the merits of its product.  The release, which clocks in at 840 words, is so long and dense it is practically unreadable, aside from being in poor taste.

Two distinct problems: poor construction and Odyssean wordiness.  These problems are easily avoided by taking the time to edit.  PR is a fast-paced business, no question about it. We have moved beyond the 24-hour news cycle into one that lasts mere seconds.

Nevertheless, isn’t taking a few minutes to put your product in front of a second set of eyes, ensuring its quality before sending it into the ether, just as important as timeliness?  After all, if your press release is so poorly written that an average reporter can hardly read it, the speed with which it was released doesn’t really matter.

Not only that, but in the age of social media, a poorly crafted bit of writing can open your agency—and, more importantly, your client—up to embarrassing online criticism.