 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
The Russian attempt to influence the 2016 American presidential election, using what intelligence agencies call “active measures,” has dominated U.S. headlines.There is, however, a second front in Russia’s effort to shape the hearts and minds of American citizens, and it’s received almost no attention in mainstream U.S. media outlets since the election. As someone who studies the growth of global public relations, I’ve researched the roles PR firms play in shaping public perceptions of international affairs. For years, Russia has been involved in public relations campaigns that have been developed and deployed by prominent, U.S.-based, global PR firms – campaigns intended to influence American public opinion and policy in ways that advance Russia’s strategic interests....
There’s a Word for Using Truthful Facts to Deceive: Paltering Virtually everyone lies when we interact or communicate with others. Hard to believe? Well, here is what the evidence tells us: people (you and me included!) tell, on average, one or two lies per day. Many of these lies are harmless: e.g., giving a spouse or friend a compliment we really don’t mean. Others, however, when mixed in with actual facts, have important consequences. Take politics, where candidates all too frequently employ such distortions to influence voters.For example, in the U.S. vice-presidential debate between Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Mike Pence, Kaine pushed Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to release his tax returns. (Trump has said he’d do it once the Internal Revenue Service completed an ongoing audit.) Kaine asserted that “Richard Nixon released tax returns when he was under audit,” leaving the impression that Nixon, a Republican, did so while running for re-election, creating a precedent for Trump. But as the New York Times pointed out, “Mr. Nixon released his taxes while under audit — but it was not until a year after his 1972 re-election.” Another recent example is Trump’s response in the September 26 presidential debate to a question about a federal lawsuit that charged his family’s company with housing discrimination. His answer was: “When I was really young, I went into my father’s company. We, along with many, many, many other companies, throughout the country — it was a federal lawsuit — were sued. We settled the suit with zero — no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do. But they sued many people.”...
We suppose it is possible for the Department of State to screw up the handling of questions about whether they lied to reporters even worse — but it is hard to figure out how. The video below from CNN’s Jake Tapper today nicely lays out the series of offenses — but here is our quick summary: In February 2013 Fox News correspondent James Rosen asked then State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland if there had been direct talks between the U.S. and Iran. She essentially said “NO.” In December 2013, Rosen points out to Nuland’s successor Jen Psaki that the correct answer would have been “YES” and asked if State routinely lied to reporters when they found it convenient. Psaki with a smirk said there are times when diplomacy needs privacy to succeed. (Translation: yes, we lied)....
The Republican frontrunner met with the editorial board on Monday morning. The full transcript follows at the link above: FREDERICK RYAN JR., WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHER: Mr. Trump, welcome to the Washington Post. Thank you for making time to meet with our editorial board. DONALD TRUMP: New building. Yes this is very nice. Good luck with it. RYAN: Thank you… We’ve heard you’re going to be announcing your foreign policy team shortly… Any you can share with us? TRUMP: Well, I hadn’t thought of doing it, but if you want I can give you some of the names… Walid Phares, who you probably know, PhD, adviser to the House of Representatives caucus, and counter-terrorism expert; Carter Page, PhD; George Papadopoulos, he’s an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy; the Honorable Joe Schmitz, [former] inspector general at the Department of Defense; [retired] Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg; and I have quite a few more. But that’s a group of some of the people that we are dealing with. We have many other people in different aspects of what we do, but that’s a representative group....
Gawker recently turned food marketers' heads with a 2,500-word takedown of blogger, dietary guru and anti-GMO activist Vani Hari, aka "Food Babe." Author Yvette d'Entremont, who started a rival blog under the "Science Babe" moniker, asserted that Hari peddles easily disproved pseudoscience designed to frighten people into emptying their pantries of "toxins" and send angry emails to major food conglomerates.
Vani, a New York Times bestselling writer and TV talk show guest, responded with a can't-we-just-be-friends lament before casting d'Entremont as a "biased," pro-pesticide advocate promoting that most unpopular of agricultural villains—Monsanto. She even created a disclaimer for readers who visit her site from links in the Gawker post: "Coming from Gawker? Warning: I believe you should have both sides of the story before you make an informed opinion. Read the other side of the story here."
