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For longer than I care to think, the  headlines about employment have all been negative. Rising unemployment. Underemployment. People leaving the employment market. However, at long last the economy is starting to see some shoots of recovery. In fact, in the world of PR, it seems like the shoots are turning into the first blossoms of spring (the analogy can be taken further in that those blossoms can easily be ruined by an unexpected storm).

In both of the recessions that I  have endured – the dot-com flameout in 2001-2003 and the “Great Recession” of 2008-2009, PR agencies seemed to bear the early brunt, but came out of the downturn quicker than the overall economy. Saying that PR is the bellwether of the economy is probably stretching it a bit, but it’s not that difficult to see why agencies were impacted in such a way. Although PR is an essential component of marketing, it has traditionally been tough to measure in terms of direct dollars-and-cents return. Combined with the fact that when making cuts, canning an external agency is much more employee- and shareholder-friendly than conducting staff layoffs, the PR agency is often one of the first big expenses to go *sigh*.

When the times get better, however, most savvy companies realize that an early – and strong – investment in PR helps them get a head up over the competition. Evidence from my agency and from friends in the industry suggests we’re in such a phase right now.

However, the big problem we’re all seeing now is a real lack of qualified, experienced candidates. Although there is, and will always be, a steady stream of graduates looking to enter the market, my experience from both recessions is that there seems to be an exodus from the PR industry. Then, when hiring starts back up, they choose to stay away. It could be that PR is a very transferable skill, so when the layoffs occur, PR pros (especially those with 2-5 years experience or so) simply leave the market.  Whether it’s that tougher times cause people to reflect more on their overall choice of career and move into something more “touchy-feely” or that people seek an industry they view as more secure remains to be seen, but the outcome is that for PR agencies, one of the biggest barriers to coming out of the recession is having enough talent on board to handle the work.

If you’re a talented PR pro and are looking to work for a great agency, please go to the jobs section of Allison & Partners’ website for our latest postings. If you can’t see anything in your area, feel free to contact your local General Manager with a résumé and  cover letter.

1. Don’t criticize your boss in a public forum…
2. …especially when that public forum is a high-circulation magazine likeRolling Stone…
3. …and your boss happens to be the President of the United States

General Stanley McChrystal must have skipped this part of the media training course. It didn’t work out well for him.

Politics and war strategy aside, what on earth went on here? How the heck did the general’s media team allow him to talk so stupidly candidly about the most powerful person on the planet? Surely someone there should have been keeping a closer eye on the reporter during the interview, and keeping their client somewhat more on track. It seems as though it may have been a case of “loose lips sinking ships.”

According to MSNBC, the reporter ended up on a longer-than-planned stay with the general, due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland. As part of this, the team all spent a long bus ride together, from Paris to Berlin, during which time McChrystal and his team were drinking “the whole way.” It doesn’t take too much imagination to realize that the reporter saw this as the perfect time to get candid feedback from the general.

Although this may seem a little backhanded by the reporter, Michael Hastings, he was just doing his job. Unfortunately, he’s the only one in this affair who was doing so. McChrystal’s (former) staffer, Duncan Boothby, should have had a much tighter rein on the general, and not allowed any off-the-cuff comments to occur. So what if everyone else was drinking? When a reporter is by your client’s side with a tape recorder, you MUST stay close. On top of that, what was he doing during the rest of the time Hastings was embedded with the general?

The other obvious culprit here is McChrystal himself. A four-star general with over 30 years of service and many media briefings under his belt, he should surely have known the risks of what he was doing. It’s not like he wasn’t aware of Hastings’ presence. Nor was it simply a case of single comment that was wrongly interpreted. Unless this was some concerted effort to have himself fired in a very public forum, it can really be viewed as nothing less than a colossal and sustained lack of judgment. Sadly, it cost two people their careers.

Sepp vs Dutch models. Who would YOU rather sit next to at the game?

The World Cup –or, to avoid getting me in trouble, the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ – has thrown out a few surprises so far. For me, the biggest one is how cagey many of the top teams have been playing, and how world football (I’m English, so don’t expect it to be called soccer) seems to be on much more of a level playing field than in previous tournaments.

