Monthly Archives: November 2009

We expect many companies face the challenge of scientifically invalid or dated dogma that impacts their business.  Whether or not you are a manufacturer of pediatric vaccines facing concerns about autism debatable science becoming dogma can affect your business particularly if audiences are resistant to revisit their assumptions.

A good example of outdated or inaccurate dogma was described in the Wall Street Journal Currents column of October 21, 2009.  Carl Bialik describes the often-quoted healthcare ranking of the United States at 37^th in the world.  The WHO study has been accepted as dogma by politicians and media alike.  In fact, at a recent investor conference we heard Tom Daschle, the former senator from North Dakota, reference the ranking in a speech about U.S. healthcare reform.  The only problem is that the ranking is dubious at best.  According to the article, many of the inputs that generated the ranking were controversial or outdated.  Others were unavailable and proxy data were used in their stead.  The result is that the ranking study is probably worthless as a tool to understand U.S. healthcare.  Despite this, the ranking is referenced often as fact.

What is a company to do when dogma that is either incorrect or based on inaccurate or irrelevant assumptions affects its business?  It can be very difficult to change perceptions and one can be on the receiving end of hostile responses if the dogma is challenged (see “Shots in the Dark” by Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer in the November, 2009 The Atlantic).  Our advice is to first, craft a strong message with strong supporting points.  Second, communicate this message to your target audiences.  Third, be prepared with strong answers to difficult questions that you are likely to receive from skeptical members of your target audience.  Fourth, be consistent and stick with the core of your message even as you refine it to respond to changing circumstances.

We are occasionally contacted by potential clients who wanted to enlist our PR expertise at the time of a news announcement. For this type of project we recommend a message development meeting, drafting of a news release incorporating that messaging into the news announcement, and proactive media outreach at the time of the announcement. The challenge? Sometimes potential clients want to cut corners on a project in order to reduce the budget, skipping the message development and limiting media outreach to only one or two media outlets. We decline the business. Why? Because quick and dirty PR doesn’t work.

Limiting media outreach to only a couple of outlets is essentially putting all of your publicity eggs into one basket. If those outlets decide not to cover the news announcement, the client ends up with nothing. While some may be OK with this scenario, this is an outcome that Russo Partners sees as unacceptable.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument that those media outlets do cover the news and run articles on the story. What story will those articles tell? Will it be the right story? Will the desired message reach the target audiences? Without working out the messaging first, it is highly unlikely that the right message will be conveyed.

Sending out a one-time news release without doing any message development or significant media outreach doesn’t bring any value to a company. It is far better to wait until you have the resources to execute a proper PR campaign than to blow your budget on several small announcements that are done poorly. Quick and dirty PR doesn’t work. Which is why we don’t do it.

What do you do when you are falsely interviewed for an unscientific documentary? This question was raised in an editorial published in the October 15 issue of Nature. The editorial is referring to an interview with Professor Stephen Schneider and the makers of Not Evil Just Wrong, a documentary film that states global warming fears are “hysteria.” Dr. Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, withdrew his interview after he realized that the film-makers had lied about their intentions. The clips the film-makers used in the eventual documentary were taken out of context and offered only two lines from the entire interview.

He shares this experience with many scientists who have also refused talking to the media after being misinterpreted. The article states media silence is an overreaction. However, Dr. Schneider complied that out of an estimated 3,500 interviews he has only been hoodwinked twice.

As public relations counselors we do not recommend our clients to be discouraged after a bad media experience.  To prepare for an upcoming interview we determine the storyline a journalist has in mind; and then together we develop our clients key message points.