When Ozzie Guillén, manager of the rebranded Miami Marlins, inserted the proverbial foot-in-mouth during an interview with TIME magazine, where he stated, “I love Fidel Castro,” I immediately began to question the Marlins’ management strategy.

I thought, “Clearly this guy has no understanding of local politics. Clearly he has no understanding of what so many of us lived through in a Fidel-Castro-Cuban regime. Clearly the Marlins management doesn’t necessarily know what it’s doing to the brand.” I wasn’t alone.

To give you some quick background: What Guillén said is highly offensive to many Hispanics of Cuban origin, especially to those who are older. Cubans did not come to the U.S. looking for a better job or a better economic opportunity. Many lawyers, doctors, engineers, journalists and professionals left their homes, careers and even families because of political oppression and the sheer lack of simple human rights — all attributed to Castro and his followers.

Just as recently as last month, during the Pope’s visit to Cuba, he reiterated how important it was to keep in mind human rights above all else in the island. He urged the Cuban people, “that you may strive to build a renewed and open society, a better society, one more worthy of humanity.”

Having been personally affected by this communist regime, I was taken aback upon hearing about Guillen’s remarks. The fact that he was suspended for five games for his comment didn’t seem like “enough” to me initially. Then, I thought, “How could the Marlins public relations team not have provided such important market-sensitive information?”

Continue reading " No Grand Slam for Miami Marlins’ PR Practices "

Lord Tim Bell, head of the U.K.-based PR firm Bell Pottinger, thinks so.

That’s what he told a crowd gathered in Dubai for the recent IPRA Public Relations World Congress and reiterated in an excellent interview with The Holmes Report.

Lord Bell is asked why he feels that public relations has become a “lightning rod for mistrust.” His response is intriguing inasmuch as it provides a nuanced view of a much broader issue afflicting the profession: its reputation within business and society.

Lord Bell sees “no solution to [the] issue,” of public relations’ reputation challenges, he tells The Holmes Report’s Arun Sudhaman, believing that “We [have] become the lightning rod for that mistrust. It is something we have to learn to live with. That makes us an easy target for the media.”

Lord Bell would know. As we have pointed out in this blog and in other forums, he and his firm have a way of attracting unwanted attention. Last March, PRSA wrote in The London Evening Standard that Lord Bell’s assertion that “everyone is entitled to representation so long as it does not involve doing anything illegal” should be placed in further context — that a public relations professional’s work also must not involve doing anything unethical.

Lord Bell found himself in further hot water back in December when his firm was caught in a row over allegations of surreptitiously editing clients’ Wikipedia entries. The ensuing firestorm set off a slew of industry hand-wringing. But in a bit of good news, it also helped bring forward some much-needed dialogue between public relations professionals and Wikipedians about the practice and ethics of “paid advocates” editing client’s Wikipedia entries.

(PRSA is hosting a panel on the relationship between Wikipedia and public relations professionals at its Digital Impact Conference, April 2–3, in New York.)

Those issues aside, Lord Bell’s point that the public relations profession has become “the lightning rod for mistrust” is not without merit. But how much of that is the result of Lord Bell and others reaping what they sow, and how much is manufactured by the media and certain interest groups?

Continue reading " Has PR Become a ‘Lightning Rod of Mistrust’? "

I wasn’t involved in the Occupy Wall Street activities, although I followed the movement closely and admired many of its ideas and ideals. As a public relations professional, however, I was increasingly frustrated by the inability of its participants to adhere to basic PR principles. If they had, I believe they would have made a much more powerful impact on the public, and the corporate and government leaders they were trying to reach.

I have been fortunate to have implemented some successful national advocacy communications campaigns. Usually the process takes months, sometimes years, for an issue to reach a level of national or international prominence so that major media and the public take notice. For the participants and organizers of Occupy Wall Street and the other cities across the country and around the world — it took a few weeks.

Beginning Sept. 17, 2011, thanks in part to the 24/7 news cycle and social media in particular, the Occupy movement grew quickly. Initially covered by the mainstream media as an oddity or fringe movement, by Oct. 1, 2011, network TV news was reporting seriously about a national movement with demonstrations in Los Angeles, Portland, Maine, and elsewhere.

Suddenly, OWS was a major story in top-tier media and was prominent online and with social media. The phrase “We are the 99%.” quickly became a part of the public vernacular.

Continue reading " Occupy Wall Street Abandoned PR 101 "

Confession: my name is Steve, I am 38-years-old and, and … I am a public relations professional.

Sixteen years ago I thought I was doing a filthy job. I was a journalist: knocking on the doors of just-bereaved parents, phoning ministers of religion for comments on the sin stories I was about to break, stitching up civic dignitaries by quoting them well out of context.

In the past few weeks, given what has happened with U.K. newspaper The Independent’s sting on PR agency Bell Pottinger, I could be forgiven for thinking my hands are dirtier now than they were back then. PR professionals have long faced questions about the moralistic implications of what they do, but rather than the mysteries of the “dark arts,” observers’ thoughts have been drawn to misconceptions of illicit foulness dripping from our greedy hands.

All of which is, in my experience, untrue. In fact there’s a very British word for it: bollocks.

Sure, some PR professionals have always been willing to take on lucrative contracts from dubious sources. None of us are utterly holy, or at least if any of us are I haven’t met them yet. We have all, if we’re honest (and we should be) told untruths — or been extremely liberal with the truth — to protect the interests of clients.

But Pottingergate has ruffled the feathers of many agency top brass and senior managers. The reason is this: we had enough on our plates with the fact that if PR agencies do not fundamentally modernize the basis of their commercial success, they will die. Now we have another challenge: not only must we modernize, we must also sanitize.

Where Should the Line Be Drawn on Ethics?

A lot of senior, well-paid people in public relations have tried to wear the ethical badge in recent years. Without ethics, we are unable to continue to operate in a transparent age when clients require a responsible approach to communication, they say. They’re right, but ethics is a relative term, certainly in the public relations field. The industry organizations have rightly stood up and been counted on this, but PR professionals must figure out themselves where the line must be drawn on what is ethical and what isn’t. Whereas the British media at the moment faces the threat of imposed legislation to govern its conduct, the PR industry  must develop a form of self-regulation.

My bet is that the answer will be driven by market forces rather than a consensus view on ethics.

Continue reading " Time for PR to Cleanse Itself of Ethical Transgressions "

In the wake of a tumultuous week of twists and turns for Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood, today’s resignation of Karen Handel, Komen’s vice president for public policy, comes as little surprise. In her resignation letter, which The Associated Press obtained, Handel states that her objective from the beginning was advancing a policy that would seek to pull financial funding from Planned Parenthood and “distance Komen from controversy.”

While inoculating an organization from attack is certainly a worthy goal it cannot be done without understanding the attitudes and values of key stakeholders. Organizations must understand that goals are shaped by the external environment.

In the end, Handel and other leaders did not consider who really owns the Komen brand.

Continue reading " Who Really Owns the Komen Brand? "