Mon dieu! Someone should have reminded the French national soccer team about the old maxim: don’t air your dirty laundry in public. The team is in complete disarray at the 2010 World Cup as players and coaches feud publicly over the poor performance and underachievement of one of the world’s most talented squads. Former players and current politicians have waded in, advertisers and sponsors have pulled out. Ooh la la.

It’s all a good reminder of what mother used to say: if you don’t have anything nice to day, zip it. (Or words to that effect.) It’s also a good example of how a lack of public relations skill can inflict terrible damage on individuals, a team with a noble tradition, and legions of fans around the world.

I haven’t posted anything for a while and it’s been bugging me. It means I’m not practicing what I preach when it comes to social media policies. When I tell my clients that you should be updating your blog at least once a week, it doesn’t look good when I’m reduced to updating my own company blog once a month.

As I hang my head in shame, I can only say that my negligence in this area is because we’ve been very busy lately. In fact, we’ve been so occupied with various projects that we’ve had to bring in additional help to get it all done. On our plate right now is ongoing media relations and grassroots outreach for a major manufacturing and retail client, some media relations and crisis communications planning for another client, ongoing corporate communications, social media and advertising for our friends at Keystone Processors and the Manitoba Cattle Enhancement Council. And we’ve been busy with writing copy for Wellington West and Access Credit Union.

It’s fantastic that we’re able to call on the services of experienced, seasoned colleagues such as Karen Ilchena and Caroline Traweger. And I’m really looking forward to welcoming our intern from Red River College’s Creative Communications program, Lisa Bernstein, next week.

All told, it’s been a very busy spring and we look forward to keeping it all rolling with our customary attention to client service and results.

Imagine that you’re the Winnipeg School Division and your current claim to fame is a couple of cell phone videos of two of your teachers simulating a lap dance and oral sex during a high school pep rally. The high school is pilloried by media around the world. The teachers in question are lambasted by students, parents, politicians and every human being who hears the story and shakes their head in dismay.

So what do you do if you are the Winnipeg School Division? Why, you pretend nothing has happened at all. That has been the approach of the WSD administration ever since the Churchill High School lap dance scandal broke.

Today’s Winnipeg Free Press reported that the division has even removed any media stories from the clippings it sends to its trustees. Those would be the same trustees that the citizens of Winnipeg elected to govern the administration.

Let’s repeat that: the trustees are supposed to govern the administration.But I digress.

This story continues to go from bad to worse. What started as a serious lapse of judgment for a couple of high school teachers has escalated to a potential crisis of confidence in the entire school division administration.

It’s hard to tell why the administration is burying its head in the sand on this. There have been a few comments saying that it’s a personnel matter and therefore is entirely private. That may be, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also a full-blown communications crisis for the school division and the school in question.

As it happens, I live in the catchment area for Churchill High School. I also have a son for whom my wife and I have to soon decide if he’ll attend Churchill or some other school that doesn’t have lap dancing during pep rallies. As a parent, I’m looking for some sign that the school and the division understand the depth of the mistrust this episode has bred. As a voter, I’m searching for some evidence that the school division is capable of handling itself competently. Sadly, I’m seeing the exact opposite on both counts.

The school division could have taken a much more pro-active approach to this situation while still respecting the privacy of the teachers. Its executive management team should have immediately responded both within the school community (before it hit the media). And once it hit the media, it needed to speak through the media and via its own publications to the general public (to reach would be parents like me). We need to be reassured of the culture and policies at work in our schools and in our school division.

Instead, the only public action it’s taken has been to threaten the students who took the videos and to see that they’re removed from YouTube. Seems to me they’re trying to move mountains to protect the reputations of two teachers that have deservedly lost them on their own. Meanwhile, the reputation of the WSD and of Churchill High School has been permanently smeared by their inaction.

Adam Dooley, President of Dooley Communications, was recently interviewed by Uniter reporter Kristy Rydz on communications and corporate social responsibility. The question: can companies that pollute credibly call themselves environmentally sensitive?

The story examines the dilemma and wonders if some corporate efforts are only so much ‘greenwashing’.

What’s your view?

Last week’s Tiger Woods apology-cum-public flagellation was nothing if not a great case study for students of communications. The golf great continues to get awful advice (perhaps he’s acting as his own PR counsel?) on how to rehabilitate his image following last fall’s sex scandal.

