United Airlines is engaging in a little crisis management. A guitarist who had his guitar thrown around by some United baggage handlers has gone on the offensive after United turned a deaf ear to his complaints and requests for compensation for damage to his guitar.
Read the story here. After trying to get United to cough up less than two thousand dollars to pay for the repairs to his damaged guitar, the guy wrote a song about his troubles with United, and turned it into a music video which has now been viewed more than 2 million times on Youtube. The song is great, the video is entertaining, and two more follow up videos are promised.
Since the release of the first, United has offered to pay the guy the money to repair his instrument, but he told United to donate the funds to charity.
The story is now getting lots of coverage from all of the major media.
Attention big business: its a whole new world out there thanks to social media. You better be careful, start paying attention, and take your customer's concerns seriously.
Amazing how one guy with a little creativity can quickly and easily gain influence while doing damage to a major brand.
I've seen these types before, but this guy takes the cake.
A guy by the name of Brian Oxman, who at one time had a loose connection to Michael Jackson and his family, took center stage for the media the day that Michael died, presenting himself as a media spokesman for the Jackson family when in fact, he was not.
The LA Times today has the full story today on the goof ball and what he did.
Sorry about the use of the term "whore" in the headline, but in this case, I think it fits.
Chances are you probably saw this guy interviewed by some of the national networks and cable news outfits.
I saw him being interviewed live on what I think was the CBS Early Show one morning last week, and I remember thinking to myself at the end of the interview that something was not quite right about this guy. He didn't "smell" right to me.
Watching Oxman and his pathetic and opportunistic tactics in drawing the media attention to himself left me feeling that I wanted to take a shower.
The national media was all over Oxman, hook, line and sinker. I can understand how it happens, but shame on the media, and shame on Oxman.
When South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford first admitted his infidelity in his press conference last week, my first impression was that he did a pretty nice job in admitting his failure and issuing apologies that were for the most part appropriate. He seemed sincere and seemed to display a fitting degree of humility.
However, since that time, he and his staff have done a poor job of handling the story.
After promising to turn over his related financial records to the AP, The governor has changed course and now says he won't.
And for a man who claims he wants to patch things up with this wife, telling a reporter that his Argentinian lover is his "soul mate", and that their story was a "love story", this type of talk will do nothing toward restoring his relationship with his wife.
He simply needs to shut up, and apparently that is what he is now doing. Today Sanford told media outlets that he will no longer comment on his personal life.
That is a step he and his media relations team should have taken following the initial press conference.
While working as a television news reporter and anchor during a 15 year
career in broadcast journalism, I interviewed thousands of people. One of the
things I enjoyed most was asking the right questions in the right way, or leading an interviewee in such a way as to elicit that often elusive, but
attainable and "perfect" sound bite. That’s a fun process which requires quite
a bit of skill and experience to be done well.
Delivering a great sound bite also requires skill, along with an
understanding of what a reporter wants.
How do you do it?
Generally speaking, the best sound bites are subjective in nature.They are comments in which a person talks
about how they feel about something.They are comments in which an interviewee provides an opinion or analysis
of a situation, with emotion, or at least an emotional
undercurrent. I think that is the easiest and quickest way to
describe it. Those are the types of comments that reporters are looking
for, especially television news reporters when interviewing someone on camera.
Sound bites that don’t make it to air are those that are heavy on facts or
lack emotion.
For example, interviewees like police officers, emergency responders and
public information officers most often are good at providing sound bites that
are heavy on facts. By focusing primarily on the facts of a story or
situation, they provide reporters with the elements required to craft a
story.By focusing on the facts, a
spokesperson won't get into any trouble by saying something they shouldn’t.It’s safe
for spokespeople to speak this way on camera. However, once the facts are
delivered, continuing to comment only in this way can sometimes leave a
reporter frustrated.
If you are an emergency responder or a public information officer, you can
do that TV reporter a favor, and give them a great sound bite by offering
comments which are subjective and emotive.
Consider this example from a rescue worker at an accident scene, where three
big rigs were involved in a high-speed collision on a freeway:
"I've been in emergency response for 20 years, and I've never
scene an accident scene like this. It looks like a war zone out here."
That is a great sound bite. This is the type of comment that will
ultimately make it to air.
The best spokespeople and public information officers understand this; they
know what TV reporters need and want, and they deliver. Good reporters
quickly discern who can and will do this, and who won't. By providing
sound bites like this, you'll score points with the media, who most often are
happy to return favors to those who make their jobs easier. It’s a two
way street.
