ARTICULATED

Back in March, I confessed my regret over a posture I maintained through most of a recently ended client relationship. I named my guilt for doing something fairly unlike me – keeping quiet some potentially disruptive ideas about where the client really should have been investing its marketing resources. In the name of avoiding conflict with my primary contact at that company, I maintained silence. As it turns out, that did none of us a bit of good. I said never again.

Fast forward to recently, when Kinkennon Communications received an RFP from an organization I’d love to work for. Unfortunately, my thoughts about how the prospective client should approach its public relations challenge, and the approach suggested in the RFP, were a bit out of synch. The modus operandi in these proposal situations is to say the right things so your firm gets hired. But with “never again” fresh on my mind, and a general distaste for hypocrisy, I decided I’d better go ahead and say what I think … even if I was pretty certain it would result in Kinkennon Communications’ proposal going directly to the trash.

Wouldn’t you know it, they’ve called me in for the next round. I may find myself in front of a firing squad. But it would be an honor to help this group, so –- at the moment -– I’m feeling pretty good.

Scott Warner of Warner Strategies, a trusted partner of Kinkennon Communications, writes occasionally for this blog. This is one of those posts. To the left is him in a downtown-DC nature setting.

I’m amazed we still see news stories with the phrase “So-and-So did not return calls for comment.” It happens all the time, even from large, high profile, mature organizations and companies that certainly should know better.

In an example the other day in The Washington Business Journal, a respected D.C.-area business had clearly opted not to respond to a reporter writing about a legal matter involving the company. I appreciate the sensitivity and internal tension around complex legal issues. But refusing to answer questions in an age of 24×7 communications and pervasive citizen journalism is an entirely outdated modus operandi. PR101 instructs us to get out ahead of such stories. Be upfront and proactive. If communications strategy does not match legal strategy, then both are at risk of failure.

In the case of this particular company, the unreturned phone calls had the same negative consequence as they always do. Other people were sought out to comment in the vacuum left by the company’s silence. The narrative was set by the media and random third parties. As a result, the story did no favors for the company nor, I’m guessing, its legal position.

If your company or organization finds itself in a legal predicament, figure out a communications strategy other than silence. Find a way to put forth your side of the story. Craft and communiate your legal messages in a timely manner. No matter how sensitive the material, your reputation is on the line, and silence will never, ever help you.

Photo courtesy of bitzcelt (http://bit.ly/aijJnR)

My partner Warner Strategies and I recently wrapped up work for a client that is doing some important if not particularly sexy work. It is a good little company with a very relevant mission. We were hired to generate news stories about it.

Early on in the arrangement, I could see the indirect benefit to the company of the media placements we were generating. But I had a nagging suspicion that, based on the company’s stated goals, there were higher-value activities to which it could have been allocating those marketing dollars. In time, I wanted to articulate my private assessment. Of course, the fact that the company had chosen media relations was helping me pay my mortgage. I kept my mouth shut.

My principles are a powerful motivator in my business dealings. As a consultant, I feel compelled to speak the plain truth as I see it, even when such recommendations might make my client uncomfortable, and even when they might not be the smartest thing for Kinkennon Communications. I believe it’s what is “right” for me. I’ve taken the risk plenty of times in my career. Sometimes it’s rewarded in spades. Sometimes it’s not.

At the same time, I love revenue, more rather than less. I have an obligation to myself and my family to keep my infrastructure amply funded. I recognize that letting one’s opinions get in the way of that objective is self-indulgent, at the very least.

By and by, we secured some pretty good national news stories for the client. But we never quite generated what the client or we had hoped for. It’s a new company trying to create an entirely new market niche. There were just too many ingredients still unmixed for a media-relations program to cook. Personally, I thought that instead of pursuing news stories, the company should have been investing in a comprehensive go-to-market strategy, more direct in approach, mixing some very different and precise tactics to uncover and qualify new-business leads.

In a meeting, the client CEO unexpectedly popped in, and I had the perfect opportunity to make my case. As a team we are very qualified to do the kind of work that I believed would have generated greater ROI, so it was not a foregone conclusion that we would get canned if I spoke my mind. The CEO asked for my opinion! My candor might have resulted in an all-new, higher-revenue project!   But I allowed media relations and its underwhelming results to dominate the conversation once more. We lost the client the next day.

That client paid us pretty well, and I never really offered the best of my brainpower in return.  Now the client is gone.  If I had foregone what was clearly smart in the name of doing what, to me, was obviously right, might I have saved the account?   Might I really have helped that company? I’ll never know.  But I’ll be even more thoughtful, and possibly more courageous, in how I strike that balance in the future.

Photo courtesy of American Society of Civil Engineers

My partner Scott Warner and I have are having a run of good luck lately compelling some news outlets to cover the profoundly unsexy topic of the nation’s infrastructure crisis. In the process, I’m developing a bit of a fascination with the issue. That is specifically the result of listening to our client’s CEO, architect Barbara Heller.  She makes a provocative case for why every American should care about rickety bridges and brittle water mains. She’s incredibly convincing that, if we don’t get serious quickly, we’ll be in big trouble. And she’s got some ideas.  Listen for yourself – here she is on the nationally syndicated Jim Bohannon Show. (The segment begins at about the 40-minute mark.)

It’s estimated that $2.2 trillion in infrastructure investment is needed over the next five years. Yikes. I don’t want the federal deficit to balloon any more. And I damned sure don’t want to pay any more taxes. But after being around Heller, it’s clear we’ve got to do something.

