Public Relations Strategery

Headlines like this may soon be a thing of the past

September 30, 2019 will be the date that changed NCAA athletics forever. Maybe. Or Not. Who knows at this point?

That’s the date California passed the Fair Pay to Play Act. California’s Senate Bill 206 made it the first state to mandate deep reforms over how college athletes are compensated for their efforts. Right now, the NCAA rules bar players from hiring agents or receiving compensation from outside sources related to their sport. But the Fair Pay for Play Act would change that. College athletes wouldn’t be paid by the school as employees, but they would be allowed to earn money related to their “name, likeness, or image.” That obviously opens the door to everything from paid endorsement deals to social media “influencer” relationships.

Travis Knobbe, who also happens to be an attorney and a sportswriter has started a series of blog posts on this topic over at the Last Word on College Football. In those posts, he’s covering issues like who is going to pay the athletes, recruiting, transfers, and competitive balance. Those are fundamental issues that will be discussed ad nauseam among dozens of teams of lawyers and NCAA officials over the next 13 months (the NCAA Board of Governors has set a deadline of January 2021 to modify its rules to permit student-athletes to benefit from the “use of their name, image and likeness in a manner consistent with the collegiate model.”).

No matter what happens between now and then, there are also going to be some fundamental PR, communications, and marketing issues that need to be ironed out. And colleges and universities are incredibly naive if they think this is only going to impact a small % of their student-athletes. This isn’t just about the Tuas and the Zions of the world. It’s for the Ohashis and the Tituses too.

Think about the junior four-star football recruit from a small town in the middle of nowhere who hasn’t quite lived up to his potential. He may be a third-stringer now at his university, but he’s still one of the biggest names to ever graduate from his high school. You mean to tell me there’s not a car dealership in his hometown who would gladly give him a free car to drive around town in exchange for using his face in their ads?

As a PR and communications professional has worked with everyone from local small businesses to big global brands, my head is spinning with the possibilities that exist not only for the student-athletes, their schools, and the NCAA, but for brands, big and small.

• Oregon’s ties to Nike are well-established. The obvious conclusion is that close school-brand relationships like this could become even more popular. But what about smaller-scale partnerships? “George Foreman Grills, the official grill of the LSU Tigers.” Or “the Southwest Airlines locker room at the University of Texas.”
• As a brand, is it better to sponsor the school or the individual athlete? What’s Zion Williamson without the Duke logo? Still a mega star. But would you know who Kenny Pickett is without the Pitt jersey? If you’re a brand looking to partner with a student athlete, are you more interested in the person or the school he or she plays for?
• Remember what you were like in college? Now think about how a brand paying you thousands of dollars would feel about those photos of you at that fraternity party at 2am appearing on Instagram. These are college athletes acting like college kids. As a brand, are you comfortable entrusting your reputation to an 18-year-old college kid? The rewards are high, but the risks may be even higher.
• Brands are going to fall all over themselves trying to get to the star athletes. But the real opportunity for brands lie further down the depth chart. Established stars like Baker Mayfield, JJ Watt, and Scottie Pippen were all walk-ons in college who worked their butts off and became huge household names commanding millions in endorsement deals. A brand could have signed them for beer money when they were freshmen. Could brands sign dozens of these players to four year contracts in the hopes that one or two strike it big?
• What if as a brand, you could personally keep a player at your preferred school for an extra year? Every year, you read about a player who left college chasing a payday only to not get drafted. They’ve now burned their college eligibility and don’t have a team. They’re worse off than they were before. Now, what if you got wind that the best player on your favorite team may be entering the draft early because they wanted to get paid? Maybe you decide to make college worth his while and give him a five or six figure endorsement deal if he stays in school another year.
• From energy drinks to beauty products to Amazon, brands have infiltrated college campuses via “social media influencers.” Due to NCAA rules, student-athletes have been unable to participate in this trend, but pending the outcome of the Fair Pay to Play Act, these doors will be opened to them too. How long do you think it would take Head & Shoulders to reach out to Trevor Lawrence and his 393,000 Instagram followers?
• What about the athlete from a second or third tier sport who rockets to viral fame? Had this law been in place last year, we would have seen Katelyn Ohashi’s face everywhere, from leotards to toothpaste to beauty products. But what does that do to her teammates? To the school? NCAA football and basketball teams are much more prepared to handle stars that get the media attention (and soon, the endorsements). How would that play on a gymnastics team? Or a field hockey team? Brands have the potential to create rifts within the very teams they’re purportedly interested in helping.

At the end of the day, no one knows how this is going to play out. It could be the end of collegiate sports as we know it. Or maybe nothing really changes. The NCAA did, after all, did drop this nugget into its announcement – “in a manner consistent with the collegiate model.” What does that mean? No one knows. But it’s going to be a very interesting 13 months, potentially followed by a 21st century gold rush as brands, schools, and athletes navigate an entirely new era of college sports.

