Tag Archives: Donald Trump

The Nonprofit PR/Marketing Audit

Not-for-Profit organizations exist to do good. And most do. At the same time, they need PR, marketing and exposure to further their mission.

Many nonprofits don’t recognize they operate in a competitive environment. At the same time, many don’t accept the fact that there are probably dozens of similar nonprofits doing similar work.

So how does a nonprofit stand out? How does it convey its unique mission? How does it tell its story?

It is not easy. To tell a unique story, you have to have a unique story to tell.

That’s where fresh eyes come in. The nonprofit PR/Marketing audit is a way for a PR consultancy firm to take a fresh look at an organization and its unique selling proposition. In almost every case, the outside PR firm will see things those on the inside take for granted or don’t see.

When considering a PR campaign, consider first starting with an audit. It will shed valuable light on your organization and bring to life your story that will set you apart from all the others.

How much PR can a nonprofit expect?

As nonprofit PR specialists, we hear the same statement by nonprofit organizations all the time:  “We are the best kept secret in town.”

Every nonprofit believes they don’t get the amount of publicity they deserve.  After all, they do great work, have a dedicated staff and make the world a better place.

And they all are right.

But the reality is there are tens of thousands of nonprofits in America and only a limited number of media outlets.  Even if all media did nothing but wrote about the good works of nonprofits, there wouldn’t be enough space or airtime.

That’s why nonprofits need to take a strategic approach to their media relations and marketing.  It is not a good strategy to flood the press with news releases or pitch emails.  These should be done when stories warrant.  Doing great work is not always going to make CNN.  Doing exceptional work, that is visual, extremely unusual, and has a twist the media look for, will.

It is important for nonprofits to adopt realistic expectations.  No nonprofit, even the largest and most high profile, get their stories in the media every day.  So work to create effective, impactful stories and pitch them correctly and the media will respond.

When PR gets in the way of the message

All of us want to be loved.  Well, at least liked.

This is apparently no more the case than with our president.

President Trump is obsessed with what people say about him; what people think of him and his popularity.  This is not a political statement.  He has admitted it and displayed this obsession by watching what seems to be countless of hours of cable television to see what the media say about him.

Obviously, much if not most of it, is not good.  So how does he change that?  How does President Trump manage his own PR so he markets himself in a way that will improve his likability and make him happy?

There is only one way, and it is not through polished statements read off a teleprompter.  (Not his strength.)

The President needs to stop worrying so much about his image and start getting things done.

Certainly much of what he wants to get done people disagree with.  I won’t rehash the list, but we know what they are.

But one thing is for sure.  Everybody wants a stronger economy.  Everybody wants a job.  Everybody wants healthcare  If he can achieve this, and it won’t be easy, then his misstatements and political pitfalls will be easier to forgive.  At least for some people.  For many others there is nothing he can do that will redeem him.

He also needs to remember that presidential criticism is part of the job.  There has never been a president when everything he did received 100% approval.  Maybe Trump is facing more of an uphill battle than prior presidents, much because of his own doing, but he needs to swallow it and roll up his shirtsleeves.

So if he can, and that is a big IF, he should turn off the TV and get to work.  Americans want a better life, not someone who can deliver a pretty speech.  Doing both is better, but people will take what they can get.

And right now, people aren’t asking for much.  They just want to pay their bills, raise their families in peace and have the dignity of a job.

If he can do that, his PR and image will rise.

IF he can do that.

 

 

The Twitter PR battleground

Seems hard to believe, but Twitter is only about 11 years old.  It started as a cute social media venue, used mostly by celebrities to promote their movies and shows.  Somehow it has become a PR battleground and major political communications force.

Twitter now is used by presidents (I don’t have to mention who) and state leaders around the globe.  Police forces, business people, everybody.  It is the favored way to instantly get a message out, hopefully reposted, and then often regretted.

It is fascinating that something that allows only 140 characters can become so powerful.  Of course most people post multiple messages, strung together, to make their point.  But Twitter’s constraints have forced people to write more concisely, use abbreviations they make up and often convey nonsensical messages.

President Trump has said he believes he wouldn’t have been elected without Twitter.  He touted his Twitter account years before entering politics and has never stopped using it.  Today, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, he still refuses to give up the habit, much to the chagrin of many Americans who see it as “unpresidential.”

What does this say about our communications, PR and marketing?  It says a lot, but foremost it underscores the fact that we don’t have the time or patience to write complete, thoughtful sentences. It says a lot about lashing out impulsively at another person, a company or a government.

