What if you learned that your writing and communications skills are really are sub-par? Would you want someone to tell you? Here is an example– An IABC e-mail just reached my inbox. The lead sentence says, “I’m excited about…”
That is sub-par writing and public relations. It is shocking that public relations people cannot write a lead sentence for a news release and that they continue to use tired, old clichés. It makes me wonder if their public relations teachers accepted this as good writing in college.
Effective communications focuses on your customers or your audience. However, every day while teaching media training or in message writing workshops, I see PR people and CEOs all making inward facing comments, rather than external facing comments. They focus on themselves by using words and phrases such as, “I’m excited to announce…” or, “We’re pleased to tell you…”
Your audience, however, is excited and pleased when your opening sentence says what’s in it for them.
Ironically, the e-mail was promoting an IABC event, which likely needs a session on writing without clichés.
Take a moment to search through your e-mails and news releases to determine if you are guilty of using these clichés, especially in your lead sentence. Akin to this is the sin of writing a fake quote from the CEO that says, “We’re pleased and excited about this event,” says CEO Pat Jones.
If you find you are guilty of these sins, write to me at gerard@braudcommunications.com and confess your sins. I’m willing to conduct an intervention on your behalf… or should I say, “I’m pleased and excited to help you stop saying pleased and excited in a lead sentence.”
If you were a smoker and your doctor told you to stop or you would die of cancer, would you stop?
If you had diabetes and your doctor told you to change your diet so you don’t die, would you change?
Amazingly, there are people every day who ignore the advice of an expert and do the wrong thing. Some are stubborn. Some are in denial. Some just magically hope the problem will go away.
I’m watching two crisis communications patients die right now. As their doctor of crisis communications I submitted to each a plan of action that they could have taken long ago, when the early warning signs of a crisis were on the horizon. Both are major smoldering crises on the brink of igniting.
Time was on the side of each patient 60 days ago when they first contacted me. Time is now their enemy because the flash point has arrived and the media are writing stories on each. No messaging has been written. No news releases created. No media training has been conducted.
A doctor can’t miraculously cure cancer in a patient that has refused to listen to expert medical advice. Likewise, we in public relations are called upon too often to make miracles happen. We can’t always do it.
I could try to save each of these patients, but I know the effect of the communications we would do so late would be about 1/6th as effective as what was originally suggested. I know that this marginal benefit would cost them much more than the original plan, with less than satisfactory results. I don’t know that I want my name associated with a marginal response that lacks planning and execution.
Persuading audiences, engaging employees and communicating to the media takes time. Strategies are best done on a clear sunny day. Media training and writing a crisis communications plan should have been done weeks ago.
In one case, an organization will face very expensive legal bills and payouts. Their reputation will be damaged. People will likely get fired.
In another case, lawsuits will likely be filed, the institutions reputation will be damaged, I predict their revenue will fall, and there will be an employee revolt. The best employees will quit and go to work for their competition. Many angry employees will remain on the job, polluting the human resources culture for a decade or more. In the process, customer service will suffer, leading to a greater loss in revenue. This institution may also get gobbled up by a competitor as the value of the company drops.
Why do people ask for advice and ignore it? Who knows? They just do.
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Public relations people constantly ask, “How do I get a seat at the table?” The short answer for now is to take advantage of the Ebola hysteria.
The seats are not handed out at the table. The seats are taken. During a time of crisis or potential crisis, leadership can be displayed by those who speak up about how to manage a crisis, how to make a crisis go away, and how to effectively do both through effective crisis communications.
We addressed this in the October 27, 2014 IABC webinar, “Is it too soon to talk about Ebola?” My advice is that each public relations professional needs to become a crisis communications expert. The Ebola crisis is a perfect time to gather executives and leaders together to discuss the many ways real or rumored Ebola contact could damage the reputation and revenue of the business that employees you.
Speaking to the IABC group, my advice was to focus on the negative ROI. In other words, focus on how much money could be lost, even if the public thinks Ebola has tainted your company. Often in crisis communications and crisis management, rumors and hysteria can do more damage than a real infection.