If you’re a collegiate student-athlete or college administrator, I’d love to talk more with you about this. What are you telling your student-athletes about this? What rumors are you hearing? What questions do you have? Hit me up on Twitter at @sradick or Travis (@travisknobbe) and let’s talk.

Not my best photo

I get distracted easily. I don’t call my mom nearly often enough. I’m sometimes, ok, oftentimes, arrogant. I have constant anxiety over the fact that I give presentations talking about how success isn’t measured using impressions and likes, yet I find myself building client reports that do exactly that. I’ve sent emails complaining about how bad my client is…to my client. I have no idea how to use power tools.

The list of my mistakes and flaws could go on and on. Just ask my wife. So could yours. So could everybody’s…if people were willing to talk about them.

But no one wants to talk about their flaws, mistakes, screw-ups and failures. They’re embarrassing. They’re uncomfortable. They’re awkward. They make us seem weak and inadequate.

That’s why we use technology to hide every flaw, cover up every defect, and filter every word. Every text, email, post, and Snap is concepted, staged, shot, and shared to emphasize our strengths and optimize our brands.

We can present the absolute best version of ourselves all the time. And that’s the problem.

Our flaws are our greatest strengths and we’re not only not using them, we’re actively hiding them.

Don’t believe me?

• Think about the waiter that tells you not to order the fish because it’s not fresh.
• The car salesman who tells you the car you’re considering has a lot of reliability issues.
• Or the politician who goes on Saturday Night Live and lets the cast poke fun at him.

Now think about your reaction to those situations.

• You don’t order the fish, but you do order the pasta the waiter recommended.
• You believe the salesman when she directs you to another car she says is much more reliable.
• You start to think that politician isn’t such a bad guy – you might even say you’d have a beer with him.

These reactions are driven by science. The Pratfall Effect states that people viewed as highly competent are deemed to be more likable following a blunder. And as Robert Cialdini explains in his book “Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade” – when you admit your flaws, people are more receptive to what you say or do next. And several recent studies have demonstrated that while we over-magnify our own flaws, we minimize flaws we see in others.

It’s why we still embrace celebrities like Charles Barkley or Britney Spears. It’s not despite their scandals and mistakes. It’s because of them. It’s why celebrities read mean tweets about themselves on Jimmy Kimmel. It’s why shows like Worst Cooks in America: Celebrity Edition and Dancing with the Stars exist. It’s why Dove’s Real Beauty campaign has won every award. It’s why Eminem won the final rap battle against Papa Doc.

Psychologically speaking, it’s our own insecurities that prevent us from using some of our greatest assets in building and maintaining relationships. We underestimate the power of authenticity, flaws and all. Our flawed reality, no matter how difficult it is to talk about, creates a stronger, more sustainable brand than a perfectly manicured one.

That’s why flaws were the basis for PRSA Pittsburgh’s annual PR Summit – “Failing Forward.” We have all bombed job interviews, flubbed presentations, sent emails to the wrong person, and shared unflattering pictures of ourselves. Instead of hiding those things, we celebrated them. Let’s turn our flaws into our strengths.

This article originally appeared in MediaPost.

In 1999, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger said the Internet would turn markets into conversations, audiences were actual human beings, and companies would come down from their ivory towers to create meaningful relationships. Eight years later, I read their book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto.” Social media was going to change the world, and I wanted to be at the tip of the spear.

I joined a rapidly growing cadre of change agents using social media to radically transform everything from fixing potholes and broken stoplights to managing city budgets. 

Social media wasn’t the realm of any one person, department or organization. It was owned by everyone and no one. The only thing early adopters of social media had in common was the desire to create change.

These conditions applied:

• People were people, not fictionalized digital personas.
• No one talked about social “content.” These platforms were for conversations with constituents in real time.
• The organizational hierarchy flattened dramatically. Corporate silos crumbled as people throughout the org chart could easily collaborate with other departments.
• Customers talked to one another about brands all over the Internet, and marketers were invited to join.
• Social media accounts were run by actual people, with real names and personalities.

We enforced these changes because this was an opportunity to do things differently, to do things better.  We could say, “No, senior director, you don’t get to approve every tweet we write. Do you follow me around and pre-approve my conversations, too?”

But social media became too popular, too fast. It didn’t take long for marketers to start measuring the ROI of every tweet, post, and photo. Eventually, they were able to overwhelm the change agents with processes and best practices.

Instead of recognizing social as an opportunity to fundamentally change how companies interact with employees and customers, companies did what they always do: blanketed people with ads, driving as many impressions as possible, as cheaply as possible, until they derived every last piece of revenue. “Social media” became less social. It became another place for brands to push out advertising.