Anyway, this is a marketing and PR blog, so I’ll get to the point. The biggest shock to me has been how vehemently FIFA has been defending its sponsors and going after any other unsanctioned company which has tried to do anything regarding the World Cup. First, a few months back, FIFA stopped South African airline kukula from calling itself “the unofficial carrier of you-know-what,” and even went as far as saying that the airline – remember it’s South African – couldn’t use the words South Africa, feature a photo of one of those damn vuvuzelas, or use the South African flag on its ads. While kukula was obviously being somewhat cheeky with its ads, it seemed that FIFA was really going a bit far.

The most recent incident took place at the Holland vs Denmark match, when 36 Dutch models turned up to the game wearing identical orange dresses, apparently supplied by Bavaria, a Dutch brewer. The dresses, from what I saw, had no branding on them. Also, don’t forget that the Dutch team is the “Oranje,” and probably about 80 percent of all Dutch fans in the stadium that day were wearing the same color. FIFA’s response? Kick them out of the game and have two of them arrested. I can see why FIFA may want to file a civil suit against Bavaria, but a criminal suit against two of the people involved seems incredibly disproportionate and seems to go against FIFA’s “Fair Play” ethos.

While it’s completely understood that FIFA and its sponsors need to protect copyright and ensure the sponsors get value for money, it seems that the PR backlash of this far outweighs the benefit for FIFA. In fact, if anything, it has only helped raised Bavaria’s awareness (which, if that’s what they were trying to do – goad FIFA into a high profile response – it was a great PR stunt). It also raises the question of how far FIFA is willing to go to support its sponsors to the behest of everyone else. I think fans should rebel by wearing shirts adorned with non-sanctioned companies’ logos to all the games. I’d love to hand out a load of Coors-branded T-Shirts at a game and see what the FIFA suits would do.

But now things have gone a step further and online social networking site Foursquare is allowing celebrities to have open accounts where people can follow them, literally, wherever they go. Or maybe the word is stalk.

Unsurprisingly for this, a) the first celeb is somebody I’ve never heard of (possibly because I’m not really down with the kids and stopped watching MTV when it took “Music”  out of its name), and b) Foursquare is very sensibly allowing celebs to have two levels of communication, where they can selectively turn on and off their check-ins, which I imagine will mainly mean limiting it to official, orchestrated promo events.

Even so, at a time when more and more people are being hunted down and, in some cases, killed following information posted on social media sites, this seems like rather a strange move for everyone but the most desperate D-lister eager self-promoter.

For a start, there’s already PleaseRobMe.com a site which aggregates Twitter and Foursquare feeds to show when people are away from home. In the UK, several Manchester United and Liverpool players have had their homes burglarized while playing overseas games, just by members of the public knowing where they live and when they will be away from home. But aside from the risk of robbery, surely the biggest concern is the stalker element of some crazed lunatic knowing when you’re down at the 7-11 and stabbing you in the throat while you’re picking up a coffee in your PJs.

It will be interesting to see how many celebs actually start using this function to interact with fans. It’s fine giving out your location if you’re 7′ 1″ and 325lbs, but for rather more diminutive types, surely it’s just a 911 call waiting to happen.

See what I've done here?

Google Buzz. Blah blah blah. It’s great. It’s not great. There’s been a lot of hype about it in the past week and social media übermensch Pete Cashmore seems to think it will be a big hit.

At first thought, my big question is “why?” OK, I know that everyone thought Friendster and Myspace were the bee-all [ok, I'll stop now] and end all of social networking and Facebook managed to slaughter them both, and therefore another platform could swoop in and take the top spot. However, it’s also fair to say that Orkut, Google’s previous foray into a social networking platform was, to be candid, a right old flop.

I also think that given the prevalence of Twitter and Facebook, do people really need yet another platform to see a steady steam of their friends’ and acquaintances’ thoughts? I barely have time to keep tabs of everything I’m currently using, without throwing something else into the mix. Also, this just doesn’t seem to have that much of a great user experience. Maybe I’m wrong because I’m a six-follower Billy-no-mates it’s so new that not many people have got into it yet, but it just seems rather “meh.”