The lesson to be learned from the Twitter craze is it often does more harm than good for the user.  How many people have been fired for insensitive or racist Twitter posts?  How many people in prominent positions have had to retract their Twitter posts, only to see them live on.

Instant communication via social media or even email is tempting.  Getting back at someone quickly through electronic communications can provide instant gratification.  However, for most people if they take a couple of hours, and a few deep breaths, they usually decide it is not worth it.

The internet never forgets, and too often people never forgive.

Trump’s PR problem

This post is not pro or con President Trump. FMG’s political views are irrelevant. What is important, is Trump’s communications policies, imaging, branding his PR, and what we can learn from President Trump’s success and failures.

Prior to running for President, Donald Trump thrived attention. He became one of the best known private citizens in the world. He did this not only through his business success and television show, but the fact that he relentlessly sought media exposure.

His name recognition undoubtedly contributed to his ability to run an effective political campaign for the highest office in the land, and winning. Rather unbelievable, but studies prove that name recognition is a major asset for anyone seeking a political life.

But how much attention is too much attention? How much Tweeting is too much Tweeting? Is it helping or hurting him? He obviously contends it helped him win and continues to help him push his political agenda. On the other hand, his incessant Tweeting has resulted in jokes for misspellings, misstatements, and is being used against him in Congressional hearings.

So the lesson has to be balance. Far be it for us to give President Trump advice, but we would recommend using all forms of communication not only wisely and often sparingly.

White House news “gaggle” block, good political PR or unprecedented PR disaster?

Today the White House held a “gaggle,” journalist lingo for an informal news briefing, but didn’t invite CNN, The New York Times, L.A. Times and other news organizations.  In the five weeks that President Trump as been President Trump, he has made the media his enemy.  Is this a good PR move for the White House?

While this blog is not political in any way, it is an extremely rare occurrence for a president of the United States to purposely block providing information to major news outlets, even though they can get it from other sources.  Press secretary Sean Spicer tried to explain the move as a news pool — where a limited number of media are briefed and they share it with others.  That is not unusual, but this is.  There are literally thousands of news outlets in American and tens of thousands around the world, and the White House can’t fit them all into a room.  So there is a selection process.

However, President Trump is on another campaign, and it is not to “build a wall” or to “lower taxes” or to “repeal and replace Obamacare.”  His campaign is to attack the media, and rally his supporters to this cause.

I think back to my days in journalism school.  We learned that the media don’t always get it right; often have an agenda; are often sloppy; and almost always are critical of the president.  And most presidents don’t like the media because they tend to focus on the negative.  But even Richard Nixon, who was legendary in his disdain of the media, didn’t go so far as to bar major media from news briefings.

It’s been said that Donald Trump is at his best when he is campaigning against someone or something.  He beat 17 Republicans for the nomination and one major Democrat to win the presidency.  He talks about the great things he is going to do for the country, and hopefully they will happen, but he has lost what really gets him going — someone or something to attack.

He has found it in the media, and hopefully it is a passing phase.

It will just be curious who is next.

 

Trump’s public relations strategy. Brilliant or disastrous?

Since I am essentially apolitical, I can’t comment on President Donald Trump’s political savvy.  But I can comment on his public relations and media savvy.

For decades, Donald Trump has made it a point to be in the media.  If it wasn’t a whirlwind marriage, or divorce, or a new skyscraper, or a new product, show or whatever, it was a regular appearance on the David Letterman show and countless other programs.

It is obvious Trump craves attention and PR.  Oddly, he doesn’t seem to care if the PR he gets is positive or negative.  If it is positive, he will re-tweet it.  If it is negative, he will attack the person or news organization that reported it.

It is clear his voracious need for media attention propelled him into the White House.  Maybe it was an accident, maybe it was a grand plan.  In either event, it worked.

The president of the United States is the most watched and reported person in the world.  His every word, every action, every nuance is recorded.  He can cough at the wrong time during a speech and send the financial markets into a spin.

One would think that a president would want a good relationship with the media.  John Kennedy was a master media manipulator.  He loved his news conferences and the press repaid him by keeping his secrets secret.  Richard Nixon hated the media and they virtually ran him out of the White House with relentless Watergate reporting.

In office a mere two weeks, it is clear Trump marches to his own beat.  He doesn’t care.  If he isn’t attacked, he attacks first.  He seems to relish a good fight and will often raise issues nobody is talking about and nobody cares about.  He just wants the attention.

