The background:

• AshleyMadison.com attempts to purchase TTC advertising space and the Rocket (allegedly) refuses
• Mock-ups of the ads are released and chaos ensues

That’s really it.

From a stactical prospective, this controversial service embraced controversy through (allegedly) sincere attempts to market using uncontroversial advertising media. The content of the ads are published for free using earned media with an explanation of what the service does. Gaining earned media from creative work is at its base, a coup for marketing PRtists, as it expands the reach of the ad campaign without adding to the ad buy costs (see: the strategy behind Super Bowl ads)

So, strategy goes, if the ROI on a creative campaign is increased by piggybacking earned media, imagine the increase to ROI when the creative doesn’t even need to be produced, let alone bought media for.

This strategy is risky, yes, but it vibes in stride with the risqué identity of the brand.  Let’s send 60 swinging stractical points to AshleyMadison.com.

Ashley Madison proposed TTC ads courtesy of Torontoist.com

I didn’t watch the 24 hour CNN coverage of a camera aimed at Tiger’s front door. I didn’t listen to the tawdry voicemail messages. I don’t know the names and back stories of his alleged mistresses. But I know a story broke. And I know I didn’t think much of it. But then this radio silence kept amplifying this minor traffic accident until there was no other possible explanation for the events besides a domestic disturbance. In a way, Tiger baited the media and set his own trap, not for employing a terrible crisis strategy, but by attempting multiple half-assed strategies: Keep silent, but make a statement. Express sullen remorse but lash out at the unscrupulous media attention. Speak of vague “transgressions” as a parade of mistress names roll across the news ticker. And I know there are more but these are just the few bleeding through the margins to someone actively avoiding this one. The PR strangeness is just too strong, it won’t let me escape.

I’ve read constructive PR and social media critiques here and here. The comparisons to the David Letterman strategy are particularly apt though Dave had two things going for him that Tiger lack: a sense of humour for the softening touch of self-deprecation and an hour a night on network television to fill.

I’m struggling to offer Tiger advice so I’ll be portentously reductionist:

Be stractical. That means giving the GOST treatment both short and long term. Ask the questions: What is my essential to my personal brand? Or more generally, what do I need? To continue to play professional golf at a high level? To sign and carry out endorsement deals? To keep my family together? Adoration from millions? — A multi-national corporation would rally around its raison d’etre in a crisis and so should you.

While this epic is far from over, we’ll prematurely award -65 stractical points to Team Tiger Woods and note the irony that the low score in golf wins.

And now, if you’ll excuse me.  I’ll get back to changing the channel.

Tiger in the rough

PR has changed – pull is now more effective
Pull PR is superior to push, there is no escaping this. A (not so) secret part of media is this: media report on media. It’s so simple, yet so overlooked. By becoming media you embrace a pull strategy naturally and will attract attention from all other types of media – both professional and amateur.

And I believe it.  Just as Zara gets burn from its just-in-time business model, organizations are currently seeing earned media results from social media innovations. But, the contrarian in me how to wonder: is this stractical or  simply novelty? That is to say, if social media is a trendy topic in mass or otherwise credible media right now, what happens when it becomes old news? Is this argument for social media right or right now?

This led to me running down some of the media list aggregating services that I have used before: Vocus and Medianetcentral. The friend currently used Cision. The danger with these services, I warned, is that they make it too easy for PRtists to pile together a big ol’ list of names and e-mails addresses without actually positioning their pitches and press releases. That’s how, even with the best of intentions, you become a spammer.

And so when that same friend re-tweeted (did I say that right?) this from UnMarketing I thought it was only prudent to stractualize. Or stracticulate? Yeah, I like that.

In the tug-o-war between PR professionals and the media they’re trying to pitch to, both parties try to balance objectives with what they need from the other side. Okay, that was incredibly generic. What I mean to say is that the PR side wants to impress and interest the journalist with whatever product or story or angle they’re trying to promote. Journalists also need PR to feed them stories, grant them access to interview subjects, pass along products to review, etc. But don’t be fooled: PR is always a guest at this party and has to be on their best behaviour all time.

Unsolicited e-mail pitches or pitch spam has become the dominant force in 21st century pro-active marketing media relations. To extend the party analogy, the spam pitch is the guy who keeps opening beers without ever finishing them and won’t stop hitting on your girlfriend. The conversation about spam pitches lit up after Wired editor Chris Anderson published a list of e-mail addresses from (what he concluded were) PR spammers. And while this post may be vitriolic and punitive, he’s right for no other reason than these PRtists need him.

So, you’re thinking, the answer is we must all swear to uphold the sanctity of the incredibly narrowly-positioned and researched pitch and chastise those lazy charlatans who hurl mass e-mails to anyone labelled “entertainment” on a piece of software, right? We know who to blame!

Yet, like health-care reform or capital punishment, there’s three or four or 103494 sides of this coin.

As I’ve discussed before within the pages (posts?) of Stractical, I receive these spam pitches daily. Even with a finely-tuned spam blocking system, about five a day still pop through. The number of these e-mails that have actually piqued my interest, ever? One.  And just barely. Quite simply… it’s awful. And shameful. Somewhere, clients are paying for this to happen (though, with e-mail as we all know it only takes a second to send one or 500).

But at the same time, I’ve been on the other side. I’ve been an intern and a junior PR coordinator with billing commitments, managers breathing down my neck to produce a media list in four minutes. What was I to do? Those cool, crisp, focused pitches take research and style and most often a prior relationship with the writer. Juniors have none of this. To make the kind of media lists I should have been producing, it would have taken days, maybe even weeks. Which client was going to pay for that? So we resort to software and keywords, quantity over quality, our seniors look the other way and life moves on.

