The misguided practice of doing media relations by not doing media relations continues to grow. PR professionals must put a stop to it.
 
Sadly, the practice got an “attaboy” last month in a blog headlined, “Why a Brand Not Responding Is Sometimes the Best Response.” While the writer didn’t promote so-called “strategic silence” in all cases, she did suggest topics to which it might apply: legal and regulatory issues, personnel matters, financial transactions, and times when you can’t keep up with the volume of calls.
 
I’ve blogged on this issue before. Then, as now, I consider the behavior lousy and cowardly PR.
 
What drives “strategic silence” is not strategy, but an assumption. The assumption is that the news media owe their livelihood to PR people: We provide content so they can report it; therefore, what we don’t provide isn’t worth covering.
 
That assumption is false. Yes, we represent our clients and their interests. Part of promoting our clients is working with news media to gain coverage, or to do our best to get our clients’ voices heard in good times and bad. But accomplishing this isn’t a one-way process. Public relations and media relations are … wait for it … relational.
 
That means understanding what reporters need. That means knowing what interests their audience. That means being as responsive and as transparent as possible. That means your client (or your client through you) speaking for themselves—because if they don’t, others will do it for them. When we’re relational, we build trust and strengthen the client’s brand.
 
Are there times when you must limit your comments, such as the examples the blogger cites? Of course. But there’s a big difference between restricting your comments and ignoring the ask. Even a simple “we can’t comment on pending litigation” respects the reporter, the news outlet, the relationship and the audience.
 
The only example on which I’ll reluctantly agree with the blogger is capacity—when you can’t keep up with the queries. That’s happened in my experience, albeit rarely. When I couldn’t tap coworkers to help, I had to prioritize media callbacks and do what I could as quickly and thoroughly as possible. But that’s a far cry from deliberately tossing a pink “While You Were Out” slip or hitting “Delete” on voicemail.
 
In short, the news media don’t owe us coverage. We have to earn it by building trust, by understanding what they need, and by being responsive. There’s no excuse for deliberately going silent. It’s guaranteed to hurt your relationship with reporters and their audience—and ultimately damage your brand.
 
In the practice of public relations, silence isn’t golden.

For those in PR who think the news media’s public opinion woes aren’t our woes, some new research says otherwise.
 
Bay Area PR firm Bospar partnered with market researcher Propeller Insights to survey people’s opinions of the news media, public relations and marketing. You can find full results here. Some highlights:

• 95% of respondents said they were troubled by the current state of the media.
• 67% fear things will be worse during the 2020 election cycle.
• 42% believe ethics in PR and marketing are worse than in the past.

 
Interestingly, respondents’ opinions on ethics in PR and among news media were almost precisely the same. Bospar Principal Curtis Sparrer suggested that’s because the public sees the two as increasingly intertwined.
 
Not sure my journalist friends would agree, and even I’m not ready to suggest we’re “intertwined.” But our two professions do interact more than ever, whether over the phone, over email, or over news events. This relationship requires the PR profession to make sure it operates with the highest ethical standards.
 
I’ve said this many times: The Fourth Estate is vital to the health and future of our society. Those who applaud the demise of yet another newspaper or media outlet are celebrating the decline of truth, transparency and our nation’s wellbeing. Yet newsrooms are shrinking, and journalists are struggling to do more with less. I think that’s a place where ethical PR pros can step up to provide trustworthy, meaningful and relevant content.
 
That requires us to understand what today’s journalist needs. It requires us to know the audience that a media outlet serves, and not to try the useless—and ultimately self-destructive—work of force-feeding irrelevant or unwelcome content to journalists. It requires us to reflect on the content we have to offer to make sure it connects and aligns.
 
Many times I’ve told clients who wanted a tepid story placed or ho-hum event highlighted that it wasn’t the right fit. If I’m lucky, I can find a connection that’s relevant to the audience. Sometimes, I simply have to say “no.”
 
Some would suggest that’s letting a client down. I say it’s doing PR from a place of truth, ethics and relevance. And it’s helping the client understand what matters to the audience and how they can connect with them better.
 
