Ketchum has announced
its plans to avoid future controversy such as it experienced during the
past week with the Armstrong Williams debacle. Critics have come down
hard on Ketchum, the DoE and Williams when the USA Today unveiled that Williams was being paid by the White House through an arrangement by Ketchum to advocate the No Child Left Behind Act.
Among the new guidelines to prevent future
mishaps of this magnitude, Ketchum stated "We are putting in place a
new policy for the signing and authorization of contracts with
spokespeople." Perhaps this is a necessary step for Ketchum as a result
of the media frenzy, but one that will weigh on the agency work flow.
I think it is worth taking a look at the perspective offered by Julia Hood about the whole situation. Hood wrote this editorial partly in response to Ketchum CEO Ray Kotcher's Op-Ed piece for PR Week in which he gives his defense and perspetive.
Stephen Baker, one of BusinessWeek's bloggers on the new Tech Beat, has just posted
about a topic that will see waves of coverage during the coming year as
bloggers grill big corporations over the proverbial coals. That topic:
what should PR be doing to counter the negative comments on the
blogosphere?
What
types of attacks will we see? Rest assured that corporations will see
everything from product insults to attacks on executive management
regarding non-work related items to venting about the technical
support. We're seeing these things already, aren't we? In all, this
year we are sure to see more negativity regarding the companies we work
for by bloggers than we may have seen in several of the previous years
combined. As Big Blog Company pointed out recently,
the adoption of a technology that gives free Web publishing to the
general public will bring out the cynic in people. They have a forum by
which they can rant and rave about anything and find an audience that
agrees.
Will such negativism injure the companies we work for? Not
necessarily. Blogs bring together people that share common goals,
beliefs and values. The content of a person's site establishes their
credibility and if they rant on about a frustration they have with a
corporation, they'll draw those people who share that feeling to their
site and find other people losing interest. As PR practitioners we are
responsible for sustaining a positive and mutually beneficial
relationship with various publics.
What should PR do to counter this?
First, embrace the blogosphere
Second, expect varied criticism
Third, counsel when appropriate with corporate management regarding incidents
Fourth, take action and approach individual bloggers if it makes sense to reason together
One
worthy side note to the final recommendation, taking aggressive
punitive action might make the blog in question more visible, and hence
work against the company’s interest suing.
During the coming years, corporations will see a lot of negative
things written about them by bloggers. Hopefully a good economic model
will take hold and that companies will weather the storms. One thing is
certain as we have already seen, bloggers will continue to write things
about companies that have not been written by mainstream
journalists.
It is a topic that you'll see NextGen PRose blog more about during the coming months.