Where Do You Stand?

In this week’s edition of Newsweek, the reader-contributed essay My Turn (perhaps my favorite feature of the magazine) is titled “Closing Shop — And a Life by Sal Nunziato.” The writer shares the story of his life as the owner of an independent music store and the relationship he had with customers who he knew not only by name, but by musical preference.

He also writes of his connection to Erika, the Starbucks barista around the corner from his shop who took the time to develop a relationship with her customers.

“Erika knew me. This corporate java behemoth actually employed someone who found the time to learn and remember my name and my order. Erika (not her real name) was a rock star to me. She knocked seconds, eventually minutes, off my waiting time. I’d walk in and, boom, a latte was in my hand. A minor thrill, but a thrill nonetheless.”  

Once Erika left Starbucks, Sal did too, the challenge of starting over with a new coffee friend too exhausting to consider.

I have an “Erika” too. Her name is Ashley. Ashley doesn’t just work at Mudhouse, my frequent morning java stop, she wraps herself in it. Each morning she describes the coffee I’m about to enjoy with phrases like “deep chocolate undertones and a  rolling, fruity finish.” Each description is like listening to a seasoned sommelier at a wine tasting. This morning she cheerfully informed me that my cup of joe was saving victims of genocide. For $1.90, I get a large coffee and a show.

Ashley has become my de facto co-worker. Since I work at home, I don’t get the experience others do of seeing colleagues every day. I miss out on the breakroom chat, the coffeemaker gossip. Ashley makes up for it, often commenting on my outfit, asking about my day, my plans for the weekend, noticing when I get a haircut; she keeps me coming back to Mudhouse again and again. It’s this kind of relationship-building that Sal Nunziato understood was why his customers came to his music store and why his latte at Starbucks was ultimately more than just a latte.

Listening to Ashley describe the day’s offering of coffeealongside another customer, my fellow caffiene addict commented to me, “I wish I was as passionate about my job as she is.” Every company needs an Ashley, an Erika, a Sal; and when a company finds they have one of these gems on board, they should reward them as often and as lavishly as possible. They’re the reason we keep coming back.

Mudhouse photo via Flickr, originally uploaded by Jarsonic.

The last time I was an editor was as a high school senior. I was one of four editors-in-chief of the Cranbrook Kingswood Crane-Clarion, and now I fully understand why there were four of us: in order to quadruple our chances of catching copy errors.

A piece written by Gene Weingarten published in Sunday’s Washington Post has been making the rounds at Standing. Titled “Yanks Thump Sox,” the piece is a satirical look at the reasons why copy editors are no longer “necessary” in a world where newspapers are having to cut corners to make ends meet.

“If you are like I, you are pretty sick of reading articles about how the financially-troubled newspaper industry is making desperation budget cutting moves,” Weingarten writes. “One frequent newsroom complaint is that they are cutting back drastically in the use of copyeditors. The era of the copy editor is gone. Copyeditors were once an important part of the journalism process, back when journalists weren’t as educated as they are now… Copy editors were fine-tuners, fixing basic but important things that a first line of editing might’nt catch.”

You get Weingarten’s point; copy editors are essential and without them, the written word is less effective (and more annoying) than it’s potentially able to be.

The public relations profession, just like journalistic professions, relies extensively on the written word. I’m doubtful the public relations industry would have the ability to maintain long-term client relationships if editors and administrative team members were eliminated; what makes publications believe they’ll maintain the loyalty of their “clients” (readers) without their copy editors?

Read the rest of Gene Weingarten’s piece and try to spot all of the “errors in fact, grammar, syntax and style that a good copy editor would have caught.”

A story posted to the Columbia Missourian Web site late last night discusses a proposal that would take away Missouri employers’ right to implant a microchip into the arms of their employees. The story cuts right to the issue:

Your bosses can still make you work weekends and give you projects you loathe. But Missouri lawmakers have voted to make it a crime if they order that a microchip be implanted in your arm.

The article states that employers would be fined up to $1,000 for demanding that a worker get an implant. One thing the article doesn’t explain: Whether employers would be forced to remove the microchip after paying that massive fine. I mean, such a steep, steep fine might be punishment enough, but still …

This story really got me thinking. I mean, what kind of world do we live in where an employer can’t take its workers down to a microchip factory and forcibly have a radio-frequency identification device placed under their skin? How are these employers going to track their employees every move?

