A second take on Tiger

A few things have changed since I first weighed in on the “transgressions” of Tiger Woods and the PR aspect of the public’s minute-by-minute hunger for every sordid detail about the “truth” about his “accident” in his front yard.

When I wrote this on Dec. 3, I assumed – like you – that he had an affair, not affairs.

Had the truth been about an affair – about one woman – I still stand by my take that Tiger could have legitimately given the media the Heisman Trophy-stiff arm and had every right to say “…personal sins should not require press releases…” and he could have repaired his family on his timetable and terms.

I would have applauded him for that, as a way to send a message to the tabloid crap that passes for “media” that he wouldn’t play it out the way it’s “supposed” to be played.

Of course, that’s if this was all about one woman.

But what we’ve learned since obviously changed the game. And the PR strategy for Woods.

Scott & White connects in Fort Hood crisis

I didn’t know anything about Scott & White Healthcare until I listened to a recent episode of the For Immediate Release podcast, which recapped its performance during the Nov. 5 Fort Hood shootings. 

In my neck of the woods in Minnesota, Mayo gets all the social media street cred. 

S&W deserves kudos for how it communicated – especially just a few weeks after even getting its social media presence up and running, via Twitter, a blog and YouTube. 

S&W is one of the hospitals which provide services to Fort Hood, and treated 10 victims of the shooting in their ER. Ed Bennett’s Found in Cache blog has an interview with Steven Widmann, director of Web Services at S&W, which lays out the hospital’s crisis communications performance. 

Widmann sums up his thoughts in the interview by saying: “I’m finding the use of social media is really no different than what crisis communications have been in years past. Only the tools have changed. With social media tools we have the capability to get information out quicker and to a larger audience. Ultimately it’s all about communication. Having social media tools and understanding how they work will allow hospitals to create that ’source of truth’ that will better serve the community.” 

He’s right. But “quicker” is quicker than it used to be. 

On the FIR podcast, Shel Holtz smartly points out it’s not just the tools that have changed: “I think the appetite for news has grown tremendously from what it was before social media – the expectation that you can get information – and I think that Scott & White accommodated that…” said Holtz. 

The always-intense information landscape of people wanting to know, now, requires organizations to respond online to that hunger for news when it makes sense to do so, as in the Fort Hood situation. And to do it respectfully – as in the case of a hospital – and also to do it in a way that assists the media in its reporting of factual information and hunger for more updates. 

More information on S&W’s crisis communications effort is here on Crisisblogger and at Mac’s Safety Space. 

 

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Nothing common about B.C.E.

“Dad, have you ever heard about B.C.E. or C.E.?

And so began my online search into the latest relabeling project our schools are pushing at our kids. B.C.E., or Before Common Era, or C.E., the Common Era.

Seriously.

Yes, I guess there was a need to change Before Christ, or B.C, and Anno Domini, A.D. Funny, I thought we were doing just fine.

It’s likely this is not new to you if your child’s school has already introduced this.

And as best I can tell, it’s not really a new development. Thanks to its entry in Wikipedia, I discovered the Common Era has been written about for a few hundred years. Apparently though, the reason schools are incorporating it now has something to do with its increasing use in textbooks.

So B.C.E. has been around, and first pushed in the 1980s, though it was never mentioned in my textbooks as I recall.

Oh and it’s not necessarily just an anti-Jesus thing. Some people have referred to B.C.E. as Before Christian Era… though “Common Era” does win out most of the time.

So, apparently we’re in the Common Era.

Who knew?

In trying to learn more about the use of B.C.E. and C.E. I did see posts like this, aimed at getting Christians to stand down and accept the relabeling as an effort to correct some calendar questions. Fair enough. I see some of the argument for it. The precise year of Jesus’ birth is murky. Why our predecessors couldn’t get that right, as year zero, is odd. (Some people place His birth in 7 B.C. or 6 A.D.).

But this is really yet another effort to secularize our schools. Yes, I’m against the “Winter Party” and “Happy Holiday” crowd. Though, I’m not as worked up about B.C.E. as some of the parent protests have been. The passion against B.C.E. even inspired the creation of Conservapedia.

But I’ll say this, I just don’t think, at this time, that B.C.E. is as commonly accepted as its proponents would have you believe.

Do I like it? Not really. I think it’s a needless change. Do I care enough to petition my kid’s school? No.

What’s amusing in all this, as this story points out, is that B.C.E. is still based on Jesus. It’s just another way to label and measure the same time period.

So label it what you want, teacher of my offspring. I’ll keep using B.C. and A.D.

By the way, why have we clung to the English system of measurement in the United States, instead of going full-blown Metric? You’d think that would be easier than taking Christ out of B.C.?

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Tiger

There are enough thoughts percolating out there in the PR world right now about the incredible fall from grace of Tiger Woods. I’ll let the so-called “smart people” in PR talk and write about what he should have said and when he should have said it. And where he goes from here.

It doesn’t change what he did.

Ask me for my quick take, though, and I submit that Tiger has a point in his statement today.

Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.

Whether he wrote that or not is not the point. It’s the message. And I agree with it.

And Tiger’s just about the only person in the world who can pull that off.

Just because “the media” likes the story – and every juicy detail – it doesn’t mean the person at the center of the scrutiny has to play ball.