In case you haven't seen it, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford today delivered what I think is a textbook example of how to issue a public apology at a press conference.
Today at the press conference, which was covered live by most of the cable news outfits, the married Republican Governor and father of four admitted to having an affair with a woman in Argentina.
The affair began about a year ago, and the Governor was taking heat this past week for essentially disappearing for the past 7 days, without anyone, including his family knowing his whereabouts. He was in Argentina with his lover.
In his press conference, Sanford was candid, handled himself with humility, sincerely apologized to a number of people and admitted his failure. He seemed forthright and honest. The conference was incredibly compelling.
While I feel sadness for everyone involved, I believe the governor offered a fitting apology and admission of guilt.
Hear it directly from the horse's mouth, or shall I say from the reporter's "tweet"?
Take a look at this at this tweet (on Twitter) from Marisa Brahney, who is an investigative reporter for NBC-2 in Fort Myer's, Florida. (She is expressing frustration with a media relations representative who turned down a request to appear on camera.)
Her "tweet":
"Frustrating
day...how is it that people with careers in media relations don't
understand the importance of ON CAMERA interviews for TV news?"
From experience, this is something that I can relate to. As a reporter, I too experienced great frustration when a media relations representative, for whatever reason, would turn down a request to appear on camera, or turn down a request to provide SOMEONE ELSE to speak on camera.
In the situation with Marisa, I'd say the media relations representative failed to do their job.
Even if the story is "negative", a representative should still appear on camera and attempt to comment in such a way to try to represent their organization or client in the best possible light.
Online press release writing and distribution services are a dime a dozen. You pay $500 and they’ll write up your press release and send it out to thousands of media contacts. In the case of “Advanced PR” at Majon.com, they boast of a media database of 690,000+ media contacts, and they also offer “Guaranteed Press Release Coverage of Your PR”. This “Guarantee” is hugely misleading, it’s a rip-off and a joke, because the implication here is that the press release they send out for you will generate media coverage. But in truth, that is not the case.
What exactly is that “Guarantee”?
If a potential customer bothers to scroll down to the bottom of their website and reads the fine print, they’ll see exactly what it means:
“Everyone who orders the Advanced-PR service for their business WILL GET VALUABLE PRESS and MEDIA ATTENTION! WE GUARANTEE your success! If you don't get any media or press coverage that YOU know about then just let us know and we will ask you to make a few changes to your PR news release and then we will distribute your updated press release again for FREE!!! That's our GUARANTEE!”
Again, what a joke.
They don’t guarantee the customer gets media coverage, they simply guarantee that if you don’t get media coverage with the first release they send out for you, they’ll tweak the press release and send it out again! Pathetic. This kind of thing chaps my hide. Customers who don’t know any better get duped and they end up wasting their money.
As I’ve said before, ANYBODY can write up and send out a press release, and as I’ve written before, most of the time the vast majority of press releases are ignored, deleted, or thrown in the trash. The trick is to find a media savvy writer who knows how to find a story and pitch it strategically to carefully targeted contacts.
Only a small percentage of press releases actually generate a response from the media and end up leading to coverage. I’m guessing maybe 10%, if that.
Any PR practitioner or media relations consultant worth their salt should only take money from a client if they can generate media coverage. That is how I operate. I only take on clients that I know I can get in the media, otherwise I’m wasting their time and money.
And regarding this company’s claim of having a media database of more than 690,000 contacts? I’m very suspicious about that. How often are those contacts updated? How many of those contacts are still employed? On top of that, the overwhelming majority of media contacts don’t respond to most of the press releases they receive anyway.
Check out this great read on how local TV news operations in Boston are using Social Media to connect with viewers.
These are all great examples which should be adopted by ailing local TV newsrooms across the country, which are all operating with fewer staff and shrinking budgets. Using social media tools this way helps stations become much more efficient in the news gathering process.
One of the stations, WCVB, has launched its own social network at ULocal. The homepage for ULocal looks a little sparse, but its a move in a good direction.
Key point from the article:
'Stephanie Miller, director of digital media at WBZ and sister station
WSBK-TV (Channel 38), said the idea is to tear down the wall between
anchors and viewers. "It has helped in building a deeper connection
with the audience," she said.'
As more media outlets adopt these strategies, opportunities for engaging editors and journalists, and ultimately influencing coverage will only increase.