The most important question that needs to be addressed is what would happen to Florida-based VeriChip Corp., the nation’s only federally approved maker of human microchip implants (according to the Columbia Missourian)? That company may have to look toward employers in other states to forcibly have employees microchipped. I give the Columbia Missourian credit for trying to find out such an answer. However, VeriChip’s spokesman thought it would be best to not return the reporter’s call. That’s a classic PR snafu. At least he could have stood up and said “No comment” like the countless other companies that we do NOT advise.

By the way, for those of you who don’t know me, this post is mostly in jest. I do not condone microchipping humans … and neither do Cathy or Melissa — or at least I hope that’s the case.

Yes, the words “annual report” do tend to make communications professionals collectively bang their heads on their keyboards…but it doesn’t have to be that way. No, I’m serious. Stop laughing hysterically. You’re starting to scare me.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to about 70 members of the St. Louis Community Service Public Relations Council (CSPRC) regarding annual report production. I enjoyed it not only because they laughed at my references to Monty Python and Jimmy Buffett (which makes them way cool in my book), but also because annual reports can actually be…gasp…fun to do.

Hear me out before you call me a freak - read through my Top 10 Annual Report Tips, then judge for yourself. (Bonus tip: play some Buffett in the background while you’re reading - it automatically makes anything you’re doing more fun.)

1. KISS (Keep It Simple, Sweetheart!) Don’t set out to write “War and Peace.” Just hit the high points.
2. Be true to your brand. Make sure your annual report reflects your brand. If you don’t know what your brand is, I’d suggest defining it before you go any farther. Go. Now. I’m serious. You’ll thank me later.
3. Repeat after me: audience, message, measurement. Ask yourself three questions: Who are you trying to reach? What do you want them to know? How will you know if they got your message? Answer them, and there’s your strategic plan for your annual report. (See, I told you this was fun!)
4. It’s a thesis, not a last-minute term paper. Make a production schedule and stick to it.
5. Your cousin Martha and her snazzy new digital camera do not equal professional photography. Don’t try to cut corners here. It won’t be pretty, in any sense of the word.
6. It’s a storybook, not a financial textbook.With nonprofits, people want to hear all the ways their donations are making a difference. With for-profits, people want to know you’re being good corporate citizens. You can’t convey that message with dry numbers (apologies to all the CPAs out there). Tell your story in words and photos, and find the heart of your organization. Yes, it’s there - go find it.
7. It’s impossible to love your donors/board/executives too much. People like to see their names in print. They like to see pretty photos of themselves (see #5) even more. 
8. Give a sneak peek at future goals. Letting people know you have a strategy for future growth is a good thing. They’ll trust you much more if they think you know what you’re doing. This has worked for countless political candidates (notice I said “think you know what you’re doing”), and it’ll work for you.
9. Make it Googleable.If you post your annual report in pdf on your Web site, it’s not searchable. Post it as an html document, and put a link on your home page.
10. Save some trees - go digital. You can print annual reports on demand these days - no more finding 10 boxes of old annual reports to throw out (might as well throw cash straight into the wastebasket), and no more need to take out whole forests to print your report (see #1, BTW). And, do you even need to print hard copies to send out to everyone on your list? Send a link through email or RSS (or heck, even Twitter) - you’ll increase traffic to your Web site and earn kudos from conservationists. It’s a win-win, people.

Any other tips to add?

I grew up with the St. Louis Rams (am I dating myself?) and I was broken hearted to hear from Yahoo! Sports that at least three groups have had talks about purchasing the Rams franchise. Luckily, my sadness was short-lived as Rams Managing Owner Chip Rosenbloom announced he has every intention of keeping the Rams in St. Louis.

His statement read:

“It has only been four months since my mom passed away. Her passing immediately caused speculation that we were selling the team. When a team is passed from one generation to another it becomes to some a calling card that the team must be for sale. So to reply to this article: Nothing has changed since my mom’s passing. We’ve been approached by several people. We plan on using the season to show that the performance on the field will be exciting and to honor my mom. And while we deal with her estate I can assure you we have every intention of keeping the Rams in St. Louis and will have no further comment on this article.”

Every time we provide our clients with message training, we insist that telling the truth is the most important tip to remember, followed by not speculating on the situation. Mr. Rosenbloom (or his publicist), in a very matter-of-factual way responded by stating the facts and nothing else. It is because of Mr. Rosenbloom’s clear and concise message, and by dismissing the Yahoo! Sports article’s accuracy, St. Louis Rams fans across the country slept better last night.

We talk a lot about the vast possibilities that the Internet has afforded PR, especially on this blog. But it is not often we reflect on the limits of the Internet, as Felix Salmon points out in this Portfolio article.

