PRx Inc - A Leading Silicon Valley Public Relations Agency

Exploring San Jose

As PRx’s in-house photographer I’ve had wonderful opportunities to photograph an array of events: from OSH’s School Garden Program launch, various Valley Medical Center events, to Copa Coca-Cola’s soccer tournament and beautiful hotels, such as Oceano in Half Moon Bay, the Cupertino Inn and the Grand Hotel in Sunnyvale.

Recently, we were given the opportunity to create a series of advertisements for the San Jose Redevelopment Agency. These ads are displayed in the large wall-mounted light-boxes in San Jose Airport’s baggage terminals and cover each business district of San Jose, highlighting the unique experiences each district has to offer both visitors and residents of San Jose.

My favorite part of this assignment was to discover areas of San Jose I have never really explored personally. I’ve lived in San Jose for 10 years (some of those were as a student at SJSU) and it wasn’t until this year that I checked out the Lick Observatory in Alum Rock. I’d often wondered what that white building was on top of the mountain in the distance!

I think my experience touches on the importance of advertisements like these. While a primary goal is to inform and entice visitors who are picking up their luggage at baggage claim to learn about our diverse city, it lets those who already live here know about spots they may have overlooked. Now all of us can know the thrill of seeing something new, with a visitor’s eyes, and all it takes is a glance up from the baggage carousel.

Why we fight

I was speaking with a friend at a San Jose Rotary Club committee meeting today about her marketing communications needs. She’s the executive director of a substantial nonprofit organization that, frankly, does not enjoy the wide name or mission recognition that it deserves.

She asked if we did Web sites, which we do, and I referred her to the site we developed for FIRST 5 Santa Clara, www.first5kids.org. That site has won us several national and international awards, but more importantly, it has helped FIRST 5 build a larger and more active community of parents, caregivers and supporters. It enables its various constituencies to access information relevant to them, easily and even elegantly, with attractive graphics and clear, precise prose. And it appeals to people outside our geographic area because it is such a useful compendium of child-development research and information, presenting its offerings in audio and video files that inform even the most impatient or non-literary viewers.

Speaking with her about what we do made me realize, ever so belatedly, that PRx has always been in the business of building stronger communities. The difference is that now social networking has changed the paradigm from paper-based communications to online, 24/7, instant communications, and that people come together in virtual communities based on their interests—actually their passions—and seek to make a difference in the lives of their families and their community. Our specialty is linking corporations and for-profit entities with community-based, nonprofit groups to the mutual benefit of both.

So our work over the past 20 years with Second Harvest Food Bank has generated thousands of corporate supporters who provide volunteers, food and financial donations. The corporations benefit from their association with and good deeds for the Food Bank, and their employees feel better about their companies for being involved in significant, socially beneficial work. The Food Bank’s mission is advanced by the fuel—often literally, in the case of subsidized diesel fuel for the Food Bank’s many trucks—that companies and individuals make possible through food and financial donations as well as their volunteer efforts.

We seek to craft win-win-win solutions for our clients, whether they are Fortune 500 corporations or worthy NPOs. Now, those solutions increasingly have online components. Social networking—blogs, bulletin boards, online communities of like-minded individuals—makes a person’s or a company’s investment in a social cause more immediate and multi-faceted.

We like to think that we know all the ways people will band together and make “common cause” for a social issue, but we don’t, because people, in their infinite wisdom and creativity, will always invent initiatives that no PR agency could imagine. But what we do is create the platform, the medium for people to join in concerted action to make a difference in their community.

Of course, it’s not just online. It involves brochures, posters, direct mail campaigns, ads, contests, speaking engagements, personal contacts, consistent messaging and so on, all the elements of classic marketing communications.

This holistic communications mix is our comfort zone and expertise. So when a company is ready to step up to the plate and make a difference in the community, we can help, making the process easier, cheaper and more effective. When an NPO seeks a greater degree of community engagement and support, we can be the midwives for that transition.