Additionally, my suggestion was that each organization should use this as a perfect time to update or write a crisis communications plan that can be used in the Ebola crisis, as well as any other crisis that might strike in the future. (contact me via my website to learn more)
If you are waiting for your invitation to take a seat at the table, it won’t come from your boss. However, there is a chance Gerard Braud (Jared Bro) just sent one to you via the web.
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2014-10-28 09:26:412021-05-20 05:11:36How Do I Get a Seat at the Table? Times of Crisis Management and Crisis Communications Present an Opportunity
Your expert crisis communication and public relations feedback is invited on this crisis communications case study.
A global company called to inquire about my crisis communication plan program and training. Their corporate revenues are $2 billion dollars annually. The company stock trades at about $66 per share. It has about 8,000 employees worldwide. Experts and media are doing an increasing number of reports questioning the safety of one of the company’s main products, which is suddenly in high demand because of changing trends. News coverage is both favorable and unfavorable
What might a single crisis cost this company in revenue and reputational damage? That is the question I always ask to help a corporation, CEO, or public relations team make an informed decision about spending money for a crisis communication plan or crisis communications training.
If you had a corporate public relations crisis looming, would you spend $7,995.00 U.S. to protect your revenue and reputation? Would the CEO or CFO grant your budget request?
The $7,995.00 is the price I quoted to the company for them to have access to my proprietary 50 page crisis communication plan system, with 100 pre-written news releases, plus expert crisis training for their staff, all delivered in two days. The estimated value of such a crisis communications plan could be placed at $100,000 with the standard amount of time to complete this task being six months to one year. The crisis communications plan and news releases have more than 4,000 hours of development built into them.
Some corporate experts would say this is a “no-brainer.” Experts might say, “A single crisis would cost us more than $7,995 in loss product sales or in a stock price dip.” Hence, those people would buy the plan without giving it a second thought.
Other experts would say, “Heck, the crisis communications plan would cost less than 125 shares of stock.” Hence, those people would see the crisis communications plan as a value.
Another group might say, “Heck, if we lost one sale because of bad publicity and this crisis communications plan helped us thwart the bad publicity, the plan would pay for itself many times over.”
However, this company clearly undervalues the crisis communications plan and this executive undervalues the crisis communications plan. The prospective client said it was “spendy.” Yes, that was the world a senior executive used. Obviously, I did a poor job of convincing this corporate leader of the value of the crisis communications plan. The leader sees the plan as a commodity, while I view my plans as a value.
The secret to undervaluing a crisis communications plan lies in what psychologists say is the single greatest human flaw: Denial. One psychology expert tells me that humans are instinctively programmed to say, “That crisis won’t happen to us,” or “We’ll just deal with that crisis when it happens.”
Denial is why public relations experts and corporate leaders don’t get along in the workplace.
A public relations professional sees a crisis communication plan as a vital tool to do their job, just as an accountant needs a calculator, or just as a mechanic needs a wrench. Yet the corporate leader, in denial that a crisis communications plan is a necessary tool, will insist that the accountant must have the calculator, and that the mechanic must have a wrench, but that the public relations person can magically slap together words and strategy in a bind.
I believe a public relations person without a corporate crisis communications plan is the equivalent of the accountant counting on their fingers, while the mechanic is told to use his or her hands to loosen or tighten vital bolts.
The reality is every corporation must justify every dollar it spends. This case study highlights three things:
1. A crisis communications plan is seldom perceived as an item of value in a corporation.
2. Most public relations people are undervalued in their jobs because they are often denied the tools they need to do their job, yet ironically are expected to produce magic on the company’s darkest day.
3. Denial is the reason corporations do not allow their public relations people to take time and a few dollars on a clear sunny day to protect the revenue and reputation of the company when it faces a crisis on its darkest day.
A wise business coach told me that, “Some people get it and some people never will get it. Work with the ones who get it, dismiss the ones who don’t get it… and then watch them fail on live TV when they have their crisis.”
Hence, every time I take the stage as a speaker, to deliver a keynote at a conference or convention, I look out over the audience knowing some get it and some never will. Sometimes most people in the audience get it, but when they return to work, their bosses won’t get it.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your opinion.
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2014-07-29 12:17:242021-05-20 05:37:003 Secrets to Undervaluing a Crisis Communication Plan
Few people read to the end of an article. I have little confidence that you will read to the end of this article, even though the final thought may change your life and career. Every reader makes several judgments throughout each article as to whether they should move on or read on.
