Waggener's Woes

Dear oh dear. The curse of electronic media has struck again and I have to say I do feel great sympathy for the nitwit from Waggener Edstrom (the worldwide PR company that invented Communication Innovations!) that hit the send button in error! Boy oh boy was this a communication innovation if ever I saw one!

The email that was sent to the journalist, one Fred Vogelstein a contributing editor to Wired Magazine, contained a full dossier of notes relating to .... Fred Vogelstein! It isn't uncommon for agencies to keep notes on journalists but this 13 page document contained really personal commentaries with comments like "it takes him a bit to get his point across so try to be patient" and "we're pushing fred to stop reporting and start writing". Fred's own commentary on the matter makes interesting reading and his experience here further reinforces the low regard that some journalists have of PR people.

This booboo exposed, in my eyes, some questionable practices. In my first agency we took notes on journalists but when the Data Protection Act came to force in 1998 I decided to stop this process because as the act dictates " when we hold data, we hold it in trust for people, and we are obliged to treat the data as their property and not ours". In effect it means that any notes we hold on any person is their property and their right to see.

But, also I am very uncomfortable with people expressing their own personal opinion in judgement of others. We have all come across situations in everyday life where we take a dislike to someone who a colleague or a friend may think is simply great. This can happen with journalist relationships too. Keeping notes on people means that you are influencing others before they have even formed an opinion or taken their own approach.

I think it is fine to record when a journalist has reported on or interviewed a client but giving opinion just can't be condoned. My advice is, when you keep a note on a journalist, to consider if this is something that they would be happy reading about themselves. If, as in Waggener Edstrom's case, it is more than mildly embarrassing, then think again about what you write.

Also - I have written about how to deal with a crisis many times on my blog. Frank Shaw the Waggener Edstrom CEO has absolutely blown it when it comes to handling his own crisis in his blog. He faffs around saying that he doesn't want to talk about it and then offers to have a beer with people who press him for comment. Bizarre. Current and potetial clients may well think twice before looking to WagEd for their crisis communications offering. If they can't teach their own CEO how to communicate in a crisis I hold out very little hope for them of helping their clients in times of need.

Comments

[steven cody]

Great blog, Jacki. It never ceases to amaze me how unaware we in the profession are about the material we create. Shame on the account person who wrote the booklet without first thinking about the fallout from his/her editorializing comments.

[Ted]

IMO, this is what happens when you work for a company like Microsoft. Not that WaggEd is not to blame, but I can see Microsoft forcing their agencies to do things like this based on the false pretense that this type of prep is necessary to dealing with the press. It's no wonder that companies like Microsoft and Walmart and HP continually get hammered in the mainstream press. If you take this type of combative approach, the media will smell it from a mile away, driving them to skew their coverage more negative.