In this case, Tiger could have shortened his statement down to two sentences, saying it was a private family matter, etc… and let that be that. He’s under no expectation – other than to fulfill the desires of the media – to do anymore than that.

Really. We’ve all got bigger things to worry about, don’t we?

Still, as I think about all this, my world is basically colored by the questions I get from my kids.

Simple questions, really. “What did Tiger do, Dad?”

Well…

Why, Tiger?

Why?

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Worth getting suspended over?

As a former TV news guy, I thought I’d weigh in on the story of the billboard for a station in Mobile, Alabama that apparently got its management in trouble.

Would a realistic person, driving by, actually think the real-time Twitter update headline of “3 Accused of Gang Rape in Monroeville” pertained to the smiling faces of the WPMI anchors and weather guy on the billboard?

Give me a break.

In “Twitter Billboard Leads to Epic Fail” on Mashable, there’s a link to a story by Rob Holbert on Lagniappe that says the WPMI general manager and news director were both suspended for the unfortunate billboard Tweet.

Again, how stupid do you have to be to think the headline was about the WPMI talent?

Amusing? Sure. A “fail” that’s worth getting suspended over?

Hardly.

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The Prejean PR lesson

(Photo courtesy: Miss California USA)

If you asked me a few months ago about Miss USA 2009 first runner-up Carrie Prejean, I was among those who felt she got a raw deal at that pageant.

And, that she deserved credit for sticking to her beliefs in a public forum, knowing full well many people wouldn’t agree with her. (In my first take on that, I pointed out the hypocrisy of the pageant’s Q&A format).

Today, my opinion of Prejean regarding that night on the Miss USA stage hasn’t changed. She had a chance to speak her mind and she did. Clumsily, but she did.

But her time in the public eye over the last week, promoting her book, has essentially made it hard for even the people who would’ve have purchased her book to like her.

It offers three quick lessons for people and businesses in the PR world, seeking bigtime PR hits on network TV:

Poster child for poor sportsmanship

Elizabeth Lambert might be a nice person. She might genuinely feel bad about what she did in a soccer game that now lives online for all the world to see. Again and again. (ESPN has more of the video, and analysis, here).

But thanks to letting her emotions “get the best” of her, she’s now forever the “angry soccer player” from the University of New Mexico. With the evidence prominently on display on YouTube for who knows how long.

You want her coaching your daughter on a youth soccer team in 10 years or so?

Aside from the obvious idiocy of her actions – calling it “poor sportsmanship” doesn’t seem to cut it – Lambert’s 15 minutes of fame provides yet another study in how a university’s media relations/communications team has to put together an apology for an athlete who decided to play dirty.

While New Mexico’s damage police at least used the “uncalled for” phrase in the statement below – No, I don’t think Lambert wrote this – I don’t think it goes far enough:

Cash for Christ followers

(Photo courtesy: Chicago Tribune)

If a Chicago-area pastor’s goal was to create a little buzz, it has certainly worked.

But will that buzz around his church’s cash weekly giveaway lead people to a meaningful, personal relationship with Jesus?

Only time will tell. Maybe the real goal is to raise awareness of the church itself and its impact on its community. In any case, not unlike many PR and marketing campaigns, you can’t always measure it and judge it while it’s still in play.

I read about Rev. Dan Willis and his Lighthouse Church of All Nations in Alsip, Illinois on the PR Junkie blog, as well as a story in the Chicago Tribune.

The Tribune explained the premise:

Hey Verizon, can you hear me now?

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have have zero patience… for crappy customer service.

Usually, I let the offender know via a nice old-fashioned letter. Feels good to get it all out, stick the stamp on, and see what happens. 100% of the time I get a call or letter seeking to remedy the situation.

I’ll be doing the letter-writing thing again for what I experienced today at a Verizon store in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

But… I also want to let it breathe a bit here on my blog. Because an online rant seems fitting for a company that tries so hard to get it right in its ads and in what it does online. And, is trying so hard to compete with Web favorite, Apple. Case in point, the whole iPhone envy “There’s a map for that” campaign.

Well, as Yoda said, “Do or do not, there is no try.”

By the way, I’m not holding my breath for a response on this one. Because I simply don’t think the particular store manager on duty today cares, or is informed enough about the phones Verizon sells.

The issue:

Favre’s return to Green Bay

(Photo courtesy: Star Tribune/Time)

Before I tackle some PR-related points about Brett Favre’s return to Lambeau Field this Sunday, let’s make something clear right off the bat:

I bleed Viking purple.

And I’m not thrilled Brett Favre is on the Vikes right now. I’m just not big on one-year fixes with 40-year-old quarterbacks. But that’s just me. While I’m pleased the Vikings are winning, and I realize they wouldn’t be 6-1 with any other quarterback on the roster at the helm, I’m also preparing for a playoff collapse like any good pessimistic Minnesotan.

If you’re one of those goofballs who went out and bought a Favre #4 Vikings jersey, you and I couldn’t have more opposite takes on his place on the team.

That said, I do think Brett Favre has a will to win, and an ability to win, unlike any other quarterback in NFL history. He’s fun to watch. Win or lose.

So it puzzles me why the Green Bay mayor felt the need to spend his and the city’s time on a photo-op campaign dubbed “4 Days to Victory.”