What if you began with that thought every time you write?
Would you change the way you write to make it more compelling?
Here are three things that you can do to produce words that resonate with your audiences and increase the chances that your audiences want to either read more or hear more about your topic.
Write Conversationally
Approach everything you write as though it is a script for the greatest speech in the world. Listen to great speeches and study the language and motivational techniques. Notice that the language is conversational. The words in great speeches are usually words that we hear in everyday language, yet they are organized in a way that invokes a call to action or a deep emotion.
Whether you are writing for print or the spoken word, re-think your style to be conversational. No, this isn’t the way you were taught to do it in college. Face it — most colleges taught you to write for a newspaper and that style was created long before we lived in a world with as many information outlets as we have today. This is your permission to rethink your style to match the needs of your audiences.
As you write, hear the voice. Channel the voice of Kennedy, Reagan, King or another great speaker. Consider that sometimes you may write something that looks great in print, but it doesn’t sound good when read aloud and it isn’t comfortable to the ear. Something that sounds good to the ear, and can be spoken with ease, will also look great in print and is easier for your reader to read.
Write Inclusively
After nearly two decades of political correctness and diversity training, we should all realize that these movements are centered on inclusiveness. Corporations and government agencies have spent millions on training programs centered on inclusiveness. Yet these same organizations, and the people who write for them, exclude vast audiences when the writing is filled with institutional jargon and acronyms. A person shouldn’t have to “belong to the club” in order to be able to understand what is written or said.
Junk the jargon and realize there are no prizes for being multi-syllabic. In media training classes I always try to get spokespeople to speak at a sixth, seventh or eighth grade level, because that is the level at which most people comprehend the written and spoken word. To achieve this, you must shun the idea that you are “dumbing things down” and adopt the approach that you are simplifying the information to be inclusive of everyone in your audience.
Vigorously Fight Edits from Non-writers
Many corporations, government agencies and non-profit agencies are lead by left-brain, analytical individuals and seldom by right-brain, creative individuals. Analytical people, such as accountants, engineers, scientists or doctors are each great at their skills, but their proper writing skills are as poor as the creative person’s math skills.
When I’m invited into organizations to help them achieve more effective communications, I always promise the accountants that I won’t try to balance their books if they don’t try to re-write what the public relations team has written. You should instruct the left-brain analytical types that they have permission to correct errors, but that they should respect the professional training of the writer and respect the content and style of what is written. If you really want to get their attention, tell them that every time they change a letter you’ve written, you get to change a number that they have on a spreadsheet. This should cure the problem.
We each have natural skills and gifts. I know my gifts are definitely not in math but are rooted in written and spoken word. Try the above lines where you work. Stand up for yourself. Push back. If someone wants you to re-write something that you’ve written — and you know it is good and they want to clutter it with jargon, acronyms, and excessive facts and figures — you have an obligation to your craft and your career to push back.
Will there be a big payoff if you implement these three ideas and re-think your writing? Try it and see for yourself. You’ll never know until you give yourself permission to try.
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2014-02-26 09:19:472021-05-20 22:51:51Re-Think Your Writing: Three Ways to Make Your Words Resonate With Your Audiences
Our last article focused on the need for public relations experts to be more strategic as they accomplish tactical tasks. You were reminded that the articles you write must result in behavior change. Your Tweets, Facebook posts and videos must also result in change such as better employee productivity, more sales, or a changed behavior in your customers.
Once you have set up your strategic goals for the year, you must fight what we will call, “Emergency News Release Syndrome.”
Symptoms of Emergency News Release Syndrome include:
1) Emails from an executive telling you in the middle of the day that they need an unplanned and unscheduled news release by the end of the day.
2) An executive walking into your office asking you for a news release immediately for something that he or she has known about for weeks, but did not trust you enough to share with you previously.
3) Someone from a random department, that achieved an internal goal, wants you to write a news release to brag about their accomplishment. No one in the outside world, or even outside of their department, cares about it.
Several years ago I worked as a Vice President at Best Buy, which had one of the best processes I have ever seen for dealing with Emergency News Release Syndrome. It was in place before my arrival, so the credit goes to my predecessors.
