The best guess is that Apple will unveil a tablet computer, perhaps like the image below. One thing is for sure – Apple has mastered the art of product debut and news media hype.

Amid all the speculation, Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag issued a call for readers to send in photos of the Apple tablet. Valleywag offered a cash prize of up to $100,000. A day later, in typical lawyer-fashion, an attorney representing Apple sent Valleywag a cease-and-desist letter. That act, together with the contents of the letter, may have tipped Apple’s hand and actually confirmed speculation. Here’s what the attorney, Michael C. Spillner, wrote, in part:

“I am writing on behalf of Apple regarding the notices on Gawker.com and Valleywag.com Web sites that Gawker Media will pay someone a financial reward for sending you photos, video, or a sample of an unannounced and highly confidential Apple product.”

Naturally, ValleyWag published Spillner’s letter online.

The smart, intelligent move would have been for Spillner not to write the letter and to keep quiet. He should have had a clue that such a saber-rattling tactic would only create more impetuous for someone to spill the beans about the new product in exchange for the $100k … that his letter would serve only to perpetuate speculation. But, most lawyers are not wired that way.

It’s a shame that communications skills, including how to deal with modern day dynamics of the news media, are not taught in law schools.

The post Lawyers Do Not Good Communicators Make appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

Another press release is the antithesis of what today’s beleaguered reporters want. They are under orders to find fresh stories or else … so why should they care about another press release that’s been sent to everyone? They don’t.

Today’s news media – whether mainstream or online – is struggling financially. They don’t want your self-aggrandizing press release or any other 1970s era press materials. Furthermore, they are building walls against the barrage of unsolicited PR stuff, using, for instance, special spam filters that screen and trash any document with the typical PR jargon, such as “For immediate release.” Why would a reporter – who is under pressure to find legitimate news – risk their job looking at something that’s been carpet bombed to every other reporter on the planet?

Brian Lamb, founder and chief executive officer of C-SPAN, shared this wisdom with me:

“Media relations today is about relationships. A reporter needs to know who you are. It’s as important as what you have to say. If you have a great announcement but have not established a contact or relationship in the media, no one will pay attention.”

Lamb’s powerful words get incisively to the core of effective strategic communications today. It’s all about establishing relationships with journalists.

Sure, I know … I know … when a press release is mass distributed, it will show up briefly on an automatic news aggregation site, from obscure pages of MSNBC to The Singapore Times. But, that’s not real media coverage and certainly does not equate to meaningful awareness-building. It’s at best a brief poof of smoke that disappears, and you’d be kidding yourself to think otherwise.

Real stories in the real media are the result of knowing the right person to contact at the right time. It’s called relationships, and it’s never been more important than now … in the digital era.

The post Ultimately … It’s All About Relationships appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

Newshour interviews tend to run longer to provide more depth and understanding for both sides of an issue or story, presenting either an opportunity or a challenge for the person being interviewed.

The good news is that as a newsmaker or someone providing expert perspective, you are given a fair amount of time to present your case provided you heed interview rule #1 – listen to the interviewer’s questions and answer those questions before bridging or transitioning into your own agenda.

The bad news is that if you are not prepared for the interview or obsessed with trying to remember rehearsed talking points or simply lack adequate knowledge of the subject, you may flounder live on national television.

The latest person to flounder on NewsHour was Rosetta Jones, VP for corporate relations at VISA.

NewsHour’s Ray Suarez was interviewing Jones and Kim Zetter of Wired.com about a case of record-setting cyber theft of credit card numbers. The Justice Department had indicted three men for stealing more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers by hacking into the computer systems of five major companies. Jones and Zetter were billed as “cyber-security experts.”

Zetter’s side of the interview was superb and informative. Zetter knew her stuff. But when it came time for Jones to take a question, she stumbled, did not answer the questions from Suarez and delivered rehearsed and unrelated talking points. She clearly was not prepared or over her head. Here’s an excerpt from NewsHour.org:

RAY SUAREZ: Rosetta Jones, the program, according to the government, that these fellows were using burrowed into the systems and then started exporting the data they were finding there to places outside the United States, to some places inside the United States, but also to Latvia, Russia, the Netherlands. Why?

