Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Hardship Fatigue: Slouching toward joy

"Let's go camping, where the wireless carriers can't find it."

That's what a buddy from way back suggested to me yesterday.  He had had with the media's hammering on tragedy and hardship, ranging from 9/11 to all those who had lost their houses. 

A guy in marketing, he also predicted there would be a surge in the introduction of products and services which bring joy.  Last night when I went to see the inspirational film "42" of Jack Robinson, which has a happy ending, the movie house was jam-packed on a Tuesday.  My friend sure seems to be on the money.

In communications, what we should be pitching to clients, editors, and reporters is Happy Talk.  The analogy is post-World War II when Americans grabbed greedily at whatever could bring joy.  That included buying single-family houses with grass they could tend, having lots of children, and serving good booze at cocktail parties.

Spinning good news, just like spinning bad news, is an option we have, including in our personal lives.  Instead of starting out the conversation on the elevator with "So sad about Boston," a successful mortgage broker in my complex belted out, "Isn't it grand to be alive." 

Kobe Bryant's Achilles Tendon: The writer's creativity

Those with extraordinary talent like basketball player Kobe Bryant sometimes seem like they sign a secret pact with the devil.  Someday, the expiration date will come, we might believe, and they will have to pay up with the suffering of the end of the joy of performing and the receding spotlight. 

Could that be the situation with Kobe Bryant who recently heard his achilles tendon pop?  As USA TODAY reports, Bryant, as well as fans, might sense that, at least for the season  If that is so, Bryant might long for the ability to play so well more than the adulation of crowds. It's impossible that he will experience the time on the bench as a holiday.

We writers are also like that, even though the adulation is considerably less as is, of course, the money.  When our material gets stale or, worse, we suspect our best days are behind us we suffer.  Bryant is his game. We are our creativity. 

When Truman Capote seemed to have lost the capacity to write well he seemed to go down the emotional drain.  He made poor decisions such as outing the habits of the rich and famous.  Had he seen his bad patch through he might have opened again the whatever which fueled his creativity.  Instead he self-destructed.

This blog wishes Bryant a speedy recovery.

Jane Fonda: Sweet Jesus, save us from any more apologies

Perhaps with no more reinventions up her sleeve, Jane Fonda has sunk to the common attention-getter of providing an apology.  In this case it's for posing in 1972 with North Vietnamese soldiers aboard a tank in Hanoi.

We wish Jane would have spared us the apology.  After all, we are burdened with so many of them these days, the worst of the batches accompanied by tears.

Sweet Jesus, apologies have always been attention-getting nuisances.  Those making them are usually so self-centered that they don't realize that society just wants them to go away and stay away.

Since the 1930s when Alcoholics Anonymous had been founded there is a non-stop group of folks making their amends, usually to those who, as expected, don't want to even hear from them.  There's a rush of some kind that goes with amend-making and, I have a hunch, it's an addictive process in itself.  Therefore, like Jane, members of 12-step programs will reach deep into their past to find situations to apologize for.

In the public interest, the best and brightest in public relations can create a campaign to call a moratorium on apologies for 10 years.  In itself it could prevent some disturbed people from screwing up just so that they have a platform for an apology.

Anyone intending apologizing to me will have to encounter a moat stocked with alligators and the drawbridge drawn down.

Bro, Can You Spare Me a Link: Ham-handed SEO

Social media is mature.   It's light years since Robert Scoble triggered shock and awe with the book "Naked Conversations" which he co-wrote with Shel Israel.  In it, the two evangelists informed the world that business had become a conversation. 

To become part of that conversation, everyone who wanted to make a buck or have influence set up a site and sought the counsel of the search engine optimization experts (SEO) about attracting traffic and comments.  Those were the days before likes, shares, tweets, and retweets.  For most that didn't work out so hot.  That's because they didn't really understand how to conduct a digital conversation which resonates. Just as fatal they didn't know how to network with those who could provide them inbound links which had a lot of Google juice.