Best Buy’s communications department had a policy that no news release would be written if the information did not correspond with the strategic objectives of the overall corporation. For example, if a corporate goal was to increase sales, the news release had to contribute to an initiative to increase sales. Also, if someone in IT came rushing to the communications department asking for a news release about a gadget that did nothing to improve sales or productivity, their request was rejected and no release was written. They were told to write a memo and place it on the bulletin board within their department.
Another policy was that there would never be a request for a news release for something that the communications department was kept in the dark about. When the executive leadership held confidential meetings about big, future initiatives, or potentially negative issues, a vice president from communications was brought into these confidential discussions from the beginning.
Both of these approaches worked because the communications team instituted a “Gatekeeper” policy. All requests for news releases had to go to the Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper and her team would evaluate whether the information contributed to the company’s strategic objectives.
There are two somewhat sarcastic lines I use when presented with an Emergency News Release request:
• Do you want fries and a large coke with that news release?
This references the concept that you are not in PR just to take orders like someone at a fast food restaurant.
• Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
This references the concept that in PR, your day, week, month and year should be planned out. Yes, you must be flexible on days when things are truly beyond anyone’s control, but man-made emergencies that result from poor planning or corporate secrecy are unacceptable.
You should do these things:
1) Set PR objectives annually that are in line with corporate objectives.
2) Appoint a gatekeeper and communicate to all what the PR department’s policies are regarding the gatekeeper system.
3) Push back and stick to your guns when people violate the gatekeeper system.
In short, be a welcome mat for strategically communicating and not a doormat for everyone to wipe their feet on.
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Public relations and communication professionals on a global basis are experts at creativity. One cute, creative holiday letter I received spoke volumes about how public relations people judge success and the urgent need for public relations people to rethink their approach.
The card was a creative spoof of the dreaded “holiday letter” that so many families send out. You’ve probably received one. It brags about the achievement of their daughter in dance class, the son’s success in soccer, the mom’s new workout routine, dad’s job promotion and of course, photos of the family vacations to exotic lands.
The accomplishments in this spoof letter included how many tweets the communications team made, how many Facebook posts, how many “Likes,” the number of videos posted and viewed, the number of publications created, and the number of news releases written.
This is typical of how many public relations people judge success; they judge it based on tasks completed.
What is wrong with this approach?
Ask: What Do I Want These Tasks to Accomplish?
Success should be measured not in the quantity of tasks completed, but by the impact those tasks have on or for your institution and your audience. If you Tweet 1,000 times, post 1,000 times on Facebook and blog 360 times in a year, but you have no followers and no readers then you also have no impact. If you are blessed with followers and readers, you must ask, “Have my communications caused my audiences to behave the way I want them to?” For example, did your customers buy more products? Did you guide your employees to be more productive? At a hospital, did you change the health habits of your community? At an electric company, did you help your customers be more energy efficient?
A new year is always a time to set goals. You should consider setting goals as strategic objectives that are accomplished by the tactical actions you take. Public relations actions without meaningful results equals busy work.
Hence, I would have loved to see that cute, holiday card spoof again next year. Next year I hope it tells me about the successes achieved in terms of end results rather than tasks completed.
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2014-01-08 10:24:072021-05-20 23:06:23How Public Relations People Judge Success: One Monumental Secret to Achieving More Success in the Coming Year
Five public relations veterans, pontificating and dropping F-bombs over cocktails recently at the PRSA conference, concluded the biggest problem in PR today is the lack of perseverance by those in the media relations, public relations and the communication professions.
Is this true or not true for you? Read on…
I’ll describe the group as “old salty dogs” who speak their mind and say hello to the truth and to hell with political correctness. Sitting there are a combined 150 plus years of PR experiences, including myself, three gals and another guy. The waiter has just brought the first round of drinks, so these comments have not been impaired by alcohol.
One gal said she was successful because every November, she went back to her boss and asked for budget money she had been denied earlier in the year, knowing there is always extra money in the pot. She says often she got what she asked for and sometimes more because she was “Smart enough to ask, when the rest of the dumb a**es sat with their fingers up their a**es and never asked. It was like robbing a fu*#ing bank and I walked out with all the money.”
