Birth Control Out, TV In

Please call the White House!
Planned Parenthood is urging birth control supporters to call the White House after President Obama caved to Republican demands and stripped family planning out of the economic stimulus package.  You can reach the White House at 202-456-1111. Let them know that during this tough economic period, expanding access to basic health care is more important than ever for women and families.

The Obama move was pure politics.  “While he believed that the policy of increased funding for family planning was the right one … he didn’t believe that this bill was the vehicle to make that happen,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Some Republicans were incredulous at the notion that preventing unintended pregnancies would boost the economy.  So unplanned pregnancies are going to help families make ends meet?  With record numbers of people on a financial cliff, this funding could have helped half a million low income women avoid an unplanned pregnancy.

Along with birth control, politicians rejected pleas for casinos, aquariums and swimming pools.  So it was no to family planning but yes to funding for the TV industry and many other consumer goods.  A good deal of the funding makes sense, like providing health care coverage for 8.5 million people who lose their insurance when they either lose or shift jobs.  But Obama deserves a phone call nonetheless to make sure he hears the voice of the overwhelming majority who support access to birth control.

Messing Up At Work

Hmm.  The banks are in trouble, so taxpayers are giving them billions in bailouts.  But the bank executives won’t reign in their wild spending spree. It used to be tolerable that the profits they made on us were spent on massive bonuses and corporate jets and luxury boxes at football stadiums. Those excesses were repugnant but seemed to be part of the bargain we struck, since we agreed to pay all that interest on our credit cards and mortgages.  But last year the banks cried panic and demanded a bailout, meaning that those luxury items and massive bonuses are now being paid for by our taxpayer dollars. Why should we use our tax dollars to subsidize the extravagance of CEO’s who can’t keep their businesses afloat, while millions of workers are losing jobs, healthcare, and housing?

Predictably, the public relations war has escalated with even greater intensity than the economic food fight.

Recently deposed banking executive John Thain, who spent over a million dollars renovating his office last year and slipped in massive executive bonuses just before the Congress turned over taxpayer dollars to help him out, is now in full PR battle mode.  He seems utterly disinterested in playing the role of scapegoat.  Thain, like countless celebrities and moneyed elites before him, hired the best corporate PR talent that money can buy.  Rumor has it that Thain approached Rubenstein first but landed with Sunshine, Sachs & Associates.  Sunshine has helped Thain weave his story, including finger pointing at the man who fired him.  According to Thain, his excesses were known and approved by Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis.

Here’s where Camino PR’s Loretta Kane enters the fray.  Public relations can be used for social justice too, like shining a bright light on corporate excesses and abusive practices.  Yesterday Loretta helped the SEIU publicize their new campaign to oust Lewis from his perch.  These efforts landed the SEIU prominent news attention, including coverage in the New York Times business section:

“…Tuesday, the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest service sector unions, started a “fire Ken Lewis” campaign…”

The Charlotte Observer – the main newspaper where Bank of America’s headquarters’ are located – ran a prominent story that directly pulled from the SEIU press release, ““It’s time to start enforcing some basic standards for corporate behavior,” said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, a frequent critic of the bank, in a statement. “Ken Lewis has failed Bank of America and he has failed taxpayers – and the Bank of America board should remove him.”  The union also called on the bank to add director seats for a taxpayer and a lower-level employee and to stop all executive bonus payments until the government’s investment is repaid.”

The full story is laid out in the SEIU press release .  EVERYONE can help with this campaign – just go to seiu.org and find an event to attend in your area.  The SEIU is taking the issue off the newsprint and into the streets.  These small protests will put continued pressure on Bank of America to stop its corporate excesses and culture of abuse.  It’s our money, our jobs, and our houses.  Please take a few minutes to make your voice heard.

Welcome MaryAlice!

Camino Public Relations welcomes the newest member of our team – MaryAlice Parks!  MaryAlice is a student of history and political science at Columbia University.  She previously worked in the offices of US Senator Chuck Schumer, and US Congress member Norm Dicks.  Her achievements include writing for the Columbia Spectator and directing a full-length production of Steven Berkoff’s Metamorphosis.  Mary Alice – like most of the Camino PR team – is just back from the Obama inauguration festivities and is already hard at work at Camino PR.  You can send a welcome message to MaryAlice at map@caminopr.com.

