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Sunday, 28 April 2013
Biggest PR Blunders
The business world will always have loose cannons -- executives who stray from their crafted bullet points to say cringe-worthy things.
There are also decisions made at the top that no public relations expert would ever condone. When AIG was spared from extinction with an $85 billion federal bailout from the government, its clueless leadership didn't think twice about spending nearly a half-million dollars on a luxurious spa retreat and golf outing for executives.
Executives for the "big three" automakers made a political miscalculation by flying into Washington, D.C., hat in hand for a bailout -- on corporate jets. Chastened by the response, they later overdid things by driving themselves in hybrid cars.
In looking at some of the biggest PR miscues in recent years, we discounted thick-headed blunders such as these. No matter how good internal or external PR departments are, they can be no match for a CEO gone rogue.
Instead, we focused on situations where a company's public response amid controversy was either too little, too late or dishonest and it was the spinmeisters themselves making the unforced errors. The following are 10 examples of when spin control spun out of control and a PR strategy only made matters worse:
Detroit (expletive) City
So, you work for a firm that gets hired by Chrysler to help build its social media presence.
If you read the newspapers, you may realize that the company had battled to stay alive, resorting to a government bailout to stay afloat. You should also be aware that the government loan riled up conservatives, despite supporters maintaining it was needed to save U.S. jobs, particularly in Michigan.
If you know anything about your big client, you might also know Chrysler had unveiled a series of dramatic commercials, some featuring rapper and Detroit native Eminem, to show the world that the hardworking character of that city's workforce should be a source of American Pride and optimism.
You should have known all that. Instead, an employee of New Media Strategies, a Virginia-based marketing firm retained by Chrysler, went on the company's Twitter feed, @ChryslerAutos, and posted: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive."
(In the tweet -- accidentally posted to the company site instead of a personal feed -- the expletive we censored was actually spelled out.)
Accidents happen and, really, the tweet was not that bad. But in the world of social media, never the company and personal should meet. Given the company's Detroit Pride message, the posting was even more of a wreck.
Fortunately, Chrysler shook aside the flurry of unwanted media attention.
The firm, however, lost the gig.
As for the staffer who made the mistake, last month he started work on the social media initiatives of another company -- this time Ford .
A&F offends Asians; says critics think dirty thoughts
It is hard to know whether the brain trust at Abercrombie & Fitch is inept or brilliant.
The latter, and a calculated move to maximize publicity, might be the only explanation for some of the hard-to-believe ways the company has responded to controversy.
Back in 2002, the retailer was under fire for T-shirts seen as reinforcing negative Asian-American stereotypes. One shirt shows cartoon Chinese laundry worker caricatures -- complete with slanted eyes and conical "rice-paddy" hats -- with the slogan "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White."
Amid charges of racism and nationwide protests and boycotts, the company finally offered an apology -- sort of.
"We're very, very, very sorry," a spokesman told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's never been our intention to offend anyone."
Then came the head-scratching coda: "We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt."
The response to a later controversy -- selling thong underwear for children adorned with images of cherries and the words "kiss me" and "wink, wink" -- had the same bizarre mix of contrition and glibness.
The official statements to the media included such gems as "It's not appropriate for a 7-year-old, but it is appropriate for a 10-year-old" and "The underwear for young girls was created with the intent to be lighthearted and cute; any misrepresentation of that is purely in the eye of the beholder."
Laying out its case for what age it is OK to start sexualizing young girls was scurrilous enough, but the kicker accusing critics of harboring their own dirty thoughts broke just about every PR and crisis control rule ever written.
Toyota Steers into the skid
Remember the Disney movies featuring Herbie, a sentient Volkswagen Beetle that could start, stop and steer all on his own?
In real life, it is not so much fun when your car seems to have a mind of its own.
Toyota had the misfortune of balancing a growing PR crisis with the legal imperative to cover its bumper. The two didn't mix well.
As Toyota would learn, silence doesn't work. Nor does blaming the motor skills of drivers when the sheer volume of incidents, some of them fatal, seem to indicate that's not the case.
Are we really, even now, 100% sure what was happening with the sudden acceleration? Although the problem seems solved, many questions remain.
What we do know is that Toyota's public relations response was a textbook case in what not to do when they dodged and denied the problem for months before issuing an apology and potential mechanical fix.
Brian Dobson, a crisis PR expert, says Toyota was "flat-footed" and slow to respond.
"If brand managers don't engage the media from Day One, then crisis reports get driven by critics, competitors and pundits who dominate news with negative comments," he said last year in comments about the issue. "Toyota lost ground trying to minimize its troubles as competitors pounced to capitalize."
Facebook vs. Google
Facebook seems to always be under attack by one disgruntled party or another, usually about its ever-changing, sneaky approach to a privacy policy. Bottom line: A company that give you a service for free in exchange for mining data is never going to be too keen on shielding your data from prying eyes.
It does seem Facebook suffers a disproportionate share of scorn regarding this topic than the bigger potential threat to personal privacy that is Google .
Still, Facebook crossed a line when PR firm Burson-Marsteller was tasked with trying to spread privacy-related vitriol about Google and plant news stories and blogs that prodded writers to make the case for them, even offering to help write these pieces. The targets ranged from influential blogs to USA Today.
In one of the emails leaked by an unwilling blogger, Google is described as having "a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America's Internet users."
PR firms always try to influence stories -- it's what they are paid for. What made these efforts such a failure is that the firm refused to reveal it was working for Facebook. Here's the other miscalculation: The public often has a finely tuned hypocrisy detector. A suitable defense for Facebook when its lackadaisical approach to user privacy is denounced really needed to be more than "They started it!"
Antennagate
Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. We would be doing Apple's late genius a disservice, however, if we didn't include one of the most famous examples of his sometimes caustic management style.
When a design flaw was uncovered in the 2010 iPhone 4 -- touching certain areas killed reception -- Apple initially avoided the topic with a companywide cone of silence. Jobs didn't help matters by chastising users, in one of his many off-the-cuff email answers, that they were holding it wrong.
Ignore the problem. Blame the customer. Refuse to apologize. Those approaches never work.
Cooler PR heads eventually prevailed, and Apple instead spent $175 million sending cases to owners to resolve the issue. (Even now there may be questions about the problem. AntennaSys, an antenna design and consulting firm, did tests and told PC World that "all the hype has been just hype ... It's not any more sensitive to hand position that was the first-generation iPhone -- and probably many other phones on the market.")
LeBron James' bad decision
LeBron James has a lot to carry on his broad shoulders. There is the six-year, $110 million investment the owners of the Miami Heat have in him. There are basketball fans to appease. And there are big-name sponsors who have shelled out big bucks to associate themselves with the top NBA star, among them McDonald's and Nike .
For most of his career, James was one of the few young phenoms who seemed to pan out, entering the league straight from high school. He was young, likable and talented -- a native of Cleveland who played for the hometown team.
But James' decision to pursue free agency left Ohio residents hanging. It was very likely their hometown hero would pack his bags.
While there would surely be a fair share of Cavaliers fans who would never forgive their prodigal son, James certainly had the opportunity to exit gracefully and with at least muted good wishes. Many of his critics, deep down, would be thankful for the resurrection of the team he ruled and admit they too would switch employers for a few million more dollars a year.
But James let his consultants and handlers pitch him on making the whole contract process a spectacle. Notable was a disastrous, hourlong, ESPN special called The Decision, in which cities vied for his services as though they were reality show contestants.
In trying to create drama and build upon James' reputation, all they did was ruin it. James is now one of the more reviled and mocked figures in sports (aside from another classic PR bungler, Tiger Woods).
Alaska Airlines and the diaper incident
The inevitable bit of bad service on an airline (or a grumpy passenger) make for easy headlines. Southwest Airlines , for example, had to deal with the weighty fallout when they angered filmmaker Kevin Smith by saying he was too fat to fly with a one-seat ticket.
All a company's PR department can do in a situation such as that is straddle the line between apologizing and defending their actions. With any luck, short memories will prevail and everyone moves onto a new villain. (Thankfully, airlines always have the TSA to steal away the attention.)
Alaska Airlines had every opportunity to douse a publicity fire when a family was stuck in Las Vegas because the man's wife, tending to a baby's diaper needs, was kept from boarding the plane because, in the alleged words of an employee, she was "one minute late."
The airline certainly sounds heartless. To be fair, however, time is of the essence when boarding a plane. With all due sympathy for a mom having to deal with a child, once the plane door closes, security measures dictate that no one boards. People are stuck on standby every day because a connecting flight was a few minutes off schedule.
But Hell hath no fury like a "mommy blogger" scorned, and an online attack on the airline's handling of the incident titled "Alaska Airlines Hates Families" got widespread exposure and was reported in mainstream media.
In its annual rundown of the worst PR blunders, the San Francisco-based Fineman PR explained what the airline did wrong.
"While Alaska Airlines social media manager Elliott Pesut did respond promptly in the blog's comment section, he did so without compassion, citing rigid policy and offering a future travel voucher for less than half the family's losses," the PR firm wrote.
The lesson learned: when you are under the harsh light of a full-on media attack, swallow some pride and a few bucks by going beyond normal procedures to make things right. A little contrition can go a long way.
FEMA's fake reporters
What if they threw a press conference and nobody came?
That was the scenario when FEMA scheduled a 2007 press conference to update media on efforts to combat raging wildfires in California.
To reporters, press conferences are a necessary evil in covering big stories for which a public official has to efficiently answer questions or detail talking points, and they know they must separate spin from facts. But delivering the trut is harder when a press conference is missing one very important element -- the press.
Instead of letting reporters grill executives, FEMA filled the room with staffers and agency officials. It was a make-believe press conference!
In a memo to all FEMA employees Oct. 29, 2007, administrator R. David Paulison said that "without intending to deceive," the FEMA external affairs staff "nevertheless lost perspective of the core imperative that they preserve the credibility of our agency." He described the fake press event as among "a series of serious mistakes and extremely poor decisions."
Among the issues Paulison cited is that media who did get to take part in the conference off-site were restricted to a "listen only" capability, which kept them from stepping on the toes of the fake reporters who did get to ask questions.
An earlier statement from FEMA's vice admiral, Harvey Johnson, missed the point: "The real story -- how well the response and recovery elements are working in this disaster -- should not be lost because of how we tried to meet the needs of the media in distributing facts."
BP gets slick
Enough has been written about how badly BP botched its response to last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, including former CEO Tony Hayward declaring he wanted his "life back" and dashing off to a yacht race while an entire region's economy and environment was trashed.