“And if they didn’t have the money, I didn’t walk out of the office until I got a definitive answer that I’d get the money after the first of the fu*#ing year. I always finished the year strong and I hit the ground running hard on January 2nd,” she said.
“Most people today are afraid they’ll get fired if they push too hard,” I responded.
“They should be fu*#ing fired for not asking,” the other guy said. “That’s the fu*#ing problem with PR people; they’re afraid to get fu*#ing fired or quit their fu*#ing jobs. Your fu*#ing career never starts until you’re willing to quit or get fired.”
Do you ask for extra money in November? Read on…
Another veteran complained that PR people go into hibernation mode and near paralysis from Halloween to the first of March. “It’s like they surrender to the holidays until after New Years and then have difficulty regaining momentum after the first of the year. This isn’t a job that you start and stop,” she barked. “I call bull sh*t on this ‘seat at the table’ crap. You don’t deserve a fu*#ing seat if you don’t do your job 12 months out of the year.”
That lit up the discussion like throwing a match on gasoline. One gal blamed it on moms in PR not being able to comprehend that work is work and home is home. The guy said he thinks it is “the damn Gen X-Gen Ys” who aren’t as committed to their jobs and “go into lala land from Halloween to New Years.” One gal ranted about how hard she worked to establish herself in a male dominated workplace 34 years ago and how “PR people today are pissing on the trails that were blazed to make PR a credible part of corporate culture. You can’t just fu*#ing mentally shut down every winter.”
In his book Good to Great, author Jim Collins made a great point that we each have to “keep the fly-wheel turning” if we want to succeed in our careers. In other words, we have to persevere to succeed.
What do you think? Is perseverance dead in PR? Do you persevere or hibernate in the winter?
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{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}
The news media love to show the contrast between what was and what is. If the media are going to do this anyway, you should anticipate it and plan your public relations strategy, media training strategy or crisis communications strategy to take advantage of this.
Here is the how, why and what I did, so you can do the same thing.
Reporters, anchors and media unfamiliar with a particular location don’t know what to expect. Sometimes they have misconceptions, which lead to inaccurate reporting. Sometimes their lack of knowledge makes the audience think the media are biased. Sometimes the local audience thinks the media are stupid. Your effort to make the story easy to tell makes reporters smarter and more accurate.
Since my house on Lake Pontchartrain afforded me a front row seat to the storm, I saw an opportunity to tell an accurate story to and for the media, through my iReports. My experience as a storm chaser and former journalist, positioned me to know that conditions were going to change drastically during Hurricane Isaac. So, my first video iReport foretold that a calm Lake Pontchartrain would overflow its banks, flooding my neighborhood. My video including me showing the calm lake and the beautiful green grass of my yard near New Orleans, then telling how all that you see would be covered with water in 24 hours.
This prediction, as an iReport, got the attention of CNN producers. My strategy all along was to show my flooded neighborhood in my second iReport, which I did. This contrast further got the attention of CNN producers. This, in turn, triggered the phone call asking me to do live reports via Skype, G3 and my iPhone 4, all while I had no electricity and 7 feet of water surrounding my house.
These news reports further set the stage to keep telling the story as conditions deteriorated. Next came the report of the physical damage to my home, followed by stories of massive amounts of debris, followed by reports of dead animals, and the reports of live alligators.
The compare and contrast story should be a standard part of your story telling, whether you are filing an iReport, writing a news release, or communicating directly to the media during a crisis. Recognize what is… recognize what was… then compare the two in order to add perspective to your story and situation. This should be done by your corporate spokesperson, Public Information Officers (PIOs) at the state, county and city level, and anyone who must serve as the spokesperson during an unfolding news event.
In our next article, you’ll learn how to manage the expectations of your audience.
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What if you learned that your writing and communications skills are really are sub-par? Would you want someone to tell you? Here is an example– An IABC e-mail just reached my inbox. The lead sentence says, “I’m excited about…”
If you were a smoker and your doctor told you to stop or you would die of cancer, would you stop?
Public relations people constantly ask, “How do I get a seat at the table?” The short answer for now is to take advantage of the 
Your expert crisis communication and public relations feedback is invited on this crisis communications case study.
The reality is every corporation must justify every dollar it spends. This case study highlights three things:
