In Defense of Public Relations

I may be a couple of days late with this post, but I have a good excuse. One I’m not on deadline and two there were way too many events going on in the world the past two days for me to even care about what Tiger Woods has to say about his shenanigans the last four months.

It also took me more than a day to digest Tiger Woods’ first two media interviews with ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi and The Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman. Neither will be winning a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism in the future. Both reporters (if you want to call them that) showed a lot of restraint and avoided asking the tough questions. In fact, it is obvious Kelly is the queen of Tiger Woods’ media groupie. Still, you can’t solely place the blame on them though. With only five minutes allotted per interview, there’s no way any journalist could have been able to ask the hard questions, and if they did, Tiger would have needed more than five minutes to respond. Let’s put it this way. Tiger’s caddy, Steve Williams, could have stood in for him and we wouldn’t have known the difference.

So what was this exclusive 5-minute press junket about? It was about one thing. PUBLICITY. Since Tiger’s PR has been consistently duffing lately, I’m guessing Ari Fleischer had something to do with this before he resigned his services from the Tiger camp.

It was a clever PR move really. Tiger needed to get in front of the corporations/brands that have dropped him like a two-foot putt to woo them back as well as be seen by other brands that are seeking an endorser. There were two key messages he delivered during the interviews and he pounded these repeatedly in five minutes:

1) Tiger’s personal life is back in order

2) Tiger’s ready to play golf.

Oh there was a third, Buddhism is the answer to a chaotic life…and with that Tiger Woods exits (still wearing his “TW” logo cap and Nike apparel).

P.S. Jim Furyk did win his first golf tournament in two and a half years. Unfortunately, it ended up as a post-script on media outlets.

There’s no one else out there today besides President Obama who can command the media’s attention the way Tiger Woods does. Known for breaking almost all the records in golf, Tiger is now breaking all the rules in PR.

When his agent, Mark Steinberg, came out with a statement yesterday that Tiger will finally going to address the public and apologize for his no longer recent troubles with MRS. WOODS and the skanky ladies who look like Jersey Shore rejects, as a PR pro and Tiger fan, I pretty much said, “dude, it’s about time.”

Kissed, Made Up and Making Out

I wonder what other celebrity, public figure, brand that can keep quiet for more than three months before addressing the media and the public. I mean Toyota is getting grilled daily for taking a week to respond about its recall and here’s Tiger who’ll be strolling in this Friday at PGA Tour headquarters months later.  And it turns out, the public statement he will be making is simply that–a statement. He won’t be taking any questions from the press. Seriously, who does that? It boggles my PR mind.

What Tiger is doing reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander) decides to do the complete opposite of every decision that he instinctively makes.  In the end, Costanza gets a job with the New York Yankees.

Will Tiger’s strategy of doing the opposite of what we in PR are accustomed to work out for him in the end like Costanza? I guess we’ll have to wait. If Tiger gets a job with the Yankees, then we’ll know his PR strategy was a_________________.

Since joining Twitter less than a year ago (pre-@aplusk), I’ve observed many new words being created using Twitter’s first two letters — TW.  I’ve always had a special affinity towards TW only because it’s the initials of Tiger Woods, but I digress.

The combined letters, T & W, are also used by many Twitter apps like Tweetie, Twitturly, Twitterrific, Twitpic, among many others to show that it’s somehow related to Twitter. Trust me, if you’re a dude hanging out with a bunch of non-twittering dudes, the last thing you want to say is, “I’m tweeting using twhirl & tweetie.” Hey, I get it, it’s a San Francisco company. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So here’s what I’ve come up with as my very own Twitter glossary of terms or Twitter slang, in short, Twang:

TWIT — One who tweets about everything that happens in their lives no matter how mundane. Sample tweets look like this: Ate at Taco Bell. Took a dump. Flushed toilet. Forgot to wipe ass.

NITWIT — What I’d call Ditzy Boss when DB starts tweeting. Seriously, Twitterers whose tweets indicate their IQ level is in the low double digits.

TWISTED — Tweets that are so insane that you can’t tell whether it’s a joke or if you should be calling 911 maybe even CTU.

TWYCHO — Taking TWISTED a step further. A twitterer whose obviously a perv. Also classified as a twitter stalker. You must immediately remove and block from your follower list. If persistent, call the authorities, or send message to @ev or @biz .

TWIVORCE — Two twitter friends who now have irreconcilable differences. They remove each other from their follow lists, but on occassion, goes directly to the other’s twitter feeds to see what they’re saying. One day, a twitterer will use twitter to serve divorce papers to his/her spouse in under 140 characters.

TWILO — A former hip Manhattan club where many NYC Twitterers used to partay before Twitter was invented. Today the NYC party animals are stuck at home staring at their twitter feeds taking care of the kids they had with their dance partners at the famed Manhattan night club. The only clubbing they do these days is with a golf club.

TWITCHICK — Self-explanatory for dudes, but proceed with caution because twitter profile pics can be enhanced or be an outright fake. Unfortunately, in twitter-verse you can never tell.

CELEBRITWITS — Not to be confused with CELEBUTWANTS like Paris Hilton who tweets as @babygirlparis. These are the celebs on Twitter who showcase their celeb status by only following a select few of their celeb friends while their followed by hundreds of thousands even millions. Many are classified as TWITS and NITWITS judging by their celebri-tweets. See above for definitions.

TWAB — Twitter Acronym Break. Introduced by @joeprguy for active twitterers to stop for a couple of minutes and define acronyms that Joe (aka “Mr. Check Out My Guns”) tweets. I thought it was a pointless exercise at first, but after a few times, I ended up thinking hard to find the right words that would fit perfectly for the acronym. It gets in your head like @oprah.

TWITCH — Means many things. The itch a twitterer gets when Twitter is down for more than a minute like when it’s down for it’s “so-called” maintenance. The witches at your job who’ve joined Twitter. Big (literally) boss nervous tick that throws people off.

TWIX — The official candy bar of Twitter.

I could think of many more, but I won’t have enough space in this post to keep you focused. And the more I think of new ones, the more I sound like my 3yo dudeling who calls his favorite pasta Twortellini.  I’m sure you can come up with others too. Please feel free to share your TWANGS with me.

This is not a joke so there’s no punchline although Pitch Letter and Golf Swing did go to a bar and made fun of tyrannical bosses, demanding clients, snotty reporters and Charles Barkley’s golf swing.

No one else in the world would take on the task of comparing pitch letter writing with the golf swing except your friendly neighborhood, prdude. It may appear as though I’ve been on the green smoking the grass around me, but you’ll see there are similarities to writing a solid pitch letter and developing a sound golf swing (once you inhale all that smoke). So here’s my attempt at breaking them down as simply as possible (keeping posts to under 655 words since many of you suffer from undiagnosed ADD):

The Address — In golf, that would be how a golfer sets up as he prepares to hit the golf ball. A solid foundation is needed to get the most of out of the swing. The set-up dictates the rest of the golf swing.  In writing a pitch letter, a solid set-up is also critical as this will dictate the flow of the entire pitch.  We all know that addressing the pitch letter to the correct reporter is practically half the battle.

The Backswing — In golf, you better make sure you take the club back smoothly and in a consistent line. This helps eliminate mis-hits (hyphen added to avoid any mispronunciations by non-golfers) when striking the ball on the downswing.  Hitting your target will be dependent on it. In a pitch letter, this would be the lead/opening paragraph, which better be smooth and consistent, to ensure no misperceptions is derived by the reporter.

The Downswing — In golf, this is the part where experience takes over since the downswing action almost becomes second-nature to the skilled golfer. Once you reach the top of your backswing, gravity pretty much takes care of the downswing, so controlling it to ensure consistency takes a lot of practice. In a pitch letter, this would be the essence of your pitch. Experienced PR pros have an easier time spotting the newsworthy nuggets they want to convey on their pitch. It’s a skill that is developed through practice although, just like in golf, there are some inexperienced individuals who seem to have been born with this ability.

The Follow-Through — Once the golf club strikes the ball, you might think it’s pretty much over, but that’s not the case.  The sequence of events immediately after contact is extremely important. The better players will keep the same line after hitting the ball and maintain their follow-through eyeing their golf ball as it flies toward its intended target. In a pitch letter, this would be maintaining contact with your target even after you hit that “Send” button. If you maintain your follow-through with a well-crafted pitch, you have a higher percentage of making a solid impact with your intended media target.

The Punchline — So I lied. Here’s the punchline: there is no perfect swing and there is no perfect pitch letter.  Even Tiger Woods, whose golf swing is near flawless, has ended up out of bounds, in the rough, even beaned a lucky spectator on the head. As with the so-called perfect pitch letter, it may seem flawless, but it could still end up in the trash. One thing to remember is to keep the pitch letter and the golf swing as simple and consistent as possible.

And all we can do, as PR pros (and golfers), is to keep on practicing to lessen the stray shots. The only thing I guarantee is if this post doesn’t help your pitching skills, it will surely help your golf swing. Golf and PR may be frustrating, but when you hit that perfect shot, and it does happen folks, it makes everything worthwhile.

A discussion about the pitch letter, golf swing, or whether you think I’ve smoked too much golf course weed, is encouraged.

Probably one of the most famous words uttered in professional sports: HELLO WORLD! If you’re clueless as to who said this, then you haven’t been paying attention to a sports personality who has transcended his own sport. You guessed it, none other than Tiger Woods.

Why borrow Tiger’s famous line for a PR blog you ask. Well, one because I’m a golf fanatic and a huge Tiger fan way before he even hit puberty. Two, because he’s a case study for what PR can do for one man and one brand. Three and most important, it’s my way of saying “I’m back baby!”

This blog has been on hiatus for a few weeks now and has had more relaunches than NASA. Unfortunately, I’m an amateur in blogging and moving the original blog to WordPress has caused all my previous posts to vanish into cyberspace. I’m hoping they don’t turn up in any of my clients’ inbox or web sites. So basically, this is now my first post though this blog is already three years old (that’s equivalent to ten in Internet time).

Here’s hoping I still have your attention. If I do, welcome to In Defense of Public Relations. Please consider this an open invitation to trash or praise my posts with any commentary.