The Bospar survey found 86% of people expect PR and marketing to operating ethically. I think that ought to be 100%. And when half that many say we aren’t doing it right, we need to do much more than heave a sad sigh. We must do better—and we can start by embracing our role as trustworthy, ethical, relevant resources for journalists as well as for our clients.
 
September is designated by the Public Relations Society of America as Ethics Month. See PRSA’s Code of Ethics here.

Admittedly, the headline on this blog may seem odd for an agency that specializes in strategic communications. But the word “strategy” gets thrown around so much these days, I fear it’s losing both its meaning and its indispensable role in communication and in leadership.
 
Years ago, I set a goal of running the Boston Marathon. To do that, I had to run a qualifying time in a different marathon. So I developed my strategy: I selected an ideal marathon, worked up a training regimen, and planned my pace. I shared my strategy with more accomplished runners, and they affirmed it as sound.
 
The outcome on marathon day? I failed, finishing more than 10 minutes slower than a Boston qualifying time. Why? I focused so much on strategy that I neglected to heed the tactics of the plan.
 
I competed in a long-distance race just two weeks before the marathon, when I should have been tapering. I ran the first half of the marathon 30 seconds per mile faster than planned, leaving me trashed in the second half. And I didn’t consume the calories I should have during the run, which left me depleted in the final miles.
 
This wasn’t a failure of strategy. This was a failure of tactical execution.
 
I think this happens all the time, and not just in PR, communications and marketing. It happens at every level in countless organizations. Leaders embrace the call to “be strategic,” creating thoughtful plans that others can implement. Yes, that makes sense—except when the organization expects everyone to “be a leader” and to “be strategic.” Without careful guidance on this point, you wind up with an organization full of great ideas with no one making them work.
 
Symptoms of this too-narrow approach: Ideas that never go anywhere. Needs that don’t get addressed. People eager to create strategies but not execute at the tactical level. Missed details and dropped balls. Individuals who feel less valued because their strategic skillset isn’t as strong as their tactical prowess—in other words, they’re left believing they “aren’t strategic enough.”
 
We’ve diminished the word “strategy.” We’ve allowed it to become a buzzword, a self-professed status, a solitary defense, instead of what it should be: a driving force for an organization’s direction and success. (Notice I said “a driving force,” not “the driving force.)
 
When I create a strategic communication plan, I spend a lot of time considering the tactics needed to make that strategy successful. What are the right tactics to drive the measurable outcome? Which tactics fit with the audience? How are those tactics best executed? Who will do that work, and when, and what is the cost? And crucially: Are all of these tactics doable with the resources—people, finances, time—available?
 
Am I failing to be strategic when I give such attention to tactics? I would argue not. So long as my starting point is with a sound and meaningful strategy, the tactical detail is critical to delivering what the strategy promises.
 
Don’t misunderstand my point. Strategy is essential. Tactics absent a strategy is a recipe for doom. But we need to quash the idea that it’s an either/or proposition. It’s both. Strategy must always be inextricably linked with tactics.
 
The Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, said it best: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

The Southern California sun poured its fierce rays upon the large, white tent nestled near the spectator stands alongside the pool at USC. Inside the tent, broiling in the summer heat, was a gaggle of sports reporters from around the world. Now and then, a parade of elite swimmers would pass through, their faces split by canyon grins, their pruned hands clutching medals of gold, silver and bronze. They gushed; the reporters smiled and took notes.

Oh yeah, and there was this other group, a motley crew in strangely colored clothing, all malachite green and mustard yellow and a dash of hot magenta.

I know because I was one of them.

It was August 2, 1984, the sixth day of the Games of the XXIIIrd Olympiad in Los Angeles. The day would bring medal winners from five finals through that simmering tent. I sat nearby, garbed in the aforementioned garish uniform, recording and transcribing one of the medalists' remarks. Later, I would type up the Q&A and fax it to the Main Press Center at the LA Convention Center two miles away. Those quotes would wind up in newspapers and magazines, on TV and radio across the globe.

Thus was my first professional experience following college: a journey west with a friend to serve for three weeks in Press Operations at the Olympic Games. We aspired to track and field; we ended up at the swim venue, our second choice.