Hayward's case of foot-in-mouth disease obscured some other terrible PR moves by the company.
There are two basic flavors of spin control -- deny, deny, deny; or 'fess up and take your lumps.
BP basically took the former route, trying to pass the buck to other contractors and underplaying damage they had caused.
It hurt, rather than helped, a battered reputation.
There were upbeat Twitter posts by the company offering unrealistic updates and estimates for the progress of the cleanup (in one, beaches were prematurely described as "beautiful") and one making the jaw-dropping claim that New Orleans' hotels "ended 2010 on high note," a bit of allegedly good news credited to $5 million ponied up by the multibillion-dollar company that ruined the area's tourism in the first place. Hotel business in other cities throughout the affected gulf were not mentioned.
From wildlife inventories to how safe seafood was to eat, BP never gave up a chance to sugarcoat the spill, understate the damage and exaggerate the restoration effort. It has also been pointed out that BP's claim it would "restore the shoreline to its original state," made by one-time mouthpiece Hayward, neglected to mention that the company really didn't think that was even possible.
A federally mandated spill plan assured that with any PR messaging "no statement shall be made containing any of the following: promises that property, ecology or anything else will be restored to normal."
Amazon redefines "kid-friendly"
We can certainly appreciate Amazon's policy for sticking by the books it sells, no matter how controversial they may be. The discourse sparked by writers would be silenced if a bookstore in any form caved to boycott threats by those who want to squash views they don't agree with. For a bookseller to give in to special interest groups demanding censorship could be as bad as a book burning.
But Amazon dropped the ball by sticking to this philosophy when a book defending, promoting and praising pedophilia grew into a massive blog-fueled boycott last holiday season.
Amazon, rather than engage these critics, stuck tersely by its policy.
What's worse is that the company did eventually decide to remove the book, meaning its initial defense had no real value to start with. It should also be pointed out that Amazon, contrary to the image it presented, does restrict its offerings and has a ban on materials deemed pornographic.
By picking a fight over a policy it was already willing to bend, the company did little more than fuel protests and drag its otherwise good name into the mud.
There are also decisions made at the top that no public relations expert would ever condone. When AIG was spared from extinction with an $85 billion federal bailout from the government, its clueless leadership didn't think twice about spending nearly a half-million dollars on a luxurious spa retreat and golf outing for executives.
Executives for the "big three" automakers made a political miscalculation by flying into Washington, D.C., hat in hand for a bailout -- on corporate jets. Chastened by the response, they later overdid things by driving themselves in hybrid cars.
In looking at some of the biggest PR miscues in recent years, we discounted thick-headed blunders such as these. No matter how good internal or external PR departments are, they can be no match for a CEO gone rogue.
Instead, we focused on situations where a company's public response amid controversy was either too little, too late or dishonest and it was the spinmeisters themselves making the unforced errors. The following are 10 examples of when spin control spun out of control and a PR strategy only made matters worse:
Detroit (expletive) City
So, you work for a firm that gets hired by Chrysler to help build its social media presence.
If you read the newspapers, you may realize that the company had battled to stay alive, resorting to a government bailout to stay afloat. You should also be aware that the government loan riled up conservatives, despite supporters maintaining it was needed to save U.S. jobs, particularly in Michigan.
If you know anything about your big client, you might also know Chrysler had unveiled a series of dramatic commercials, some featuring rapper and Detroit native Eminem, to show the world that the hardworking character of that city's workforce should be a source of American Pride and optimism.
You should have known all that. Instead, an employee of New Media Strategies, a Virginia-based marketing firm retained by Chrysler, went on the company's Twitter feed, @ChryslerAutos, and posted: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive."
(In the tweet -- accidentally posted to the company site instead of a personal feed -- the expletive we censored was actually spelled out.)
Accidents happen and, really, the tweet was not that bad. But in the world of social media, never the company and personal should meet. Given the company's Detroit Pride message, the posting was even more of a wreck.
Fortunately, Chrysler shook aside the flurry of unwanted media attention.
The firm, however, lost the gig.
As for the staffer who made the mistake, last month he started work on the social media initiatives of another company -- this time Ford .
A&F offends Asians; says critics think dirty thoughts
It is hard to know whether the brain trust at Abercrombie & Fitch is inept or brilliant.
The latter, and a calculated move to maximize publicity, might be the only explanation for some of the hard-to-believe ways the company has responded to controversy.
Back in 2002, the retailer was under fire for T-shirts seen as reinforcing negative Asian-American stereotypes. One shirt shows cartoon Chinese laundry worker caricatures -- complete with slanted eyes and conical "rice-paddy" hats -- with the slogan "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White."
Amid charges of racism and nationwide protests and boycotts, the company finally offered an apology -- sort of.
"We're very, very, very sorry," a spokesman told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's never been our intention to offend anyone."
Then came the head-scratching coda: "We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt."
The response to a later controversy -- selling thong underwear for children adorned with images of cherries and the words "kiss me" and "wink, wink" -- had the same bizarre mix of contrition and glibness.
The official statements to the media included such gems as "It's not appropriate for a 7-year-old, but it is appropriate for a 10-year-old" and "The underwear for young girls was created with the intent to be lighthearted and cute; any misrepresentation of that is purely in the eye of the beholder."
Laying out its case for what age it is OK to start sexualizing young girls was scurrilous enough, but the kicker accusing critics of harboring their own dirty thoughts broke just about every PR and crisis control rule ever written.
Toyota Steers into the skid
Remember the Disney movies featuring Herbie, a sentient Volkswagen Beetle that could start, stop and steer all on his own?
In real life, it is not so much fun when your car seems to have a mind of its own.
Toyota had the misfortune of balancing a growing PR crisis with the legal imperative to cover its bumper. The two didn't mix well.
As Toyota would learn, silence doesn't work. Nor does blaming the motor skills of drivers when the sheer volume of incidents, some of them fatal, seem to indicate that's not the case.
Are we really, even now, 100% sure what was happening with the sudden acceleration? Although the problem seems solved, many questions remain.
What we do know is that Toyota's public relations response was a textbook case in what not to do when they dodged and denied the problem for months before issuing an apology and potential mechanical fix.
Brian Dobson, a crisis PR expert, says Toyota was "flat-footed" and slow to respond.
"If brand managers don't engage the media from Day One, then crisis reports get driven by critics, competitors and pundits who dominate news with negative comments," he said last year in comments about the issue. "Toyota lost ground trying to minimize its troubles as competitors pounced to capitalize."
Facebook vs. Google
Facebook seems to always be under attack by one disgruntled party or another, usually about its ever-changing, sneaky approach to a privacy policy. Bottom line: A company that give you a service for free in exchange for mining data is never going to be too keen on shielding your data from prying eyes.
It does seem Facebook suffers a disproportionate share of scorn regarding this topic than the bigger potential threat to personal privacy that is Google .
Still, Facebook crossed a line when PR firm Burson-Marsteller was tasked with trying to spread privacy-related vitriol about Google and plant news stories and blogs that prodded writers to make the case for them, even offering to help write these pieces. The targets ranged from influential blogs to USA Today.
In one of the emails leaked by an unwilling blogger, Google is described as having "a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America's Internet users."
PR firms always try to influence stories -- it's what they are paid for. What made these efforts such a failure is that the firm refused to reveal it was working for Facebook. Here's the other miscalculation: The public often has a finely tuned hypocrisy detector. A suitable defense for Facebook when its lackadaisical approach to user privacy is denounced really needed to be more than "They started it!"
Antennagate
Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. We would be doing Apple's late genius a disservice, however, if we didn't include one of the most famous examples of his sometimes caustic management style.
When a design flaw was uncovered in the 2010 iPhone 4 -- touching certain areas killed reception -- Apple initially avoided the topic with a companywide cone of silence. Jobs didn't help matters by chastising users, in one of his many off-the-cuff email answers, that they were holding it wrong.
Ignore the problem. Blame the customer. Refuse to apologize. Those approaches never work.
Cooler PR heads eventually prevailed, and Apple instead spent $175 million sending cases to owners to resolve the issue. (Even now there may be questions about the problem. AntennaSys, an antenna design and consulting firm, did tests and told PC World that "all the hype has been just hype ... It's not any more sensitive to hand position that was the first-generation iPhone -- and probably many other phones on the market.")
LeBron James' bad decision
LeBron James has a lot to carry on his broad shoulders. There is the six-year, $110 million investment the owners of the Miami Heat have in him. There are basketball fans to appease. And there are big-name sponsors who have shelled out big bucks to associate themselves with the top NBA star, among them McDonald's and Nike .
For most of his career, James was one of the few young phenoms who seemed to pan out, entering the league straight from high school. He was young, likable and talented -- a native of Cleveland who played for the hometown team.
But James' decision to pursue free agency left Ohio residents hanging. It was very likely their hometown hero would pack his bags.
While there would surely be a fair share of Cavaliers fans who would never forgive their prodigal son, James certainly had the opportunity to exit gracefully and with at least muted good wishes. Many of his critics, deep down, would be thankful for the resurrection of the team he ruled and admit they too would switch employers for a few million more dollars a year.
But James let his consultants and handlers pitch him on making the whole contract process a spectacle. Notable was a disastrous, hourlong, ESPN special called The Decision, in which cities vied for his services as though they were reality show contestants.
In trying to create drama and build upon James' reputation, all they did was ruin it. James is now one of the more reviled and mocked figures in sports (aside from another classic PR bungler, Tiger Woods).
Alaska Airlines and the diaper incident
The inevitable bit of bad service on an airline (or a grumpy passenger) make for easy headlines. Southwest Airlines , for example, had to deal with the weighty fallout when they angered filmmaker Kevin Smith by saying he was too fat to fly with a one-seat ticket.
All a company's PR department can do in a situation such as that is straddle the line between apologizing and defending their actions. With any luck, short memories will prevail and everyone moves onto a new villain. (Thankfully, airlines always have the TSA to steal away the attention.)
Alaska Airlines had every opportunity to douse a publicity fire when a family was stuck in Las Vegas because the man's wife, tending to a baby's diaper needs, was kept from boarding the plane because, in the alleged words of an employee, she was "one minute late."
The airline certainly sounds heartless. To be fair, however, time is of the essence when boarding a plane. With all due sympathy for a mom having to deal with a child, once the plane door closes, security measures dictate that no one boards. People are stuck on standby every day because a connecting flight was a few minutes off schedule.