SEO is no different from any other business process.  You have to know what sells, what incentives will help you sell more, how to attract hotties on the net who will link to your material, and how to keep coming up with what's new and will resonate.

This month this blog is eight years old.  Compared to the big guys like BUSINESS INSIDER and DRUDGE REPORT, I am a two-bit player.  But from the get-go, I have been hounded by those requesting, usually in the most ham-handed way, links.  They will fail most tests for Emotional Intelligence (EI).  Currently, it's even more difficult for them to get the inbound links they want.  Yet, they haven't figured out how to play the SEO game.  They may never.  They may simply be stuck in the pre-digital era when business was not a conversation.

"Inky Tears" by Frank Rich - Now we public-relations writers are no longer children of a lesser god

"The past two months have been a tipping point for journalistic wakes."  - Frank Rich, "Inky Tears," NEW YORK Magazine, April 7, 2013

When many of us public-relations writers came of professional age, journalists, and ironically a number of our clients, treated us like children of a lesser god.  In the late 1970s, I was pleased as punch to have been hired by Mary Ann Aug at the University of Pittsburgh to handle media, including creating press releases touting the genuis of the music department and how the school of engineering configured a master's degree that didn't saddle the pocket-protector types with courses they would never use.  Yet, an intern - yes intern - sneered at the direction I gave her on an assignment with, "That seems very 'pr-ish.'" 

The scorning seeped through my love of positioning whatever. Recently, until about two years ago, I dabbled in journalism.  Actually, I did well, getting bylines in AOL, PAJAMAS MEDIA, HUFFINGTON POST, SELLING TO SENIORS, INDIE READER, and WALL STREET JOB REPORT.  But the compensation from that wasn't downsizing my credit card bill.  Also I tired of the nanosecond deadlines.

Since I returned to PR, with no wistful looks back to inky times in journalism, I notice that no one in any age category is turning up their nose in my direction.  Instead, they want in, crowding career conferences.  Jack O'Dwyer reports on Odwyerpr.com that last year 15 out of the 25 firms it surveyed had double-digit growth.  The leader of the pack has been Edelman with a 12.4% increase.  O'Dwyer, who has a reptuation for helping anyone out of work or hanging out a shingle, has been custom-making information about how Millennials can enter the field, especially side ways through contract work.

The rub for journalists is that it's not easy to think "positioning."  Sure they are used to struggling to find angles for their stories and developing attention-getting ledes.  But that's different from drilling down to the essence of what a client hands you and coming back up with the kind of magic the late Steve Jobs demanded of his creatives.

Are journalists willing to learn to become wizards?  They may have to.

Lilly Pulitzer: She broke down, then she built a fashion empire

A bored rich housewife and mother of young children, Lilly Pultizer had a nervous breakdown. 

When she left the mental hospital after several months, a doctor told her to find something to do.  She did just that when she spilled orange juice from her husband's fruit groves on her dress.  That gave her the inspiration to design dresses with bright colors which would conceal such spills.

After that beginning she, who was part of the southern Florida elite crowd, designed simple shifts.  Jackie Kennedy, who summered in FL with Jack Kennedy at the family compound, wore one of those shifts in a national magazine.  The rest is history.

Pulitzer has died at age 81. Her life is a testament to the conventional wisdom that often bottoming out is a great place for a new and better start.

BUSINESS INSIDER + TIMES INTERNET: It takes an infrastructure

 

Henry Blodget's BUSINESS INSIDER is following in the footsteps of GAWKER in partnering with TIMES INTERNET, the digital part of TIMES OF INDIA.

That's what TECH CRUNCH reports today. Like HUFFINGTON POST, they are expanding their brand overseas.  This requires infrastructure.  And all three media properties have that.