I love this post on the Story Assistant blog from Matt Batt (@StoryAssistant on Twitter). YouTube is still growing like a weed, he writes, so he argues for “vitching” … video pitching. Get it?  Typically I’m not wild about newfangled made-up words.  The responses to his blog post find “vitching” particularly disagreeable.  But I like it, probably because it sounds so much like “bitchin’.”

So today, I vitched Vanessa Mizzell at the Vashington Vost. I very vell could have simply called her. But I told my colleague Scott Varner that I thought vitching her would be more vun.

He didn’t laugh. And she didn’t respond. But vhat a good time I’m having.

Today I found myself reflecting on the success I was part of achieving with the United Methodist Church (the global church, not this pretty building…) a little over a year ago. That success was a complex stroke of luck and inspiration. I don’t know if I could repeat it if I tried.

Our task was to attempt to shape the tone of a huge, pivotal gathering of United Methodists from around the globe by getting folks predicting that – because of reasons X, Y, and Z – the event would be a positive one. More recent previous such events had been quite negative, so this was no small endeavor. All sorts of evidence suggested that this conference really needed to inspire people, for the good of the church.  And all sorts of evidence suggested the negative trend would continue. The stakes were very high.

Of course, we didn’t KNOW that the event would be positive for X, Y and Z reason.  We were quite skeptical.  But we hoped.  Then we figured that if enough people made the same hopeful prediction, it might just come true. Sure enough, it did.

My client calls it “scripting reality” – when you do such a compelling job of positioning something that the facts fall in line. It’s a fascinating concept. I’m not always comfortable with it, certainly in an age where transparency has become the highest form of organizational existence.  (“Let’s just tell it like it is…”)  But to me, this was the perfect example of the power of communications, on rare occasion, to actually constructively shape something really important.

I recently competed against another small agency to be the P.R. shop for a small but well-funded nonprofit doing some very compelling work. Because that work is almost eerily consistent with where I think Kinkennon Communications is headed, and where my personal interest and experiences lie, the opportunity felt like a bit of a sign.

Besides, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve had a client whose story was so compelling that I could confidently call a USA Today writer or NBC TODAY producer and say, “You really need to look at this.” I went so far as to hint to a Wall Street Journal contact and a Denver Post editor that I might soon have something they would love. I thought the match was SO RIGHT that I scarcely even considered that I might lose. But I did.

Typically when a potential new account falls through, my response resembles cathartic nonchalance. It’s a salesperson self-preservation mechanism. But this one stung.

A week has passed, and other new-client prospects are calling. I’ve moved on, plus I’m properly busy with my great existing clients.  But I’ll remember this one for a while. I’m reminded of how quickly vested I become when I believe a client prospect fulfills my incredibly personal definition of “really important work.”

Years ago, when I wrote a weekly newsletter for a corporate trade association, my boss was a stickler about securing sign-off from accountable experts on any story I wrote. Her preferred turn of phrase: “We [the PR department] don’t make policy. We just communicate it.”

It turns out that today that statement, flipped on its end a bit, drives my increasingly strong belief about the only way PR will work in the future. “Without a policy, we shouldn’t communicate it.”

I’ve long argued to clients that we should not pitch a story idea to a news writer unless we have “proof points” – facts that will make our pitch credible and the reporter’s ultimate story believable.

But I’m referencing something more philosophical. It suggests that lest we risk inadvertently telling tall tales, let’s first be sure what we want to say about our offering is fully aligned with what the company or organization actually does – its operations, structures, systems, and the like. If not, let’s find something else good to say until it is.

As I’ve become more confident in my views on this, I occasionally find myself in tricky positions. I’ve gently, respectfully recommended to client executives that if they really want to make a certain claim to the marketplace, then they might need to consider some significant organizational/operational changes. Not every CEO appreciates such sweeping advice from their PR guy, though some do.

I’m willing to suggest the unpopular to a client for a reason. In a world in which everyone is a citizen journalist, everyone follows citizen journalism, and people no longer trust corporate voices, claims by an organization that are inconsistent with the organization’s actual daily behavior get noticed, called out and amplified. It does more harm than good.

I think old-school PR books call what I’m talking about “PR with integrity,” but the idea matters now more than ever. The behavior of your product, service, people, and other customer-facing things shape the perception of your organization far more than any polished talking points a PR person can offer. So let’s get busy making all those things great, and great conversation about your brand is almost sure to follow.

Today, the Denver Post wrote a story (check it out here) on “The Rights 5,” a public-education campaign I worked on with my friends at the wonderful Peak Creative Media. The full campaign website is here, and you can find the campaign on Facebook here.  I dreamt up the wacky superhero characters, their storylines, and the like.

The project was great because it got me back into creative copywriting, which I haven’t done in years. It was my first-ever project in the LGBT world, which is good because I’ve wanted an opportunity for Kinkennon Communication to show its stuff and build some relationships there.

Finally, the client, Colorado’s GLBT Community Center and other partner organizations, understand how communications works in this day and age. I didn’t have to convince anyone that the campaign required a sound social media component if it was going to sing.  They just get it. Lucky me.

Just like everyone else, I watch economic data and signals, holding out hope for a rebound sooner rather than later. Some of my fellow PR free agents have been terribly affected by the recession, a constant source of anxiety, to say the least.

Kinkennon Communications has been fortunate thus far. We no longer turn away great prospective great clients over lack of bandwidth, like we did for a while. I don’t predict that bizarre reality to return any time soon. But the business has not been forced to massively contract, either. Knock on wood, we have yet to lose a client solely because of the economy.

And now, the phone has begun to ring. After nearly a year of silence, we’re receiving incoming requests to be part of cool projects. It’s probably a coincidence. But it’s encouraging to speculate that I’m seeing a sign, however anecdotal, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.