Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Getting to the top of PR is lots like getting into Harvard Business School

Becoming one of those shrewd public relations players whose firms rank high on O'Dwyer's iconic list of agencies is, it turns out, a lot like getting admitted into Harvard Business School. 

Melissa Horn demonstrates that in her interview with Dee Leopold in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Heading up the admission process at HBS, Leopold gives the green light to only 12% of the applicants.  Roughly that's about the percentage who make a brandname for themselves in public relations.

Horn's interview with Leopold is a stunner. In essence, the only way to beat the system is to not try to beat the system.  No one gets in because he or she decoded what was the secret formula.  That's about how it is with the stars in public relations. Their game is unique.  

Leopold outs the reality that the personal essay is not the most important factor. It might not even be that important at all.  So much for all the money some applicants are paying to professional services to put together those essays.  On Craigslist there are ads for those assignments, especially for ghostwriting personal statements for international students.  The money is great.  Leopold dings those kinds as "overcrafted."  When the public relations leader becomes ossified, that is his or her client work is overcrafted, that's the end.  Everyone in the field can spot it happening.  Soon enough clients do also and leave.

What also stands out as a negative is not being authentic in presenting one's professional self.  For example, when there's the space to describe three accomplishments, those too eager to win assume the way to go is to follow some template they believe  or have been told exists.  They don't transmit the essence of who they are, how they approach challenges, and how they frame success.  Public relations heavyweights are right out there. 

Another baddie is to ask for recommendations from big names who really don't know them. That becomes obvious when the person writing the recommendation isn't concrete about issues such as providing feedback. Enduring presences in public relations value the big names but don't overplay that hand.

Another common feature for both is extreme emotional intelligence. Leopold was impressed by an applicant who, right before his interview at the Harvard Club, was gracious to a mother and daughter who were oblivious to his situation, delaying him.  The shrewdest in public relations are the most socially astute. 

The good news is that in public relations and in applying to HBS, we can start all over again.  Sometimes the second try is the charm.

Sheraton Kisses Away Alternate Sex Biz: Here's a niche for PR firms

We all know the magic of a kiss.  At the Phoenix Sheraton restaurant, a lesbian couple shared one to celebrate their anniversary.  Within seconds, a power-that-be told them to "get a room." 

Of course this has made media headlines.  As all oppressed minorities (me included) this couple knew how to make noise and make it effectively.  That started with a post on Facebook.

Clearly, there's a niche business here for PR firms to pitch to the hospitality industry for training the front lines on what behaviors to use in situations that might be new or troublesome to them.  Part of the pitch could be the estimated dollars saved in bad publicity and possible lawsuits. 

The hospitality industry deals with people off their good behavior. They're relaxing and paying a pretty penny to do so.

CEO Succession: With all the churn, lots of opportunities for smart IR folks, financial writers

The smart money chases after leadership.  For instance, in speechwriting/ghostwriting we want the C-suite in the Fortune 100. 

Well, the new leadership hot spot for earning money is zeroing in on all the churn going on there.  About 80% of men and women who get that CEO job won't be able to hang onto it until retirement.  All this is making investors very nervous.  Just think about those whose money is tied up with the fate of Yahoo, Avon, H-P, and Research in Motion.

So, the front lines of Investor Relations have to tell their company's stories in different ways.  And those of us in financial writing have a lot more angles to cover.

I took a look into CEO succession for the financial information powerhouse Motley Fool. Here is what I published today.  It may give you ideas how to position your whatever and pitch your services.

Financial Communications: Helping our Wall Street clients tell their story

Profits are down on Wall Street.  By about half: $13.5 billion v $27.6 billion the year before.  This is reported in POLITICO because it's a matter which can be fixed by lobbying.  And that's the job of us in financial communications.

A big part of the money problem is the new regulations, ranging from Dodd-Frank to the Volcker rule.  And the consequences aren't just about dollar figures.  They also are about the competitiveness of the U.S. financial industry. 

Financial players who want to innovate will likely do that in Asia, U.K. or even Canada .  As THE ECONOMIST reports in its current issue, innovation is back in finance.  Not that it ever left but the global financial crisis put a bit of a kibosh on innovators rolling out their products.  With a recovery taking hold, there will be a growing market for those innovations and American players might find themselves out of the loop.

Teri Everett Goes to Time Inc. from News Corp

Teri Everett has gone from one media game to another.  Before she had been senior vice president of corporate affairs and corporate communications at News Corp.  Now, reports Felicia Pride at Mediabistro.com, she'll be starting in March as executive vice president of corporate communications at Time Inc.

In its flagship publication TIME, Time Inc. now tells ts stories primarily in photos and short articles.  It's trying to maintain its media presence in a world with so many emerging templates.  Will Time Inc. become another Reader's Digest Association or do a breakthrough like the Harvard Business Review franchise?  The latter carries compelling blog pieces on subjects like the importance of failure to a career and the prisoner of success syndrome. 

With Everett at Time, the game will be more interesting to watch.

AOL: Night of the Shorts

Those in communications who are still back there in the world of catchy blogs whose posts go viral might value where AOL is, especially since content queen Arianna Huffington came abroad. However that's not where the value will come in the future.  And, according to Starboard, a fund which owns 5.2% of the stock, that's not where the corporation's focus should be.  Starboard is demanding that AOL pay more attention to its Intellectual Property, which the fund values at $1 billion.