A larger trend is lurking beneath this spat over digital influence: America is facing a growing crisis of credibility in food labeling. And as consumers struggle to decide whom to trust—passionate bloggers or major food brands—agencies can get caught in the crossfire....
Investigating the gun industry, Muslim extremists, and high-stakes litigation, I’ve grown accustomed to deadline intimidation from corporate legal departments or an executive’s personal PR squad, but only this week am I getting a feel for what it’s like to be the target when a sovereign nation goes into crisis-communication mode.
Worried about revelations in Law of the Jungle, my soon-to-be-released book about the epic Chevron (CVX) oil pollution case, the Republic of Ecuador’s U.S. public relations advisers, New York-based Ketchum, has sent a six-page, single-spaced memo to Ecuador’s ambassador to the U.S., Nathalie Cely. Marked “reservado y confidencial,” the memo, prepared in Spanish throughout, outlines “difficult questions” the book raises “that negatively affect Ecuador,” and includes an ad hominem swipe. “It remains unclear when and how many times Barrett visited Ecuador or if he interviewed anyone from the Government,” the memo states. “This can be converted into a point that we can raise, but only in suitable settings and among appropriate journalists.”
I obtained a copy of the memo from a helpful noncombatant who works for neither Ketchum nor the ambassador and who requested anonymity for all the obvious and usual reasons. The damage-control document is a peculiar combination of advice on how to discredit the messenger—“this can be converted into a point …”—and admissions that the book raises issues that do not reflect well on Ecuador’s government....
How do you get news and ideas into the hands of already-well-informed opinion leaders in public office? And how do you add substantively to the public discourse while avoiding the trap of becoming "just more noise"?
These were some of the challenges General Electric faced in designing its ground-breaking #Pressing campaign. Linda Boff, GE's Executive Director, Global Brand Marketing, sat down with us to discuss the campaign and how partnering with RebelMouse provided her team with the end-to-end platform they needed to deliver high-quality curated content to their audience...
On Thursday, Ketchum scored another public-relations coup: It helped place a Putin commentary in opinion pages of The New York Times, just as representatives from Russia and the United States were beginning to meet in Geneva to negotiate a plan for Syria to give up its chemical weapons.
The article made quite a splash in Washington. Putin painted himself as a peacemaker and lectured the United States for what he said was a tendency to use "brute force" in world disputes. U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said he was "insulted" by the article, while the White House noted that Putin was taking advantage of press freedoms unavailable in Russia.
Ketchum, a division of the Omnicom Group Inc., has earned more than $25 million working for Russia, according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice. It also has been paid more than $26 million since 2007 to promote Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas company....
...While national political attention was dominated by the fiscal cliff and a new Congress, environmental activists continued gearing up for what they believe to be the fight of the century. Rather than lick their wounds after the high-profile defeats of the last month, they leveraged them into outreach and engagement opportunities that are swelling their ranks.
Likes on the “Stop the Keystone Pipeline” Facebook page have grown to four times the number on the “Support the Keystone Pipeline Page.” YouTube is now teeming withvideos expressing personal and emotional appeals against the pipeline. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) now owns the top result for a Google search on “Keystone Pipeline, Nebraska.” The National Wildlife Federation claims the top spot for searches on “Keystone Pipeline, Danger.” A search for “Tar Sands” returns no fewer than five first-page results maintained by pipeline opposition groups. All the while, activists are leveraging relationships with high-profile bloggers to further sway public opinion and demonstrate compelling third-party support. As it has so many times in the past, the activist community is asserting its digital dominance. All of that online activity is translating into grassroots action. Protests are being carried out across the country. Petitions are being delivered to the White House in droves. And to keep the momentum building, 18 top climate scientists recently penned a letter to the president in strong opposition to the pipeline, writing that “the administration would be actively supporting and encouraging the growth of an industry which has demonstrably serious effects on climate.”...