But Hell hath no fury like a "mommy blogger" scorned, and an online attack on the airline's handling of the incident titled "Alaska Airlines Hates Families" got widespread exposure and was reported in mainstream media.
In its annual rundown of the worst PR blunders, the San Francisco-based Fineman PR explained what the airline did wrong.
"While Alaska Airlines social media manager Elliott Pesut did respond promptly in the blog's comment section, he did so without compassion, citing rigid policy and offering a future travel voucher for less than half the family's losses," the PR firm wrote.
The lesson learned: when you are under the harsh light of a full-on media attack, swallow some pride and a few bucks by going beyond normal procedures to make things right. A little contrition can go a long way.
FEMA's fake reporters
What if they threw a press conference and nobody came?
That was the scenario when FEMA scheduled a 2007 press conference to update media on efforts to combat raging wildfires in California.
To reporters, press conferences are a necessary evil in covering big stories for which a public official has to efficiently answer questions or detail talking points, and they know they must separate spin from facts. But delivering the trut is harder when a press conference is missing one very important element -- the press.
Instead of letting reporters grill executives, FEMA filled the room with staffers and agency officials. It was a make-believe press conference!
In a memo to all FEMA employees Oct. 29, 2007, administrator R. David Paulison said that "without intending to deceive," the FEMA external affairs staff "nevertheless lost perspective of the core imperative that they preserve the credibility of our agency." He described the fake press event as among "a series of serious mistakes and extremely poor decisions."
Among the issues Paulison cited is that media who did get to take part in the conference off-site were restricted to a "listen only" capability, which kept them from stepping on the toes of the fake reporters who did get to ask questions.
An earlier statement from FEMA's vice admiral, Harvey Johnson, missed the point: "The real story -- how well the response and recovery elements are working in this disaster -- should not be lost because of how we tried to meet the needs of the media in distributing facts."
BP gets slick
Enough has been written about how badly BP botched its response to last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, including former CEO Tony Hayward declaring he wanted his "life back" and dashing off to a yacht race while an entire region's economy and environment was trashed.
Hayward's case of foot-in-mouth disease obscured some other terrible PR moves by the company.
There are two basic flavors of spin control -- deny, deny, deny; or 'fess up and take your lumps.
BP basically took the former route, trying to pass the buck to other contractors and underplaying damage they had caused.
It hurt, rather than helped, a battered reputation.
There were upbeat Twitter posts by the company offering unrealistic updates and estimates for the progress of the cleanup (in one, beaches were prematurely described as "beautiful") and one making the jaw-dropping claim that New Orleans' hotels "ended 2010 on high note," a bit of allegedly good news credited to $5 million ponied up by the multibillion-dollar company that ruined the area's tourism in the first place. Hotel business in other cities throughout the affected gulf were not mentioned.
From wildlife inventories to how safe seafood was to eat, BP never gave up a chance to sugarcoat the spill, understate the damage and exaggerate the restoration effort. It has also been pointed out that BP's claim it would "restore the shoreline to its original state," made by one-time mouthpiece Hayward, neglected to mention that the company really didn't think that was even possible.
A federally mandated spill plan assured that with any PR messaging "no statement shall be made containing any of the following: promises that property, ecology or anything else will be restored to normal."
Amazon redefines "kid-friendly"
We can certainly appreciate Amazon's policy for sticking by the books it sells, no matter how controversial they may be. The discourse sparked by writers would be silenced if a bookstore in any form caved to boycott threats by those who want to squash views they don't agree with. For a bookseller to give in to special interest groups demanding censorship could be as bad as a book burning.
But Amazon dropped the ball by sticking to this philosophy when a book defending, promoting and praising pedophilia grew into a massive blog-fueled boycott last holiday season.
Amazon, rather than engage these critics, stuck tersely by its policy.
What's worse is that the company did eventually decide to remove the book, meaning its initial defense had no real value to start with. It should also be pointed out that Amazon, contrary to the image it presented, does restrict its offerings and has a ban on materials deemed pornographic.
By picking a fight over a policy it was already willing to bend, the company did little more than fuel protests and drag its otherwise good name into the mud.
Biggest PR Blunders
The business world will always have loose cannons -- executives who stray from their crafted bullet points to say cringe-worthy things.
There are also decisions made at the top that no public relations expert would ever condone. When AIG was spared from extinction with an $85 billion federal bailout from the government, its clueless leadership didn't think twice about spending nearly a half-million dollars on a luxurious spa retreat and golf outing for executives.
Executives for the "big three" automakers made a political miscalculation by flying into Washington, D.C., hat in hand for a bailout -- on corporate jets. Chastened by the response, they later overdid things by driving themselves in hybrid cars.
In looking at some of the biggest PR miscues in recent years, we discounted thick-headed blunders such as these. No matter how good internal or external PR departments are, they can be no match for a CEO gone rogue.
Instead, we focused on situations where a company's public response amid controversy was either too little, too late or dishonest and it was the spinmeisters themselves making the unforced errors. The following are 10 examples of when spin control spun out of control and a PR strategy only made matters worse:
Detroit (expletive) City
So, you work for a firm that gets hired by Chrysler to help build its social media presence.
If you read the newspapers, you may realize that the company had battled to stay alive, resorting to a government bailout to stay afloat. You should also be aware that the government loan riled up conservatives, despite supporters maintaining it was needed to save U.S. jobs, particularly in Michigan.
If you know anything about your big client, you might also know Chrysler had unveiled a series of dramatic commercials, some featuring rapper and Detroit native Eminem, to show the world that the hardworking character of that city's workforce should be a source of American Pride and optimism.
You should have known all that. Instead, an employee of New Media Strategies, a Virginia-based marketing firm retained by Chrysler, went on the company's Twitter feed, @ChryslerAutos, and posted: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive."
(In the tweet -- accidentally posted to the company site instead of a personal feed -- the expletive we censored was actually spelled out.)
Accidents happen and, really, the tweet was not that bad. But in the world of social media, never the company and personal should meet. Given the company's Detroit Pride message, the posting was even more of a wreck.
Fortunately, Chrysler shook aside the flurry of unwanted media attention.
The firm, however, lost the gig.
As for the staffer who made the mistake, last month he started work on the social media initiatives of another company -- this time Ford .
A&F offends Asians; says critics think dirty thoughts
It is hard to know whether the brain trust at Abercrombie & Fitch is inept or brilliant.
The latter, and a calculated move to maximize publicity, might be the only explanation for some of the hard-to-believe ways the company has responded to controversy.
Back in 2002, the retailer was under fire for T-shirts seen as reinforcing negative Asian-American stereotypes. One shirt shows cartoon Chinese laundry worker caricatures -- complete with slanted eyes and conical "rice-paddy" hats -- with the slogan "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White."
Amid charges of racism and nationwide protests and boycotts, the company finally offered an apology -- sort of.
"We're very, very, very sorry," a spokesman told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's never been our intention to offend anyone."
Then came the head-scratching coda: "We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt."
The response to a later controversy -- selling thong underwear for children adorned with images of cherries and the words "kiss me" and "wink, wink" -- had the same bizarre mix of contrition and glibness.
The official statements to the media included such gems as "It's not appropriate for a 7-year-old, but it is appropriate for a 10-year-old" and "The underwear for young girls was created with the intent to be lighthearted and cute; any misrepresentation of that is purely in the eye of the beholder."
Laying out its case for what age it is OK to start sexualizing young girls was scurrilous enough, but the kicker accusing critics of harboring their own dirty thoughts broke just about every PR and crisis control rule ever written.
Toyota Steers into the skid
Remember the Disney movies featuring Herbie, a sentient Volkswagen Beetle that could start, stop and steer all on his own?
In real life, it is not so much fun when your car seems to have a mind of its own.
Toyota had the misfortune of balancing a growing PR crisis with the legal imperative to cover its bumper. The two didn't mix well.
As Toyota would learn, silence doesn't work. Nor does blaming the motor skills of drivers when the sheer volume of incidents, some of them fatal, seem to indicate that's not the case.
Are we really, even now, 100% sure what was happening with the sudden acceleration? Although the problem seems solved, many questions remain.
What we do know is that Toyota's public relations response was a textbook case in what not to do when they dodged and denied the problem for months before issuing an apology and potential mechanical fix.
Brian Dobson, a crisis PR expert, says Toyota was "flat-footed" and slow to respond.
"If brand managers don't engage the media from Day One, then crisis reports get driven by critics, competitors and pundits who dominate news with negative comments," he said last year in comments about the issue. "Toyota lost ground trying to minimize its troubles as competitors pounced to capitalize."
Facebook vs. Google
Facebook seems to always be under attack by one disgruntled party or another, usually about its ever-changing, sneaky approach to a privacy policy. Bottom line: A company that give you a service for free in exchange for mining data is never going to be too keen on shielding your data from prying eyes.
It does seem Facebook suffers a disproportionate share of scorn regarding this topic than the bigger potential threat to personal privacy that is Google .
Still, Facebook crossed a line when PR firm Burson-Marsteller was tasked with trying to spread privacy-related vitriol about Google and plant news stories and blogs that prodded writers to make the case for them, even offering to help write these pieces. The targets ranged from influential blogs to USA Today.
In one of the emails leaked by an unwilling blogger, Google is described as having "a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America's Internet users."
PR firms always try to influence stories -- it's what they are paid for. What made these efforts such a failure is that the firm refused to reveal it was working for Facebook. Here's the other miscalculation: The public often has a finely tuned hypocrisy detector. A suitable defense for Facebook when its lackadaisical approach to user privacy is denounced really needed to be more than "They started it!"
Antennagate
Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. We would be doing Apple's late genius a disservice, however, if we didn't include one of the most famous examples of his sometimes caustic management style.
When a design flaw was uncovered in the 2010 iPhone 4 -- touching certain areas killed reception -- Apple initially avoided the topic with a companywide cone of silence. Jobs didn't help matters by chastising users, in one of his many off-the-cuff email answers, that they were holding it wrong.
Ignore the problem. Blame the customer. Refuse to apologize. Those approaches never work.
Cooler PR heads eventually prevailed, and Apple instead spent $175 million sending cases to owners to resolve the issue. (Even now there may be questions about the problem. AntennaSys, an antenna design and consulting firm, did tests and told PC World that "all the hype has been just hype ... It's not any more sensitive to hand position that was the first-generation iPhone -- and probably many other phones on the market.")