ROSETTA JONES, Visa: Your question was why they were exporting data?

RAY SUAREZ: Well, why to those places? Is it harder to investigate, harder to prosecute once you ship the data off to somewhere else in the world?

ROSETTA JONES: We think there’s ample opportunity for the government to be involved to help international cooperation in catching the criminals. We think that is an important opportunity and a significant area where the government can be involved.

RAY SUAREZ: Have the two sides been learning from each other, the hackers and the institutions that are trying to fend off these attacks? Do they look for breaches and then exploit them and then your side tries to build new defenses?

ROSETTA JONES: Well, I think, as long as card data remains valuable, criminals are going to continue to seek that information. What we have to do as an industry is to work with financial institutions and with merchants to protect that card information. And we have to make sure that they’re adhering to strict industry data security standards.

I think as an industry we also have to explore new ways to make that card data not valuable to criminals. And we’re looking at things like the introduction of dynamic data into the transaction. We think that has a good opportunity to help prevent fraud.

And, so it went, painfully, as Suarez tried to extract specifics from Jones who apparently was not an expert but rather a corporate PR person who had memorized some general talking points. It did not reflect well on VISA, and the company should have better and more professional spokespersons.

You can read the interview here … or, better yet, watch it.

Incidentally, Jones was only the latest so-called expert to bomb on NewsHour. A fellow named Robert Faris was on the program in June to talk about Twitter even though he had little knowledge of Twitter and was not using the mini-blogging service.

The real issue, I believe, is that by having such non-experts on the program actually hurts the credibility and reputation of the NewsHour.

The post Good and Bad about a NewsHour Interview appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

Imperial Sugar Company's online newsroom

With the newspaper business in America in shambles and much of the rest of mainstream media adrift somewhere between wild sensationalism and chaos, there are fewer and fewer places for a corporation, association or not-for-profit to get their stories shared and heard.

Sure, mainstream media may show up if some scandal or crisis is brewing. But they could care less about such things as best practices, new and more efficient approaches to doing business and worthwhile programs that help people.

The reality today is that it is a significant challenge for any company or organization to get meaningful attention on a consistent and credible basis.

Sending out press releases is the least effective method of getting the media’s attention in today’s world although news releases are still the staple of lazy PR people who lack actual working relationships with the media or knowledge of the online media environment.

In this digital era, a great online newsroom is needed together with a strategic plan for building an enhanced footprint of awareness. The problem is that most online newsrooms are either dusty, molding depositories for press releases that date back to when God invented dirt or merely advertising showplaces to boast over new products with complete disregard for legitimate “news” about the company.

Imperial Sugar Company, headquartered in Sugar Land, Texas, has boldly taken a better direction. The company has created an honest-to-goodness working newsroom, ISCNewsroom.com, and after just a few months online, site traffic and ranking reflect its popularity. Awareness about the company’s news has increased on all major search engines.

At a time when most online newsrooms are generally the least-visited section of a company’s Web site, the ISCNewsroom has quickly become the most popular online news source in the sugar industry, reaching out to investors, employees, communities, suppliers, the media and the industry, as a whole. It is rich with appealing photos.

ISCNewsroom.com was developed by The News Group Net - with offices in Washington, Austin and Dallas. It is a consultancy of veteran communications strategists and journalists really know legitimate news and how to strategically communicate and connect with audiences … and the results are in the impressive audience numbers that help to position Imperial Sugar as the #2 producer of high quality cane sugar products in the United States.

The post Value of a Great Online Newsroom appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

In his popular blog, WebInkNow.com, David writes:

I’m particularly excited about how ISC hired journalists to create their newsroom, something I’ve advocated for years. This is something I’ve called brand journalism and is an increasingly effective marketing tool. In fact, ISC has hired the skills of a print journalist, a television journalist, and a photojournalist.

When a company creates information in a newsroom like ISC and updates it frequently, the valuable content is indexed by the search engines, and will gravitate into the top positions.

Imperial Sugar’s new online newsroom was developed by The News Group Net, of which I am a partner.

Click here to read David’s full story.

