A picture is still worth more than 1000 words. The furor over the cover of the Rolling Stone proves that once again.
The cover depicts accused Boston Marathon bomber Jahar Tsarnaev but unlike the 1970’s cover of Charles Manson which showed a demonic killer, this cover shows someone who could be the latest teen heartthrob.
Reaction has been swift and damaging to the Rolling Stone’s reputation, a reputation founded on the cache of being on the cover as much for the often profanity laced articles inside.
The PR mistake that Rolling Stone made was failing to understand that emotions were still raw surrounding this terrible event. The editors forgot PR 101, lesson one, people react emotionally to what they see and not what they read.
What they saw and are fixated on is the picture. The words “bomber” and “monster” don’t come close to balancing that, even in bold, large print.
A picture is still worth more than 1000 words. In this case it’s worth hundreds of thousands of tweets threatening never to read the magazine again, and some retailers pulling the magazine from circulation so as not to offend their customers.
Having created its own “PR Crisis” the steps that Rolling Stone have taken are good ones:
Publishing the entire article so that people can read for themselves that the article does not glorify a “monster”.
Giving away its cover story, so that Rolling Stone is not seen to be benefiting from the controversy
Acknowledging the bombing victims at the top of the article and explaining why they pursued the story
The article is legitimate. TV entertainment shows do this all the time. Sometimes entertainment news just becomes news.
In 1970 Rolling Stone published a Charles Manson cover story, but the picture demonized Manson. This one didn’t. It showed the boy next door or the newest rock star. The public wanted to see the devil and they saw themselves.
It has been 40 years since Dr. Hook released “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” a song which immortalized what it meant to get on the cover. The public hasn’t forgotten what that means.
If Rolling Stone had a do-over they would pick a different cover.
It will take years to recover from the devastating flood that hit Calgary and Southern Alberta in late June. Many communities will never be the same. Others suffered so much damage they may never be rebuilt. Yet despite all the destruction, now estimated at over $5 billion, only four people died. It could have been a lot worse if not for a well-executed emergency communications plan keeping residents informed. Social media and traditional media played a vital role in that plan.
During the worst of it, as the rain poured down and rising rivers flooded one community after another along with the downtown, the zoo and Stampede Park, Twitter became an essential information lifeline for thousands of people. With no electricity, residents in affected communities used Twitter for real time information. Mayor Naheed Nenshi was constantly Tweeting to his tens of thousands of followers and the Calgary Emergency Management Agency (CEMA), Calgary Police Service, Calgary Fire
Department and other essential services used Twitter extensively to update flood conditions, coordinate evacuations, provide road closure status and even direct people to emergency shelters. Facebook sites were used to draft volunteers and muster resources and supplies. The flood clearly demonstrated how effective and efficient social media is at disseminating information during an emergency.
Calgary’s news media and in particular the TV stations really came through when it counted. As the flood situation worsened, Global, CTV and CBC affiliates broke into programming and provided wall-to-wall flood coverage for almost 48 hours. As part of its communications strategy, CEMA held frequent media updates and used the media as an information conduit. Mayor Nenshi and officials from CEMA, police and fire were readily available for media interviews. The coverage was critical in keeping the community informed, especially the hundreds of evacuees crowded around TV sets at the emergency relief centres trying to find out if they still had a home to go back to.
Now that the clean-up is underway and thousands of people work to put their lives back in order they can at least be assured that Calgary has an excellent emergency communication plan in place.
Peak has been announced as finalists in the 2013 Ragan PR Daily Awards. Ragan’s awards are regarded as some of the most prestigious in the PR and communications industry worldwide. They recognize excellence in employee communications, corporate, nonprofit and agency PR and marketing, social media and digital PR, executive communications, health care PR and marketing.
The Ragan PR Daily Awards have received notable recognition throughout the industry and attracted respected PR firms from around the globe. The team at Ragan has stated they are “blown away” by the number of exceptional entries put forward.
Given the volume of competition, Peak is delighted to be announced as finalists in three categories for the PR Daily Awards and the team highly anticipates the winner announcements in late June.
Peak has been declared finalists in the following two award categories, and our client, Avigilon, has been shortlisted as well;
Best Crisis Management – Traditional Media
For Canada West Veterinary Specialists (CWVS)
Best Fitness/Health Campaign – Community Relations/Special Campaigns
For the Canadian Diabetes Association (CDA)
Best Client of the Year – Talent
For Avigilon
“We’re extremely happy with our achievements so far,” says Charlotte Sherry, Account Director at Peak Communicators. ”Our team of PR specialists has worked tirelessly over the past 12 months to deliver creative campaigns. We are delighted to have made the finalist list.”