It struck me earlier this week that those Games happened 35 years ago. I shake my head to think of all those years gone by, of the wiry kid I was, of a lifetime in the windshield before me then, now most of it in the rearview mirror.

What do I feel? Mostly gratitude for the road traveled. And still a bit of that young man's anticipation of the journey remaining.

I wrote of my Olympic experience before, in a series of blogs posted for the 30th anniversary in 2014. I invite you to share in those adventures--quirky, frightening, exasperating, always memorable, and just plain fun--at these links:

Part 1: 'Badges? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges'
Part 2: 'You! You, I No Love!'
Part 3: Gold Medals and Teddy Bears
Part 4: That Time I Accidentally Propositioned an Olympic Champion
Part 5: The Faux-pening Ceremonies and Final Thoughts

I remember it clearly: a warm July evening, huddling around a black-and-white television immediately after Sunday night church service, watching the first images from Apollo 11 on the surface of the moon.
 
I was seven years old and well into my lifelong passion for all things space. What I didn’t know was that, on that toasty night in 1969, I was part of a global audience of 600 million people captivated by those grainy, ghostly images—and what they represented.
 
While neither the first nor the last space mission to be carried on TV, Apollo 11 was unique in the power of its singular message, summed up in a single word: We.
 
“I was amazed that everywhere we went, people said, ‘We—we did it. We, you and me, the inhabitants of this wonderful Earth. We did it,’” recalls Michael Collins, Apollo 11 command module pilot, narrating a new Google Doodle honoring the first moon landing.
 
Today, our society is more individualistic, more insular, more likely to consume news on our respective smartphones than to watch an event together. From politics to philanthropy, we’re more inclined to seek what “I want” rather than what “we need.”
 
And yet, as I spend my days communicating with and on behalf of clients, I sense a different wish. I sense a deep-down yearning to connect, to tack back toward the We.
 
How might that happen? Only when we have the courage to embrace what a wise man once said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”
 
As we reflect on half a century since “one giant leap for mankind,” perhaps we’ll be inspired to embrace the We once again.

My shower has this small spot where a little mildew grows. I scrub away the mildew, yet it springs back a few weeks later.
 
That’s roughly how I feel about today’s news that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is out as the White House press secretary.
 
I won’t revisit at length my dismay at Sanders’ record of half-truths-at-best—excuse me, “slip(s) of the tongue"—during her tenure, and how her behavior taints the communications profession I hold dear. You can read my earlier blog here. Suffice to say that her exit is, at best, a temporary win for truth and respect for the Fourth Estate.
 
Yes, I said “temporary.”
 
I realize the role of White House press secretary is a difficult balance—perhaps more difficult than other spokesperson roles—between serving the President and providing factual information to the news media. But the fact is, Sanders never tried to find that balance. She deliberately rejected transparency, honesty and integrity at the behest of her master. I’m not confident that her successor, whoever it is, will be less inclined to play loose with the truth.
 
That said, I hold out a small hope that the next press secretary will care about truth and ethics as articulated by PRSA’s Code of Ethics. But it's likely a foolish hope. Given the profound lack of concern for truth and integrity at our nation's highest levels, I fear this will be much like the mildew in my shower: a brief cleansing, then a return to darkness.

Since December, I’ve been pummeled with emails and caution-yellow postcards warning me of an urgent deadline. Indeed, the latest mailings announce that I’m now, all-caps, “PAST DUE.”
 
Did I miss a bill payment? Neglect to pay a parking ticket? Forget to renew a magazine?
 
None of the above. No, it seems that I failed to update my personal information in my old school’s alumni database—and thus missed the opportunity for a marketing firm to sell me stuff.
 
This is why so many people despise marketing and public relations.
 
For the record: I reached out to my alma mater and shared my concern. (Out of respect for the school and its good people, I’m leaving out names.) The alumni director, a delightful and dedicated person who has no staff support, explained that the school lacks internal resources to keep the alumni database up to date. That hurts the school's ability to stay in touch with its former students. Thus it contracted with an out-of-state marketing firm with a 50-year track record of successfully gathering this data. Their compensation: the profit from selling school-branded stuff to those who respond.
 
