The Ethical Optimist

After 25 years in the PR business, I’ve become fairly adept at the spoken word. My family and friends will tell you I’m passionate and rarely run out of things to say.

Yet, when it comes to speaking up on certain issues with clients, I often stumble all over myself. For example, I don’t do money discussions well, but with age and experience, I’m getting better at it.

I found myself in a quandary recently and tripped over my tongue a bit, but since it was an interesting ethical dilemma I’d like to share it with you.

We have a client that we started with several months ago. We believe in their business and truly feel that PR can be a tremendous asset to them. However, it quickly became apparent that this was a tough relationship at the onset. Within just a few weeks, getting our client contact on the phone regularly was a mammoth effort. When we did, we found we were not getting the information, feedback and response time we needed to do our job effectively.

At first, we attributed it to the fact that the client was new to PR and extremely busy. So, we did what any good agency would do, we confronted the issue head-on in a meeting. We walked away believing the client contact had a better understanding of our needs, and we theirs. However, after another week or so, the issue remained status quo.

We became increasingly concerned because without information, feedback, approvals and the like, we weren’t able to get the results we knew this client’s management team needed. A second call to action via a conference call yielded little in the way of progress.

Here’s where the ethical dilemma emerged. At this point, as the CEO of Utopia, I felt that the client company’s CEO would quickly wonder what they were getting for their money and might not know about the issues we were facing. However, not knowing what the internal issues/politics were, I wondered if we should contact the CEO of the client company directly with our concerns. After all, we might risk damaging the relationship we had with our primary contact. I did not want her to think we went over her head, but it might be perceived as such.

Our group met internally and came to several conclusions in determining how we should handle the situation:

1. We tried repeatedly to resolve the situation with our existing contact, to no avail. We couldn’t ascertain why, and we had no idea if our concerns were being effectively relayed to the senior management team.
2. We had a fiduciary responsibility to our client not to waste their budget dollars, and generating results were a key factor in living up to that responsibility.
3. Utopia is a results-driven culture and treading water was taking its toll on the team.
4. If we are to promote ourselves as an ethical agency, we must tackle the problem head on and be completely transparent about the issue…even if it meant losing the account (not an easy call in tough economic times)
5. Everyone on the team believed that the problem stemmed from a lack of interpersonal interaction with the client (since they are a virtual company, in-person meetings can be a challenge) and we had to push for a meeting to confront the issues.

The wind up? I called the CEO and asked to speak to him privately to express my concerns. I’m glad I did. The client company had been experiencing tremendous growth and the senior management team had been unable to focus on what was happening with the PR program. Moreover, the CEO explained that our direct contact had a very full plate, and they were constantly reprioritizing her responsibilities. It helped us to understand what was going on over the fence, so to speak.

He thanked us for bringing the issue to his attention and we had an in-person team meeting shortly thereafter where we were all able to discuss our concerns and brainstorm ways to resolve them.

The lesson, which I continue to learn, is that sometimes the toughest conversations are the best conversations to have.

“Wow, that public relations agency must really be growing; they’re hiring again,” so said one of my account execs. Not so fast I told her…the reason you keep seeing the advertisements is not because they are growing, but rather it is because they have a revolving door filled with disgruntled employees.

With so many recent graduates (and experienced workers) job hunting, my advice to you is caveat emptor or buyer beware! Don’t be fooled by the size of the agency or the accounts it represents because not all is what it seems on the surface. Use your social networking tools like FB, Twitter, MySpace and a good web search to find and speak to current and former employees of the agency you’re thinking of joining; be sure to dig deep.

Why the caution? I’ve heard far too many horror stories from young professionals.

For example, one of my current employees was interviewed by a “glam” agency in NYC that told her they insist that new hires live in NYC, work till 10PM most nights, and all this for the glorious sum of $21K per year! The interviewer chain smoked through the interview and barely allowed the candidate to speak. She then told the young pro that she should be grateful for the opportunity (smart lady never took the job).

Another buddy of mine went to work for a well known father and son duo. Sonny boy would routinely walk past the offices of young professionals and throw his spare change at their heads while berating them for not getting enough hits and cursing them off. This was his only contact with the young people in his company. Lovely! Score one for nepotism and job security.

A final example is of another young professional I know who went to work for an agency with prestigious accounts only to find herself packed in to a cubicle, given a press release and a phone list and told to get 20 major hits per week or be fired. If she left before 9PM, she was chastised. Other than this, her supervisor barely spoke to her, but took credit for her work. The client barely knew she was on the team. She, too, managed to leave quickly.

Believe it or not, these are all well known, recognized names in the public relations world. That doesn’t mean they are ethical in regard to how they treat their employees. Remember, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Some need a careful reading first. Make sure you do your homework or your first (or next) experience in PR may not be your best.