LeBron James' bad decision
LeBron James has a lot to carry on his broad shoulders. There is the six-year, $110 million investment the owners of the Miami Heat have in him. There are basketball fans to appease. And there are big-name sponsors who have shelled out big bucks to associate themselves with the top NBA star, among them McDonald's and Nike .
For most of his career, James was one of the few young phenoms who seemed to pan out, entering the league straight from high school. He was young, likable and talented -- a native of Cleveland who played for the hometown team.
But James' decision to pursue free agency left Ohio residents hanging. It was very likely their hometown hero would pack his bags.
While there would surely be a fair share of Cavaliers fans who would never forgive their prodigal son, James certainly had the opportunity to exit gracefully and with at least muted good wishes. Many of his critics, deep down, would be thankful for the resurrection of the team he ruled and admit they too would switch employers for a few million more dollars a year.
But James let his consultants and handlers pitch him on making the whole contract process a spectacle. Notable was a disastrous, hourlong, ESPN special called The Decision, in which cities vied for his services as though they were reality show contestants.
In trying to create drama and build upon James' reputation, all they did was ruin it. James is now one of the more reviled and mocked figures in sports (aside from another classic PR bungler, Tiger Woods).
Alaska Airlines and the diaper incident
The inevitable bit of bad service on an airline (or a grumpy passenger) make for easy headlines. Southwest Airlines , for example, had to deal with the weighty fallout when they angered filmmaker Kevin Smith by saying he was too fat to fly with a one-seat ticket.
All a company's PR department can do in a situation such as that is straddle the line between apologizing and defending their actions. With any luck, short memories will prevail and everyone moves onto a new villain. (Thankfully, airlines always have the TSA to steal away the attention.)
Alaska Airlines had every opportunity to douse a publicity fire when a family was stuck in Las Vegas because the man's wife, tending to a baby's diaper needs, was kept from boarding the plane because, in the alleged words of an employee, she was "one minute late."
The airline certainly sounds heartless. To be fair, however, time is of the essence when boarding a plane. With all due sympathy for a mom having to deal with a child, once the plane door closes, security measures dictate that no one boards. People are stuck on standby every day because a connecting flight was a few minutes off schedule.
But Hell hath no fury like a "mommy blogger" scorned, and an online attack on the airline's handling of the incident titled "Alaska Airlines Hates Families" got widespread exposure and was reported in mainstream media.
In its annual rundown of the worst PR blunders, the San Francisco-based Fineman PR explained what the airline did wrong.
"While Alaska Airlines social media manager Elliott Pesut did respond promptly in the blog's comment section, he did so without compassion, citing rigid policy and offering a future travel voucher for less than half the family's losses," the PR firm wrote.
The lesson learned: when you are under the harsh light of a full-on media attack, swallow some pride and a few bucks by going beyond normal procedures to make things right. A little contrition can go a long way.
FEMA's fake reporters
What if they threw a press conference and nobody came?
That was the scenario when FEMA scheduled a 2007 press conference to update media on efforts to combat raging wildfires in California.
To reporters, press conferences are a necessary evil in covering big stories for which a public official has to efficiently answer questions or detail talking points, and they know they must separate spin from facts. But delivering the trut is harder when a press conference is missing one very important element -- the press.
Instead of letting reporters grill executives, FEMA filled the room with staffers and agency officials. It was a make-believe press conference!
In a memo to all FEMA employees Oct. 29, 2007, administrator R. David Paulison said that "without intending to deceive," the FEMA external affairs staff "nevertheless lost perspective of the core imperative that they preserve the credibility of our agency." He described the fake press event as among "a series of serious mistakes and extremely poor decisions."
Among the issues Paulison cited is that media who did get to take part in the conference off-site were restricted to a "listen only" capability, which kept them from stepping on the toes of the fake reporters who did get to ask questions.
An earlier statement from FEMA's vice admiral, Harvey Johnson, missed the point: "The real story -- how well the response and recovery elements are working in this disaster -- should not be lost because of how we tried to meet the needs of the media in distributing facts."
BP gets slick
Enough has been written about how badly BP botched its response to last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, including former CEO Tony Hayward declaring he wanted his "life back" and dashing off to a yacht race while an entire region's economy and environment was trashed.
Hayward's case of foot-in-mouth disease obscured some other terrible PR moves by the company.
There are two basic flavors of spin control -- deny, deny, deny; or 'fess up and take your lumps.
BP basically took the former route, trying to pass the buck to other contractors and underplaying damage they had caused.
It hurt, rather than helped, a battered reputation.
There were upbeat Twitter posts by the company offering unrealistic updates and estimates for the progress of the cleanup (in one, beaches were prematurely described as "beautiful") and one making the jaw-dropping claim that New Orleans' hotels "ended 2010 on high note," a bit of allegedly good news credited to $5 million ponied up by the multibillion-dollar company that ruined the area's tourism in the first place. Hotel business in other cities throughout the affected gulf were not mentioned.
From wildlife inventories to how safe seafood was to eat, BP never gave up a chance to sugarcoat the spill, understate the damage and exaggerate the restoration effort. It has also been pointed out that BP's claim it would "restore the shoreline to its original state," made by one-time mouthpiece Hayward, neglected to mention that the company really didn't think that was even possible.
A federally mandated spill plan assured that with any PR messaging "no statement shall be made containing any of the following: promises that property, ecology or anything else will be restored to normal."
Amazon redefines "kid-friendly"
We can certainly appreciate Amazon's policy for sticking by the books it sells, no matter how controversial they may be. The discourse sparked by writers would be silenced if a bookstore in any form caved to boycott threats by those who want to squash views they don't agree with. For a bookseller to give in to special interest groups demanding censorship could be as bad as a book burning.
But Amazon dropped the ball by sticking to this philosophy when a book defending, promoting and praising pedophilia grew into a massive blog-fueled boycott last holiday season.
Amazon, rather than engage these critics, stuck tersely by its policy.
What's worse is that the company did eventually decide to remove the book, meaning its initial defense had no real value to start with. It should also be pointed out that Amazon, contrary to the image it presented, does restrict its offerings and has a ban on materials deemed pornographic.
By picking a fight over a policy it was already willing to bend, the company did little more than fuel protests and drag its otherwise good name into the mud.
There are also decisions made at the top that no public relations expert would ever condone. When AIG was spared from extinction with an $85 billion federal bailout from the government, its clueless leadership didn't think twice about spending nearly a half-million dollars on a luxurious spa retreat and golf outing for executives.
Executives for the "big three" automakers made a political miscalculation by flying into Washington, D.C., hat in hand for a bailout -- on corporate jets. Chastened by the response, they later overdid things by driving themselves in hybrid cars.
In looking at some of the biggest PR miscues in recent years, we discounted thick-headed blunders such as these. No matter how good internal or external PR departments are, they can be no match for a CEO gone rogue.
Instead, we focused on situations where a company's public response amid controversy was either too little, too late or dishonest and it was the spinmeisters themselves making the unforced errors. The following are 10 examples of when spin control spun out of control and a PR strategy only made matters worse:
Detroit (expletive) City
So, you work for a firm that gets hired by Chrysler to help build its social media presence.
If you read the newspapers, you may realize that the company had battled to stay alive, resorting to a government bailout to stay afloat. You should also be aware that the government loan riled up conservatives, despite supporters maintaining it was needed to save U.S. jobs, particularly in Michigan.
If you know anything about your big client, you might also know Chrysler had unveiled a series of dramatic commercials, some featuring rapper and Detroit native Eminem, to show the world that the hardworking character of that city's workforce should be a source of American Pride and optimism.
You should have known all that. Instead, an employee of New Media Strategies, a Virginia-based marketing firm retained by Chrysler, went on the company's Twitter feed, @ChryslerAutos, and posted: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive."
(In the tweet -- accidentally posted to the company site instead of a personal feed -- the expletive we censored was actually spelled out.)
Accidents happen and, really, the tweet was not that bad. But in the world of social media, never the company and personal should meet. Given the company's Detroit Pride message, the posting was even more of a wreck.
Fortunately, Chrysler shook aside the flurry of unwanted media attention.
The firm, however, lost the gig.
As for the staffer who made the mistake, last month he started work on the social media initiatives of another company -- this time Ford .
A&F offends Asians; says critics think dirty thoughts
It is hard to know whether the brain trust at Abercrombie & Fitch is inept or brilliant.
The latter, and a calculated move to maximize publicity, might be the only explanation for some of the hard-to-believe ways the company has responded to controversy.
Back in 2002, the retailer was under fire for T-shirts seen as reinforcing negative Asian-American stereotypes. One shirt shows cartoon Chinese laundry worker caricatures -- complete with slanted eyes and conical "rice-paddy" hats -- with the slogan "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White."
Amid charges of racism and nationwide protests and boycotts, the company finally offered an apology -- sort of.
"We're very, very, very sorry," a spokesman told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's never been our intention to offend anyone."
Then came the head-scratching coda: "We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt."
The response to a later controversy -- selling thong underwear for children adorned with images of cherries and the words "kiss me" and "wink, wink" -- had the same bizarre mix of contrition and glibness.
The official statements to the media included such gems as "It's not appropriate for a 7-year-old, but it is appropriate for a 10-year-old" and "The underwear for young girls was created with the intent to be lighthearted and cute; any misrepresentation of that is purely in the eye of the beholder."
Laying out its case for what age it is OK to start sexualizing young girls was scurrilous enough, but the kicker accusing critics of harboring their own dirty thoughts broke just about every PR and crisis control rule ever written.
Toyota Steers into the skid
Remember the Disney movies featuring Herbie, a sentient Volkswagen Beetle that could start, stop and steer all on his own?
In real life, it is not so much fun when your car seems to have a mind of its own.
Toyota had the misfortune of balancing a growing PR crisis with the legal imperative to cover its bumper. The two didn't mix well.
As Toyota would learn, silence doesn't work. Nor does blaming the motor skills of drivers when the sheer volume of incidents, some of them fatal, seem to indicate that's not the case.
Are we really, even now, 100% sure what was happening with the sudden acceleration? Although the problem seems solved, many questions remain.
What we do know is that Toyota's public relations response was a textbook case in what not to do when they dodged and denied the problem for months before issuing an apology and potential mechanical fix.
Brian Dobson, a crisis PR expert, says Toyota was "flat-footed" and slow to respond.