I sympathize with the school and the alumni director. In fact, after hearing this explanation (and knowing I'd missed the "deadline"), I initially decided not to blog about this—until yet another pair of notices arrived. For the sake of the profession, I can’t let it go.
 
I have no problem with the marketing firm’s basic model—provide a service to the school, profit off sales. However, I do have immense problems with its approach.
 
One, it’s deliberately deceptive. The firm forcefully presents its message as if there’s an urgent deadline you are expected—just short of “required”—to meet. Both the American Marketing Association and the Public Relations Society of America have ethical codes that stress truth and transparency. Hard to see how these mailings “foster trust in the marketing system … [by] avoiding deception in product design” (AMA) or “build respect and credibility with the public” (PRSA).
 
Two, it hurts the most vulnerable people. In Michigan alone, 43% of households are either in poverty or struggling to make ends meet—what’s known as ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed). Imagine you’re among them. Imagine you’re already behind on your bills; you get your share of actual past-due notices every month. The stress and anxiety are enormous. And then a postcard shouting “PAST DUE” arrives. Sure, a moment’s attention will make clear this isn’t another bill or a collection agency threat. But the moment before then is frightening, cruel and unnecessary.
 
Three, it fosters distrust of professional communicators. In an era where politicians call news media “the enemy of the people,” when some spokespersons lie with aplomb, and when some (wrongly) consider "spin" a tool of the trade, this approach trashes the credibility of everyone in the field—every marketing firm, every PR professional, and every organization that employs them.
 
What could the marketing firm do differently? Simple: Be honest. Had I received an email or postcard explaining the arrangement and asking me to respond, I would have gladly updated my file and tolerated a short sales pitch. Heck, I might have even bought something. Now? No way.
 
What should we as marketing and communications professionals do? Call out this behavior. Refuse to participate in it. Embrace the ethics of our respective fields and hold each other to a higher standard.

To my shame, sometimes I read those click-bait “worst [fill in the blank] ever” stories. I recently came across this amusing one:
 
An obnoxious traveler on a jetliner makes demands on a flight attendant, insisting that he deserves special attention because of he’s supposedly a close friend of the airline’s CEO. A woman across the aisle hears this and challenges the man to tell her the CEO’s nickname. When he tells her to mind her own business, the woman pulls out her wallet and shows him a photo from her wedding; it turns out the CEO is her father-in-law.
 
The morale of the story is clear: Your lies will find you out.
 
But the question it raises today is troubling: Does anyone care?
 
Over the past two years, I’ve started to write blogs about the behavior of White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders—and Sean Spicer before her—only to abandon them out of concern they’d be taken as political screeds. Let me be clear, I’m no fan of President Trump, who has a passed-it-in-the-hallway relationship with truth. But as a critical link between the administration and the Fourth Estate, spokespersons like Sanders bear a tremendous responsibility—to the nation and to her profession—to uphold transparency, honesty and truth. Indeed, Sanders claims that’s what she desires as her legacy.
 
In my opinion, she’s failed at all of them. While hardly a revelation, the evidence in the newly released (and heavily redacted) Mueller report underscores the fact.
 
This should sweep away whatever shred of credibility Sanders might still have with the media. Indeed, some news outlets are calling for her to resign or be fired.
 
I think it’s 50-50, at best, that she’ll go. Why? Because in this administration, loyalty trumps credibility. In this administration, and among many of its supporters, truth is a “who,” not a “what.”
 
What does this say about the public relations profession?
 
Some of my colleagues will brush it off. “That’s her, not me.” Problem is, Sanders’s “slip of the tongue” behavior reflects on all of us.
 
As a member of the Public Relations Society of America, I embrace a Code of Ethics, which says in part: “We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public.”
 
I firmly believe in the Code. It’s one of many reasons why I’m a frequent critic of the word “spin”—which is synonymous with deceit.
 
But here’s the thing: If PR professionals don’t call out unethical behavior, we’re no better than those who do it. If we don’t call out dishonesty and spin, we’re saying it’s actually okay.
 
That’s the moment we sacrifice our professional morals and credibility. That’s the moment we give up our place as champions of truth.
 
