Sorry, Mark, but many startups DO need PR help... and desperately

Dallas Mavericks owner, investor and tireless blogger Mark Cuban posted a defense of his "Why startups should never hire a PR firm" statement this week after he got blasted by various publicity folks. He backtracks a bit, but I have to say, a lot of what he says is rather disingenuous.

So let me turn things around and say, Mark, if you knew many of the startup executives I have known, if you were in my shoes, you'd be crazy not to think they didn't need a publicist. They desperately needed one.

Granted, there are some startups that should not hire a PR firm. I've been hired by a few myself. They have so many NDA's or what they do is such inside baseball, that journalists aren't going to get much out of them or they'll not be interested. So why even try to move that mountain? Don't bother.

Cuban talks about publicists having plenty of contacts but not being able to do the "vulcan mind meld" of understanding the elements of a growing business. Well that's pretty sad if you've been burned by some lousy PR firms. If all you're doing is hiring firms who excel at burning lots of money sending out press releases over paid syndication wires, have some good contacts and act like hovering control freaks, frankly, you deserve to be upset at the profession. But hey, you hired wrong! Not all PR firms are alike.

Did you examine the brains upstairs at these firms to see if they think strategically, know how to tell a story, have some genuine creative genes, and have passion for who you are? Do they rely excessively on sending out press releases for every little thing? If you didn't, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Cuban says that any executive writing an unpretentious letter to a journalist will likely get a response:

It’s amazing how often a simple email to a writer for a trade publication or local media will get a response. The key to getting a response is being short, sweet , hyperbole free and to the point.

If you're Mark Cuban, sure. But you'd be surprised how many startup execs don't know how to write or spell. Really. They are great at what they do, but they're not exactly Robert Browning or Elizabeth Barrett. Weirdly enough, the subject line Cuban uses in his sample letter to the press -- Tracking Traffic to Reduce Vacancies -- looks like spam or a press release. Not personalized. Upper and lower case, like the headline of a press release? C'mon, that's bush league and a good, smart publicist wouldn't let that happen.

Sure, a casual toss-off letter to a total stranger may get a reply, but more often than not, they don't. Mark, have you ever seen the inbox of the average blogger at a popular tech site? Good luck not getting deleted or overlooked altogether!

Besides, what happened to picking up the phone? Whoops, no mention of that in Cuban's advice.

Let me tell you about some of the startup execs I run into. A good deal of them need third party guidance on how to shape their story and message because they've been living inside it for so long, they can't get to the point. They may put their foot in their mouths by talking about things they shouldn't. Sometimes they don't know how to be confident when speaking with a reporter, or just too confident and get carried away, going overboard.

Some of them have brilliant complex concepts for their companies, but need another person to boil it down to something a journalist can easily understand and go "aha!"

Some have harangued me about going on video casts, but then when they are in front of the camera, they need somebody like me to tell them, "hey, maybe you should be enthusiastic about what your company does?"

Some have incredible delusions of grandeur, thinking the world is going to beat a path to their door. I have to break the news to them that if they don't walk before they run and think strategically over time, the only people arrive at their door will be the moving men to clean out their offices.

Where would Mark Zuckerberg be if somebody didn't bring him out of his shell and explain how to come across as less geeky and more approachable and humane?

Here's some more reality from the front line: a lot of startups are just plain afraid of approaching bloggers, and many of their top people are so busy, they don't have time to write nice little notes to them either.

It's really easy to say "startups should never hire a PR firm" and pontificate about some fantasy world where reporters answer all your emails and are dying to hear about what you're doing, and where all startup executives are Brad Pitt and infinitely quotable and articulate.

But they are not. Far from.

P.S. Isn't it ironic how some journalists jump on the bandwagon and say, we agree with Mark, don't hire PR firms, but then are inaccessible when startups approach them. Or better yet, when some executive goofs up publicly, maybe by accident, and they can't say tweet fast enough, "where's their publicist?" or "they should have had a better publicist!"

Is Cision enabling blast e-mail spam?

You would expect that with the highly-irate journalist backlash against impersonal publicist-driven spam and blast e-mails these past few years, database companies such as Cision and Vocus would bend over backwards to educate its users on avoiding this despised tactic.

Quite accidentally, I seem to have stumbled across a troubling practice at Cision that may be in fact enabling it with their users.

Let's start with this premise, as this is the reason why publicists and companies pay thousands of dollars to Cision for their database: to know what journalists, bloggers, producers, hosts and bookers want to be pitched, how they want to be pitched (if at all), and how to contact them.

Then take this rather unique situation: I am both listed in Cision's database because of this blog, and I am a subscriber because I am a public relations practitioner.

Now let's explain how this all came about...

In mid-December, I received an e-mail from Cision's Kristen Sala.

Hi Drew,

I hope this email finds you well.

Cision produces media directories in which we have a free listing for you with the title of Blogger at Drew Kerr's PR Rock and Roll. This listing with us allows PR and Marketing professionals to find out about you and your areas of expertise, helping to ensure that you receive relevant material from them.