...The first 90 seconds of the spot were fantastic. As a viewer, I learned some of the steps the nation’s leading beverage company is taking to provide us with healthier drinking options. It has more than 180 low- and no-calorie options, many of which have replaced higher-calorie offerings in school vending machines. It has created smaller, portion-controlled sizes as well as boldly stated the calorie count of each drink on its cans. It supports initiatives like the Boys & Girls Clubs that encourage kids and young adults to get active. These efforts have helped reduce the average calories per serving across the soda industry’s products in the United States by about 22 percent. That’s a fantastic story, if it stopped there. If Coca-Cola had admitted that overconsumption of its higher-calorie beverages has led to greater numbers of obese individuals while emphasizing its efforts to offer healthier beverage options, portion control and transparency in calorie counts, I’d applaud it (though would wonder why its message warranted a 90-second spot). But it didn’t admit the truth, and the ad didn’t stop there. At about the 90-second mark, Coca-Cola’s storytelling machine went off the rails. Instead of coming clean and admitting that it’s a source of the problem, it proclaimed that “all calories count, no matter where they come from.” The line was made intentionally vague because it implies something that is not true. While it’s true that all calories count, it’s untrue that they’re created equal, and that’s indisputable....
The world of social media provides a clear road map for how to bridge the 'Advocacy Gap'. Will the advocacy technology world follow it? What capabilities would an advocacy platform need to provide to make effective advocate storytelling a reality? Last week on the blog, I began focusing on the concept of the advocacy gap. Research, compiled in a report titled “The Advocacy Gap: Research for Better Advocacy,” notes that for the better part of the past 20 years, Capitol Hill offices have faced an ever-increasing crush of online constituent communication. The world of social media has followed much the same path. And, as social media has continued to evolve, some clear trends have developed on how to cut through the communications clutter...
Because firms don't need to disclose political contributions, we don't know who's lobbying for what.are you Newsweek just released its fourth annual Green Rankings, grading the "greenness" of the 500 largest publicly-traded companies in the world. In partnership with research firms Trucost and Sustainalytics, companies are ranked based on their management, performance, and transparency in the environmental domain. One of us (Toffel) was a member of Newsweek's advisory panel. Thanks to that involvement and our research on green ratings, we understand the many challenges of rating firms' environmental performance. While leading assessments like Newsweek's are admirably rigorous and comprehensive, all major green rankings have an important blind spot: They do not account for corporate lobbying and campaign contributions around environmental policy. After all, no matter how green a company's operations and supply chains are, political efforts aimed at weakening environmental laws and regulations can have far greater environmental impact. Unfortunately, we know little about corporate political activities since much of it occurs behind closed doors. So whether companies are pushing to strengthen environmental regulations or lobbying to weaken them, none of this crucial information is incorporated into green rankings. You might think that companies that are transparent on environmental issues would also be forthcoming about their political activities. But perhaps not....
It seems like every politician, pundit and PBS advocate alike has weighed in on the Obama campaign's spoof of Mitt Romney's savage attack on Sesame Street's Big Bird. The Team Obama TV spot has had no fewer than 60 separate... ...airings on different networks around the country. And, PBS, the Switzerland of broadcasting, has asked that the partisan power punch be taken off the airwaves. Aside from a rather innocuous SNL segment, no one has really stopped to ask Big Bird, Elmo or Oscar the Grouch their feelings about this tempest in a teapot. So Repman's crack editorial team stepped into the lurch and arranged for an exclusive interview with the trio at a local Manhattan bagel shop. (Note: Kermit the Frog was on assignment in the Middle East and Miss Piggy was competing to become a contestant on “The Biggest Loser.”... [Steve Cody rocks in this post ;-) Jeff]
|
Some MIT faculty, led by Roger Levy and Nancy Kanwisher, posted a short message regarding what they believe in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. More than 400 faculty have now signed it. As an MIT alumnus, I read this statement and wondered about the platitudes it contains: why make this statement, and why ask faculty to sign it? The answers may make you uneasy.
The platitudes in this statement are problematic
The 233-word statement is well-written and direct — it’s free of jargon, passive voice, and weasel words. If you think only about the words, it seems clear and effective. But its filled with platitudes nobody disagrees with. The fact that these faculty need to make statements of this kind says a lot about them, and the times we live in. I’ve appended my comments in italic....