It is a very strange strategy for someone like myself who has spent a lifetime working to curry favor with the media.  I want the press to like my clients and to report favorably about them.  Negative press is never good, in my view, but not in President Trump’s.

We will have to just wait and see if the friction between President Trump and the White House press corp. is a fluke or a permanent reality.  If it continues for months, it will continue throughout his presidency, and for Donald Trump, that may be just the way he wants it.

When the media tries to become the story

The CNBC-hosted Republican debate turned into a debacle.  From the first question, it was clear that CNBC didn’t want to be the conduit of information for the candidates.  They wanted to insert themselves into the debate by asking ridiculous, mean-spirited and mostly irrelevant questions.

Candidate Ted Cruz, after several questions, took them to task and received loud audience approval.  He blasted the questioners for wanting to turn a civil debate into a “cage fight.”

This post has nothing to do with politics.  It has to do with money.  Since Donald Trump entered the race, the Republican debates have earned Fox, CNN and now CNBC big ratings.  And big ratings translate into big ad revenue.

It was no accident that CNBC asked the questions they asked.  They wanted the “debate” to be as bloody as it possibly could.  They wanted to turn it into a reality show that is talked about and YouTubed over and over.  And by doing so pump up the ratings.

The question is: what is the role of a news organization that hosts an election debate?  Are they supposed to ask meaningful questions that allow each candidate to state his/her positions on important issues, or is the media’s role to grab as many eyeballs as possible for its own bottom line?

The historic 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate, which cemented John Kennedy’s election, was the first televised presidential debate.  But it was not an exercise in who could mess up the most.  CBS took its role as a news organization seriously and allowed each candidate to talk about the issues, not about their personalities, short-comings, poll ratings and everything else that had nothing to do with being president.

But, unfortunately, that time may have come and gone.  Today news organizations are profit centers and they cherish the opportunity to host election debates because they make money, especially if there are fireworks.

And if it takes a network like CNBC to flame the fires, well, so be it.

On the other hand, the fall-out from the CNBC was so pronounced and embarrassing that future primary and then election debates may actually do what they are supposed to — showcase the candidates qualifications for the most powerful job on earth.

Let’s see if that is the case.

 

Does Trump’s PR style trump all others?

Not surprisingly, Donald Trump finally made official what he has been flirting with for years.  He declared himself a candidate for president.  And to nobody’s surprise.

It’s also no surprise how he made the announcement and what he said.  To lots of fanfare — as all candidates have at the ready — Trump spoke about the U.S. presidency as if it were a corporation.  He spoke as if he wasn’t running for president of the U.S., but for emperor; in no need of a vice president, cabinet, congress or advisors.

But that’s who he is, and if he changed now it would be kind of a let down, don’t you think?  What we expect of Donald Trump is someone who speaks his mind, is egocentric and a bit of a bully.  Quite a sharp contrast to the presidents we are accustomed to.

The question I would like to raise is whether this style that has been so successful in the boardroom will resonate with the American people.  Are we ready for a president who says he is ready to go eye-to-eye with every other country so we can finally get the U.S. out of debt and in the black?

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Few people are taking Trump’s candidacy seriously.  It is great fodder for late night TV hosts.  But some say whether he is a serious candidate or not, he will undoubtedly raise issues nobody else wants to talk about such as the trade imbalance, domestic jobs and so forth.  The other candidates don’t want to talk about the economy because there are no easy answers and no easy solutions.  Slapping a tax on everything coming into the U.S. is not a new idea.  It was done in the 1980s when Congress limited the number of Japanese manufactured cars into the U.S.  The import quota actually worked because it forced Japanese automakers to build U.S. plants.  Today most of the Japanese cars sold in the U.S. are made in the U.S.

What I am talking about is not substance but style. One reason few are taking Trump seriously is not his message but how he delivers it.  If I were his PR advisor (and I am not) I would encourage him to focus on his ideas and check his ego, bullying, and brashness at the door.   If he truly wants his ideas heard, debated and considered, and if he truly cares about making America “great” again, he needs to make his campaign about issues not himself.  Everything in his announcement speech related to his business and himself.  He needs to talk about the rest of America, not only his net worth and who he is competing with in his hotel and golf course business.

Tone down the rhetoric and up the focus on the issues, Mr. Trump.  If you do, perhaps you’ll be taken seriously and even more important, maybe you will force the other candidates to think about these issues and come up with some ideas (and solutions) of their own. Please follow us for more info and tips on having the quickest lending option for you.

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