The post David Meerman Scott: Creating Authoritative Voice appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

For a business or organization, WordPress brings an online newsroom alive and interactive with many features. The newsroom is no longer a dusty and boring archive of news releases that go back years. Rather, it becomes an online showcase for an organization’s latest news, photos and video, and a place to listen, exchange, and share with key audiences.

You can see where I am going … in today’s Internet era, stop shouting. Reach out to the media, investors, stakeholders and others who follow your organization, and tell them that everything new will be online. Focus the media’s attention back to your site, to your organization. Give them a site they can subscribe to in order to instantly get all updates by email. Such an approach meets the legal requirements of full disclosure for publicly traded companies.

What gives each WordPress site its distinctive look and feel are called Themes, and there are many to choose from. Solostream.com is an excellent resource. Incidentally, WordPress – as an online platform – is free.

Here’s the good part – when you post news on a WordPress-powered online newsroom, it shows up on Google within minutes. In other words, it becomes search engine friendly.

If you want to learn more, send me an email.

The post Build an Online Newsroom, Using WordPress appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

The PR industry has become an email spammer to the news media by emailing thousands of press releases each day. Reporters, under pressure to find fresh and new stories for their editors (the opposite of press releases), have become overwhelmed with their inboxes being cluttered with releases sent to everyone and his uncle. Reporters don’t need that; they need something that feels more exclusive and imaginative in order to keep their jobs. They need stories!

News organizations, in response to complaints from their reporters over too darn many press releases, have installed special email spam filters to catch releases and dump them into email trash. A popular spam filter is SpamSieve. Works like a charm. Furthermore, reporters are under no mandate to read those releases in the trash.

So, when your organization spends hours of valuable time to craft a press release, and then, distributes it via email or some blast email service, that’s what happens to it – the trash basket. End of story.

All you need to do is ask a reporter – mainstream or online – what they need for a story, and they will tell you that they need a story idea … just a brief paragraph in an email that outlines a possible story, including contacts and links to other material. That’s what they want. That’s all they need.

Now, I expect that somebody’s going to write a comment to say that press releases serve other meaningful purposes other than attempting to generate media attention. I suppose my response might be … stop kidding yourself.

The post The Short Lifespan of Press Releases … appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

Speak with journalists, and they will say that the majority of online newsrooms are of little value to them. In most cases, online news information sections neither deliver timely news nor anything else of value to the media, like ready access to the right contacts. Rather, they are akin to dusty archives.

Why even bother, I ask? It is amazing to see the sections referred to by even some of the largest corporations and even PR agencies, which should know better, as “Pressrooms.” A pressroom is where the machinery is located at a newspaper to physically print a newspaper, certainly the antithesis of the image of today’s online media information site.

Here are some ideas—based on input from many journalists—for creating a contemporary and useful online news info capability:

• Use correct terminology. It is neither a “Pressroom” nor a “Newsroom.” Leave those terms to the media. It is “News Info” you are delivering about your organization.
• Use dynamic content management platforms and RSS feed technology to drive your online news information site, so that the media and others who follow your organization can track new developments online with instantaneous newsfeed syndication and social media services.
• Deliver timely and relevant material of meaningful use to the media about your organization, not ads or marketing pieces.
• Be accessible … if for no other purpose than it’s the job of a communicator. Provide contact details, including names, telephone numbers and emails. No forms. If you’re a communicator and don’t want your contact information listed for the media, consider changing careers.
• Update regularly. Dynamic RSS site technology allows quick updates for timely issues from any computer, and without encountering the bottleneck of going through a web team.

What kind of signal is your communications department sending online about your organization? Savvy, timely, accessible … or tired, boring and an approach that makes the media jump through hoops to get what they need? Unfortunately, the latter is more the case than the exception for most. Isn’t it time for a change?

The post Time to Streamline Online Newsrooms appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

I received a press release via email a few days ago from a well-meaning PR person.

Guess what? I can’t write about it because at the bottom of the release is this:

NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission contains confidential information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by any other person is strictly prohibited. If you received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and then destroy the message. Opinions, conclusions, and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of AGENCY X shall be understood to be neither given nor endorsed by AGENCY X. Before opening any attachments please check them for viruses and defects. When addressed to AGENCY X clients, any information contained in this e-mail is subject to the terms and conditions in the governing client contract.