"If brand managers don't engage the media from Day One, then crisis reports get driven by critics, competitors and pundits who dominate news with negative comments," he said last year in comments about the issue. "Toyota lost ground trying to minimize its troubles as competitors pounced to capitalize."
Facebook vs. Google
Facebook seems to always be under attack by one disgruntled party or another, usually about its ever-changing, sneaky approach to a privacy policy. Bottom line: A company that give you a service for free in exchange for mining data is never going to be too keen on shielding your data from prying eyes.
It does seem Facebook suffers a disproportionate share of scorn regarding this topic than the bigger potential threat to personal privacy that is Google .
Still, Facebook crossed a line when PR firm Burson-Marsteller was tasked with trying to spread privacy-related vitriol about Google and plant news stories and blogs that prodded writers to make the case for them, even offering to help write these pieces. The targets ranged from influential blogs to USA Today.
In one of the emails leaked by an unwilling blogger, Google is described as having "a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America's Internet users."
PR firms always try to influence stories -- it's what they are paid for. What made these efforts such a failure is that the firm refused to reveal it was working for Facebook. Here's the other miscalculation: The public often has a finely tuned hypocrisy detector. A suitable defense for Facebook when its lackadaisical approach to user privacy is denounced really needed to be more than "They started it!"
Antennagate
Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. We would be doing Apple's late genius a disservice, however, if we didn't include one of the most famous examples of his sometimes caustic management style.
When a design flaw was uncovered in the 2010 iPhone 4 -- touching certain areas killed reception -- Apple initially avoided the topic with a companywide cone of silence. Jobs didn't help matters by chastising users, in one of his many off-the-cuff email answers, that they were holding it wrong.
Ignore the problem. Blame the customer. Refuse to apologize. Those approaches never work.
Cooler PR heads eventually prevailed, and Apple instead spent $175 million sending cases to owners to resolve the issue. (Even now there may be questions about the problem. AntennaSys, an antenna design and consulting firm, did tests and told PC World that "all the hype has been just hype ... It's not any more sensitive to hand position that was the first-generation iPhone -- and probably many other phones on the market.")
LeBron James' bad decision
LeBron James has a lot to carry on his broad shoulders. There is the six-year, $110 million investment the owners of the Miami Heat have in him. There are basketball fans to appease. And there are big-name sponsors who have shelled out big bucks to associate themselves with the top NBA star, among them McDonald's and Nike .
For most of his career, James was one of the few young phenoms who seemed to pan out, entering the league straight from high school. He was young, likable and talented -- a native of Cleveland who played for the hometown team.
But James' decision to pursue free agency left Ohio residents hanging. It was very likely their hometown hero would pack his bags.
While there would surely be a fair share of Cavaliers fans who would never forgive their prodigal son, James certainly had the opportunity to exit gracefully and with at least muted good wishes. Many of his critics, deep down, would be thankful for the resurrection of the team he ruled and admit they too would switch employers for a few million more dollars a year.
But James let his consultants and handlers pitch him on making the whole contract process a spectacle. Notable was a disastrous, hourlong, ESPN special called The Decision, in which cities vied for his services as though they were reality show contestants.
In trying to create drama and build upon James' reputation, all they did was ruin it. James is now one of the more reviled and mocked figures in sports (aside from another classic PR bungler, Tiger Woods).
Alaska Airlines and the diaper incident
The inevitable bit of bad service on an airline (or a grumpy passenger) make for easy headlines. Southwest Airlines , for example, had to deal with the weighty fallout when they angered filmmaker Kevin Smith by saying he was too fat to fly with a one-seat ticket.
All a company's PR department can do in a situation such as that is straddle the line between apologizing and defending their actions. With any luck, short memories will prevail and everyone moves onto a new villain. (Thankfully, airlines always have the TSA to steal away the attention.)
Alaska Airlines had every opportunity to douse a publicity fire when a family was stuck in Las Vegas because the man's wife, tending to a baby's diaper needs, was kept from boarding the plane because, in the alleged words of an employee, she was "one minute late."
The airline certainly sounds heartless. To be fair, however, time is of the essence when boarding a plane. With all due sympathy for a mom having to deal with a child, once the plane door closes, security measures dictate that no one boards. People are stuck on standby every day because a connecting flight was a few minutes off schedule.
But Hell hath no fury like a "mommy blogger" scorned, and an online attack on the airline's handling of the incident titled "Alaska Airlines Hates Families" got widespread exposure and was reported in mainstream media.
In its annual rundown of the worst PR blunders, the San Francisco-based Fineman PR explained what the airline did wrong.
"While Alaska Airlines social media manager Elliott Pesut did respond promptly in the blog's comment section, he did so without compassion, citing rigid policy and offering a future travel voucher for less than half the family's losses," the PR firm wrote.
The lesson learned: when you are under the harsh light of a full-on media attack, swallow some pride and a few bucks by going beyond normal procedures to make things right. A little contrition can go a long way.
FEMA's fake reporters
What if they threw a press conference and nobody came?
That was the scenario when FEMA scheduled a 2007 press conference to update media on efforts to combat raging wildfires in California.
To reporters, press conferences are a necessary evil in covering big stories for which a public official has to efficiently answer questions or detail talking points, and they know they must separate spin from facts. But delivering the trut is harder when a press conference is missing one very important element -- the press.
Instead of letting reporters grill executives, FEMA filled the room with staffers and agency officials. It was a make-believe press conference!
In a memo to all FEMA employees Oct. 29, 2007, administrator R. David Paulison said that "without intending to deceive," the FEMA external affairs staff "nevertheless lost perspective of the core imperative that they preserve the credibility of our agency." He described the fake press event as among "a series of serious mistakes and extremely poor decisions."
Among the issues Paulison cited is that media who did get to take part in the conference off-site were restricted to a "listen only" capability, which kept them from stepping on the toes of the fake reporters who did get to ask questions.
An earlier statement from FEMA's vice admiral, Harvey Johnson, missed the point: "The real story -- how well the response and recovery elements are working in this disaster -- should not be lost because of how we tried to meet the needs of the media in distributing facts."
BP gets slick
Enough has been written about how badly BP botched its response to last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, including former CEO Tony Hayward declaring he wanted his "life back" and dashing off to a yacht race while an entire region's economy and environment was trashed.
Hayward's case of foot-in-mouth disease obscured some other terrible PR moves by the company.
There are two basic flavors of spin control -- deny, deny, deny; or 'fess up and take your lumps.
BP basically took the former route, trying to pass the buck to other contractors and underplaying damage they had caused.
It hurt, rather than helped, a battered reputation.
There were upbeat Twitter posts by the company offering unrealistic updates and estimates for the progress of the cleanup (in one, beaches were prematurely described as "beautiful") and one making the jaw-dropping claim that New Orleans' hotels "ended 2010 on high note," a bit of allegedly good news credited to $5 million ponied up by the multibillion-dollar company that ruined the area's tourism in the first place. Hotel business in other cities throughout the affected gulf were not mentioned.
From wildlife inventories to how safe seafood was to eat, BP never gave up a chance to sugarcoat the spill, understate the damage and exaggerate the restoration effort. It has also been pointed out that BP's claim it would "restore the shoreline to its original state," made by one-time mouthpiece Hayward, neglected to mention that the company really didn't think that was even possible.
A federally mandated spill plan assured that with any PR messaging "no statement shall be made containing any of the following: promises that property, ecology or anything else will be restored to normal."
Amazon redefines "kid-friendly"
We can certainly appreciate Amazon's policy for sticking by the books it sells, no matter how controversial they may be. The discourse sparked by writers would be silenced if a bookstore in any form caved to boycott threats by those who want to squash views they don't agree with. For a bookseller to give in to special interest groups demanding censorship could be as bad as a book burning.
But Amazon dropped the ball by sticking to this philosophy when a book defending, promoting and praising pedophilia grew into a massive blog-fueled boycott last holiday season.
Amazon, rather than engage these critics, stuck tersely by its policy.
What's worse is that the company did eventually decide to remove the book, meaning its initial defense had no real value to start with. It should also be pointed out that Amazon, contrary to the image it presented, does restrict its offerings and has a ban on materials deemed pornographic.
By picking a fight over a policy it was already willing to bend, the company did little more than fuel protests and drag its otherwise good name into the mud.
Saturday, 27 April 2013
PR 101 for dummies!
To get people talking about you, your company, or your product, you need to develop a good public relations (PR) plan. Applying some PR fundamentals, knowing how to deal with the media, getting your press release to stand out and your blog noticed are all key steps in your public relations campaign.
Employing Important Public Relations Principles
Public relations (PR) is all about getting noticed. When you’re planning your PR strategy, the whole idea is to get customers talking. Keep these key issues in mind to get you or your company noticed:
You have to be different. Conventional publicity strategies get lost in the noise. You have to find a creative way to stand out from the crowd and get noticed.
Publicity should help you reach your market objective. Getting publicity is fun, but it’s a waste of time and money if it doesn’t help you achieve your marketing objectives. If getting on the front page of The Wall Street Journal doesn’t help you make more money or increase your firm’s market share, it really isn't worth the trouble.
You don’t have to have media contacts to get big-time publicity. You don’t have to know Joe TV star to get on his TV show; you just have to come up with an idea that will interest his producer.
Manage the Media with Public Relations Fundamentals
In the world of public relations (PR), finding the media outlets to send your press releases and other PR materials to so you can reach your target audience is crucial. Do your research, think expansively, and stay connected to the media with these tips:
Build a personal contact file. Keep at it until you have a list of at least 100 media contacts who know you personally and take your call when you have a story you want to publicize.
Follow up. Call everyone to whom you send your press release — several times each, if necessary. Do this and you will get coverage.
Become the “go-to guy.” Show the press that you’re the one to call for expert interviews in your particular field. For example, Alan Dershowitz is the go-to guy for law.
Don’t limit yourself. Broaden your outreach. A CEO reads Forbes, but he also watches the evening TV news.
Offer an exclusive. If it’s important for you to get into a particular publication, offer the editor an exclusive on the story (meaning you won’t send out a press release to other media until that publication has run it first).
Go where the cameras already are. Instead of trying to get media to cover your event, make noise at an event they’re already covering. Domino’s Pizza gets national TV coverage by bringing free pizza to the post office on April 15 to feed last-minute taxpayers standing in line.
Media are not interested in you or your product. They care only whether your story will interest their readers or viewers.
Remember: Media are your customer. They are buying stories, and you are selling. Meet their needs, and they will run your stories.
