Turning A Corner: SCO

If you ever wondered whether there is a point of no return — a time when you lose control of your message forever — SCO might provide the answer. The company's primary message has been so public and so narrow for so long, it's difficult for anyone to see past it.

Sure, CEO Darl McBride wants people to look at SCO's new product releases — UnixWare and OpenServer, and the fledgling Me Inc. suite of mobile messaging applications. I don't blame him, but it's too little too late because everyone else wants to talk about what SCO wanted to talk about in 2003: its ongoing (and failing) lawsuits with IBM and Novell. Some journalists, like Bob Mims of The Salt Lake Tribune, even define the company this way: "SCO, best known for its ongoing US $5 billion federal lawsuit alleging that IBM leaked proprietary Unix code into Linux..."

From a communication standpoint, this illustrates why, sometimes, you have to be careful what you wish for. In 2003, McBride wanted the world to know that "SCO is in the enviable position of owning the UNIX operating system." But that was the year that SCO had so much news, it issued about 90 news releases and its "News About The SCO Group" page had at least that many entries. By comparison, in 2006, it issued about 30 new releases, but only a paltry five stories are included in the "News About The SCO Group" section, probably because all the rest are unfavorable and about the lawsuits.

Over at LWN.net, for example, the editor summed up a recent SCO conference call as: The answer is somewhat unsurprising: more of the same, with the main point being that SCO claims to own the Unix copyrights and believes that Novell is "trying to curry favor with the Linux community" by pressing its claims. SCO believes it will prevail on this point.

No, it isn't surprising, primarily because SCO has wrapped itself up so tightly in lawsuit communication, its executive team can no longer help themselves. You see, the conference call began with a statement that they would not talk about the lawsuit. But, of course, that was exactly what it was primarily about, with exception to some details about declining revenues and workforce reductions, which everyone except SCO seems to think is linked to, well, you guessed it, the lawsuit.

Which brings me back to the idea of reaching the point of no return. If SCO loses the lawsuit, assuming it can continue to operate with ever-diminishing returns, it seems to me it will be sunk. If, on the other hand, prevailing opinion is wrong, and somehow it wins the lawsuit, then it will forever be linked to winning a lawsuit no one seems to want it to win.

Ho hum. Sometimes when you win, you lose anyway. And that, to me, is the point of no return. You can have your day in court, but it's a short day when winning costs everything else. Addictions are like that.

Making The Times: Jobster

There are many reasons for a CEO to be excited when his or her company makes the pages of The New York Times. Unfortunately for Jason Goldberg, it was for all the wrong reasons.

Just when Goldberg probably thought that all the flack about posting was over, Damon Darlin of The New York Times decides to rehash the 20-some day old news. The article is titled "A Boss Takes to His Blog to Deny, Then Confirm," which pinpoints the original problem for those few who still don't get it. No, it wasn't that he had a blog or writes about foodie sites. It wasn't about whether his "handlers" check his posts or that sometimes he considers capital letters optional. It was all about hinting at the inevitable when it was clearly the wrong thing to do.

The reason I say this is unfortunate is because a lot of people in the recruiting industry seemed excited about Jobster's new features. Forty-one people voted for his write-up covering the Jobster's new features at Recruiting.com. I was one of them, mostly because I've been covering Jobster for a few weeks now and secretly hope, er, not-so-secretly hope, that it can patch up the hull of its ship and sail on to better things.

But unfortunately, it seems some journalists have different ideas, preferring instead to make Goldberg the poster CEO for inappropriate posts in contrast to Jonathan I. Schwartz at Sun Microsystems. Darlin even cited Goldberg's own words as to why this has come up once again: "It’s the nature of Web 2.0 and new media that if you don’t embrace openness, it will come back and bite you.”

Ouch. Shakespeare could not have written a better foreshadow.

As Jobster remains a living case study, I'll post some notes on "moving beyond bad news" when you actually have some good news ahead (this Friday). I mean, Exxon got over it. And while the handling of Jobster's layoffs were deplorable, they were nowhere near as bad as Valdez. Unless you were laid off, I suppose.