So why has Google done this? I have a theory. I’m probably not the first to come up with it, but after a few minutes of Googling (of course), I’ve not seen anyone say this, so I will lay claim to it.

My theory is that Google is scared.

People simply aren’t using email as much as they used to. The rise of messaging within platforms such as Facebook, as well as the increased use of microblogging platforms such as Twitter has caused a fairly dramatic decline in – dare I say it – “traditional” emailing. So for Google, fewer emails = people checking GMail less often = fewer click-throughs on ads within GMail = less money for Sergey and Larry to spend on saving the planet (or not). Although it’s being said that this is more to do with adding a new revenue stream for Google, I think it’s more of a defensive approach, to try and keep its 200 million or so GMail users coming back to the site, reversing the trend away from email.

While I say now that I can’t really see it getting that much attention, it’s probably just my inner Luddite talking, and I’ll undoubtedly get sucked in and be waxing lyrical about it in a few months.

Edit: looks like even Mashable isn’t so hot on it.

Royal Caribbean's facilities in Labadee, Haiti

It’s the classic PR snafu. Some tragedy happens and a hapless flack gets a public thrashing from a journalist for pitching them about how their company / product could have helped.

But, what can companies do when their everyday operations lead them to be embroiled in a major humanitarian disaster? This is exactly what’s happened with Royal Caribbean International, (RCI) whose cruises include a stop in Haiti, as outlined by this CNN article.

The gist of it all is, is it ethical for RCI to continue going to Haiti (albeit to its developed, guarded compound many miles from the affected region), or to pull out as a sign of respect? Frankly, it’s a tough choice. For the cruisers, the thought of being so close to so much suffering and being cocooned  away from it all could be quite distasteful. On the other hand, if RCI pulls out, that will take away a much needed source of jobs and revenue for the island, and we all know that they need all the help they can get right now.

I actually think that although the knee-jerk reaction would be to pull out (and there is certainly lots of talk about this subject), and on the surface of it, that’s the “nicest” response, RCI made a sound decision in staying.

It also handled the PR well, by announcing it would donate at least $1 million in humanitarian aid to Haiti and contribute all of the its net revenue from Labadee (RCI’s resort in Haiti) to the relief effort. RCI is also helping with the humanitarian aid – its ships are also delivering supplies – including rice, dried beans, powdered milk, water and canned goods – to the region. What’s best is that all of this was accomplished without the all-too-easy-to-do PR hand-wringing,

Although obviously RCI’s motives will always be questioned as to how much of it is altruistic and how much is simply brand halo-polishing, RCI is helping Haiti both short and long-term with its efforts, and this should be applauded.

Quick Disclaimer: My client, Johnny Rockets, has a relationship with RCI, with locations on a number of its vessels. But that doesn’t have anything to do with this post. I still think RCI is doing the right thing.

"But my product manager said it was unbreakable..."

I always wonder why PR people still allow their clients to promote anything as “un-[XXX]-able.” It almost never goes well. In my past I’ve had clients talk about their firewalls as being unhackable, and here’s yet another example.

You have to admire that the CEO of Sonim didn’t turn ashen when the BBC reporter managed to break his phone within about three seconds, but even behind his smile, he must have been thinking “why did I set myself up for this”

It would have been so much for him just to say that it was toughened and could stand up to most knocks. That would have been a much easier (if slightly less sexy) pitch than calling it unbreakable. But oh no, bravado and / or too much faith in your products took over. And it wasn’t pretty.

Tip for marketers everywhere. If you issue a challenge, someone, somewhere, will take you up on it. And if they succeed, you’ll know about it – especially if it’s a tech reporter doing it on camera at the world’s largest consumer electronics. So be warned, it will end in tears.