From the cheapskate podium and ‘community theatre’ backdrop to the phony delivery of his ‘lines’, Tiger’s apology just drew attention to just how far he’s fallen. And deservedly so. While critics of PR say it’s all about spin and lying, this is a perfect example of one PR maxim I follow: “never lie.” Lies are almost always found out, or at least sniffed at. They obliterate credibility. Yet, here was a guy who told whopper after whopper. Pretending to be a pillar of integrity, morals and discipline, he made tens of millions of dollars on his image and has justly lost millions as his image has been stripped bare… much like his skanky mistresses, I suppose.

An apology was necessary. It should have come last fall, but it didn’t. In this case, he would have been better off giving an exclusive interview to a friendly source. The Oprah show would have been perfect. It would have given him the opportunity to tell his side of the story more fully and it could have showed him to be more human.

But aside from Tiger’s image and marital rehab, there were also lessons on how organizations need to deal with episodes like this.

Ernie Els complained that staging the apology in the middle of one of the World Golf Championship tournaments was  selfish. He was right, and PGA Tour commissioner Tom Finchem apologized to Els and other players saying: “You can never communicate too much in this business, and when you don’t, you usually pay a price. And that was a good example.”

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Tiger. As my mother used to say, he’s made his bed and now he has to lie in it. That bed might not be as uncomfortable if he had been following good communications advice from the start. The same goes for the PGA Tour, which needs to make an extra effort now to adjust its marketing and branding. It can’t be considered Tiger’s tour any longer. If it is, then the tour will risk battering its image just as badly as Tiger has hurt already his.

The year is getting off to a great start for everyone at Dooley Communications with new clients coming on stream (stay tuned for more info) and old clients coming back with new projects.

It’s exciting to see the firm continue to grow. As we do, we’ll maintain our focus on being a service-oriented PR firm for the Canadian Prairies. Our focus remains on the Winnipeg and Manitoba markets for public relations and corporate communications services, but we also routinely reach into both Northwestern Ontario and Saskatchewan for our clients.

We use a variety of tools and tactics for our clients from traditional media relations to corporate communications, newsletters, magazines, social networks and blogs. We also develop and execute advertising campaigns, stage special events, and host photo ops and public speaking engagements.

As we get started on our third full calendar year in business, I’d like to personally thank all our suppliers for their highly professional and excellent help. They include:

• Twist Design and Communications
• Nova Design
• Prairie Research Associates
• GRP Media Services
• Mirek Photography
• Tony Nardella Photography
• Tint Marketing
• Contemporary Printing
• Marketwire LP
• Cision
• The Great Promotional Products Company

All the best in 2010!

Adam Dooley,
President

Knowledge can be a terrible thing… especially when what you know is horrible or salacious or illegal.

Since people are social animals, our baser instinct is often to spill the beans and tell all about what we know. As a public relations consultant, I am often called on to tell my clients to say nothing.

A perfect case in point was in the Saturday Winnipeg Free Press when Gordon Sinclair Jr. took a young woman’s story of her affair with her boss and turned it into a sermon on transparency in communications. Mr. Sinclair may be many things, but as a PR consultant he would fail miserably.

When you consider whether you should come forward and divulge your secrets to the rest of the world, you should ask yourself a few questions. First and most important are the twin-headed dragons of: what is the potential upside and downside of coming forward? If the only upside is to get some revenge, then zip up. That is made only truer when the potential downside is to turn a private embarrassment into a public humiliation.

Other questions to ask: is it likely that your story will come out on its own? Could a reporter reasonably sniff it out and get independent confirmations without your help? More often than not, the news never gets out. It can even go to court where all the details will be placed on the public docket, and chances are still fair that it won’t be reported in the newspaper. In Manitoba at least, there are too few reporters who can chase only so many stories.

The reality is that scandals are constantly occurring in businesses, charities and private homes all over this city. Most of them remain secrets. When it comes to malfeasance or criminality, that’s a shame. When it comes to private matters, it’s a good thing. Because contrary to what reporters and columnists tend to think and say, it is RARELY in your best interest to go public.