Convincing Editors to Print Your Press Release
Editors receive hundreds of press releases weekly and they toss out most of them. To make your press release stand out and get the attention of an editor, make sure your press release is professionally prepared, the content is important and newsworthy, and it’s short and to the point. These tips will help make your press release stand out even more:
Offer a free booklet or report. Readers love freebies, and editors love to offer them.
Set up a hotline for people to call for information or advice.
Stage a special or timely event or gimmick. A manufacturer of juice machines gained media coverage by holding “juicing seminars” in major cities.
Introduce a new product or service. Many magazines have special sections featuring new products and services.
Offer new literature. Many trade journals have sections featuring new sales literature (brochures and catalogs, for example).
Tie in with a current trend, fad, or news issue and piggyback on that coverage.
Sound a call to action. Ask people to participate in a boycott, for example.
Tie your publicity to your high-visibility advertising if it received a lot of attention and created some buzz.
Public Relations Tips for Promoting Your Blog
Blogs provide news and commentary one to two days ahead of major media. Those two days can make a big difference in the world of public relations. Blogs build buzz, so after you’ve launched your blog, use these tips to promote and monitor it:
Submit to blog search engines. Beyond the traditional search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, there are search engines and directories that track blogs exclusively and which thousands of people search every day. Submit your blog's URL to these sites for free: http://blogsearchengine.com, http://technorati.com, http://www.daypop.com, http://blogdex.net, http://w.moreover.com, http://www.yahoo.com, and http://popdex.com.
Ping each time a new post is published. The blog search engines offer a system whereby you notify (or “ping”) them, either manually or automatically, each time a new post appears on your blog.
Use trackbacks and tags. Look for the “trackback” link at the bottom of a post, next to the permalink and comments link. Trackbacking notifies a blogger that one of their posts has been featured on another blog. It’s a non-intrusive way of letting a blogger know you are interested in what they have to say. “Tags” are categories and keywords for blog posts. You will often see keywords on the navigation bar of a blog. If you click on one of the keywords, it will show you all of the blogs that are categorized under one of those "tags." If someone finds your blog and wants to read all of the articles on a particular topic or keyword, tags make this very easy.
Include a growing “blogroll.” You’ll see this on the navigation bar of many blogs. It is essentially a list of favorite blogs or related Web sites. This is one of the ways people hop from one blog to the next and help promote each other’s blogs.
Participate on other people’s blogs. Devote a certain amount of your time actively commenting on and linking to blogs that are related to your industry and topic. Focus especially on blogs that get high traffic. And be sure to include your blog address in your email signature so that your blog will reach many new readers who see your post.
Make it easy for readers to subscribe to your blog via RSS. Give lots of options so people can choose the one they prefer.g
Employing Important Public Relations Principles
Public relations (PR) is all about getting noticed. When you’re planning your PR strategy, the whole idea is to get customers talking. Keep these key issues in mind to get you or your company noticed:
You have to be different. Conventional publicity strategies get lost in the noise. You have to find a creative way to stand out from the crowd and get noticed.
Publicity should help you reach your market objective. Getting publicity is fun, but it’s a waste of time and money if it doesn’t help you achieve your marketing objectives. If getting on the front page of The Wall Street Journal doesn’t help you make more money or increase your firm’s market share, it really isn't worth the trouble.
You don’t have to have media contacts to get big-time publicity. You don’t have to know Joe TV star to get on his TV show; you just have to come up with an idea that will interest his producer.
Manage the Media with Public Relations Fundamentals
In the world of public relations (PR), finding the media outlets to send your press releases and other PR materials to so you can reach your target audience is crucial. Do your research, think expansively, and stay connected to the media with these tips:
Build a personal contact file. Keep at it until you have a list of at least 100 media contacts who know you personally and take your call when you have a story you want to publicize.
Follow up. Call everyone to whom you send your press release — several times each, if necessary. Do this and you will get coverage.
Become the “go-to guy.” Show the press that you’re the one to call for expert interviews in your particular field. For example, Alan Dershowitz is the go-to guy for law.
Don’t limit yourself. Broaden your outreach. A CEO reads Forbes, but he also watches the evening TV news.
Offer an exclusive. If it’s important for you to get into a particular publication, offer the editor an exclusive on the story (meaning you won’t send out a press release to other media until that publication has run it first).
Go where the cameras already are. Instead of trying to get media to cover your event, make noise at an event they’re already covering. Domino’s Pizza gets national TV coverage by bringing free pizza to the post office on April 15 to feed last-minute taxpayers standing in line.
Media are not interested in you or your product. They care only whether your story will interest their readers or viewers.
Remember: Media are your customer. They are buying stories, and you are selling. Meet their needs, and they will run your stories.
Convincing Editors to Print Your Press Release
Editors receive hundreds of press releases weekly and they toss out most of them. To make your press release stand out and get the attention of an editor, make sure your press release is professionally prepared, the content is important and newsworthy, and it’s short and to the point. These tips will help make your press release stand out even more:
Offer a free booklet or report. Readers love freebies, and editors love to offer them.
Set up a hotline for people to call for information or advice.
Stage a special or timely event or gimmick. A manufacturer of juice machines gained media coverage by holding “juicing seminars” in major cities.
Introduce a new product or service. Many magazines have special sections featuring new products and services.
Offer new literature. Many trade journals have sections featuring new sales literature (brochures and catalogs, for example).
Tie in with a current trend, fad, or news issue and piggyback on that coverage.
Sound a call to action. Ask people to participate in a boycott, for example.
Tie your publicity to your high-visibility advertising if it received a lot of attention and created some buzz.
Public Relations Tips for Promoting Your Blog
Blogs provide news and commentary one to two days ahead of major media. Those two days can make a big difference in the world of public relations. Blogs build buzz, so after you’ve launched your blog, use these tips to promote and monitor it:
Submit to blog search engines. Beyond the traditional search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, there are search engines and directories that track blogs exclusively and which thousands of people search every day. Submit your blog's URL to these sites for free: http://blogsearchengine.com, http://technorati.com, http://www.daypop.com, http://blogdex.net, http://w.moreover.com, http://www.yahoo.com, and http://popdex.com.
Ping each time a new post is published. The blog search engines offer a system whereby you notify (or “ping”) them, either manually or automatically, each time a new post appears on your blog.
Use trackbacks and tags. Look for the “trackback” link at the bottom of a post, next to the permalink and comments link. Trackbacking notifies a blogger that one of their posts has been featured on another blog. It’s a non-intrusive way of letting a blogger know you are interested in what they have to say. “Tags” are categories and keywords for blog posts. You will often see keywords on the navigation bar of a blog. If you click on one of the keywords, it will show you all of the blogs that are categorized under one of those "tags." If someone finds your blog and wants to read all of the articles on a particular topic or keyword, tags make this very easy.
Include a growing “blogroll.” You’ll see this on the navigation bar of many blogs. It is essentially a list of favorite blogs or related Web sites. This is one of the ways people hop from one blog to the next and help promote each other’s blogs.
Participate on other people’s blogs. Devote a certain amount of your time actively commenting on and linking to blogs that are related to your industry and topic. Focus especially on blogs that get high traffic. And be sure to include your blog address in your email signature so that your blog will reach many new readers who see your post.
Make it easy for readers to subscribe to your blog via RSS. Give lots of options so people can choose the one they prefer.g
Thursday, 25 April 2013
C & L Advertising/Marketing: Police and crime commissioner advertising for publ...
C & L Advertising/Marketing: Police and crime commissioner advertising for publ...: Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner David Lloyd is advertising for highly-paid PR guru to join his ‘leadership team’. Although Hert...
Police and crime commissioner advertising for publicly-funded £70k-a-year PR guru
Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner David Lloyd is advertising for highly-paid PR guru to join his ‘leadership team’.
Although Herts police has a corporate communications department, the county’s PCC wants to hire another mouthpiece on a salary of £66,312 - £75,786, with a car allowance and final salary pension scheme.
Conservative Mr Lloyd, who was elected on a turnout of just 14.5 per cent of Hertfordshire’s voters, is himself paid £75,000 a year.
The advert, on his website, is for a Director of Communications and Engagement and reads: “You will have a track record in providing vision, direction and clarity in the development and delivery of communication plans and strategy and play a key role in the successful implementation of the Commissioner’s ambitious Police & Crime Plan, Everybody’s Business.
“As a member of the Commissioner’s leadership team, you will have an innovative approach to ensure the Commissioner and Constabulary connect effectively with the communities of Hertfordshire through the full range of communication channels and engagement opportunities. You will then use the results to shape and guide future strategy and policy direction.”
Eleanor McGrath, campaign manager of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “It’s very disappointing that the newly-elected police commissioner is advertising for a PR guru on a massive taxpayer-funded salary.
“Local residents expect the commissioner to hold the police to account in a way that delivers value for taxpayers’ money.
“If Mr Lloyd is so concerned about his image, then he should focus on cutting out wasteful and unnecessary spending.”
However, the PCC’s office has rebutted the claims, saying “as a directly-elected representative for the whole of Hertfordshire, the Police and Crime Commissioner has very different requirements to the previous Police Authority and the current Constabulary alone.”
The statement continues: “This new role has been advertised to reflect Commissioner’s new remit, which encompasses a broad range of policing and crime issues, as well as extensive public engagement with the people and communities he represents. The post has been independently assessed by employment experts (Hay Group) and have approved the salary scale in line with Hertfordshire senior police staff grades.
“The Director of Communications and Engagement will be expected to create and implement a strategy to support the Commissioner’s policy, including the new Police and Crime Plan. This is not something the Commissioner can do alone - there are many channels of communication to utilise, including the many news media outlets and ever-growing social media.
“In terms of the Commissioner’s ‘engagement’ role this involves an understanding the views of over one million people who live in Hertfordshire and the multiple communities and groups, including businesses, based in the county – without expert advice, help and action, it would not be possible for a single elected representative to do this effectively.
“The role will also oversee the public relations functions and operational policing communications for the Constabulary (Corporate Communication Department) and ensure that important information, crime prevention advice and reassurance reaches everyone possible in the county.”
In February, Hertfordshire’s Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner Rachel Frosh resigned after she became embroiled in a Twitter row about Adolf Hitler. The Conservative, who earned £20,000 a year for her two-day-a-week job, had re-tweeted a message that likened Socialists to Nazis.
