How to Recover from the Rat Race and More

Over the course of the last few years, I’ve been very fascinated by the crisis communication portion of public relations. Although, there are several incidents that I can’t talk about, I will talk about those that I haven’t been exposed to confidentially. One of the most interesting is the San Francisco 49ers in-house training film. More recently we have the KFC “Rat Race” and the Jet Blue “Extended Stay.”

Recently, Rhonda Weiss, CEO and Chair of PRSA appeared on CNN In the Money to discuss the recent disasters, the impact of the Internet, the role of the CEO in a crisis and the forgotten group in disasters like these.

To read the transcript, click here.

PR's Battle to Get Recognized Continues

In this year’s Bacon’s/ PRSA 2006 State of the PR Profession Opinion Survey, 1,493 from all levels of the PR profession responded to issues from ethics to organizational integrity, and their opinion on how these issues are affecting the profession.

The study found that more than 37 percent of companies increased its PR budget to an average budget at $45,800. However, 30 percent of respondents work by themselves and an additional 45 percent work in groups of less than five.

There were no shockers in this survey and I agree that PR, advertising and journalism are increasingly becoming vague. However, I disagree that ROI is becoming harder to prove. It’s at a stage where it has become more mature and has moved past stealing from the advertising playbook by discussing ad equivalency.

When that story posts and your clients phones starting ringing off the hook or the sales team uses the feature you secured to seal the "big" deal, there’s an immediate realization. Hearing that from clients has always been one of my motivating factors to try a little harder on their behalf. As companies are becoming better at tracking leads, identifying the true impact of PR will reveal itself. Even in the survey, CEOs acknowledge the importance of PR.

Regardless of what you think you know, it’s worth taking a look at the survey.