Since he lost his TV reporting job last year, Jarrett Hill has been looking for his next opportunity. It presented itself in an unexpected way. Hill was sitting at a corner table Monday night in a Culver City Starbucks, drinking a venti iced coffee and watching the Republican National Convention on an MSNBC live stream. As Melania Trump spoke, she uttered a phrase that the 31-year-old California native had heard once before — from First Lady Michelle Obama. “… the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams …,” Melania Trump said during her address to the Republican National Convention. Instinctively, Hill finished the phrase aloud to his laptop screen: “… and your willingness to work for them.” “Kind of like a song that you haven’t heard in a long time and you remember the lyrics as you hear them. Or a movie that you know the line to and you kind of respond to it,” he said. He recalled the words from Michelle Obama’s speech because, he said, he had thought to himself at the time that it was “really beautifully written.” “I believe I even wrote it down or typed it,” Hill said. “Obviously having no idea that eight years later I’d hear them again from a woman who wanted to be first lady speaking at a convention in front of 40 million people.”...
If there’s one tactic that has stood out in this presidential campaign, it is the way GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has slain his foes with the jawbone of an ass.
Trump’s penchant for labeling his opponents—from “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz to “Low-Energy Jeb” Bush—has been like a boxer’s left hook to the liver. It doesn’t look like much until the other guy drops.
Now Trump is trying to do the same to his Democratic foes, calling them “crooked” and “crazy.”
After The New York Times Magazine explored the issue (“Donald Trump Shares His Opponent-Branding Secrets”), I wondered: Do the same labeling techniques work in PR and marketing? Whether it’s throwing mud or branding oneself positively, does Trump offer lessons to PR pros?
The consensus is that such tactics can work, but mudslinging is “risky,” a word Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton uses in an effort to brand Trump.
“Trump has a knack for coining just the right moniker, the perfectly dismissive and catchy thing,” The Times writer stated. “‘It works, it flows,’ Trump said, admiring his latest work.”
The vast majority of working journalists, even those covering politics, have not sat down with a president of the United States for an interview. But in January 2015, three YouTube stars got that opportunity. They asked about drones, net neutrality and what super power the president would like to have. And then there was the moment when GloZell Green (3 million followers) handed a tube of her signature green lipstick to the leader of the free world. “For your first wife,” she said. Barack Obama was nonplussed. “You know something I don’t?” he asked.
To Dan Pfeiffer, the outgoing Senior Advisor to the President in charge of White House communications, the awkwardness was part of the lure: a moment of authenticity that helps a sometimes distant chief executive connect with his huge base of supporters. Pfeiffer, who has been with Obama since his first run for the White House, has been a key force in expanding the range of venues in which his boss can communicate with the American people. To the chagrin of a White House press corps accustomed to special access, the president has traded jibes and plugged Obamacare with Zach Galifianakis on Funny or Die, chatted about the climate with local weather anchors, and made faces in the mirror on a Buzzfeed video. The White House has also established a huge presence on Facebook, Twitter and Medium (yes, us), using the latter to break precedent and publish the State of the Union speech before the president delivered it....
A population of 100,000 is no longer a guarantee that a city like Richmond, California can sustain a thriving daily paper. Readers have drifted from the tactile pleasures of print to the digital gratification of their smartphone screens, and advertising revenues have drifted with them. Titles that once served up debates from City Hall, news of school teams’ triumphs and classified ads for outgrown bikes have stopped the presses for good.
Last January, however, a site called the Richmond Standard launched, promising “a community-driven daily news source dedicated to shining a light on the positive things that are going on in the community”, and giving everyone from athletes to entrepreneurs the recognition they deserve. Since then, it has recorded the “quick-thinking teen” commended by California’s governor for saving a woman from overdosing; the “incredible strength” of the 5ft 6in high-school freshman who can bench-press “a whopping 295lbs”; and councilman Tom Butt’s warning about the costs of vacating a blighted public housing project.
The Richmond Standard is one of the more polished sites to emerge in the age of hyper-local digital news brands such as Patch and DNAinfo.com. That may be because it is run and funded by Chevron, the $240bn oil group which owns the Richmond refinery that in August 2012 caught fire, spewing plumes of black smoke over the city and sending more than 15,000 residents to hospital for medical help....
Last week, Gawker uncovered a hapless tie-up between genetically modified seed/pesticide giant Monsanto and Condé Nast Media—publisher of The New Yorker, Bon Appetit, GQ, Self, Details, and other magazines—to produce "an exciting video series" on the "topics of food, food chains and sustainability."