 If you were to help build a list of limits, what would you include?

Ever have a story that almost happens?

We had a peach of an opportunity. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band booked tee times at Spring Creek Golf Club, a client of Standing Partnership’s in Charlottesville, Va. While The Boss and the band didn’t want publicity while they played (and we respected that, of course) there was potential for some photos and some post-game publicity.

Springsteen ultimately didn’t make it; he was busy rehearsing for his concert at John Paul Jones Arena Wednesday night and some of the stage and audio crew, as well as a couple of E Street band guys, kept the tee times instead.  At left is a photo of the tour bus I shot in the parking lot of the course; in the window you can see a small Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band sign.

While it was disappointing not to get to meet The Boss, it was also very exciting that he and his band had chosen Spring Creek Golf Club, Golf Digest’s 2007 number one best new affordable public golf course, as the golf course they wanted to play in Virginia.

Springsteen doesn’t know what he missed — or, he did, when his friends returned from the course to tell him how spectacular it really is. Next time you’re in town, Bruce, we’ll have the course ready for you.

Here are a few more shots I took of the course; it was a beautiful day out at Spring Creek.

I’ve been grading papers this week (a LOT of papers) for the two college courses that I’m teaching. I keep running into a problem: Students citing Wikipedia as a source. It’s not just in my classes that I see Wikipedia being overly legitimatized. A colleague of mine (bless her heart) recently used the Web site to define the term “journalist.”

As I’ve found while working here at Standing Partnership, not everything found on Wikipedia is accurate. We regularly find incorrect information on the pages for our clients. And because it’s frowned upon when the actual company or a PR agency attempts to correct mistakes (an outsider must do that), the process is quite complicated and frustrating.

In future semesters, I plan to tell my students, “Wikipedia is not a legitimate source of information for your assignments. It’s an open-source wiki, and just about anybody can post information on the site with little verification of its factual merits.” I will also tell then that they are welcome to use Wikipedia as a starting point — it’s great for that — but they need to verify the information through a more legitimate source.

I’m somewhat of a cynic, so perhaps I’m overreacting. What do you think?

Standing Partnership has a cool office - elegant, organized and with a beautiful “treehouse” feel due to the view most of us have of the mini-forest right outside our office. 

At least I thought we had a cool office - until I saw these. Bonus points to Google for featuring a corgi (my furry friend of choice) as the doggie model in their photos. 

Cathy, I’m thinking our next office really needs a small roller coaster…or at least some killer bumper cars.

Though I now make a living in the world of issues and reputation management, I’ll always consider myself an editor. Over the past 10 years, I’ve edited thousands and thousands of newspaper articles, headlines, magazine stories, brochures and other works of brilliance. I’m fallible – don’t get me wrong. I still make mistakes from time to time. And I rarely criticize in a mean way. But I cannot always hide my frustrations when I see a major typo or grammatical error. I heard some deplorable news this week that pushed me to the edge. I’m at the breaking point.

• I keep my mouth shut every time I drive by Rombach Farms in the Chesterfield area and see the “Busses welcome” sign (it’s “buses” – get it right!).
• I have stood by quietly as error after obvious error on the KSDK-TV news crawl tarnishes the most beautiful newscast in the St. Louis area.
• And I have never said a word about the missing apostrophe on the logo on the Scotts LawnService vans (it should be “Scott’s,” since the company is named after founder O.M. Scott; also, would it hurt to make “LawnService” into two words?).

Those are just a few examples. I can live with errors like that, as long as I don’t have to view them frequently. However, there’s a big error on the way for Missouri residents. The new Missouri license places feature a major grammatical error. The hyphen is missing in the state’s nickname, “Show-Me State.” You can read more about it by clicking here and here. You can also view the license plate for yourself by clicking here.

Here’s a passage pulled from one of the stories linked above that shows just how much our state cares about this pending embarrassment that will surely tarnish our state’s reputation:

David Griffith, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Revenue, said they won’t correct the mistake because that’s how it looked when voters chose it in an online contest last year.

“If the people want it that way, that’s what we’re going to deliver for the people,” Griffith told The Associated Press.

Excuse me? The people want it that way? This is ridiculous. How embarrassing for a state that many on the coasts considers “flyover territory.” Now we’re so backwoods that we cannot punctuate our own state motto correctly. This really should be considered a travesty and an injustice.

When I receive my new license plates, I’m going to take a marker and fix the mistake. I hope you do the same thing. Make a stand.