So in conclusion… we’re nowhere. Yes, there’s been some services popping up attempting to mediate journalists’ requests with PR supply but even when successful, they’ll never fill the void left if the pitching machines at agencies went away. But we know something must be done. And with so many of these spam pitches apparently bouncing back from vacated scribblers‘ e-mails, PR and journalism must solve the spam pitch issue before we lose the ability to tell a fantastic story pitch from a bottle of V1agra or a favour asked by a Nigerian prince.

Mass panic for vaccine.

Short supply.

And now the Canadian government is on the defensive, reaching for Stractical Points. And after all the media reports of grannies turned away from vaccine clinics after lining up for hours, Ottawa is in tough as the architect of Canada’s pandemic strategy.

The government needs a two-pronged approach in reaction but so far, we’ve only seen one:

1) The “we’re not wrong, we’re right” approach. Effectiveness: Tactical.

A difficult thing to prove in the blusterous court of public opinion, especially when it comes to a public health issue.

A federal official said with 6-million doses of the vaccine already in circulation, Canada is ahead of the rest of the world on a per-capita basis.

“There is no shortage,” the federal official said.

What the official meant, I interpret, is that there will be no shortage — folks who want the vaccine will get it… eventually. But in the media/public vortex, the “shortage” means what’s available now. Normally, full points for using a comparison (Canada vs. the world) but in the context of public health, this declaration reads disjointed compared to the story being created around flu concerns.

But they help their case by backing it up with numbers:  Ottawa is releasing data saying over a million doses have been distributed already nationally. A lesson in the effect and simplicity of a statistic to capture a point which carried this “we’re right” approach from gut-reactive to tactical.

2) The “what we’re doing to make things even better” approach. Effectiveness: Stractical.

While approach 1 hinges on defence, approach 2 is how you put points on the board (so many apologies to Touchdowns & Fumbles for co-opting football metaphors) To do so, the Ottawa needs to communicate what happens next. What’s the timeline? What should people expect? But the government still appears hesitant to commit to comment on when vaccines will be available for everyone who wants one or why most of us aren’t in dire need of the vaccine this week.

And they probably have good reason to avoid this area: they just don’t know and are afraid to say. But until the Canadian government can bridge approach 1 to approach 2, only half a Stractical point is all they collect.

Now, anyone for bacon?

While the dismantling of traditional media both financially and by audience/credibility has been gaining steam for years, this past year’s economic meltdown has only exacerbated the derailment. Clients are pursuing more direct lines to consumers through micro-targeted ads, Youtube channels, Twitter accounts and tactics of the like while PRtists continue to race the rest of the marketing world to plant their flag on social media mastery.

But, Michael Bush at Ad Age misses the point when he jumps from the sorry state of earned media pitching to the blossoming social media marketing scene: earning credible media is still a vital and often omnipotent strategy to achieve one’s communications goals. The slow strangulation of traditional mass media outlets is most definitely bruising to experts in negotiating earned media but that doesn’t necessarily mean former media relations mavens have thrown their eggs into a basket of Tweets.

Online media is evolving in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways.  Both niche and mass audience vehicles are establishing themselves as credible, editorial-based outlets that audiences are galvanizing around leading to trust. Skilled PRtists are recognizing these new media places, developing relationships with their writers and editors and negotiating access, products, and news stories to them in a meaningful way for their clients or organizations.

Maybe Team PR will win the race to thought leadership and supremacy over social media marketing. Maybe they’ll realize its not the only game in town.

But be on notice: Public relations in a wired (wireless?) world doesn’t mean giving up one ghost for another. Earning media is not a thing of the past. What’s that they say about evolution not revolution?

But… I just don’t know. This story isn’t going to die quickly. There are so many questions and charges and reactions yet to come that I can’t rule out the appetite for a reality show about the family that would do anything to get a reality show.

Public relations and publicity “work” by addressing goals and objectives and using its tools to advance them. The Heene family (allegedly) had a brash goal of focusing visual-hungry 24 hour cable news and making themselves famous. The reality TV game feeds off the same brash ideals. So, its hard not to credit this family with being strategic.

We’ll have to wait and see how this one turns out but I can’t help but award at least a quarter of a Stractical point to the Heene family for at least pulling Stractical out of hiatus to comment.

Burst balloon

Read it.

Lessons to be learned? First of all, protect your brand. That means sometimes you have to call in the lawyers — and when other parties are pretending to be you, it’s most likely lawyer time. And for the more insidious of marketing companies, always remember that brand authenticity toes a razor-thin line.  Social media vehicles offer unprecedented access, but also wing-melting proximity to screw it up. As Stractical has said before and will say again, the hallows of public relations lie in locating credibility. When you play the dupe, you desecrate your audience’s trust.

Besides the benefits of refreshing the look of your product or company, re-branding can be used to underscore change or advancement for your brand in the mind of the media. Why the change? What’s different? Where are you going? If you can answer those questions in a meaningful and newsworthy way, with splashy new creative to supplement as visuals, you just might have built yourself strategic media campaign. 

Back when I worked in corporate communications for a major ad firm, we’d call this “pitching around the creative.” It’s a tactic that you should pull out of your bag of tricks only once in a while (because no one cares that you changed your bus ads again, necessarily) but can be used effectively. The greatest example of “pitching around creative” is the spectacle that is Super Bowl ads. While the astronomical prices of Super Bowl airtime reflect the viewership during the Big Game (sorry, “Super Bowl” is a registered trademark of the powers-that-be) it’s the collateral press coverage that Super Bowl ads gain that truly justify the return on investment. 

Have thoughts on when and when not to “pitch around the creative” for brands, products and organizations? Please leave a comment.