Yikes! The notice at the bottom of the press release says I cannot distribute the press release. This is what happens when lawyers get in the way of PR.

Or consider this typical press release from Shell that I found on one of the press release wires. Now, I’m not picking on Shell here, I’m making a general point. I could have chosen any one of a thousand releases for this example.

New Shell $aver Card(SM) Available at Shell-Branded Stations Nationwide.

HOUSTON, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ — Shell Oil Products US launched the Shell Saver Card today, becoming the first gasoline retailer to make an electronic check payment method available to consumers nationally. This latest Shell payment option provides consumers with a convenient way to pay for purchases with a direct link to a checking account and savings on each gallon of fuel pumped at Shell stations.

The body of the press release has several other paragraphs and contains 361 words. It is a well-written new product release. But then the lawyers get involved and add a 519 word “Disclaimer statement” (sometimes called safe harbor). The legal crap is much more lengthy than the news and includes minute definitions of things that aren’t even in the release such as these two sentences:

Forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements concerning the potential exposure of Royal Dutch Shell to market risks and statements expressing management’s expectations, beliefs, estimates, forecasts, projections and assumptions. These forward-looking statements are identified by their use of terms and phrases such as “anticipate”, “believe”, “could”, “estimate”, “expect”, “intend”, “may”, “plan”, “objectives”, “outlook”, “probably”, “project”, “will”, “seek”, “target”, “risks”, “goals”, “should” and similar terms and phrases.

Yikes! By including these statements, the press release says don’t believe a word we’re saying. This is what happens when lawyers get in the way of PR.

Over the holiday break I read a great book by David Henderson called The Media Savvy Leader. David talks a lot about what he calls “bad habits” around these sorts of disclosures. David says that the legal people include this sort of language so the company can’t be accused of lying. That’s a terrible strategy if you want journalists to believe you! David suggests: “Always tell the truth and you won’t need to hide behind an attorney or safe harbor.”

Question to PR people: Have you ever had a lawyer ask you to review a contract in order to remove the jargon and legal gobbledygook? I never have. So why does it happen the other way?

I was fortunate when I was VP of corporate communications for several NASDAQ publicly traded companies (before I escaped the corporate world in 2002). I had an understanding with the lawyers and we only put the safe harbor in the quarterly financial releases, but not the others. I’d recommend that you come to an understanding with your legal department and do the same.

For more on this subject, check out David’s book The Media Savvy Leader. It is a terrific book because David has been a success both as a journalist and as a media-relations practitioner. He is an Emmy Award-winning former CBS network news correspondent so he knows what it is like to be a working journalist. And as a media-relations advisor and strategist, he has been responsible for such stunning successes as generating massive national media attention on little Branson, MO. And Henderson knows the online world. He writes a terrific blog and knows how online communications fits into the mix.

The post When Lawyers Get In The Way of Communications appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.

In another time, in the cowboy film, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, John Wayne growled “never apologize, and never explain.” But that was then—more than 50 years ago in a macho western. This is now. Today apologies can do wonders.

Consider this example: “Gov. John Rowland changed his story and acknowledged that friends—including some under suspicion in a federal corruption investigation—paid for work on his summer home,” reported Susan Haigh of the Associated Press. “Rowland’s admission, made public in a statement, came ten days after he insisted he alone had paid for improvements on the house at Bantam Lake.”

Another politician confirms what we believe about most politicians: that they accept payoffs. We hear it all the time these days. Yet in this case, Rowland exacerbated his situation by lying, then changing his story, and announcing it in a written statement. A statement! Who’s going to believe a written statement? Why not just come clean and stand up in front of the microphones and reporters with notebooks and say something that begins with, “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I apologize, and I’m going to do everything possible to make it right .…”

Rowland was later found guilty and went to prison.

Equally astonishing is the absolute refusal by some organizations and titans of industry to ever admit to any mistakes, even when their hands are caught in the cookie jar. In fact, it seems that the larger the scope of misdoings and more egregious misconduct, the more likely that arrogance will prevent the perpetrators from even considering the value of an apology.