Camino at SEIU

While in DC for the inauguration festivities, the Camino kids cheered the SEIU’s efforts in support of Obama.  We all loved seeing Andy Stern and Anna Burger with the President watching the parade.  It’s a new day for working families!

Off to the inauguration

We are off to Washington DC today.  Check out our updates on Twitter (caminopr).  Bishop Gene Robinson is kicking off today’s ceremonies.  Here’s my favorite quote from Gene about the words he is preparing for this afternoon, as reported in the New York Times:

“I am very clear,” he said, “that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.” Bishop Robinson said he might address the prayer to “the God of our many understandings,” language that he said he learned from the 12-step program he attended for his alcohol addiction.

We’ll probably be on the New Jersey turnpike when Gene makes his remarks this afternoon.  Even with the snowstorm and our very crowded minivan and the massive traffic jam headed toward DC, it will feel amazing, hurtling toward a new leadership.

Camino Collections: Humor and More

Our work is not funny, but we can learn a lot from those who are. That’s why we at Camino PR join the millions of people who tune in to news comedy shows like the Daily Show. Watching Jon Stewart reflect on the absurdity of the day’s events is like tuning in to the Olympics of sound bites.

Those of us who believe in public relations as a vehicle to spark social change are generally a serious bunch. We chose this collection of cartoons to launch Camino PR for two reasons. One, humor helps us be creative people. And two, in a rapidly changing news environment where parody news can too often provides more authentic insight than some ideologically-driven news outlets, this book recognizes the complicated landscape for communications professionals.

When funny people are also committed to social justice, their influence is enormous. Victor Borge wrote that laughter is the shortest distance between two people. A few years ago Molly Ivins wrote her last column, which said “…rasie hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous…”

I know Camino PR will help you have an impact on the public discourse. For some levity along the way, let us know if you could use the Camino PR book of Cartoons. Here are some of our favorites.

CPR partners with Service Employees International Union

CPR provides communications support to the Service Employees International Union, including messaging and media relations work and strategic communications advice on the union’s effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure that would ensure workers the freedom to choose to form a union without employer interference or intimidation.

CPR Partners with the Ford Foundation

Camino PR is thrilled to be working with the Ford Foundation to improve adolescent sexual health in the United States. The Sexual Health Collaborative (SHC) fosters collaboration among researchers, educators, and public advocates. The result will be a fresh approach to sexual health that will be informed by the best research on gender and sexuality, innovation in education reform and sex education curriculum, and a public education agenda that builds support for the real needs of teachers and adolescents.

Camino PR is honored to be a part of Ford’s efforts to increase wellness and improve our society. Ford is the second largest grantmaking foundation in the United States and its impact on strengthening our democracy is profound.

Recession PR

Loretta has cut back on trips to the hairdresser due to our 2009 recession spending plan.  Check out her Facebook page (or the pic at the bottom of this post) to see if her new style looks like Barry Gibb of the 70’s Bee Gee’s fame.  Oddly, I recall being at a disco in Honduras in 1980 and the crowd going wild when the DJ spinned a Bee Gee’s song.  Sorry, that’s the kind of useless tangent that gives blogging a bad reputation.

We might be in a recession, though who knows what the economists will say months from now.  I am routinely hearing of layoffs among friends and acquaintances.  And yet anxious customers are still lining up before Best Buy opens its doors in the hopes of snagging a sold-out wii gaming system.  Is it a depression?  An implosion?  A head game?

In the midst of downsizing, Recession PR is in full swing.  That means fewer marketing dollars and more “earned media”. It’s a critical time to re-do a communications strategy.  One good way to deal with reduced budgets and increased expectations among communications staff is to max out technology.  I just finished refresher training with a database subscription service that tracks all of Camino’s media, our media relationships, and the market value of our results.  I have automated systems that tell me when an issue is emerging, what’s happening with opponents of my issue, and what scheduled events the media is planning to cover related to my clients.  All this technology means that staff can focus on proactive and creative work.

I’m about to interview candidates for a staff position that includes “research” so that all this technology can be meaningful.  Way back when the Bee Gee’s were sexy, research meant mastering things like the Dewey Decimal System.  Now research is all about using Boolean logic. Melvin Dewey was barely a teenager when George Boole died, but his work predated Boole’s impact on information searching.  Dewey created the organization system over 100 years ago for a university library and this basic system became, and remains, the theoretical framework for library organization.  Anti-Semitism and sexism mar Dewey’s place in history, and his legacy is threatened by the fact that an alarming number of public schools can’t afford books anymore.