Personally, I'm starting to think Goldberg should take his own advice and hire a public relations professional from his job bank. It seems to me they need someone on the inside who really knows this stuff, inside and out.

Not everybody needs someone inside. For many, a consultant or outside firm is perfect. For Jobster, a company that relies so heavily on daily blog posts as a preferred method of communication, inside could very well be a "must have." Besides, his current public relations team couldn't even get The New York Times to write up something nice in between Darlin's post show commentary. Post show? Right, we're saving that one for after the Superbowl.

Breaking All The Rules: AdAge

As the 20th century was coming to a close, Advertising Age (AdAge) launched a major chronicle, the history of the era's advertising industry. It's a remarkable piece of work that can be seen online and contains the top 100 ad campaigns and people, along with the top 10 jingles, slogans, and icons.

I have shared segments of it in my public relations class for several years, under the auspices that public relations needs to work hand-in-hand with advertising (or vice versa if you prefer). The other reason I share it is simple. I like to show public relations professionals what they miss out on because for all the "rules" they have to follow, the best in advertising does not.

No, I am not talking about "rules" like whether or not there needs to be a call to action (although, I suppose, maybe there doesn't need to be). I'm talking about rules like those parodied in a Communication Arts classic article "Nine Ways To Improve A Volkswagen Ad," which, not coincidentally, targets the very ad that AdAge calls the best in history.

Here's an example: rule Number One from the classic parody touts the idea that we must always "think positive" in advertising. Applying this rule to the Volkswagen ad is easy enough: instead of the headline "Think Small," the headline should be "Think Big." And so on goes the list of rules, until one of the best campaigns in advertising history is nothing more than a shell of its former glory because it ends up looking like everyone else. In a previous post I link to the 2006 version of the Volkswagen parody, which uses Apple and Microsoft. The idea is the same.

I guess it's for this reason, my background in advertising, I also prefer the term "process" to "formula" with the distinction being that one guides you through strategic thinking (like a core message) while the other is nothing but a bunch of rules. The net result is that my favorite answer to most broad communication questions is "it depends." Because it really does depend.

For me, everything becomes more clear when it is applied to a single case study, because the answers are frequently different in one case study than another. Blogs, for example, are much like that. Lots of people are trying to invent formulas as to what makes the best blogs better than average blogs. The answer is actually pretty simple: the best blogs have a strategy. Everything else, whether it's online chat or cluster maps or anonymous comments, depends entirely on each specific blog.

If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe Bill Bernbach (1911-1982). Bernbach never read a blog, but there's a reason he emerged as No. 1 on AdAge's 20th century honor roll of advertising's most influential people. "Rules are what the artist breaks; the memorable never emerged from a formula," he said.

That's good enough for me. But just in case it's not good enough for you, take a look at all 100 campaigns featured by AdAge. They all have one thing in common. They all broke whatever rules were being enforced at the time. The same holds true for businesses in general, I suppose. The biggest success stories always seem to be innovate ideas no one else is doing.

Counting Web Pages: Tootsie Rolls

We were (are) playing with the idea of robust site for Copywrite, Ink., but then we started asking ourselves a few crazy questions like “how many clicks does it take to get to the center of a ...?"

Fortunately for me, Tootsie Roll Industries has a story board featuring the classic Tootsie Fable "How Many Licks" commercial. And that's where I found the answer.

Of course, for everyone else — how many pages does it take to make a Website — it depends on the company. But for us, for now at least, we defer to Mr. Owl.

Lacking A Message: SCO

As an investor, you might think twice about a tech company that seems to spend more on legal counsel than on research and development. In the communication world, we might wonder too, when the only news to offset the company’s continued losses is an audio postcard for mobile phones.

I’m not saying an audio postcard isn’t interesting (though I don’t think I’m in the target audience), it’s just not enough to offset what amounts to a net deficit in good news vs. bad news. (I sincerely hope they get something else off the drawing board).