If Starboard gets heard and the company changes its strategic direction, the stock may do well, eventually.  If Starboard is ignored, then the stock can undergo the night of the shorts. 

I analyze AOL's positioning for the financial information company Motley Fool.  Here you can read all about it.

Andrew Cuomo: Staying a state, not national, brand

When he returned from the political wilderness, Andrew Cuomo displayed an understanding of how the world operates that will go down in history as genius.  He knew exactly how to navigate the gay marriage issue in New York to position it as his victory.

Cuomo has been so successful that members of the political media are now making it their business to try to analyze his overall strategy.  What Dylan Byers at POLITICO comes up with is that he has positioned himself primarily as a leader on the state level, not national, and in a seemingly low profile way. 

Through that he lowers the risk of being perceived as too ambitious or peaking too fast, as Rick Perry had.  Also, he takes on the aura of being selfless in his service to the people of New York.  Yet no one doubts he has presidential ambitions for Campaign 2016.  All the time, asserts Byers at POLITICO, he has been controlling the narrative about himself through selective news leaks.

Those of us in communications know the unique power of a low profile.  Stay under the radar and plug away and it's inevitable that you get noticed.  When you do it can be the big bang.  This is especially useful during a comeback.

Looking back, we recognize that's what Hillary Clinton did when her unelected role as healthcare reformer blew up during the first Clinton Administration.  Her version of the low profile took the form of morphing into a traditional First Lady, supervising Easter egg rolls on the White House lawn and providing photo ops by her husband's side.  When she went after a U.S. Senate seat, she could manage her media presence since she had left a lot of her baggage behind. More recently, she had been able to migrate away from her failed bid for the presidency and keep the focus on her accomplishments as the U.S. Secretary of State.

Technology has made managing one's own image not only possible but low cost.  Most organizations and leaders now have on their websites their own online newsrooms, complete with online video.  Instead of doing a Google search of them for what the official media have said, interested parties just retrieve content in the online newsroom.  Forrester found that attaching video to text ups the chance of appearing on the first page of Google by more than 50 times.  That's how smart players are controlling their own web presence.  Good-enough quality video can be made on the cheap.

Remember Google+

Oh, yes, Google+.  Didn't Google unleash it in 2011 as a Facebook killer?  That's what many might be thinking sooner than later. 

In NEW YORK Magazine, Bret Smiley reports that during the whole month of January the average time members of Google+ spent on the site had been 3.3 minutes.  I spend plenty more than that every day just responding to friends on Facebook.

More than a slam at Google, this might be a sign of social networking fatigue.  How many networks can even a major commercial brand keep going? 

It's funny.  Maybe it's the mild winter.  Maybe it's the need for being back among actual people in a non-virtual setting. Whatever.  The neighborhood movie house in New Haven, Connecticut was full.   Yeah, people ponying up the cost of a ticket and for over-priced goodies when they could have been on their smartphones connecting or at home watching what Netflix was streaming.  Some even lingered after the show to chat with strangers.  Come to think it, I and my friends were there too.  And our business is social media.

Brand Roman Catholic: Most serious threat yet

Roman Catholicism has been one of the most enduring global brands.  It survived everything from the reforms of Martin Luther to the imprisonment of its priests convicted of sexually abusing children.  But it might not hold up in the newest threat.  Now it's the brass - monsignors, bishops, and cardinals - who might be going to prison.

In a closely watched case in the archdiocese of Philadelphia, Monsignor William Lynn is on trial for two counts of endangering the welfare of children.  For 12 years it was his job to investigate allegations of sexual abuse.  If convicted, he faces the maximum of 12 years in prison.  Jury selection is now going on. 

CNN's Sarah Hoye quotes CNN legal expert Paul Callan who observes, "For the first time, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is possibly being implicated in this child abuse scandal in a very, very definitive way."  U.S. prosecutors will be helped in building their cases by the Vatican's contention, when faced with its own U.S.-based leagal action, that the church was highly decentralized.  Decision-making takes place on the parish level.  Therefore, it was off the hook for what occurred, including alleged cover-ups, regarding possible abuse of children. 

A nation of trials taking place with high ranking church officials as defendants is one in which Roman Catholicism doesn't have a chance.  Its credo of forgiveness is too much to ask.

Warren Buffett Rule of Rhetoric: Balance between elite & street

"A few years back, I spent about $2 billion buying several bond issues of Energy Future Holdings, an electric utility operation serving portions of Texas.  That was a mistake - a big mistake."  - Warren Buffett, Annual Letter to Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway for 2011 corporate performance

There is a line, actually a clear one, between the language of the elite (especially those who love to talk the insider rhetoric of their high-paying professions) and the language of the digital muckrakers, that is, the rhetoric of the street.  In the latter, the author will assure the readers, "I shit you not."  In that middle is where communication is most credible - and therefore persuasive.

Head of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett has mastered the middle-way.  We in communications grab his annual report to check out how he positions and packages both successes and failures.  We intend to learn something.

With trust so low in most institutions in society, as Richard Edelman told the World Economic Forum last month, we can help our clients message and market more effectively if we help them capture the tone and content of the middle way.

UPDATE:

Here is the post I published on the language of business for the financial information site Motley Fool.