I’ve rarely sent a researcher to the library; today the Internet rules, and for that I need to hire people who get the logic of Boolean.  I need mathematically inclined research staff more than I need organization-inclined staff.  Instead of a hierarchical system,  Boolean  uses a mathematical approach to narrow the search.  Words like AND, OR, NOT, NEAR are the soul of Boolean logic.  For example, my daily apartment search looks something like: apartment AND Manhattan AND 2 bedrooms NOT walkup.

History remembers Boole kindly as a brilliant mathematician, and a modest man inspired by literature and philosophy.  Words and logic together were his poetry.  He said:

“No matter how correct a mathematical theorem may appear to be, one ought never be satisfied that there was not something imperfect about it until it also gives the impression of being beautiful.”

Below is Loretta’s recession PR hairstyle, compared to the coifed Barry Gibbs at the height of his career.  You be the judge — look alike?

PR and Frost Nixon

After shopping with three kids in a snowstorm today, I was having a hard time finding a cab.  An off duty cab driver stopped and asked where I was headed, then waved us in.  I was helping the first kid across the icy curb when a man sprinted in front of me and jumped into the cab.  The man screamed at me that he had been first. I wasn’t up for a fight; I silently backed up my kids onto the sidewalk.  But the cabbie didn’t agree, he refused to take the man and waved us back in.

The driver was in a full rant about the man for ten blocks.  He was an elderly driver speaking in a heavy accent.  “I tell this man I am not going his way.  But he thinks I take him anyway? This man is on crack!”  He went on about cab etiquette and then declared, “The man’s face, his face look like — Mr. Bush!”

There it was, the ultimate insult.

It’s vogue in these final Bush moments to compare his exit to Nixon.  Bush’s approval rating fell to 24% in December, a few points lower than Nixon in the aftermath of Watergate.  At a recent dinner party on the upper east side of New York, the mention of how Bush exits the White House (triumphant or head bowed) elicited universal disgust.  No one believed that Bush would ever be held accountable for any number of the reasons his approval rating has plummeted.   Even if Bush or Cheney run into legal troubles, people argued, they will be swiftly pardoned.  Like Nixon.

This urge for an acknowledgement and apology was central to the plot in the Frost/Nixon movie.  Even with its historical distortions this movie is feel-good for its thesis that public relations can be used for the greater good.  The suspense of the movie is whether the media pros can hold Nixon accountable in a way that the legal and political system could not.

On the wrong side of history in this movie is Diane Sawyer, who worked in the Nixon administration and stuck by Nixon following impeachment to help him write memoirs.  I don’t know why she chose that path.  Did she believe in Nixon?  Did she view it as a worthwhile career stepping-stone?  Or both?

I wonder the same thing about White House spokesperson Dana Perino, who has survived the tough job of spinning the media for Bush during his descent into ratings quagmire.  Jon Stewart grilled her last spring on her insight into crisis public relations.  She described the Elliot Spitzer prostitution scandal as greater than any crisis situation she’s had to deal with.  Which of course would include thorny subjects like weapons of mass destruction and waterboarding and illegal detention at Guantanamo.

She appeared again last week on the Daily Show and described Bush as “always fun to be around, he’s extremely funny.”  She also said, about the Bush administration legacy, “we’re pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished.” (Jon Stewart, after a long pause, said simply, “why?”). I wondered, does she think she’s on the right side of history? Or potentially like Diane Sawyer, could her allegiance be a career maneuver?

Attorney General nominee Eric Holder is making negative headlines for his crisis work in the private sector.  He earned a reported $2.5 million per year managing tough crisis cases, like helping Chiquita manage accusations that it had collaborated with thugs.  Crisis management by its definition is thorny and secretive.  Whether someone did honorable work in these cases is sometimes complicated, often hard to discern.   If public relations is a tool for social change instead of simply a paycheck, it’s the side of history we land on that matters.

Crisis work, at its best, is about helping justice triumph over power.  Ron Howard made it come true in Frost Nixon with creative license.  Maybe, in the next week while we wait for the inauguration, it’s a good time to escape reality and go to the movies.

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