This is a major difference between PRx and the many PR and communications companies we encounter in the marketplace. If you seek the best at what you need done in community or corporate relations, give us a call. We’ve been there, done that and also have some great ideas that have never seen the light of day. It all boils down to the fact that we care about where we live and what kind of society we are building. We all breathe the same air, and it might as well be clean and wholesome.

Sales pitch: let’s do some great things together.

Everyone is an entrepreneur, according to Mike Malone

Last night PRx Communication Strategists invited several community leaders to hear Michael S. Malone’s speech on “The Significance of the Entrepreneur in American History” at Santa Clara University. We were happy to host Carmen and Larry Stone, the County Assessor; Tom Zazueta, head honcho of our competitor Coakley Heagerty; Jerry Silva, Auditor for Green Waste; Sue Hutchison late of the Mercury News; Rick Zirpolo of Rabbit Office Automation; and Jerry Mikolajczyk, the sapphire king of Madagascar.

Michael is an old friend of PRx. We’ve worked with him on projects for Applied Materials, Apple and other clients and promoted his book “Valley of the Heart’s Delight.” Last night, Mike spoke about his thesis that there were more than 300 million entrepreneurs in the US at this time. He linked broadband access to entrepreneurialism, saying that a high school dropout playing video games online made him an entrepreneur.

Clearly, he was waving the red cape in front of the bull. I asked what about the Rust Belt regions of Detroit and Pittsburgh? The people we see demonstrating there for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama don’t look very much like the sleek, hip venture capitalists who populate Sand Hill Road. They don’t look like the hordes of 1999 Harvard MBAs who migrated here to start Web sites for tweens or pet owners or people who wanted to buy unused concert tickets. Mike didn’t really answer my question, but he implied that broadband access would spur the creation of new companies and new business models.

OK, Mike. We love you and are happy for your investment acumen and your success at real estate speculation in Oregon. But this argument doesn’t hold water. Millions of Americans, especially in the middle of the country, not in Silicon Valley or in the biotech cradle of South San Francisco, have no idea of how to start a company or to envision a new way of delivering healthcare or booking vacations online.

Mike is eminently quotable, and his calling out the year 1969—which saw the creation of the Internet, the invention of the microprocessor and the first landing of a human on the moon—as a watershed year for transformation was both logical and appreciated by the crowd.

However, Mike neglected the underclasses in his assessment of the state of entrepreneurialism in the US. And the thesis that entrepreneurialism is a class thing didn’t even raise its ugly head in his talk. A 10th grade dropout in Alabama playing Grand Theft Auto IV is not producing anything, not making any new insights into how to shape the social fabric through technology or even seeing a new outlet for game addicts. The passivity of the majority of American technology consumers is a fact of life, and Mike Malone is one of the most gifted thinkers we have who can put that passivity into some social and economic context.

Mike, if broadband access can not automatically create 300 million entrepreneurs, how do we mobilize the energies, thoughts and aspirations of the millions of high school dropouts who think that playing games online or downloading songs is the epitome of Web usage?

One question that burned especially brightly for me during Mike’s talk was where are the entrepreneurs and creative thinkers who will come up with a solution to the healthcare crisis, where 47 million people in the US don’t have health insurance and many of them fall into bankruptcy because of a major illness or accident. Is there a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates who will make access to healthcare a common and affordable thing in the US? Is there a Facebook or Google out there that will ensure that every American can get the healthcare he or she needs at a price that is affordable?

We’ll see. Mike, thank you for your enthusiasm and optimistic view of the world. But don’t let your deep, daily experience of speaking with entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley color your assessment of what really happens in the fly-over states. Things are grimmer than they seem here in the West Coast Paradise. We’re the ones who set the pace and show the way, so Mike, how do we light a fire under millions of Web addicts who have little ambition and less motivation to make a lasting contribution to human aspirations?