You see, while I don’t enjoy reading about companies in trouble, there seems to be growing cause for coverage from Slashdot and Groklaw that suggests SCO is in deep trouble, with the company saying very little to correct the idea. (Although there is one denial, reported by CNET reporter Graeme Wearden.)

What is odd about SCO's lack of a message is that it has a history of correcting people, an entire page of its Website is dedicated to “recent” media corrections (most pertain to events in 2004). The page makes me wonder about the public relations logic in making media corrections a permanent part of their communication strategy, doubly so because they called it “recent,” as if to allude that more corrections were expected.

Sure, some might give the company kudos for correcting flawed reporting, and in some cases, I might be one of them. However, if erroneous reporting seems to be the rule as opposed to the exception, it’s time to start asking if "you" might be part of the problem.

When assessing what the media says about you or your client, here are a few questions to ask: 1. What did I say (or not say) that might have contributed to the inaccuracy? 2. Was the story fair, given the context and depth of the story, allowing for opinions from both sides? 3. Did the media give the story appropriate time and space and, if not, why was I unable to make my case that certain points were critical to the story?

These are just a few from a longer list, but suffice to say that when the media gets it wrong, spokespeople and public relations professionals have to accept some of the responsibility. Why? Because the truth is that most spokespeople are unprepared for interviews and few have any objectives outlined before they take the call. In fact, almost no one tries to correct what they said immediately after an interview (probably because they don't remember what they said anyway).

That's too bad because if you do listen to what you are saying, there might be time to follow up. You never know when a quick post interview e-mail to a reporter might be readily welcomed. Most reporters just want to get the story right.

While I am not sure that a few bad interviews started the communication problems at SCO, it does seem safe to say that there is an abundance of miscommunication surrounding the company and that miscommunication has irreparably damaged its brand.

Killing Press Releases: Ragan

Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc. (Ragan) is considered by many to be the leading publisher of corporate communications, public relations, and leadership development newsletters. Today, it began promoting a new webinar, teasing with journalist Tom Foremski's famous 2006 blog post: "The press release is dead."

Is the press release dead? Not dead, perhaps, but wounded. Certainly social media has caused public relations professionals to reevaluate many long-standard practices, including the press release (though I prefer the term "news release").

Going further, public relations professionals have been busy developing a new standard, which Ragan and some others call the "social media release." According to their webinar description, this standard takes into consideration blogs, RSS technology, and the emerging breed of citizen journalists.

Personally, it seems to me that what we're seeing in communication is a random mutation in one species, but that is not to say that other species are extinct. Right now, news releases, "social media" releases, and corporate blog entries can all be employed strategically for different purposes. A quick example: a company can send out a new release to traditional outlets, include a variation to select bloggers, and then augment the information with personal comment by executives or other team members on their respective or shared blogs. (Or sometimes, maybe some "news" or semi-interesting tidbit is not fit for traditional media, but is certainly suitable for a blog. The other way around works too.)

Looking back over some recent commentary, maybe that was part of the answer in the recruiting world: perhaps Jobster's initial communication to address media speculation was more fitting for a news release and TalentZoo's "jab Jobster" news release more fitting for a blog entry.

Or, if you prefer, using Cisco and Apple as an example, as they seem to be right in step with this thinking: Apple sends out a release on the iPhone; Cisco sends out a release about its lawsuit. Then, Cisco augments its argument on its blog and Apple addresses the lawsuit with analysts, which is then filtered to social media outlets.

Regardless, there seems to be no argument that corporate communication and public relations is changing. The only question now is what to do about it. It will be interesting to see what comes out of the Ragan webinar.

In the interim, I'll be telling some professionals tonight that it is not enough to be a "public relations" practitioner. Nowadays, you have to think like a journalist, act like a business strategist, and write with the passion of a creative writer. And, given social media today, appeal to the casual reader who just happens to visit from time to time.