I feel badly for the young woman involved here. I know her. She’s a good person. She made a mistake in her private life and has now amplified it. I suspect (though I don’t know) that her decision to come forward was made in a cloud of emotion. It’s at times like those - when you’re too close to your terrible secret - that you should seek professional advice.

Good branding requires companies to tell a good story. And the sign of a good story is when others start retelling it for you.

That’s what we’re attempting to do for Keystone Processors Ltd. It’s a new beef plant in Winnipeg. For now, it’s selling beef solely within the province, but it has big plans to reach premium niche markets internationally.

So what? Well, Keystone Processors is the first new beef plant in Manitoba in a generation and it also happens to be owned by Manitoba farmers. When the US shut its border to Canadian beef in 2003, Canada’s beef plants in Alberta and Ontario were swamped with local livestock. With no access to local plants, Manitoba cattle farmers were devastated. A handful of them recognized they had to change the way they did business. So they united behind a vision of marketing a new brand of Manitoba beef to the world - and to own every stage of production from farm to distribution, gate to plate.

Instead of rewarding massive multinational companies, profits will go to farmers - many of them running farms that have been in their families for generations. At the same time, the new plant could mark a turning point in the Manitoba food processing sector too, which has been shrinking in recent years.

We raise great beef here. That shouldn’t be any surprise with our clean air, wide open spaces and history of agricultural leadership. And we want Manitobans to be proud of the company and the farmers behind it.

The company has come a long way in just a few short years. Thanks to dogged determination and countless hours of hard work, the farmers’ dreams of a brighter future are becoming reality. In fact, just last week, the plant received major new funding from the federal government and the Manitoba Cattle Enhancement Council.

For our part, we’ve begun telling this remarkable story wherever we can. We’ve had considerable success with media relations across Manitoba and in agricultural media across the country. Several international publications have also started following the company’s progress. These efforts are crucial as the company has to build its brand outside of our borders, but advertising is cost prohibitive to reach all the jurisdictions they need.

We’ve also been repeating the story locally, because we need Manitobans to buy in to the Keystone Processors success story first. To do this, we’ve been building a successful Facebook fan page, blogging and Tweeting all about the company. We’ve also run some small advertising campaigns, which we expect to ramp up in the months to come.

Early results have been encouraging. On a limited budget we’ve seen growth in Facebook fans, Twitter followers and, more importantly, traffic into the Keystone Processors’ online and real store to buy premium Manitoba beef.

That’s when you know the story is working: when people are buying.

Dooley Communications was busy again this year setting up UNICEF Canada’s annual pumpkin carving contest yesterday at Kildonan Place. We’re pleased to report the event was even more successful than last year by every measure: we have more teams, more media coverage, bigger crowds and more money raised.

Here are a few clippings of the event:

Fish Find Glory as New Pumpkin Kings, Winnipeg Free Press, October 28, 2009

I’m Not Out of My Gourd, Winnipeg Free Press, October 27, 2009

2nd Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest, Chrisd.ca, October 28, 2009

Billie Jo Ross’ blog, Clear 102.3 FM, October 28, 2009

We were also pleased to see CBC TV, Global TV, CTV, CITY TV and SHAW TV all out to cover the event.

Here are a few more photos of the event. 

Glad to see everyone had fun.

This is the time of year we get very busy with UNICEF Canada activities. As public relations consultants Manitoba and Saskatchewan, we help organize all the media relation activities for the annual Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF campaign.

We help coordinate campaign launch events in multiple cities, set up interviews with radio, television and print reporters across both provinces, and work with UNICEF’s national office to ensure it’s all working in concert with the national campaign.

Among our various October projects for UNICEF, this is the second year we’re organizing a Celebrity Pumpkin Carving contest. We’re currently locking in our guest carvers and sourcing our pumpkins for the big showdown Tuesday, October 27 from 11:45 to 1:15 at Kildonan Place Shopping Centre. So far, it looks as though we’ll have more carving teams than last year with organizations such as CTV, CBC, Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg Police Service, Hot 103 and the Winnipeg Goldeyes attending.

Events like this are a great way to get some attention for your organization. This one works well because it has several really good elements including notable contestants from media, business, arts and other walks of life. It also has good visuals: cameras like this whether they’re shooting for a television station, a paper or a website. It ties in to a major cultural event: Halloween. And it supports a good cause in UNICEF.