IPRN in Dubai: Day Six

After a blissful, jet-lagged sleep, I took late checkout at the hotel and taxied to the world’s most luxurious hotel, Burj Al Arab, the famous sail-shaped palace that was featured in a Discovery Channel documentary that an astounding number of people I’ve spoken with report having seen. Jonathan Choat and I, dressed more formally than usual, drove up to the security hut, flashed our lunch reservation confirmation (tourists can’t just wander into the hotel and rubber neck; you have to commit to spending a small fortune at one of its restaurants) and entered a space that is so over the top that Donald Trump and the world hotel commission gave it seven stars.

Rising 321 meters above the Arabian Gulf, the Burj Al Arab is one of Dubai’s most recognizable landmarks. One must pass through a phalanx of greeters and discreetly armed security personnel to enter the lobby, said to be one of the highest open atriums (atria?) in the world. Two stories of cascading, choreographed dancing waterfalls are flanked by up and down escalators, and giant tropical fish tanks make up the interior walls. Everything seems shiny and golden, even the beautiful people with their big jewelry. Everywhere one looks, there are colors, primary and bold. In the Discovery documentary, the interior designer thought that after all the opulence and colorful expanses she used in the guest suites, the atrium should remain a restful white.

When His Highness the Sheikh entered for the first time, he looked up at the atrium and said, “More color!” So each floor’s ceiling is a different shade of blue, a mini-sky inside. Gabriel the Malay bellman escorted us to the exterior elevator that goes direct to the Al Muntaha restaurant 27 stories up. We watched the beach rapidly recede as we rose. Gabriel passed us off to the lovely Thai hostess, and we entered the restaurant through a tunnel that seemed to be lined with printed circuit boards that flashed and blinked in colored lights.

We were seated next to the window in the hammerhead shark nose of the building. Had the day not been so overcast and the sky filled with the perpetual dust from 24-hour construction, we might have had a great ocean view, but just watching the people surrounding us was sport enough.

We chose the prix fixe menu and a nice bottle of Argentine Malbec. I asked the sommelier to let Lord Choat taste the wine, and darn if that didn’t make everyone treat us like royalty. Of course, Jonathan is a lord only in my mind and in his attitude and bearing, but he could have been but for an accident of birth.

We discussed the vagaries of the PR business at length, and then turned to the hotel’s clientele, a mixture of large, Russian mafia-types accompanied by stunning young blondes, the normal Arab businessmen elegant in white robes and head scarves, followed by their black-robed women, only their eyes visible. There were a few obviously British types in the bar, and a whole contingent of couples and single men and women who didn’t look like any nationality at all, just rich and sophisticated.

Not to be outdone in sophistication and savoir faire, we rode the elevator down to the lobby and promptly went back up to the restaurant and down again, our own little Disneyland ride in the fastest, quietest, smoothest elevator I’ve ever experienced.

Gabriel the bellman remembered me by name (could it have been the 10 dirham tip for escorting us to the restaurant?) and insisted on giving us glossy brochures about the hotel, including a nifty shopping bag with the hotel’s logo. We walked out into the staggering heat and humidity, past the hotel’s many white Rolls Royce limousines, the Ferraris, Lamborghinis and custom Mercedes sports cars arranged like motorized jewels around the circular driveway, and back to the real world. Only another 20 hours in the air, and it’s home in exotic Sannazay.

IPRN in Dubai: Day Five

We heard more presentations from our members. Jonathan Choat, chairman of Nexus Choat in London, specializes in food and drink, and his 28-employee agency represents some of the biggest brands in the world: Cadbury Schweppes, Weetabix, Macallan Scotch, Burger King. Jonathan presented his campaign for the market leader in prepared sushi sold in UK grocery stores. Rather than push the brand, the campaign sought to raise the level of UK consumers’ awareness of sushi, using a celebrated chef, a sumptuous 12-page spread in the nation’s premier food magazine, public demonstrations, a contest with trips to Japan, truly wide and deep media coverage, etc. A combination of PR and paid advertising gave the campaign’s media sponsors (Japan Airlines, a soy sauce brand, etc.) recognition. The results were not only millions of media impressions, but increased sales of the client’s product.

