Lies Of PR: That Your Final Answer?

How did lying become so fashionable—again!

Lately it appears everyone has foregone lessons of our recent forefathers (Mr. WorldCom, Mr. Rigas, and MS Living) and it’s right back to “what can I get away with” time.

We’ve entered a period where it’s too easy to get caught now since our faithful media consists of citizen journalists who will do absolutely anything for a scoop—like lose sleep and not get paid. The trip down is way too low these days.

Past few years have exposed corporate greed and disdain for the consumer at its finest, Enron being the poster child. Weren’t we shocked, despite our common opinion of corporate giants being anything but flattering? Ah, remember how particularly outlandish those few individuals behaved. The late Ken Lay was face of a sinister corporate evildoing. Faces like ours, with a nose and eyes, but at the same time something alien. People knowingly took advantage of regular folks in ways even 80’s players like Michael Milken could not fathom.

Afterwards, people like me who write, research, teach and practice PR were waiting for a new age of ethics. Nothing spawned, nothing earned—right?

Well, not exactly. In 2006 there was more out-and-out fibbing by giant players than thought possible: Edelman’s blogging for Wal-Mart BS, Sony’s bizarrely slow battery recall and $4.25 million paid-out for illegal anti-copying software, Bausch & Lomb’s faulty solutions, and Taco Bell’s mishandling of many vegetables.

Denials were the in look until corporations got smacked in the head by facts.

It is as if the go-to-jail years are shades of Bobby Ewing stepping out of a fantasy shower (reference “Dallas”)!

Lying is that thing our mothers warned us about. Look, I’m hardly a Saint –I’ve had a BlackBerry pager for going on 10 years and always claim to be somewhere I’m not.

But if you service people for a living, all you have are good looks and your word. Why ruin either; why even exaggerate! It makes a journalist who reports the lie look like a dolt, so therefore your problems get louder and more public. Not to mention the ethical problems.

I get muttering something you quickly regret. Politicians buy back what they say every day. If it happens, if you or someone in your company lies, call back, apologize, make amends. Say some unruly devil made you do it. But don’t stand by your insolence

Bausch & Lomb’s spokespeople imagined aloud that bouts of illness from their brand of contact lens solution was not entirely their fault when it was. I found that odd; beleaguered pharmaceutical companies usually do okay with stopping bad situations from worsening. They know delay will merely exacerbate. “If you don’t know what to say or how much to say,” I’ve told pharma clients at my firm, “you end up making people mad by not saying anything—or making things up.”

It may seem obvious (it’s not) but you can “get away with” telling the truth by jumping up with outside data from a third-party source – government, surveyors or testers –that you give to press before they start to wonder and thereby emphasize the safety of your product or pinpoint whatever problems exist. External data is somebody else’s reputation so it’s seen as cool.

As for citizen bloggers and podcasters and e-mail trend shouters, if you treat aggressively under full disclosure, you will rebound without folks thinking “I caught them.” Use all open channels to talk about what happened, analyze what went wrong, demonstrate how quickly you jumped!

Want proof that honesty wins any tough battle? Try Phillip Morris, which has gone above and beyond a government settlement in shouting mea culpa. A firm not known to be open has been quite grassroots with their forthrightness. They devoted resources and spoke out on TV and radio, in blogs, chat rooms, consumer and/or investor sites. They even dove into shallow end of the pool with AOL and MSN.

Hollywood has taught us poorly. But it’s one thing for Miss Kidman to pretend to be wed to Mr. Urban or Mr. Aiken to pretend to be a hot-blooded American girl-chaser. These are performers paid to beguile us and sell something that is pure fantasy! Entirely different for a firm to bemoan a problem via big media with statements they and we know is pure nonsense.

What I’ve learned from the post-dot-com workaday is smack in the middle of Punk Marketing book, which is a few days from its loud release. Here, Simmons and I unveil a heckuva convenient truth:

Knowing that what you do passes the bullshit test and is meaningful, honest and interesting, plus has some measure of heart, is all it takes to make it in the world of sales, marketing, PR, and all fields of “service.” If your work doesn’t fit the above, please find something else to do.

It’s a fact: informed people want to be told what’s up. So have a heart, pull the Band-Aid brand bandage off, and dole those facts out. We’d rather laugh at Katie Couric than you, anyway!

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