Mr Lloyd has also been criticised by councillors by other parties for his decision to seek re-election as a Hertfordshire county councillor in next month’s elections
Although Herts police has a corporate communications department, the county’s PCC wants to hire another mouthpiece on a salary of £66,312 - £75,786, with a car allowance and final salary pension scheme.
Conservative Mr Lloyd, who was elected on a turnout of just 14.5 per cent of Hertfordshire’s voters, is himself paid £75,000 a year.
The advert, on his website, is for a Director of Communications and Engagement and reads: “You will have a track record in providing vision, direction and clarity in the development and delivery of communication plans and strategy and play a key role in the successful implementation of the Commissioner’s ambitious Police & Crime Plan, Everybody’s Business.
“As a member of the Commissioner’s leadership team, you will have an innovative approach to ensure the Commissioner and Constabulary connect effectively with the communities of Hertfordshire through the full range of communication channels and engagement opportunities. You will then use the results to shape and guide future strategy and policy direction.”
Eleanor McGrath, campaign manager of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “It’s very disappointing that the newly-elected police commissioner is advertising for a PR guru on a massive taxpayer-funded salary.
“Local residents expect the commissioner to hold the police to account in a way that delivers value for taxpayers’ money.
“If Mr Lloyd is so concerned about his image, then he should focus on cutting out wasteful and unnecessary spending.”
However, the PCC’s office has rebutted the claims, saying “as a directly-elected representative for the whole of Hertfordshire, the Police and Crime Commissioner has very different requirements to the previous Police Authority and the current Constabulary alone.”
The statement continues: “This new role has been advertised to reflect Commissioner’s new remit, which encompasses a broad range of policing and crime issues, as well as extensive public engagement with the people and communities he represents. The post has been independently assessed by employment experts (Hay Group) and have approved the salary scale in line with Hertfordshire senior police staff grades.
“The Director of Communications and Engagement will be expected to create and implement a strategy to support the Commissioner’s policy, including the new Police and Crime Plan. This is not something the Commissioner can do alone - there are many channels of communication to utilise, including the many news media outlets and ever-growing social media.
“In terms of the Commissioner’s ‘engagement’ role this involves an understanding the views of over one million people who live in Hertfordshire and the multiple communities and groups, including businesses, based in the county – without expert advice, help and action, it would not be possible for a single elected representative to do this effectively.
“The role will also oversee the public relations functions and operational policing communications for the Constabulary (Corporate Communication Department) and ensure that important information, crime prevention advice and reassurance reaches everyone possible in the county.”
In February, Hertfordshire’s Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner Rachel Frosh resigned after she became embroiled in a Twitter row about Adolf Hitler. The Conservative, who earned £20,000 a year for her two-day-a-week job, had re-tweeted a message that likened Socialists to Nazis.
Mr Lloyd has also been criticised by councillors by other parties for his decision to seek re-election as a Hertfordshire county councillor in next month’s elections
C & L Advertising/Marketing: What is Public Relations?
C & L Advertising/Marketing: What is Public Relations?: Public relations professionals manage image for a company or individual such as scheduling publicity tours. Spencer Platt / Getty Im...
What is Public Relations?
Public relations professionals manage image for a company or individual such as scheduling publicity tours.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
What is Public Relations?
A basic definition of public relations is to shape and maintain the image of a company, organization or individual in the eyes of the client's various "publics." What is a "public" exactly? A public, in PR terms, is anyone who ever has or ever will form an opinion about the client.Depending on the nature of the client's work, these publics could include clients, potential clients, voters, members of the local community, members of the media, students, parents of students, online fans groups, foreign citizens -- the list is endless.
Public relations success requires a deep understanding of the interests and concerns of each the client's many publics. The public relations professional must know how to effectively address those concerns using the most powerful tool of the PR trade: publicity [source: Bureau of Labor Statistics].
Entrepreneur.com defines public relations purely in terms of publicity work, describing PR as "Using the news or business press to carry positive stories about your company or your products; cultivating a good relationship with local press representatives" [source: Entrepreneur.com].
In many cases, the chief duty of the public relations professional is to draft press releases, which are sent to targeted members of the media. But to limit the scope of the public relations definition to publicity alone would be to underestimate the growing influence and reach of PR.
For example, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes is scheduled to speak at the Public Relations Society of America's annual conference about "public diplomacy," a branch of government public relations. Public diplomacy is shaping the image of a nation (in this case, the United States) in the eyes of both traditional allies and enemy states.
Today's public relations professional does much more than sit behind a desk faxing out press releases. More than ever, he's the public face of the client. It's the PR professional who organizes community outreach and volunteer programs. It's the PR representative who cultivates relationships with potential investors. And it's the PR executive who goes on the cable TV news program to answer the tough questions.
Read on to learn more about what PR professionals do.
C & L Advertising/Marketing: 5 new facebook Ad Tips
C & L Advertising/Marketing: 5 new facebook Ad Tips: Have you tried the new Facebook Ads interface? Are you interested in getting more bang for your buck when it comes to advertising? This a...
5 new facebook Ad Tips
Have you tried the new Facebook Ads interface?This article will show you five ways to enhance your Facebook Ads.
What Changed Within Facebook Ads?
If you’ve been running Facebook Ads over the past year, you may be confused by some of the new options and the new layout of the Ads area. You may have felt like you had a good handle on everything if you read our previous post about Facebook Ads.
But of course, this is Facebook, and the only constant with Facebook is change. Let’s dive into some of the new changes with the Facebook Ads platform so that you can fully maximize your next Facebook Ad campaign.
The first step is to choose what you want to advertise. You can choose an external URL or a Facebook Page, App or Event. This step has not changed much from the previous iterations of the Facebook Ads interface.
First decide what to advertise.
#1: You Have New Choices
One big change with the new Facebook Ads layout is the choice of objectives.
Your new choices when advertising your Facebook Page.
- Get More Page Likes. With this selection, you’re advertising your Page and trying to grow your Likes. You can write your own ad copy, but the title of the ad is still unchangeable as the title of your Facebook Page. If your Page name is too long, the ad will only show the first 25 characters of your Page name. (More on this in a bit.)
- Promote Page Posts. This option was previously under the “Sponsored Story” section of Facebook Ads. This is a way to advertise one of your recent posts and the ad is prewritten for you. This type of ad still appears on the right side of Facebook Ads, as shown in the preview, and it appears in the News Feed where people can interact with the post itself right from the ad. A word of caution on this type of ad: You will get charged for a click if someone likes the post that you’re advertising. They don’t have to like your Page to like the post and they may even think that they are liking your Page by liking the post. So make sure you’re using this option wisely. But one thing I like about the Promote Page Posts selection is that you can select a post that had a photo and get a “bonus” photo in your ad.
If you advertise a page post with a photo, you will have your profile photo and the post photo in your ad.
- See Advanced Options. Selecting this option allows you to have more flexibility in the bidding on your ad. If you select this option, you still have the same options of choosing to advertise your Page or a page post, and you will have to make those selections initially. The main difference here is in how you want to bid for your ad.
Only the Bidding options change with the See Advanced Options selection.
Also note that when you choose to advertise your Facebook Page, you can change the landing view so that when users click on your ad to see more information, you can direct them to a particular tab on your Page.
#2: Sponsored Stories Are Automatically Selected When Advertising Your Facebook Page, Event or App
Be very cautious about this next step, because it is one of the major changes with Facebook Ads.Facebook auto-selects the Sponsored Stories choice for any ad that advertises something on Facebook, such as a Page, an Event or an App. Facebook says, “No increase in budget is required.” But that is a little misleading.
What that statement means is if you are spending $10/day on your ad, then Facebook will also run your Sponsored Story within that $10/day budget, but will still charge you when someone clicks on that Sponsored Story.
So now you may have $5/day going toward the Sponsored Story and $5/day going to the ad you intended and that has the copy you want.
Notice that Sponsored Stories is on by default.
Now this may not be a bad thing if you’re truly looking to increase your likes. Remember that Sponsored Stories are the ones that go into the News Feed (and they are shown on the right side also), where more people notice them.
The Facebook Ad I ran recently that included the Sponsored Story Ad performed very well. When you look at the data, the Sponsored Story looks like it had a 100% conversion rate (Actions to Clicks), versus the Facebook Ad that had an 80% conversion rate of Actions to Clicks.
The conversion on the Sponsored Story looks better than the ad.
You find that while the Actions were high on the Sponsored Story, they didn’t all result in an actual Page like. Some users just liked the post, some commented on it and some shared it.
Dig deeper into the Facebook Ad stats.
And do your own testing on Facebook Ads—you may find that your Page and your ads perform differently. Remember you can deselect the Sponsored Story if you do not want to create a Sponsored Story with your ad.
#3: Click See Advanced Options to Only Advertise a Sponsored Story
Another change with the new layout is that it’s more challenging to advertise just a Sponsored Story about people Liking your Page. To do so, click See Advanced Options, then Remove the Ad itself to leave just the Sponsored Story behind.
Click the See Advanced Options selection and Remove the Ad.
#4: Know Your Bidding Options
Bidding has not changed that much, but it is definitely something you should understand. When you choose to advertise something you have on Facebook such as your Page, Event or App, and you select the first radio button (Get More Likes, Increase Attendance, or Get New Users, respectively), then Facebook does your bidding for you. They optimize your ad with the CPM (cost per mille, which is cost per 1000 impressions) model.
If you choose the basic pricing model, Facebook optimizes your bid for you.
Switch to Advanced Pricing to set your own bids with either the CPM or CPC models.
#5: Use the URL of Your Facebook Page to Edit the Title of Your Ad
This isn’t a brand-new trick in Facebook Ads, but it’s one that seems to work sporadically. Luckily with the new Facebook Ads interface, this trick seems to be more available.If you enter the URL of your Facebook Page, rather than select your Facebook Page from the drop-down menu, you can then edit the headline.
Use the URL of your Facebook Page to modify your headline.
Hopefully these tips have helped you stay on top of some of the changes in Facebook Ads and maybe even given you some new ideas on how you can leverage Facebook Ads.
How about you? What have you found to be working with your Facebook Ad campaigns? How frequently are you using Facebook Ads? Share your experience with us in the comments section below.C & L Advertising/Marketing: What we can do for you as a person or company
C & L Advertising/Marketing: What we can do for you as a person or company: Your Satisfaction is our goal. Go like our facebook page or go to www.cladvertisingpr.webs.com or Email cladvertisingpr@yahoo.com .. •TV ...
What we can do for you as a person or company
Your Satisfaction is our goal. Go like our facebook page or go to www.cladvertisingpr.webs.com or Email cladvertisingpr@yahoo.com..