Karin Ponten of Stockholm, with five employees, showed her campaign for two entrepreneurs who wanted to increase sales of their kayaks. With a modest budget of 10,000 Euros, Karin achieved remarkable media coverage with the theme “Explore your city by water.” The clients also started a kayaking center that was a retail outlet combined with a hang-out and resource center for water sports aficionados, giving tourists and residents free use of kayaks for a morning or afternoon. Sales soared. The campaign ran during the beautiful, but short, Scandinavian summer. Most of the stunning photos used in the magazine and newspaper stories were supplied by Karin’s photographer, showing that media in Sweden are far more amenable to using client-supplied art for editorial coverage than in some other countries.

Ales Langr in Prague outlined his creative and humorous campaign to introduce a new class of beer to the country that has the highest per capita beer consumption in the world. This beer, both a light and a dark brew with high alcohol, was positioned as a drink to enjoy after a meal, a dessert beer as it were. The challenge was not to cannibalize sales of the client’s many other brands, including Pilsner Urquell.

Ales found a 16th century treatise on beer written by a famous Czech scientist and created the legend of a “lost” recipe that was miraculously rediscovered in 2007. The campaign kicked-off with massive media coverage of the first tasting of this ancient, but new, beer, with an actor paying the part of the 16th century scientist. All the presenters and assistants wore late Middle Ages costumes and encouraged guests to try the beer through playing a series of historically accurate games. The brand was then rolled out to the country’s restaurants and bars, with incentives by the brewery for the owners to carry the beer for three months. Sales outpaced expectations.

Susanne Senft from Vienna gave a recap of her campaign for a shade manufacturer that made patio umbrellas, roll-down shades and window coverings. First, she took the existing collateral which looked as if it were done by five different designers, and unified the look and feel with very modern, clean design and high-quality photography and models. The main campaign was centered on home and garden fairs, which distributors attend on Thursday, followed by the general public on the weekend. The campaign sought to increase the number of distributors carrying the products while stimulating sales by the general public. The products were positioned as “green” energy solutions, lowering inside temperatures in hot weather and retaining warmth in cold months. The year-long campaign succeeded by all metrics applied, including reducing the cost of customer acquisition from more than 12 Euros each to about half a Euro.

Sonia Madeira of East-West PR in Singapore presented a campaign to increase attendance at an economics conference. The previous agency’s efforts had stagnated (a major multinational brand) and the client wanted results. Sonia negotiated an inkind media sponsorship for East-West which increased her fee by 100,000 Singapore dollars. As with most special events, the campaign took up massive amounts of staff time, but attendance shattered all records. From an agency morale point of view, young staffers were very proud of their efforts, especially when hearing speeches they had written being given by the Prime Minister and other high government officials.

PRx presented its campaign for Orchard Supply Hardware’s 75th Anniversary, the centerpiece of which was a state-wide school garden program sponsored by OSH. Each of the chain’s 86 California stores would sponsor an elementary school’s garden, giving a $1000 store credit for supplies and dedicating an expert nurseryperson to work with the teachers, parents and students in developing and maintaining the gardens.

The campaign’s goals were to re-energize the OSH brand, increase brand loyalty in the face of competition from big-box hardware stores such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, get OSH employees more involved with their communities and positioned as the “answer” people, gain significant media coverage with prominent OSH signage and increase sales.

Working with the California Department of Education, PRx branded school garden and hands-on learning curriculum materials with the OSH anniversary logo and enlisted the department’s aid in soliciting schools to apply for the grants. The OSH school gardens program and the grant application form were featured on the Department of Education’s Web site, as well as on OSH’s site.

More than 300 schools applied for the grants, and PRx and OSH chose the 86 winning schools.