I would therefore like to check whether we currently have up-to-date information around your contact details, contact preferences and journalistic interests.

To ensure your listing is up-to-date, kindly confirm and amend the below as necessary.


Best Regards,

Kristen


My entry was quite bare bones, so sent back this amendment and asked it to be confirmed:

Please read the blog thoroughly first before contacting me, as I will ignore anything that is irrelevant to exactly what I write about. Not all public relations blogs are the same. Please do not send me blast e-mails or irrelevant press releases. I have no problem embarrassing you by posting about you if you don't heed this advice. Don't say I didn't warn you. Thanks.

The next day, I received a confirmation from Cision, stating "I've added your additional comments to this listing, verbatim."

And that was that, thinking I was informing the people who want to pitch me to read my blog first and don't blast me the same garbage as everybody else.

Until this morning, when I received a press release from the University of Missouri about "Emotional News Framing Affects Public Response to Crisis, MU Study Finds." Not relevant, so I replied asking to be removed from their mailing list. A few minutes later came this surprising retort:

"You are not on a mailing list. You have been identified by cisionpoint.com as a journalist interested in PR releases."

Huh? Not me. I clicked to my Cision listing and lo and behold, it was still the sparse entry from before mid-December. What happened? It's like my spam filter was never installed.

I tracked down Cision's Kristen Sala, who sent me the original e-mail asking to update my entry. She said she saw my amendment on her computer screen. I told her it was invisible on mine.

Then came the disturbing part: she said my additional comments were on Cisionpoint's "premium service," not basic.

In other words, the people who pay all that money to get the basic information on the do's and don'ts of how to contact the media were not going to see my entry. Only the lucky "premium" level spenders would know to read my blog first and not to send me blast e-mails and press releases. It seems the "1%" were going to get that privilege.

I didn't want to get all "Occupy Cision," but I had to make my displeasure known to Ms. Sala: does this mean lots of other journalists and bloggers listed in Cision don't have their communication preferences listed in "basic" service and it's only available for those who shell out more money? What's the point of asking me to update my entry if only the "premium" caste were going to see it? And if this advice and warning information about contact protocol was not there for all the "basic" users, weren't they helping make it a blast e-mail spam free for all?

She unhappily admitted my points were right, and offered to make my information available to all tiers of Cision, which I gladly accepted.

Publicists shouldn't have to pay extra money to Cision, or any other competing database company, to get rudimentary information about communication do's and don'ts with the press.

Lord knows what "premium" level gets you in additional background -- shoe size? favorite color? preferred Powerpuff Girl? -- but playing favorites with essential data is not a game Cision should be running if it wants to preserve healthy relationships between journalists and publicists.

Press release run amok!

How can you make a simple business transaction into a press release novella?

Leave it to executives and publicists to find a way.

The long-running business TV program "Nightly Business Report" was sold to new institutional investor owners.

The resulting release contains FOUR quotes, including one opening monster-long 162-word ego stroke by the outgoing owner, and a two-paragraph job by the show's managing editor.

Three "I am excited's" and two "I am looking forward's."

Lord knows how many drafts this release went through to pack all of that in, but didn't anybody along the line stop and say to themselves:

"Is anybody going to really read this thing?"

Mashable's Todd Wasserman wants to kill the word "excited" in press releases.

If executive quotes are the black hole of press releases, then their repetitive choice of words is the big cosmic shovel that digs them down there.

Mashable's business and marketing editor Todd Wasserman decided the world needs to be rid of unimaginative quotes in press releases. After being on the receiving end of probably thousands of these numbing missives, Wasserman decided to launch a Tumblr blog called Everyone's Excited In Press Releases as sort of a tribute and warning. He posts actual quotes from current press releases, linking back to their original location.

Let's face it -- if you weren't "excited" about the new partnership, acquisition or new hire you are announcing, would you be issuing a press release in the first place? In my opinion, and what seems to be the overriding view of many journalists, nobody cares if you're excited, happy, doing cartwheels, or breaking into song. The news is the thing.

In January, 2009, I wrote on this blog about the words "excited," "thrilled" and "honored": "It is the duty of every public relations professional who is called upon to conjure quotes for executives to remove these three words from their vocabulary immediately.

This habit is far worse than buying Aramis cologne for your dad's birthday 30 years in a row. He can impress his neighbors at Boca Vista Village in Florida and wash it off at the end of the day, but your name is stuck on that press release forever."

What I love and depresses me at the same time about Todd's new Tumblr blog is that it takes a veteran journalist to mock the non-stop follies of one annoying, lazy inanity that many publicists and executives can't seem to shake out of their systems.

I interviewed Todd about his new side project:


Q: What gave you the idea to turn this into a Tumblr? Was there a breaking point?

Todd: Yes. Netflix's Sept. 5 press release about moving to Latin America included CEO Reed Hastings' quote: "We are excited to be bringing Netflix to Latin America and the Caribbean." I thought "That's it. I can't let this go on anymore."


Q: Why do you think quotes in press releases are so lame?