No more. I regret that I didn’t post this long ago. Call it (incorrectly) a political post if you want, but regardless of person, place or party, we must call out and condemn the practices of spinning, lying and misdirecting.
 
Does it matter? If the answer is “no,” God help us all.

Surf the web and social media for comments about the latest iteration of Star Trek, and likely as not you’ll find a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
 
Whoops! Mixed my franchise metaphors. (Star Wars fans will recognize the latter reference.)
 
Back on topic: Star Trek: Discovery, which debuted a year ago and recently kicked off its second season, is a look at the decade before Kirk, Spock and the starship Enterprise as seen in the original 1966-69 television show. As regular readers know, I’m a huge fan of The Original Series (or TOS); in fact, I had the honor of writing episodes for a fan-produced series that continued the TOS storyline.
 
Where the villainy enters in is the grousing around Trek canon. “Canon” refers to the history built by a franchise’s narrative through previously told official tales. Many fans consider canon to be inviolable, and woe to those who don’t agree.
 
Not every film series or TV show creates such devotion to canon. (Remember the 1970s series Happy Days? Do you recall that Richie Cunningham had an older brother during the first season? That character was dropped without explanation. Few viewers complained.) But genre shows such as Star Trek, Star Wars and Doctor Who face an almost tyrannical commitment to canon among fans.
 
Case in point:
 
I wrote an episode of Star Trek New Voyages, “The Holiest Thing,” in which Captain Kirk first meets Dr. Carol Marcus during the TOS era. Marcus would become the mother of his child, David, whom we met in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In that film, set many years after TOS, David was in his 20s. That presented a challenge to accepted canon. In Khan, the bad guy, Khan Noonien Singh, makes a statement suggesting the TOS era happened 15 years earlier. That would make David far younger than portrayed in the film.
 
How did I get around this? I used a line from a different film, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, in which a character says the Enterprise is 20 years old. But canon indicates the Enterprise is far older, probably closer to 40. Most fans chalk this up to an error in the film’s script. I, however, decided to take it at face value. What if he meant 20 years had passed since the Enterprise’s major refit as shown in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture? That would easily allow David to be born during TOS. Thus the timing of “The Holiest Thing” fits perfectly.
 
But my logic didn’t dissuade fans from brandishing torches and pitchforks when that episode was released. Never mind that “15 years” in Khan could just as easily have been a script error as “20 years” is assumed to be in the Spock film. I was ripped online for that decision.
 
Since then, I’ve been both fascinated and troubled by the ownership that fans have assumed over franchises. The storyline for the last two Star Wars films have been savaged in some quarters—so much so that some fans demanded a director’s cut to change the outcome of The Last Jedi (it didn’t happen) while a few others are calling for a boycott of the next movie.
 
For the record, I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Jedi and loved how it shook up the storyline. I’m less enthused about the new Star Trek: Discovery TV series—less due to canon, mostly because I didn't like the first-season narrative at all, and the second season is still struggling for my interest. But I recognize the difficulty its producers face: Star Trek has 50 years and hundreds of episodes’ worth of stories under its belt. How do you keep all that canon in place without hamstringing your storytellers?
 
While I do think canon ought to be respected when possible, I don’t understand the rabid, almost nonsensical devotion to it. And fans comparing new stories to “raping” a their historical view of a franchise is beyond the pale.
 
And yet a lot of them do this. They believe they own the narrative, and any story must tack to the course they assert. They forget that the franchise is actually owned by a corporation, and that corporation is within its rights to do whatever it wishes with it. Obviously, they want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, not just the fanbase.
 
So while I'm a bit blase' about Discovery, and I find the most recent season of Doctor Who  disappointing, my right to complain must cease somewhere before I reach rabid anger and threats. Sadly, social media and the current Era of Outrage have made it all the easier for people to wallow in that dark place.

A few weeks ago, I came upon three kids in a parking lot—a teenage boy, a slightly older teen girl, and a preschool-age child. The older boy had one of those sticky rubber toys that you hold at one end and throw so it snaps back. He was hitting the two other kids with it.
 