• PRx publicized the school project regionally, with kick-offs in Northern California (Redwood City) and Southern California (Los Angeles)
• PRx publicized OSH school garden projects in medium and small cities: 62 of 86 schools received media coverage or 72%
• PRx supported OSH staff with FAQs, garden guidelines and more, served as liaison between schools and OSH corporate
• PRx interfaced with CA Dep’t. of Ed. on academic issues and collaborated with UC Davis
• California First Lady Maria Shriver issued a statement of support and appreciation to OSH’s CEO Rob Lynch
• PRx sent a survey to each participating school, with a 62% response rate
• 84% of schools rated OSH’s support as “good to far more than expected”
• 94% of schools plan to continue their gardens
• 86% of schools have been able to leverage their OSH grant to secure other funding and support
• 40% of schools claimed measured gains in test scores
• 68% of schools rated the OSH Garden experience as outstanding, with another 24% rating it worthwhile…92% positive rating
• OSH was named “the leading pioneer in school gardens” by CA Dep’t. of Education

Thus ended the case studies, all of which were entered into IPRN’s “Project of the Year” competition. The members voted their preferences, and the results were announced at our farewell banquet: Ales Langr won the consumer category for his beer campaign, Alberte won the corporate social responsibility category for the Spanish environmental city campaign, and PRx and OSH won the grand prize, the Project of the Year Award, becoming the first IPRN agency ever to win the award twice (having won in Buenos Aires in 2002 for the Silicon Valley Homeland Security Summit).

After a convivial dinner with excellent food and drink, we all went back to our hotel, many of us planning to leave the next day.

IPRN in Dubai: Day Four

Most of the past two days have been filled with case study presentations that show the members how public relations is practiced in their country or region. Each presentation, done by the firm’s owner, sets out the goal and strategy of the campaign, presents the key messaging and positioning, recounts challenges during implementation, examines the results, shows the art product and news clips, analyzes media coverage and details agency fees and costs.

Chantal Carrere-Cuny of Passerelles, with offices in Paris and Bordeaux and 12 employees, presented her agency’s campaign to raise the French public’s awareness of pediatricians because only a sixth of French babies have ever seen a pediatrician. The campaign sought to increase the number of kids seeing “baby” doctors, increase the number of medical students choosing pediatrics and improve French children’s health, especially by fighting obesity, which has doubled in the past 10 years to about 20 percent of kids. The focus of the campaign was an annual “National Day Against Childhood Obesity,” which sounded so much better in French.

The campaign was national, but also concentrated in 100 other cities. Chantal gave a brief media landscape of France, showing charts illustrating the huge number of regional and city newspapers, radio and television stations, concluding that to get complete penetration for the campaign, she would have to do blanket media coverage of the country, an enormous effort of contacting hundreds of individual journalists and editors by phone and e-mail. There were 20 pediatrician spokespeople around the country, each of whom Chantal media trained, some over the phone, most in person with video camera. Each was given talking points.

The day chosen was a date in January which I can’t recall. When I asked was that because January is when people make New Year Resolutions to lose weight, Chantal looked politely befuddled since apparently people don’t have that tradition in France, and January was chosen because it’s such a slow news month. Thank God our American media have managed to fill it up with celebrity diets. I’m quite curious about what the presidential inauguration coverage this January will be.

Chantal’s campaign was a great hit, now in its fourth year. Chantal presented a media report—more than 500 clips, 34% national, 66% regional—then showed the budget, and a lively discussion ensued with a common theme, how so much can be done for so little on the dangled hope for so much more.

For the two Americans at the meeting, it was interesting that one entire “challenge” in our world was missing from the campaign: addressing the costs of the services. Need medical care in France? Bingo. Take that issue off the table, spend more resources teaching moms not to push the fois gras on Jean-Paul, who’s spending more and more time with his video games. And there’s his McDonald’s habit as well, another win for the global high fructose corn syrup cabal.

Chantal’s case history was a classic example of how a social marketing, behavioral modification campaign focused on one issue can achieve collateral benefits for the sponsor: French pediatricians. A benchmark pediatrician and obesity awareness survey before the campaign would have helped and a post-campaign survey could have shown measurable improvement.

Which observation led us into a more detailed discussion of how we measure success in different countries. Almost all of the members use Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), a method of gauging a campaign’s effectiveness (and worth) by calculating the total editorial coverage by column inches or airtime in a particular medium (Time magazine, or NBC 11’s Tech Now, for instance), finding out what the equivalent amount of space in advertising would cost and then multiplying the result by three to indicate the extra value news coverage confers over than paid advertising. Susanne from Vienna had an ingenious method of measuring PR cost effectiveness vs. advertising, but I didn’t take comprehensible notes.

