Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Are you touching others, or just touching yourself?

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Writing Boots’ Hong Kong correspondent, speechwriter Lorne Christensen, alerts us to this speech, given in support of a gay marriage law in Maine, last spring. He calls it “a humble and powerful speech from the heart,” and adds that its genuineness would appeal to people on either side of the gay marriage debate.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s the test all communication has to pass—does it affect (even subtly, even silently) the sworn enemies of the idea it espouses? Or does it only excite those who agreed in the first place?

The Richard Henne of public relations

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The reason we like the Balloon Boy story is that it represents the one thing we can agree on as a nation. We quarrel about the legitimacy of flu fears, military queers and Glenn Beck's tears. But we join hands with all American brothers and sisters—indeed with billions of soul siblings around the world—in warm agreement on one common truth: This Richard Henne dude is a real fucking asshole.

More locally to our little communication industry, can we find unity in agreeing that this person, who made a comment on another communications website, is also an asshole?

I won't do him the favor of identifying him by name except to say he calls himself the "World's first MARKETING SOCIOLOGIST." In-apropos to the subject being discussed, he grouses:

My career plan was to go into public relations. When I started, it was REQUIRED that you have a 10 year minimum on the media side so you understood the media.



That is why public relations is dying. I was at a forum this weekend populated by hundreds of PR practitioners. Why was I the only one in the place who knew what the RACE formula was?



Most did not know what SWOT or the 4Ps of marketing were either. These are people getting $350 for their advice. I'm open for new clients at not even a fraction of that cost.

 …

Let us tally the obnoxiousness, the dishonesty and self-pity spilling out of those three short paragraphs:

1. It is my contention that a college-age person whose "career plan" is to go into public relations lacks (like Richard Henne) humanity and intelligence both. I mean, if you're going to do something as morally dreary as PR, why not do something that you could make some money at?

2. Are we to believe that you followed your career plan and slaved away as a journalist for a decade just so you could leap out of purgatory and into PR? And during that decade no editor explained to you that towns are "populated," while forums are "attended."

3. And how did you confirm, Mr. Former Journalist, that you were "the only one in the place" who knew what the "RACE" formula was? And did it occur to you that maybe the RACE formula—Research, Action, Communication, Evaluation—is something these pros have maybe sort of internalized by this point?

4. But you're not finished, are you, Roy G. Biv? You say that "most" of the PR peeps at this conference didn't know "SWOT" (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) or the "4ps" (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). Do you also have formulas for tying your shoes and zipping up your pants? And do you doubt my competence, because I perform those tasks on pure instinct?

5. Let's not indulge in brain teasers like, How can you charge an hourly amount that is "not even a fraction" of $350? Instead, let us ask: Who is on thinner ice than a PR man who grouses that undeserving others are getting more money than he is? PR man, public relate thyself! Oh, I forgot. You already do. You're the World's First Marketing Sociologist.

And, we hope, the world's last.

The communicator’s conceit

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PRacconteur Fraser Seitel used to get an automatic laugh in his seminars by casually referring to CEOs as "knuckleheads." I'm sure he still does.

That's because when communication people get together, we find comfort in an agreement that we are more intelligent than the executives we work for—or at least far more evolved in the most important aspect of life, human affairs.

One way I water down my own communicator's conceit is to read the "Corner Office" column in the business section of the Sunday New York Times. Here, CEOs are interviewed, usually on human matters, and while they often say the expected stuff—they invariably say that they love to hire people better than they are, for instance—they often show they know a thing or two about "our" end of the business, the human end.

"I was the first female president of the General Dynamics Corporation, and I went out and bought my new fancy suits," said BAE Systems president Linda Hudson in a recent Corner Office interview.

A lady at Nordstrom had show me how to tie a scarf in a very unusual kind of way for my new suit. I have my first day at work, and then I come back ot work the next day, and I run into no fewer than a dozen women who have on scarves tied exactly like mine.

That's when I realized that life was never going to be the way it had been before, that people were watching everything I did. And it wasn't just going to be how I dressed. It was about my behavior, the example I set, the tone I set, the way I carried myself, how confident I was—all those kinds of things. …

To this day, not only the awareness of that, but the responsibility that goes with it, is something I think about virtually every day.

And in yesterday's Corner Office, Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo, told a story that explains why she's a CEO:

My mom died when I was 8, so my grandmother raised my brother and me. She had a great sense of humor, and she never really let things get to her.

When we were on a farm in Wisconsin, and I was probably 13, there was a snake up in the rafter of the machine shed. And we ran and said, "Grandma, there's a snake."

And she came out and she knocked it down with a shovel, chopped its head off and said, "You could have done that." And, you know, that's the tone she set. Just get it done. Pick yourself up. Move on. Laugh.

These women are pretty smart, for CEOs.