I recently did a conference call with a local executive women’s networking group and suggested they use Twitter to alert members to upcoming events, articles about women in business etc., and was shot down. One of the group’s members thought Twitter was all hype (welcome to backwoods NJ, folks). Her exact words were, “I don’t really think many people use it.”

Ha! I bet Iran’s President (or is that Dictator) Ahmadinejad wishes it were so.

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, Twitter is making news this week because of its role in the flow of information regarding the Iranian elections. According to Time:

The U.S. State Department doesn’t usually take an interest in the maintenance schedules of dotcom start-ups. But over the weekend, officials there reached out to Twitter and asked them to delay a network upgrade that was scheduled for Monday night. The reason? To protect the interests of Iranians using the service to protest the presidential election that took place on June 12. Twitter moved the upgrade to 2 p.m. P.T. Tuesday afternoon — or 1:30 a.m. Tehran time.

The article notes that because Twitter is mobile, fast, easy and personal, it’s the ideal medium for today’s modern protester. (Imagine if our founding fathers had Twitter?)

This makes Twitter practically ideal for a mass protest movement, both very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control. The same might be true of e-mail and Facebook, but those media aren’t public. They don’t broadcast, as Twitter does. On June 13, when protests started to escalate, and the Iranian government moved to suppress dissent both on- and off-line, the Twitterverse exploded with tweets from people who weren’t having it, both in English and in Farsi. While the front pages of Iranian newspapers were full of blank space where censors had whited-out news stories, Twitter was delivering information from street level, in real time.

What interested me most about this story are the ramifications wrought by these new media technologies. In many countries where censorship abounds, citizens now have a voice and source of information. Governments are being forced to deal with real time transparency. It reminds me of Thomas Friedman’s books the Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat. Once people have access to information, it’s hard to put a lid on spreading it. That said, these new information channels also have their issues in that you don’t know who’s really tweeting and it is hard to verify the information. Numerous reports noted that the Iranian government was using Twitter to distort the truth or misinform, but there is no way to tell who’s on it and what side they are truly on.

Businesses take note…the next consumer revolution may be right outside your virtual doors! Are you ready?

The Iranian government tried to shut down key websites and IP addresses to freeze the flow of information. (I’d like to see an American business try it…not gonna happen). Apparently, they were not terribly successful because information continued to flow.

The article summarized it nicely, and I’d like to share it because it relates not only to the election in Iran, but it also relates to corporate crisis communication and there is a lesson to be learned:

Twitter didn’t start the protests in Iran, nor did it make them possible. But there’s no question that it has emboldened the protesters, reinforced their conviction that they are not alone and engaged populations outside Iran in an emotional, immediate way that was never possible before. President Ahmadinejad — who happened to visit Russia on Tuesday — now finds himself in a court of world opinion where even Khrushchev never had to stand trial. Totalitarian governments rule by brute force, and because they control the consensus worldview of those they rule. Tyranny, in other words, is a monologue. But as long as Twitter is up and running, there’s no such thing.

I’ve been in this business for over 25 years (despite my youthful appearance) and I’ve worked for my share of nit-pickers. Yet despite my training and best efforts, I always seem to find a minor typo after the release left my desk and headed out into cyberspace. To the chagrin of many a supervisor and client, I never worried about it much.

Bottom line is that a good story sells, and I’ve sold many a good story despite the sixty edits someone wanted to make after the fact. I’ve also never been judged by the press release or email, rather I’ve been judged by the results of the campaigns I’ve conducted.

We’re currently in the midst of a few great stories and projects here at Utopia, and I often have to caution clients and team members about getting lost in the minutiae trap. For example, it doesn’t really matter where you hang the banners or set out the press materials if no media shows up. End of story.

I’ll give you an example we encountered. We were hosting a critical press conference for a client and were concerned about the key speaking points, order of speakers and finalizing the press materials…knowing we had ten major media outlets scheduled to attend the following day. However, rather than discuss any of these agenda items, our client wanted us to sketch out a map of how the chairs should be set up in front of the podium…semi-circle or theatre style? Okaaaayyyyy…

It continues to amaze me how often senior ranking people lose sight of the objective of a given program or campaign and get caught up in … well … irrelevant bullshit (pardon my French).

I’ve often wondered why and have come to the conclusion that many clients are terrified of media events and prefer to focus on the things they can control versus the things they cannot control…such as media. I’ve also learned that being a good counselor requires not only getting the job done, but working with clients to keep them focused on what’s truly relevant. Sometimes this is easier said than done.

So, if you find yourself getting caught in the trap, take a breath and take control. When day is done, you’ll be judged on the results, not the seating arrangements.