Most of us agreed that any measurement of campaign effectiveness had to include a media analysis that determined whether the coverage was positive, neutral or negative, or if competitor mentions overshadowed the client. Members recommended measurement services they used in their countries, and we spoke about Katherine Delahaye Paine’s services and her blog.

While clients often want extensive reports to justify that their marketing budget is being spent wisely, they must also realize that services costing many hundreds and thousands of dollars a month need to be paid for by the party wanting them.

Alberte Santos Ledo from C & IC Comunicacion y Relaciones Publicas, a 28-employee agency in Madrid, then presented his campaign to reverse initial negative public opinion about a proposed environmental, totally green city to be developed by the regional economic development body in conjunction with a large coalition of architectural, environmental, real estate, financial and manufacturing groups. When the original announcement was made of the redevelopment of one of the country’s most economically depressed cities (Soria in north-central Spain) as an exemplar of green design and construction, the press wanted to know how much it would cost and when would the project be completed.

Unfortunately, the spokespeople for the project did not have that information. Wide press coverage followed, but it was more than two to one in negative tone and facts.

The government development agency then hired Alberte’s company to relaunch the project and convince the public that it was a good idea and a great leap forward in sustainable civic development.
Alberte’s campaign included producing a logo and Web site for the project as well as FAQs, bios of the executives involved (including a famous soccer team owner), architectural plans and illustrations, position papers, an extensive media outreach campaign and several events, etc.

The re-launch was successful, with three to one positive press coverage in hundreds of publications, national and regional. The budget presented seemed to be in line with the labor provided, which is one benefit of quoting budgets in Euros, since so many of IPRN’s agencies work in EU countries and those of us who don’t have frequent experience of how much our local currency buys in Euros.

Our next presenter was Valerie Tan, head of the global communications division for Emirates Airlines, a 16-person operation with 40+ PR agencies around the world. Valerie gave her normal presentation about Emirates, showing how this young (1985) airline made a huge bet in 2000 by committing to buy 58 Airbus 380-800s, projecting that airline travel from markets around the world would increase because of Dubai’s economic and tourist growth. The airline is now one of the most consistently profitable in the world, just announcing this week profits up 62% for the 20th consecutive year.

Valerie spoke about how her division worked with medium-sized agencies around the world. They distribute 200+ press releases a year and generate more than 2500 articles monthly in global media. They have 400+ fam tours for hosted journalists per year and have more than 100 media events annually.

Much of their publicity efforts are coordinated with Dubai destination PR campaigns, so there is a common theme about Dubai and its importance in the global economy.

She spoke about the local airport, originally built in 1960 and expanded in 2001 to accommodate 17 million travelers when the local traffic was 7 million. Current traffic is 35 million visitors in 2007, so two more terminals will be built, one dedicated solely to Emirates to meet the need of 40 million visitors in 2008.

A whole new airport is being built across town on a site covering 140 square kilometers, more than 65 square miles. It will be finished in 5 years.

Emirates Airlines is one of the main engines of Dubai’s growth, transporting millions of guest workers to man the 24/7 construction effort and provide the everyday labor of waiters, cab drivers and hotel workers as well as the occasional PR agency owner from the UK or Austria.

Valerie spoke about how she works with her agencies, and the message between the lines was that she works them hard. That’s one reason she uses agencies like those in IPRN, companies that are owner-managed, focused on hospitality and air transport and which can deal with the many sudden crises that airlines endure: crashes, delays, food poisonings, etc. One thing Emirates does not have to contend with is union disturbances. No unions. And just one shareholder, His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum.

More agency presentations to come.

IPRN in Dubai: Day Two

We had our first session of the IPRN AGM this morning, breezing through the business portion of the meeting, approving last year’s minutes, the audited financials and this year’s budget.