Marion Nestle was offered $5,000 to participate for a single afternoon. Since then, I've learned that Condé Nast's Strategic Partnerships division dangled cash before several high-profile food politics writers, in an unsuccessful attempt to convince them to participate....
Hidden in plain sight, the controversial oil fields are an industrial expanse where forests once stood....
...Even when you round a certain bend and see some of the view, it’s hard to grasp the scale: This is a place where trucks are literally the size of houses, storage tanks are the size of football fields, and machines for processing the oil are the size of small office buildings. When the oil fields are fully developed, they'll cover an area the size of the state of Florida....
The National Confectioners' Association — the lobby group representing candymakers such as Mars, Mondelez International, Nestle, and Hershey — is preparing a $2 million PR budget to fight the idea that candy has played a role in the American obesity crisis, according to Ad Age. The immediate threat they're hoping to stave off is FDA regulation of sugar: ... the Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a petition asking the FDA to establishing a recommended safe level of added sugars, particularly in beverages. While the FDA has recommended daily allowances for sodium and fat, it has no such measure for sugar. More broadly, Big Candy has encouraged an interesting effort to persuade companies to move the calorie count label to the front of candy packaging. That seems like a good thing — consumers should get more info about the food they're eating. But what Ad Age doesn't mention is that the calorie labels are printed in green, and — by amazing coincidence! — consumers have a tendency to believe that green food labeling means the food is healthier....
For starters, it’s trying way too hard to have it every which way, and trots out too much corporate blather and jibber-jabber. All that lawyer-approved disingenuousness shuts my circuits down. Most people watching would find it interesting to know that Coca-Cola owns over 600 brands, including teas, waters, sports drinks, health drinks, and the sweetener Truvia. I love the design of the tiny cans, and the big graphic calorie counts on the front labels of the sugared drinks. All good information. But you can’t have it both ways. Exactly how deeply concerned iscitizen Coca-Cola about "playing an important role" in addressing obesity, when clearly it is also using this very same message to lobby voraciously on behalf of high-fructose-syrupy, supersized drinks (which Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is threatening to kill) and against higher soda taxes? This will take “continued effort from all of us,” says the announcer, evenly. But speak for yourself, lady. It’s a bit presumptuous to ask your customers to exert any effort in your direction. The root causes of obesity are so complicated, with so many possible angles (never mind Coke’s role in that epidemic)...
...I want to share some of their [Edelman Trust Barometer] findings here because understanding them will help everyone build and grow better companies. This isn’t just a PR topic. It affects everything: Brand management, communications, operations, retail, customer service… everything. First, the checklist. Below is a graphic that shows 16-trust building attributes every organization needs to be aware of (and gauge). It looks like this year, Edelman added categories (what they call trust performance clusters): Engagement, Integrity, Products & Services, Purpose, and Operations. I can’t poke a hole into this. It’s solid....
American International Group is launching an ad campaign that will air during post-season football games, awards shows and morning news programs and thanks taxpayers for coming to the insurer’s rescue during the financial crisis. American International Group is launching an ad campaign that will air during post-season football games, awards shows and morning news programs and thanks taxpayers for coming to the insurer’s rescue during the financial crisis. The “Thank You America” campaign will highlight AIG’s recovery and the repayment of the federal government’s bailout, which at its peak in 2009 consisted of a $182.3 billion commitment from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.... The campaign follows Treasury’s announcement earlier this month that it sold its final shares of AIG. The ads will highlight the calculation that the government made a $22.7 billion profit on the bailout....
Strange PR Bedfellows: Scientology and The Nation of Islam... You may not have heard about The Church of Scientology opening a new “national affairs office” in Washington, DC’s historic Fraser Mansion last month. Small PR potatoes, right? We would normally agree–but this week The New Republic published a fascinating story that caught our eye: It would appear that The Church and The Nation of Islam—which may well be our country’s two least favorite native religious groups—have decided to join hands in the interest of faith and public relations. It’s quite bizarre.... [Can somebody please explain the upside for each? ~ Jeff ]
|
PR or propaganda? Is public relations simply a more insidious form of fake news asks Sue Curry Jansen?