Are You Ready for Some Good PR? (and Other PR Blog Jots)

In Football, as in PR...
Engage in PR
In a great follow-up to Ed Lee’s post last week regarding the best PR strategy for the Patriots following “camera-gate,” Kyle Flaherty examines the Pats’ PR moves as a case study for crisis communications. He advises those in a one-person crisis let that person take the blame, so the organization that person represents takes as little heat as possible. He also praises the Patriots for allowing the right people (the players) to offer their support to Belichick, and for continuing to operate at the highest of levels, silencing critics with outstanding play. Kyle further highlights the strategy of changing the story’s perspective. “Shift the story from “them against us” to “us against them”. Everyone likes an underdog and when you are under attack from all angles there comes a point when the tide will turn and people begin to see that people are just piling on.”

The Blogger Outreach Quiz
Bad Pitch Blog
Kevin Dugan presents a questionnaire that every PR practitioner should take before attempting a blogger outreach program on behalf of clients. Fail the quiz? Don’t hit send. Sending bad, un-researched pitches to bloggers is the best way to either get your client no social media publicity at all, or worse, bad publicity. His six-question quiz inquires as the length of knowledge about the blog you are reaching out to, and the amount of research you’ve done pre-pitch. “Does this read like a lot of work? If your news doesn’t merit this level of effort, don’t pitch it to a blog. This will eliminate a few of the irrelevant news releases many blogs receive. If you answered no to any of the above, you may need to ramp up your approach to mainstream media first.”

Learning Experience
Student PR
After sparking a long conversation about age vs experience among other PR bloggers with a somewhat incendiary post about Joe Jaffe and crayon, Chris Clarke writes thoughtfully about what he’s learned from the experience. While he stands by the decision to write about crayon’s recent loss of prominent staffers, he admits that the way he approached the issue was not right. Chris takes the experience and offers advice to other bloggers, which boils down mainly to “think before you blog.” “Don’t call anyone out unless you feel it’s justified on every level, and even then, consider the person/company you’re calling out. Would you say it to their face the same way you want to say it in a blog post?”

Corporate Doesn't Always Mean "Evil"
Chrisbrogan.com
Responding to a piece that questions whether PodCamp Boston has “gone corporate” following Microsoft’s decision to participate, Chris Brogan argues that corporations do not necessarily always have “evil” agendas, and that Microsoft may bring something to the table at this year’s Boston unconference. He admits that big companies can screw up just as easily as individuals can, sometimes easier. But does that mean we should automatically exclude them from the conversation? “But aren’t stumbles better than letting corporations sit around and “do it all wrong” over and over again? Was GM wrong for the Tahoe campaign? I don’t think so. Rather, I think it was a matter of implementation. Should they try again? Another way? Damned straight.”

Comments

[AmyT]

Well yes, and there's also some very bad PR.

Check out this "cringer" by LifeScan:

http://www.diabetesmine.com/2007/10/lifescan-market.html