As I approached, I determined these were siblings, possibly waiting for a parent inside the building. As I approached, the boy started smacking the girl again with his toy.
 
“Hey!” I snapped. “How do you know that’s not hurting her?” He shrugged. “It ain’t hurting her.” The girl, however, disagreed. “It IS hurting me,” she insisted.
 
“Maybe you should cut it out,” I told the boy. This earned me a menacing scowl. “These are MY people,” he declared.
 
Here I abandoned politeness. I pointed in his face and snapped in my sternest Dad voice, “I don’t care. STOP IT!”
 
He held my glare for only a moment. Then he averted his eyes and slipped the toy into his pocket.
 
That encounter went as it should: an abusive or bullying situation identified and stopped. Seemed reasonable to me then, and still so now.
 
So imagine my surprise to learn today that I might have contributed to the, quote-unquote, “demasculinization of America.”
 
What brings this to a head is the social media backlash over an advertising campaign by Gillette, the razor business of Proctor & Gamble, aimed at raising awareness among men of bullying and sexual harassment. Called “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be,” the campaign—including a video and other online elements—calls out men of all ages for fostering or ignoring these acts.
 
Said P&G President Gary Coombe,  "We knew that joining the dialogue on 'Modern Manhood' would mean changing how we think about and portray men at every turn.” Coombe said Gillette would review all public-facing content against a set of defined standards “to ensure we fully reflect the ideals of Respect, Accountability and Role Modelling in the ads we run, the images we publish to social media, the words we choose, and more."
 
Fortune Magazine writes, “The ad explicitly hails the #MeToo movement as a turning point for men and—through the inclusion of some old Gillette advertising material—it implies that the company’s own messaging hasn’t always been on the right side of history.”
 
You’d think such a campaign would generate more positive vibes than negative ones, right? You’d think we could all agree that bullying kids, demeaning women or assaulting them are bad. Right? Right?
 
Au contraire.
 
From Twitter: “I'm researching every product made by Proctor & Gamble, throwing any I have in the trash, and never buying any of them again until everyone involved in this ad from top to bottom is fired and the company issues a public apology.” …. “Just sell some damn razors and keep your social justice stupidity out of it.” …. “Gillette has made it clear they do not want the business of masculine men.”
 
From Facebook: “Your new ad campaign is so dumb, that a simple boycott isn’t enough. There should be very public firings and apologies to all the men you’ve insulted. But I still hope you go bankrupt.” …. “Go straight to hell, Gillette, Spare us your virtue signaling and FALSE accusations. Shame on you and I sure will watch MY spending habits as it relates to your (soon-to-be-defunct) company.”
 
On YouTube, where the Gillette video is posted, the thumbs-down votes were outpacing thumbs-up by more than two to one. Early on, the difference was six to one.
 
The controversy rages on. Some are hailing the effort as a giant step toward eliminating false constructs of manhood and historically reprehensible treatment of women. Others say it’s a threat to traditional masculine norms and strong male social models. Still others say it’s nothing more than an effort by Gillette to sell more razors by presenting itself as socially responsible.
 
Well … yeah, okay, that last one is at least partly true. Few businesses are altruistic for the sake of altruism. But the truth is, Gillette didn’t have to take this stand. Surely they knew it would be controversial—though perhaps not to this degree. They could have gone a safer route. They could have told their customers, “Hey, we’re against clubbing baby seals,” and that would have prompted little more than a collective “awwww!”
 
But they followed a path that was both courageous and dangerous—and, in this disturbing era where misogyny is “just” locker room talk, where "tough guy" bullying is celebrated, where “20 minutes of action” isn’t enough to keep a rapist in prison … it’s a path that needed to be taken.
 
I stand with Gillette on this one. Was it blunt? Yes. Was it insulting to certain people with certain attitudes? Absolutely. Is that bad? I don’t think so. Dangerous, yes. But right.
 
In a time where companies must be socially responsible, those that embrace only “safe” issues will be seen for the cowards they are; companies that take an honest, thoughtful stand on real issues may lose clientele, but they’ll build loyalty and respect—and, in time, a stronger customer base.
 
Most importantly, they’ll be doing the right thing.