So what’s so good about it (or bad, depending on whether you’re a carrier)? Well, the big thing is that it’s going to be sold unlocked, meaning you can run it on any network you want, whereas the iPhone, for example, has typically been tied to AT&T. Also, Google will be pushing full VoIP to the phone. That means that you won’t get charged for minutes from your carrier, regardless of where you dial to. This means we may finally start to see traditional mobile telcos simply become a dumb pipe – like your Internet connection at home, with will act simply as a data conduit, regardless of what information is sent down it. Even in today’s era of $50 all-you-can-eat packages, it could still have a huge impact on the market, particularly for high-margin business users.

Being someone who travels abroad quite a bit though, the big turn on for me is that they will allow users who travel to Europe to connect to HSDPA (that’s tech speak for “faster than the wireless data access you get in the U.S.”) networks for just €20 per month. No more horror stories of thousand dollar data bills. Exciting times, indeed.

Now, you can say all you like about her views, and although I personally don’t share them, I initially felt somewhat sorry for her the way the Perez Hilton asked her an unfair question on Miss USA and then skewered her (obviously not literally – it’s not his thing) for her answer.

So because of this media storm, unsurprisingly, Prejean decided she needed PR support and signed a (Christian) publicist in April 2009.

Since then, it has just been one disaster after another, with the culmination this week being her interviews by Meredith Viera and Larry King – neither of them falling into the Spanish Inquisition school of interview harshness. While her (and her publicist’s) goal for this was obviously to shill her new book, the fact that this all took place in the days following her sex tape was leaked made it strikingly obvious that that would be a pretty major element of the interviews.

Obviously nobody was a winner – her ex-boyfriend obviously chose to leak it then to cause maximum harm to her, which is frankly a pretty mean trick (although he claims that it was actually made only two years ago, when she was 20, but her team told him to lie about it, but that’s another story entirely). On the other hand, her position on morality has been somewhat undermined by what she supposedly did on the tape (feel free to Google it).

But anyway, in spite of all this kerfuffle, her publicist continued to put her on the national interview circuit. The fact that she came across so horribly suggests one of two things. They either completely failed to adequately brief her on what the subject of the interviews would be (which shows a total lack of understanding of the media culture), or alternatively thought that their client was capable of handling the questions (which shows a complete lack of their client’s strengths and weaknesses, to anyone who has seen her on TV).

So the fact of the matter is that Carrie’s publicists did a terrible job. In a damage-control situation like this, their prime job is to protect their client, who was obviously well out of her depth. Typically, that involves keeping them away from situations that can’t be easily controlled. Such as hive national TV interviews.

However, they just continued with the line of “let’s roll her out to the cameras to sell this book,” even though the story had gone way beyond that. They failed in their duties and should be fired because of it.

St Barack of Obama

There has certainly been a lot of surprise, not just from the man himself, about Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

One of the recurring themes, which was raised to me this morning by my pal and political junkie Colin Mahoney, was this: would it have been more prudent of a PR move for Obama to have been honored to have been nominated, but then decided to turn down the award?

He – or rather, his barely pubescent (OK – I’m jealous) speech writer Jon Favreau – put together some eloquent words on the subject, saying, “I am both surprised and deeply humbled. I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments. But rather as an affirmation of American leadership. … I will accept this award as a call to action.”

However, the last sentence really does mean just that. He’s essentially been pre-awarded the prize for things that he now needs to live up to. And if he fails, it will not only seriously dent his own personal credibility, but will also have a very negative impact on global sentiment to the Nobel Peace Prize.

The question is – should he have said “I appreciate the honor, and although I firmly believe my actions are on the right track towards helping with world peace, I do not believe that my actions thus far have merited such a prestigious award” or some such? That would have given him the PR boost credibility of looking like the humble, bigger man, while also allowing the Prize committee to reflect on his actions. After all, the deadline for nominations was February 1st. He’d been in power for less than two weeks at the time, so to say that this award was made on anything other than promise was somewhat far-fetched. After all, the last two sitting Presidents (Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) to get the award had drawn up the 1905 Russia-Japan peace treaty and helped in the founding of the League of Nations. The Nobel Peace Prize should be offered as a reward, not an incentive.

BTW – the photo of Obama is actually a White House handout.  Wonder how ironic they were being.