Today Business in Vancouver (BIV) released its annual list of the “Biggest public relations firms in B.C.,” ranking Peak as the largest locally-owned PR firm in the province and the overall fifth biggest PR firm in B.C. this year.
The 2013 BIV list marks Peak’s third year ranked as B.C.’s largest locally-owned firm since its founding in 2003.
“2013 has been a significant year for Peak so far with our 10 year anniversary, new international clients, expansion of our service offerings and a number of new team members,” says Managing Partner Ross Sullivan.
The “Biggest public relations firms in B.C.” list ranks firms based on the number of B.C. public relations staff in a given year. In 2013, international/national firms Edelman, NATIONAL Public Relations, Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Fleishman-Hillard were named the four biggest PR firms in B.C. with teams ranging from 18-49 members in size.
Peak hosted its annual birthday party last night but this year was juuust a little more special than years’ past. Time has flown and, incredibly, 2013 marked 10 years for Peak!
Over the last decade Peak has grown into the largest Vancouver-based PR agency and we wanted to celebrate our success together with our clients and friends, without whom the last 10 years would not have been possible.
The party was held at Coast’s O-Lounge, located just around the corner from Peak’s headquarters on Robson. Nearly 80 guests—from clients to media to partner agencies and consultants—came out to toast our next 10 years with wine, beer and delectable appies.
You can check out more photos at Peak’s Facebook page. Thank you again to everyone who joined us—here’s to the next 10 years!
Journalists are busy people. They have hundreds of pitches flying at them from PRs daily and often have little support or resources. As a result, media pitches have to be authentic, newsworthy and to the point to get noticed. To help them further, it can be beneficial to package pitches up that offer various experts who are able to give different perspectives on the topic in question. This can save a reporter valuable time having to source a third party opinion themselves. Offering to draft an initial article can also go a long way with time-strapped media.
This is what we did to secure a recent hit in the Financial Post. Peak strategically selected several senior client spokespeople and asked them to share the best advice they’d ever received. To make the piece timely, we pitched it in late December so that it could be published in early January to kick off national mentoring month.
In July 2012, Peak was approached by Great River Fishing Adventures to promote a 12-foot long, 1000-pound sturgeon caught by one of their customers on the Fraser River. They hoped for some media coverage.
Within a week, Peak packaged a media kit which involved a news release, a fact sheet and a video of the giant fish being caught and then released. We organized a meeting with all TV stations under the Mission Bridge where reporters could interview the British couple who caught the sturgeon, shoot video of the Great River Fishing Adventures charter boat on the water and speak with the company’s president and guide.
The “once in a lifetime catch” got wide international coverage in print, online, on radio, including visual stories on the newscasts for Global-TV, CBC and CTV. Great River Fishing Adventures had never experienced anything like this. After seeing the footage their phones were ringing off the hooks. Their boats were booked up for months.
In mid-September 2012, less than two months later, it happened again. Another 1000-pound sturgeon, this one 11 feet eight inches long, caught by a team of 30 from a Kamloops accounting firm.
Peak saw no problem with getting all the media to do the story again. We played on the uniqueness of this event: “It was supposed to happen once in a generation…but just two months later it happened again!”.
We reprised the file footage from the July catch, we added new images and Peak reeled in another 50 media hits, including stories on the newscasts for Global-TV, CBC and CTV. Both CTV National News and Global National News picked up the story for their million-plus viewers.
Great River Fishing Adventures said they were hoping to develop more corporate “team-building” clientele. Like magic – it happened after this story ran throughout Canada.
On Sept 11, 2012, with an NHL lock-out looming on the 15th, the Vancouver Giants Hockey Club approached Peak to see if there was something we could do to position them as “Vancouver’s hockey team.”
We quickly met and proposed a “Re-discover Your Giants” campaign before the lock out actually started. We suggested offering Canucks fans a discount for the first three Giants’ games on Sept 21, 28 and 30 and a 20% discount on all merchandise just by showing their Canucks Member Cards. This evolved into a 20% discount on all red seats at the Pacific Coliseum – or $15 per seat, which was offered to all hockey fans. We knew there would be many sports and news stories about the effects of the lockout so we wanted to bring a positive story to media. We called a news conference for Monday morning, September 17.
The Giants majority owner Ron Toigo announced the deal and why Giants Hockey was such a good value this year. He also introduced the new retro sweater to a dressing room crowded with media.