•TV Commercials
•Radio Advertisements
•Outdoor Campaigns
•Multi-Media Campaigns
•Point-of-Sale Material (banners, posters, stickers etc.)
•Strategy Development & Implementation
•Media Planning & Buying
•Audiovisual Presentations
•Art Direction
•Graphic Design
•Desk Top Publishing
•Web Design & Development
•Copywriting
•Proof Reading & Editing
•Corporate Identity & Brand Gifts
•Events Planning & Management
•Activation
•Packaging Origination & Design
•Printing (stationery, brochures, flyers etc.)
•Contract Publishing
•Social Networking & Media Marketing
•Consumer Reward Programs
•Trade & Sales Force Incentives
Kind Regards
•TV Commercials
•Radio Advertisements
•Outdoor Campaigns
•Multi-Media Campaigns
•Point-of-Sale Material (banners, posters, stickers etc.)
•Strategy Development & Implementation
•Media Planning & Buying
•Audiovisual Presentations
•Art Direction
•Graphic Design
•Desk Top Publishing
•Web Design & Development
•Copywriting
•Proof Reading & Editing
•Corporate Identity & Brand Gifts
•Events Planning & Management
•Activation
•Packaging Origination & Design
•Printing (stationery, brochures, flyers etc.)
•Contract Publishing
•Social Networking & Media Marketing
•Consumer Reward Programs
•Trade & Sales Force Incentives
Kind Regards
C & L Advertising/Marketing: 55 Cool Advertising/Marketing Facts!
C & L Advertising/Marketing: 55 Cool Advertising/Marketing Facts!: The most complained about ad in Australia in 2010 was an ad from the Advanced Medical Institute about erectile dysfunction. To advertise th...
55 Cool Advertising/Marketing Facts!
- The most complained about ad in Australia in 2010 was an ad from the Advanced Medical Institute about erectile dysfunction. To advertise the effectiveness of the drug, the ad showed a wife using her husband’s erection as a step stool to reach something out of a high cupboard.m
- Ice cubes in beverage advertisements are typically made of acrylic so they won’t melt under hot photography lights or move around. Bubbles are made by adding detergent, and water is added so light will filter through better.g
Pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than on research
- A York University study revealed that U.S. pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much on advertising as they do on research.c
- The famous Marlboro Man ads began in 1955. The Marlboro Man actually included a variety of masculine figures such as athletes, gunsmiths, and captains, but the rugged cowboy image proved the most marketable. Three men who appeared in the advertisements later died of lung cancer, earning the brand the nickname “Cowboy Killer.”d
- TV commercials during Super Bowl XLV in 2011 are estimated to have cost $3 million for a 30-second spot.a
- More than $500 billion a year is spent on advertising worldwide.i
- By the time a person in the United States is 65 years old, he would have seen an estimated two million television commercials.d
- In fashion advertising, women are often pictured lying on bearskin rugs, wearing furs and feathers, or dressed in tight-fitting leather clothing. Some researchers criticize these kinds of ads because they feature women as “prey.”d
- Women’s bodies are often “dismembered” in ads and shown only as “body parts.” This type of representation has been criticized for objectifying women and contributing to the underlying culture of violence toward women.d
- In 1900, the standard billboard was created in America, creating a billboard boon along streets and highways.o
- Many researchers argue that advertising is the most powerful art form on Earth.b
- Over $15 billion a year is spent in advertisements directed toward children in the U.S.k
- Though the commercial “1984,” which launched the Apple Macintosh computer, ran just one time on American television, during the Super Bowl, it has had a lasting impact on advertising. Directed by Ridley Scott, the commercial was the first example of “event marketing,” or when a promotion deserves as much coverage as the product itself.b
- One Kirshenbaum & Bond sidewalk ad in New York reads, “From here, it looks like you could use some new underwear.” This type of advertising is termed “guerilla” or stealth advertising to label a breed of “edgy” urban advertisements.h
- The first advertisement widely believed to be the first to feature a homosexual couple aired in 1994 when an Ikea ad featured two male companions shopping together for furniture.g
- A Disney ad which showed a woman with the words “lift my shirt to see more” over her breasts was banned in 2009. It was an advertisement for the film Adventureland.e
- Most watches displayed in advertisements are set to 10:10 because the hands of the watch frame the watch brand name and they make a smiling face.g
- The American Psychological Association (APA) reports that children under eight years old are not able to critically understand advertisements and that they regard them as truthful, accurate, and unbiased.d
- Fast food companies (soda, fast food, and cereal) in the U.S. spent about $1.6 billion in advertising in 2006.k
- In 2006, soda companies spent an estimated $492 million in advertising. In contrast, the Milk Processor Education Program, which sponsors the “Got Milk” ads, spent about $67 million.k
- The average child in America watches over 40,000 television commercials in a year, or over 100 a day.g
Advertisements often target children's self-esteem
- Advertisers consciously try to create a ‘nag factor” by bombarding kids with ads encouraging them to buy certain products in order to become popular. American children ages 12-17 will ask a parent for products they have seen on television an average of nine times until parents finally give in.d
- In a national survey, more than half of the children who responded reported that buying certain advertised products made them feel better about themselves.d
- Channel One delivers two minutes of advertising and 10 minutes of news to approximately 7.7 million students. Over 27% of Channel One advertisements are for junk food and 10% are for military recruitment. Channel One also advertises movies, TV shows, and video games with alcohol and tobacco use, violence, and sex.g
- The very first U.S. paid advertisement was a 1704 ad in the Boston News Letter which advertised an estate in Oyster Bay, Long Island.b
- Researchers note a correlation between sexual imagery in children’s ads and an increase in eating disorders among girls.g
- In 2008, approximately $2.6 billion was spent on political advertising in the U.S., the largest ever during a presidential campaign. Obama's campaign spent $70 million on ads for the primary and $240 million for the general election. McCain's campaign spent $10 million for the primary and $126 million for the general election.p
- In 2006, Microsoft spent over $11.5 billion on advertising. That same year, Coca-Cola spent $2.5 billion, Yahoo spent $1.3 billion, eBay spent $871 million, Google spent $188 million, and Starbucks spent $95 million.s
- In 2000, U.S. Internet advertising revenue was $8.1 billion. In 2011, that figure jumped to $32 billion. In 2013, the figure is expected to reach $42 billion.i
- Advertisers often use a technique called “affective condition,” which means they take a product and place it next to other things consumers feel positively about. For example, a detergent ad will juxtapose their brand with babies, sunshine, flowers, or other similar items. Repeatedly showing their brand with these items makes consumers feel good about the detergent too.j
- Advertisers appeal to several common psychological themes to motivate people to buy their products. Some of the most common psychological appeals are to self-preservation, sex, self-esteem, fear, authority, and imitation.r
- Studies show that repeated exposure to a stimulus that is barely perceptible creates an “exposure effect,” which increases positive feelings toward the object. For example, even though most people do not click banner ads, the ads still positively influence the way people feel about the product. In fact, the “wear out” effect of banner ads did not appear even after 20 exposures.t
- Food advertisements often use “food stylists” to style food for advertisements. For example, food stylists for roasted chicken will pull the skin tight on the chicken and sew it up with a needle and thread. Then they will stuff the chicken with wet paper towels, which keeps the chicken plump and creates steam. The chicken is then roasted just enough to make the skin bumpy while the insides remain raw. The bird then is painted a golden brown.g
Children in advertisements are usually older than their target audience
- In advertisements for children, child actors are typically older than the target audience. For example, a commercial for 8-year-olds will show 11- or 12-year-old models playing with an 8-year-old toy. Advertisers use older children as role models, as an image of what younger children will want to be like.g
- Microsoft allegedly paid the Rolling Stones $9 million to use their hit “Start Me Up” in its Windows 95 advertisements. Additionally, unknown songs by new artists can become hits overnight because of their association with a popular advertisement. For example, Cansei de Ser Sexy’s “Music is My Hot, Hot, Sex” became popular when Apple used their song to advertise its iPod.n
- The first American magazine advertisement appeared in Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine in 1742.b
- Life was the first magazine to make $100 million per year in advertising.b
- In 1938, radio surpassed magazines in generating advertisement profits.b
- Prerecorded advertisements became possible in 1956 with the invention of videotape recording.b
- Interpublic, WPP, and Omnicom Group are the top three largest advertising companies in the world.b
- Many kids are plugged in to some kind of media for more than seven hours a day, which means their exposure to advertising is at record levels.g
- Because the Mars candy company found the character ET in the movie ET: The Extra-Terrestrial so ugly, they refused to allow M&M’s to act as a lure for the creature. Instead, Reese’s Pieces were used. Sales for Reese’s Pieces went up 65% once the film was released.g
The "Think Small" ad is considered to be the most successful ad of the last century
- Doyle Dane Bernbach’s “Think Small” ad for Volkswagen at the end of the 1950s is considered particularly brilliant because it took a German car initially created for Hitler and successfully sold it to post-war Americans.b
- A new kind of advertising called “viral advertising” uses blogs and emails to promote a product. For example, Dove’s “Evolution of Beauty” campaign was an overnight viral sensation when more than a million people watched a time-elapsed video of a model being made beautiful on YouTube.h
- “Ambient ads,” which legally and illegally advertise on unexpected places, such as store floors, washroom stalls, or sidewalks, have been so successful that marketing firms have actively sought out new and shocking places to display their products. Researchers note that this use of “edgy” space intensifies a sense of distrust and alienation because it makes people suspicious that any human interaction may be a commercially staged event designed to get us to buy something.h
- A new study finds that the best strategy for advertisers trying to persuade a skeptical audience is to leave out facts and focus more on emotional ads. On the flip side, it found that those who are less skeptical are more persuaded by more information-based ads.f
- The 1970 Crying Indian advertisements helped usher in not only Earth Day but also the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). It also motived 100,000 people in the first four months of the ad to request a booklet on how to reduce pollution, helped reduce litter by as much as 88% by 1983, and is described as one of the 50 greatest commercials of all time.g
- Before the printing press, advertisements were often vocal announcements. The invention of the printing press in 1440 ushered in the advent of modern advertising.g
- The largest group of advertisers is food marketers.g
- Controversy arose when ABC and Fox censored a sexy Lane Bryant ad for plus-size lingerie but allowed a Victoria Secret ad to air unedited. Lane Bryant claimed that there is a bias against plus-size women in lingerie.q
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