It must be something in the American ethos that a guy who makes an apology is some sort of “girlie man,” to borrow Arnold Schwarzenegger’s words. Attorneys advise clients to shun the actual word apology in favor of regret.

Did you ever hear an apology from Enron, Global Crossing, or Worldcom? Nope. The message we heard was one of blame and excuses, seemingly driven by greed and arrogance. We were left with the impression that many of those titans of business were just well-compensated crooks.

Another example: Hurricane Isabel cut a destructive swath up the east coast of the United States, leaving hundreds of thousands of people with no power for days. Several of the power companies were slow to restore service. It was disclosed in the media that they had cut back the number of repair crews needed to upgrade power lines in order to show a better bottom line to investors.

Rather than standing up in a news conference and saying simply, “We made a mistake. We apologize, and we are now working feverishly to restore electricity to your homes,” the power-company executives attempted to defend their decisions. They did battle with the news media. They made the media their enemy rather than saying they screwed up. It was classic John Wayne behavior, circa 1950.

Yet today such behavior comes off as incompetence and appears to emphasize greed over a clear focus on customer service. It wasn’t smart, and the companies were broiled by the public, the media, the politicians and … the investors.

There are unfortunately far too many executives and attorneys who choose to duke it out (pun intended) with tough stances. The worse the situation, the greater the arrogance—and often the greater the media feast of one story after another. Denying responsibility or twisting facts, especially in the face of evidence to the contrary, will actually create a news story. Hey, just apologize, make amends, and move forward.

President George W. Bush managed to reduce damage to the reputation of his administration by accepting responsibility, albeit belatedly, for incompetence by the Federal Emergency Management Administration in responding to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A week after the hurricane, people were still dying along the Gulf Coast, and the region was in chaos, because no aid had arrived from the federal government. When it was apparent that the government had no plan and the administration was being scalded by everyone from the media to both Republicans and Democrats, Mr. Bush essentially said, “We were wrong, we made mistakes, but here’s what we are doing now …” and outlined a plan for assistance.

Sadly, though, his apology was not subsequently linked to concrete actions and timely relief for those whose lives were devastated by the hurricane, giving rise to what some Bush administration observers called Bush’s “smirk factor,” a habit of making an apology or statement that is, in reality, neither sincere nor backed up by action.

Connecticut-based communications strategist Jane Genova counsels organizations on the value of creating goodwill through an apology. She said non-apologizers might be smart to explore using mea culpa as a power tool and she shared these examples from her work:

1. Just observe. When anyone makes a sincere apology, we listen. “I landed an assignment in the mega competitive hospitality industry by recognizing that even the most unhappy guest will be turned around by an authentic and detailed apology,” she said.
2. Give up on the “cult of the self.” Did the inward, self-focus theory ever work? It’s questionable. In an interconnected, volatile global economy, who can go it alone? That’s why the eastern philosophy of “no-self” is catching on rapidly. If we aren’t defending the self, apology comes naturally.
3. Decide if we want to be right, appear to be right, or be successful. Surrendering on this one is the necessary inner paradigm shift that makes apology possible.
4. Ignore the lawyers, initially. We can apologize in ways that won’t invite legal action or strengthen the case of the opposition. After we make a decision to do a mea culpa, then we should listen to the lawyers.
5. Try out apologizing. When we get the favorable attention of others out there, we know we’re doing it right.

When talk show host Oprah Winfrey realized she had been duped by one of her chosen authors, James Frey, she accused him on live television of lying about the supposed facts in his book, A Million Little Pieces, and she apologized to her audience for originally endorsing the book. The high-profile celebrity knew the power of an apology; done right, it became disarming.

Unquestionably, a sincere apology has become an effective tool in practicing communications. Most everyone will give a break or second chance to someone who admits a mistake. We are human. We do our best. We are not perfect. We make honest mistakes. In extremely difficult times, an apology can be an effective and proven method of controlling what the media says about you.

The post The Value of Transparency … and an Apology appeared first on DavidHenderson.com.