We arranged for 20 comp tickets per game to use as prizes to run on hockey blogs including the Canucks Army. In addition to running the news of the Giants discounts, they have awarded ticket prize packages to people who answered Giants-related trivia questions on a variety of social networks.
The result: thanks to earned media, the Giant’s integrated marketing campaign surpassed the expected sale of 5,500 seats for Friday’s game. According to the Vancouver Sun, the Giants played the Victoria Royals before an opening-night crowd of 7,812.
Obviously B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s new director of communications Sara MacIntyre didn’t do her homework on local media. She had done the same job for the Prime Minister and may have been bounced for being too aggressive. But the back east media is small ‘c’ conservative. They are somewhat pushy but not uber aggressive.
No holds barred out here. When you tell a good reporter in British Columbia that they can’t do something, they are definitely going to do it. Reporters demonstrate the long-held tradition of a free press every day.
Veteran Global Television cameraman Paul Rowand took MacIntyre on while videotaping the Premier who had just invited reporters and camerapersons to follow her into a Vancouver trade show. “No go” from MacIntyre was met with “what did you say?” from Rowand as he kept walking and videotaping while firing off questions including “who are you and where are you from?”
The gum-chewing MacIntyre snapped back with sneering answers with the most condescending looks. Then she did the ultimate no-no: She stood right in front of Rowand’s camera in a futile attempt to block access to the Premier.
The embarrassing Global TV coverage that resulted from the altercations has now gone viral. I will use it in media training as an example of how not to manage media relations.
Former CTV reporter Chris Olsen (Olsen on your side), who was Premier Clark’s past press secretary, lost his job to the feisty MacIntyre. Olsen got off side in his attempts to manage the media even though he was once one of the reporters. The Premier’s office thought he couldn’t do the job. Well, what about MacIntyre?
She’s now off side with reporters who will find ways to continue to make her look bad. She forgot that you may be able to manage reporters, but you can’t control them. You would be better off trying to herd cats.
Maybe she should ask some key reporters for advice on how to facilitate positive news coverage on government. Christy Clark says she stands for open and transparent government. What does Sara MacIntyre stand for?
You may have seen the shocking YouTube video of a FedEx delivery man throwing a computer monitor over a customer’s gate, uploaded in December.
Within 24 hours, it had received 200,000 views. The story then featured in the Daily Mail and the number of views soared to 4.5 million. Today, the total stands at over 8 million and it has been ‘liked’ 17,000 times.
So how did FedEx deal with the situation?
In the first statement, FedEx condemned the employee’s actions, stating that executives were ‘shocked’. They said the handling of the package was ‘unacceptable’ and vowed to track down the employee responsible.
This is a good initial response. FedEx probably learnt about the incident at the same time as the press so they wouldn’t have had time to investigate. FedEx was also right not to protect the employee; instead they distanced the company’s brand from the individual’s actions.
FedEx’s next move was smart. They created a YouTube video in response – within 48 hours. The speed of their response was critical, helping curb speculation about the incident.
In the video Matthew Thornton, Senior VP at FedEx, said they had met with and apologized to the customer. The company deserves kudos for this; in difficult situations, companies typically communicate with customers via telephone or in writing. Meeting face-to-face is personal and proves FedEx cares about its customers.
Thornton also answered the question everyone asked: what happened to the employee? He explained ‘they’re working within their disciplinary procedures and the employee is not working with customers’. This is a mediocre response. Customers and journalists alike wanted reassurance that the guilty party had been fired. I suspect HR procedures prevented FedEx from providing a stronger response.
Thornton then reminded viewers that the company’s motto is to ‘make every FedEx experience outstanding’. This is good; he uses a difficult situation to reinforce the company’s key messages and its commitment to customers.
Despite this, the footage still damaged the company’s reputation – and consequently it was listed by Forbes as the ‘most brand-damaging viral video of 2011’.
FedEx’s YouTube video also received less than half a million views, a sixteenth of the original video. Clearly bad news travels faster than good.
This incident won’t go away for FedEx and any reoccurring issues will be closely watched by the public eye. However, FedEx can be commended for responding quickly, using YouTube as the channel to respond and meeting the customer face-to-face.
It will take years to recover from the devastating flood that hit Calgary and Southern Alberta in late June. Many communities will never be the same. Others suffered so much damage they may never be rebuilt. Yet despite all the destruction, now estimated at over $5 billion, only four people died. It could have been a lot worse if not for a well-executed emergency communications plan keeping residents informed. Social media and traditional media played a vital role in that plan.
