Obama is Blowing the Health Care PR Battle

I’m stunned by the amateur approach of Obama and his White House team to the PR aspects of health care insurance reform. While the opponents of the plan have done a masterful job of ginning up opposition to change, the White House has been caught napping and clueless.

I kept waiting to see if the Obama team was just waiting for the right time to roll out its effort, but now that the news is that the White House is “firing back” at critics, it’s obvious that they went to Plan B because they didn’t have a Plan A.

Where, for example, is the Mile High Stadium version of a health care reform rally?

Where are the heart-rending stories from ordinary citizens who will be helped by the plan?

Where is the demonization of the huge interests who are opposed to reform?

Where is the one-pager that describes to the average citizen what the benefits of the plan are?

Why is it that even I, an informed and highly educated citizen, can’t tell you a thing about what’s in it for me and my family?

This last point is the reason why these wingnut shouters at Congressional town hall meetings are having so much success — because the absence of a common understand of “what’s in it for me” has created a vacuum and an opportunity to create a fear of “what I have to lose.”

It’s too late now to fundamentally change the game. The best the Obama people and supporters of reform can hope for is that the screamers will hit the limit of their effectiveness and that the Democratic majorities in Congress will deliver an acceptable reform bill.

Really helpful guide to the mindset of 18-year-olds

I’m 50. So as hard as I might try, I have no clue what people under 40 think about the world. I remember when Johnson was president. I watched the moon landing. I lived through Vietnam and Watergate.

A heck of a lot of people didn’t do any of those things, because they weren’t alive yet. Just like I have no clue about living through WW II or the Eisenhower years. Wasn’t born yet.

To get a kick in the head about how people entering adulthood see the world, check out the Beloit College Mindset list. It’s a compilation by some brainiacs at Beloit College about the sensibilities of the incoming freshman class. The list for the Class of 2012 is their most current (last year’s class). When they release this year’s list, I’ll post an update.

Here are some of their observations about people in the U.S. who are now 19 years old and if they are in college, starting their sophomore years:

• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
• Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.
• Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
• Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.
• Students have always been “Rocking the Vote.”
• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.

Their lists go back to the class of 2002 — people who would be in their late 20s now.

Why should you care? Because people you may be pitching or working with may very well be in this cohort, and if you want to work with them successfully, it helps to have a cultural frame of reference.

Does Obama Need a Hail-Mary PR Pass on Health Care Reform?

Back from Vegas, where the famously in-touch Vegas taxi drivers were 100% against Obama’s health care plan. Why? Who the hell knows. Probably because the right wingnuts on talk radio are tearing it down.

But there’s a serious grain of reality in these man-on-the-street insights. Eight months ago, Obama’s PR machine had created a feel-good climate in which you would not have heard a Vegas taxi driver disparaging the President-elect. Now, everyone’s a critic. Why? Because, in my opinion, the Obama people haven’t done as good a PR job as they could and should selling this health care plan to the American people.

This should be a no-brainer — the facts are on their side. But Obama seems unable to close the deal. In this case, he seems incapable of clearly articulating in plain, clear and compelling language how this plan will reform the health care system so more Americans get better and cheaper care.

I’m not clear on the politics of the situation — maybe he knows that the Democratic majorities will give him a good enough bill to sign and so he doesn’t need public opinion to be on his side. But I can’t see where appearing weak and defensive on this critical issue could serve either his current cause or future causes.

Maybe the guy is human after all.

If You Can’t Measure the Effectiveness of Your PR Effort , You’ll Never Get to the C-Suite

Here’s your business school saying of the day: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Here’s your Catching Flack corollary of the day: “If you’re not measuring the effectiveness of your PR programs, your career path will be severely limited.”

I’ve railed recently about the lack of professional standards in our industry and how they hold us back. Another practice element sorely in need of improvement is measurement.

Other departments (operations, finance, sales) are obsessed with numbers and measurement, and guess what? The cream of the crop from those departments rises to the top and gets to the C-suite. Our department, all worried about “relationships” and “awareness” but short on the metrics to prove our worth, is forever stuck in middle management. When was the last time a CEO came out of the communications function?

One of the ways an industry improves in a particular area is to set up a competition and give out awards for industry leaders. And that’s the driving force of this blog post — to let you know that the deadline for applying for the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award from the Institute for PR is coming up soon: August 15. Winners will be feted at the Institute for Public Relations Summit on Measurement in October in Portsmouth, NH.

This award — named for Jack Felton, founder of the IPR Commission for PR Measurement & Evaluation — recognizes excellence in public relations research, measurement and evaluation. The award’s primary objective is to identify superb examples of research used to support public relations practice, and to publish them as case studies on the Institute for Public Relations website. You can see the 2008 winners here, and all the winning submissions can be found at that site on other pages.

Pitching Business Media Is Getting Tougher and Tougher

One of the untold stories of PR over the last quarter century has been the great rise in business journalism, from a media backwater to a front-and-center element of the media. It just so happens that I had a front-row seat for this transformation, as I entered business journalism in 1981 as part of the first wave of expansion. Back then, for perspective, the Wall Street Journal was only one section, and the New York Times’ business section was behind the sports section. There was no CNBC.

This has been a boon for PR — the more business media, the more PR people and resources needed to deal with them and pitch them.

It has never been easy to get coverage from the business media, but this year, it has gotten much tougher. Buyouts and closures are sweeping the media, taking out scores of talented and experienced business journalists.

Talking Biz News, a very good blog that follows the business media, reported today that 250 business media jobs were eliminated just during the first six months of 2009. That included the entire staff of Portfolio, the ill-timed new business mag from Conde Nast, and 100 positions throughout Bloomberg Media, which is heavily dependent on sales of its information to the financial services sector. But there have been scores of other jobs lost at national newspapers, regionals, magazines and business journals.

What does this mean for us in PR? It means we have to work ever harder to get stories placed. It means we can’t waste precious time pitching non-stories to over-worked journalists. It means that when we do pitch a story, we need to be ready to provide facts and figures, human interest, quotable quotes, photos, graphics and other sources for the story.

I know it’s hard to do. But that’s reality. So get back to work, people. Break’s over.

Storytelling Gets the Harvard Business School Seal of Approval

Anyone making a living in PR ought to know this, but it always bears repeating: a good story is the best way to convey information. Dry facts = boring. Good story = interesting. And interested people are much more valuable than bored ones.

But if you’re the type who needs academic facts to back up your business theories, then here’s an article from Harvard Business Review: “To Boost Knowledge Transfer, Tell Me a Story.”

Here’s the summary of the article:

We studied a particularly successful program of the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation called SmartLessons. Started in 2005 in response to a push from managers in the field, the voluntary program teaches employees how to deliver information through human stories that people can connect with. It offers a simple guide for writing narratives to post online, as well as the services of an editor, who ensures that the articles and multimedia presentations posted on the SmartLessons site really are in story form. We found that storytelling dramatically increased IFC employees’ ability to absorb information.