Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Nothing more credible than a leaked memo

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Thanks to Ron Shewchuk for pointing us to a segment on Canada's Business News Network. Asked about the wisdom of Citigroup's recent employee memo that, when leaked, drove the stock up 38%, Edelman Public Relations CEO Richard Edelman endorses the notion of communicating to the financial world by getting the word to employees first.

"Employees are now the new secret credible source for corporations because there's a lot of horizontal communication that happens to friends and family. I think too much of the communication has just been straight at the analysts in the past."

Well, it's actually not all that new—Crescenzo and I were reporting on "employees as brand ambassadors" more than a decade ago in The Ragan Report and an imbecile company I worked with actually created a newslettter full of good news that employees were to share with everyone they knew. (The title of the newsletter? Why, The Ambassador, of course.)

But the notion of influencing analysts by deliberately giving a leaky workforce information that might raise the stock—this is novel. Of course, the way Dick Edelman explains it—keep employees in the loop and transform them into credible resources for analysts—it sounds great.

In fact, let's just leave it at that, shall we? And let's head up the elevator and see if we can't get some of those IR funds to supplement the employee communication budget.

The ‘shit storm’ down under

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Australian prime Minister Kevin Rudd swore on TV.

My Aussie correspondent, Sydney-based communication consultant Rodney Gray, sent me the item. He says lots of his countrymen think Rudd did it purposely "to show he was one with retrenched factory workers." *

Have a look here. What do you think?

* And what would be the matter with this tactic? A professional seminar leader once told me she threw in precisely one obscenity, early in the session, to indicate the talk was no-holds-barred, grownups talking to grownups like grownups.

Obama, and authenticity

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While the conservatives go on about how Obama's heavy use of the Teleprompter means he is an empty suit and a phony—just as Michael Steele's unscripted babbling means he is a sincere man of principle—a Chicago Tribune story comes out about Obama's tight relationship with speechwriter Jon Favreau.

He's the 27-year-old heartthrob scribe who I predicted would be gone within the year because he's too inexperienced and self-promoting for the job. A sign he might prove me wrong: Favreau didn't participate in the Trib story.

Also:

With access to the president among the most valued resources in the White House, the importance Obama places on his oratory is apparent from his schedule. On most days, he meets personally with Favreau or other members of his speechwriting team to go over upcoming remarks.

"I've never worked for a politician who values words as much as the president does," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said. "The speechwriter is an unusually important person in the operation. [Obama's] willingness to entrust his words to others is limited."

As writers, we have to respect or at the very least understand the instincts of a statesman who wants to get the words exactly right in speeches—and who won't blab some empty blather some policy hack hands him for a Rose Garden speech. Like us, he feels his words are what he is as much as his actions are.

Questioning the authenticity of a guy who feels this way seems to be attacking him at his strength.

Doesn't it?