The loose wild west days of digital are over.  Back then we early adopters in blogging, Facebook, and Twitter could make names for ourselves.  It was awesome how once-nobodies could receive links from powerful media like THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Except for an occasional big hit - here is an example - most of us pioneers have become minor players in digital.  The social media expert who coached me in blogging in 2005, the marketing pro who used her blog to give mine traction, and I myself have all sought out full-time jobs.  Sure we do lots of freelance work on the side but essentially it's not stable enough to guarantee a good living.  Before, we had more offers to do freelance assignments than we could handle.

There are builders like Blodget, Nick Denton, and Arianna Huffington.  Then there are creatives like myself.  The Internet has gone to the builders, with mobile heading that way.  The best I can expect is to be able to remain part of the global conversation. 

In Buddhism, we learn: Everything changes. Often that change is an ordeal.

Moratorium on Mother's Day Until 2020: Shortage of water to grow flowers cited

April Fool

Our Inner Ted Bundy: Getting smarter about how we present ourselves

Was I walking like a victim the evening I got mugged in New Haven, Connecticut or was I simply walking on a block I shouldn't have been on after 3 P.M.?  That's what I asked myself after reading, in one sitting, Kevin Dutton's amazing book "The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What saints, spies, and serial killers can teach us about success."

Dutton's hypothesis, which he sets out to prove in the 222 pages of text, is that the typical traits of psychopaths are also the ones many highly successful leaders, businesspeople, and artists also have.  They include:

Extreme focus * Ruthlessness * No empathy * High intelligence * Ability to speedread everyone * Stress-resistant * Charisma * Surface charm * Fearlessness * Persuasiveness * Outgoing. 

Those who keep a lid on these traits don't wind up in jail, on death row, or dead on the street from a fight. Those who don't can go down in history as a serial killer like law student Ted Bundy.  Before he was executed, Bundy boasted that he knew exactly who would make good victims for him by their walk.  Psychologists were fascinated by that contention and tested it out.  Sure enough, Dutton tells us, that proved to be true.

If our walk can mark us as vulnerable to whatever, we have to consider other possible signals we're giving off that undermine our ability to succeed in whatever field we are in.  Mine, a coach I paid a king's ransom informed me, was too-open body language and too friendly a smile when entering the room in which business was to be conducted.  "You're broadcasting a message of insecurity," he said.  He was on the money.  When calling on prospects or current clients now I proceed with Great Gravitas. 

In addition to coaching, we can learn plenty about how to up our game by observing the psychopaths in our midst and taking on the traits which can be easily incorporated into how we present ourselves.  Often those psychopaths are the very successful members of our family who we only encounter on holidays like Easter.

Roman Catholic Church: Who says the world craves innovation

This spring, little girls around the world will make their First Communion, just as I did 62 years ago at St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church, Jersey City, New Jersey.  They will likely remember it as the most important day of their lives, just as I do. 

In my white dress, white veil, what shoes, white stockings, and carrying a white purse with my first prayer book I felt as special as I ever would in my life.  A fellow Baby Boomer at the North Haven Library in Connecticut confided to me that her First Communion was also the highpoint of her life.  The Roman Catholic Church, one of the most powerful and enduring brands in modern times, is a genius at creating rituals which resist change.  Tradition has been its strength. 

Yet, the media such as FAST COMPANY keep celebrating the forces of innovation.  Organizations which want to grow are told to change and keep changing.  That might be misleading.  The Roman Catholic Church has plenty of company in preserving a legacy of tradition.  Consider Ivy League educational institutions which change only at a glacial pace.  Resisting unnecessary change is one reason enterprises remain private rather launching IPOs to go public.  In a downsizing legal sector, law firms like Jones Day which stick to a known organizational culture are the ones thriving.  They tout their core values, not their technology per se.

We vendors might have learned the hard way that prospects and clients don't want a revolution.  Instead they look to us in communications for fresh ideas to transmit branding messages steeped in tradition.  That is certainly the case with elite institutions, luxury market segments, and professional services firms.