As this week is an “off” week for the Roundtable, I thought I’d post links to podcasts and topics that caught my attention over the course of the week.
- C.C. Chapman has a great episode on Managing the Gray about change. He’s absolutely correct, it all begins with you. I might just bookmark this and listen to it on a quarterly basis. Embracing change can be downright terrifying, but change is unavoidable–best to acknowledge that and run with it!
- Six Pixels of Separation — Mitch Joel talks with Joseph Jaffe about personal brands, increasing blog readership and reputation, and how that ties in with building a business. Is it still about content creation, or has the way been lost?
- It’s a couple of weeks old now, but I found the discussion about online privacy on NPR’s Science Friday very interesting. Two-thirds of lawyers use Facebook for primary source material? Wow.
- The mom-blogger topic has been heating up lately, and there’s a lot to think about for communications and PR pros. Some moms want to be paid for their time and efforts. How does this impact the basic premise of media relations within PR that the objective is to secure earned media (not paid) for clients?
- @BPGlobalPR has been “unmasked,” sort of–the man behind the satirical Twitter handle lays out why he’s doing it, and it’s a pretty damaging piece directed at the PR profession.
Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week on another edition of Media Bullseye’s Radio Roundtable.
Do you really think that Leroy STick's piece is directed against the PR profession? I don't. I think it's directed against the PR response by BP. The PR profession can only communicate what an organization does. If the organizational response to a crisis is deficient, no amount of skilled PR practice will make it sufficient.
I do think he's attacking the PR surrounding the disaster–but a lot of what the piece indicts is standard practice for PR in a disaster, isn't it? Managing the message, trying to keep the worst images out of the next round of news coverage, etc. is pretty much standard procedure, isn't it? So in that sense, BP is following the rule book–they just don't realize that the rules have changed. PR has changed. And this disaster? There's no way BP can come out of this looking anything other than the villain.
You are spot on that the profession can only communicate what an organization does–and the CEO's ill-advised remarks in a number of cases make this significantly worse than it needed to be. What would a PR practitioner need to do to improve upon their response? Some of the suggestions laid out by "Leroy" are overly simplistic at best (e.g. "don't use dispersants, just collect the oil!"–gee, thanks. Should have thought of that–All the best, BP).
I don't know what the answer is, but it seems to me that any attempt at explaining anything in this crisis is going to get criticized as being messaging or spin or attempts to minimize the disaster.
This whole disaster with BP is out of control. The total amount of petroleum spilling into the Gulf of Mexico skyrocketed by 1000s of barrelfuls Wednesday right after an subaquatic droid ostensibly struck the containment cap that has been catching crude from BP’s Macondo well. I question how much destruction this whole oil spill is going to cost the Gulf when it’s all said and done
I ponder if they can come to their senses and finish using the oil. Alternate know-how is already there to replace it!