Todd: Because they have to be approved by 19 different people. The best quotes are off the cuff and when people aren't 100% aware of what they're saying, sort of like the subconscious mind speaking. A quote that's been worked over by everyone in the legal department is the opposite of that.


Q: What can be done to prevent lame quotes in press releases?

Todd: Either don't put one in, which is fine, or only put one in when the quote is actually funny or adds something to the announcement.


Q: Will you encompass other bogus quote words such as "honored" and "thrilled," or will those be other Tumblr blogs?

Todd: Actually, someone pointed out to me that the word "leading" is used much more than "excited," but excited seems to be especially funny to me because adding the quote "I'm so excited" actually seems to drain the announcement of any excitement at all. So no, though I am interested in starting a "taglines in quotes" blog that will feature stuff like "Suffolk County's leader in HVAC since 1988."


Q: How will you know if your Tumblr blog is effective?

The day I can search PR Newswire and Business Wire and not see a quote about being excited, I'll know it's done it's job.


Q: Have you heard from any of the people who wrote those press release you posted? If so, what did they say?

I heard from one woman who said "Guilty as charged," meaning she'd used that quote in the past. I'd like to hear from others. It's no different than if I used a cliche in a story and someone pointed it out. It's constructive criticism.


Q: Vote for lamest quote in a press release?

If we're dealing with "excited" quotes, I think it gets lamer if you add qualifiers like "extremely" and such. Otherwise, really bad puns would probably make the cut, like if someone got a job at Chevy and said they really hoped to "rev sales" or something along those lines.


Q: If a publicist is forced by gunpoint to write a quote for an executive, or if an executive insists they give a quote in a release, what would be your advice to prevent them from sounding like a cliche?

Todd: I'd ask them how they would explain what happened to their wife or friend outside the business. Then I'd find a new job where they don't use guns at work.

Martha Stewart, public relations failure

Martha Stewart may have been a genius in marketing herself to millions of women, but her public relations acumen is in the stone age.

I'm sure it all started like this: you are Martha Stewart, a highly-visible but somewhat past your peak doyenne of home arts, and your publicly traded company is having a number of issues. People are defecting, the board is complaining, and you've even announced Blackrock is looking for "strategic partnerships." Not everybody is a fan of you and people are wondering if you're putting yourself on the block now.

Into the picture comes a New York magazine writer who clearly is sniffing around for a story about what went wrong with your company after you were released from jail. His initial queries are probably quite general, but you get a sense that all is not happy in Pleasantville.

You have a decision to make -- do you co-operate or not, and how do you steer this article to make it as favorable as possible because you sense there could be trouble. Michael Sitrick, author of my favorite PR book Spin!, probably would have recommended getting a positive article out there before the New York one, potentially muting the impact or maybe even delaying its appearance.

Your strategy is to opt for a complete utter across-the-board shutdown.

Fast forward: the article appears and it's a real shredder -- you come across as a micro-managing witch who won't listen to anybody and spends enough money on throwaway items to feed a third world country in year.

Read this article very carefully, if you have any interest in public relations crisis management or strategy. Once you get over the many "ouch!" parts, think about this:

Not one person in this article defended Martha Stewart. Not one.

Nobody in her company, MSLO, rose to the occasion to tell the reporter, "You're wrong. This is how we work" or "this is how we turn a profit" or "this is our strategy and here's why it's sound."

No friend or associate came forth, on the record or not for attribution, to say a nice thing about Martha and why she was a great person, or even a nice person, or even a generous person, or that she even helped little old ladies cross the street.

The Martha Stewart strategy was, I imagine, "they're not going to say anything good about us, so shy should we say anything?"

Ah, the classic blunder of waving the white flag, getting your butt deep in the foxhole, and hoping no bullets graze you when the smoke clears.

Could you imagine Casey Anthony's attorney informing the judge at her trial, "Look, those prosecutors are going to say lots of mean things about us, so why should we even show up? We'll wait until they say everything and show all their evidence, and we'll cross our fingers for good luck when the jury comes back."

New York magazine basically had a free pass to tear Martha Stewart to shreds, with nobody to set the record straight or persuade the journalist otherwise.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has millions of shareholders who are definitely reading this bombshell and may decide she's not worth investing in. Retailers and potential licensors may think twice about shaking hands on a deal with her. Her brand, to use the cliche phrase, has been damaged.

Now why would Martha Stewart leave herself hung out to dry, defenseless, willing to take as many bullets as New York magazine could shoot?

It's possible that after enduring jail time, she feels she can survive just about anything and rise above it. She clearly has a well-flexed ego. Perhaps she does not believe the pen is mightier than the sword or she's resolved that people will forget about this story as they putter off to the late August retreats.

Time will tell if Martha's unwavering belief in being "Teflon" will work.

But I don't think anybody is going to forget this article, as it will remain intact on the Internet for a long time to come, for anybody Googling her press coverage. If she's selling, the price they're giving may not be what she expected.

There are hardly any reasons for silence to be a sound public relations strategy.

But not when you are setting yourself up as a sitting duck.