Other things happened:

• Conversations gave way to content.
• Social media got integrated into IT, with complex usage permissions.
• Thriving unofficial fan sites were shut down in favor of sanitized (read: boring) official sites.
• Humans with personalities and names were replaced by corporate personas and branded voices.
• Success was measured in clicks and likes rather than relationships and loyalty.

Rather than fundamentally changing how marketing works, marketing fundamentally changed what social media was.

Today I see a world where social media has been weaponized to manipulate the public, and where everyone — brands, influencers, politicians, friends, and family members — is no longer interested in conversations, but in capturing the most likes, clicks, and views as efficiently as possible.

Still, there are signs the pendulum is starting to swing. Unilever recently said it will no longer work with influencers who buy followers or use bots. Mozilla and Sonos pulled Facebook ads after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And many direct-to-consumer brands like AllBirds, Warby Parker, and Glossier have grown without losing their soul: their personality and relationships with their consumers. Maybe they’ll be the change agents that reverse the trend.

This article originally appeared at PRDaily.

There’s a common request I’ve been receiving, and it has me simultaneously annoyed, disappointed and scared for the future.

The question comes (via email) in one of two forms:

1. We’re interested in doing an editorial story on your client. For a small fee, we’ll be able to put together a feature story including an interview with your CEO.
2. We’d love to develop an entire issue on your client including an interview with your CEO, several other members of the leadership team and a feature video that will run online. In exchange, all we ask is you provide us with a list of partners we can contact to see if they’re interested in purchasing advertising in the issue.

The initial request is usually followed up with something along the lines of “we do have a line between our editorial and advertising departments, but we also have to remember that we’re running a business too…”

Infuriatingly, these inquiries aren’t just coming from scam sites like The Leading Edge or Worldwide Business. I’ve been getting them from legit magazines, newspapers and websites, and even when I am working on something that’s purely editorial, it usually doesn’t take long for someone from the advertising side to reach out and ask if I’d be interested in purchasing an ad as well. I’ve even had publishers call me directly and tell me they keep editorial and advertising departments separate, but if I bought an ad, he’d “talk with the editor and make sure we got a story in there for you.” The worst scenario is when a reporter is interested in a story but is only willing to run it if you buy ad space, too.

Thanks to the popularity of native advertising and the shrinking of editorial departments, this pay-for-play approach is becoming more prevalent, and sadly, more accepted. There used to be a very clear separation of church and state, and now this line isn’t just blurred, it’s become almost non-existent.

For a PR guy like myself, this trend is disheartening for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it minimizes the work I do earning an authentic interest in my clients’ stories. No, the more concerning consequence of this mixing of church and state is the audience no longer knows the provenance of the content they’re consuming. Are those headphones really a best buy for Christmas, or did the publication include them because of that headphones ad that’s also in the issue? Is that thought leadership article really the work of a visionary, or is the author the CEO of a company that happened to do a media buy with that same publication?

In an era of “fake news,” Russian social media bots, and Bell Pottinger, this is a very dangerous development. What was once an outlier is now becoming more mainstream, and by fundamentally undermining the credibility of the media, this administration has created a self-fulfilling cycle of mistrust between the media and the public.

If the public no longer expects impartial reporting, then why should we even try? If the public is OK with pay-for-play content, then why wouldn’t we offer more of it?

The convergence of PR, marketing and advertising has only worsened the issue. While I may view these quid pro quo arrangements between advertising and editorial as abhorrent, many of my colleagues with marketing or advertising backgrounds celebrate it. Why wouldn’t they? They get the article, the editorial control, the timing and the impressions they want, all guaranteed for a dollar figure they can plan for versus paying someone like myself to try and earn that coverage with no guarantees. Add on surveys and studies that show the public doesn’t care if the content was paid or earned, and you’ve got an industry-wide ethical crisis on your hands.

What’s the solution? It’s going to take more than well-intentioned letters to the editor or codes of ethics to solve this problem. After all, the problem lies primarily with practitioners outside the confines of organizations like PRSA or CIPR. It’s marketers who view this as another extension of native advertising. It’s media buyers who think they’re doing PR people a favor by negotiating editorial as part of their ad buys. It’s CMOs who only look at the impact on their marketing campaign instead of the impact on their business.

Maybe Unilever’s threat will spur other brands to take a more active role in media ethics, but history tells me otherwise. As these walls between editorial and advertising tumble down, it’s become more and more difficult to spot pay-for-play content in the media, even for people in the industry like myself.

The answer must start and end with the general public. Call out lazy, biased reporting. Flag fake news as such. Check multiple sources. Report undisclosed sponsored content to the FTC. Pay for journalism so the media isn’t forced to rely on brand dollars to survive. A free and impartial press is integral to our democracy. Insist on it—for all our sakes.