Sadri Barrage, our host in Dubai, gave a brief overview of public relations in the Middle East. He said the main foci of public relations in Dubai are finance, tourism, real estate, IT and healthcare. All the major multinationals have a presence here…Porter Novelli, Hill & Knowlton, Edelman, Weber Shandwick and Burson Marsteller. As in other markets, these major players make it harder for independent PR agencies to win new business, but IPRN’s global reach and very local expertise level the playing fields a bit.

Sadri said that Dubai is a very business-friendly market, having replaced red tape with the red carpet. The city wants to be the next global commerce and tourism center like Hong Kong or Monte Carlo. It is building the largest theme park in the world, Dubailand, which opens in 2012, and the relentless, audacious entrepreneurialism of the region not only has catapulted Dubai into one of the world’s great financial hubs, but it has created 120 kilometers of beach front with the construction of three Palm Islands and the World Island that seen from space looks like a map of the world.

More than 60% of the people in Dubai don’t speak Arabic and more than half the population read and speak English. There are 150 nationalities represented among the population.

Several members shared some of the new business initiatives they have undertaken in a growing global recession. Annekatherin Koch of Pentacom in Dusseldorf specializes in beauty, fashion and luxury goods. She goes to conferences and trade fairs, finds new beauty/luxury products that aren’t well known, and offers their producers the ability to showcase them in special events she organizes for journalists and retail distributors. For 1800 Euros, the maker of say, a new handbag, gets to meet as many as 20 journalists and editors from the top magazines in Germany, France and Italy. Fashion and beauty magazines pick up on the products and feature them in product round-ups, distributors sign up brands, hotel chains discover products/amenities for their guest rooms and spas. Those participating in the “Discoveries” events get their products featured on Annekatherins’s Web site for three months.

After our business meetings, all 27 of us piled into SUVs to get a taste of the desert. After a half hour ride along the superb highways, we went off road and caromed over dunes, great sprays of sand rooster-tailing from our wheels. Small herds of camels watched our shenanigans with supreme indifference and imperturbability. The heat is truly awe-inspiring, and this is just spring.

Sadri, our host, put the searing heat in context. The late ruler of the UAE once said, “we didn’t know about heat until air conditioning came.”

After a feast in the desert of local delicacies and a riveting belly dance with the mandatory guest participation (Claude from Luxembourg was a stand-out) it was home to a quick shower and bed.

More later.

IPRN in Dubai: Day One

After 19 hours in the air, first San Jose to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Dubai, I’m here in the United Arab Emirates for the International Public Relations Network (IPRN) Annual General Meeting (AGM).

Just outside our hotel, Al Manzil in the “old” section of Dubai, the world’s tallest free-standing building, Burj Dubai, rises 157 stories of luxury condominiums and an Armani-styled residence hotel on eight stories.

The height of this building is truly awesome, even in a region of spectacular architecture and non-stop construction. At more than 1800 feet tall, this needle piercing the sky is a microcosm of the global influences intersecting at this oasis by the sea. Korean construction company Samsung is working with project manager Turner International, engineering consultancy Hyder and architect Skidmore, Owings and Merrill of Chicago. 300 Chinese cladding specialists are producing and installing the 30,000 hand-cut glass panels that sheathe this symbol of human ambition and achievement.

There seem to be hundreds of buildings going up, offices and residential complexes, in a race to see which developer can build the next iconic building, the next great shape on the skyline, and if there ever was a paradise for architects, this is it.

Cursed with monumental traffic jams, Dubai is investing in mass transit, and an elevated monorail stretches from the airport to the coast, with long sections completed and rows of columns waiting for the concrete roadway to be laid. It is said that fully one-quarter of the world’s construction cranes are in Dubai, and I can believe it.

Most of the people we encounter are not from Dubai or even the Middle East. In fact, only 15% of Dubai’s population is native with the rest coming from scores of Arabic- and English-speaking countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia to serve as waiters, taxi drivers, hotel staff and construction workers. I knew Thomas Friedman was right about globalization when I read his book, “The World is Flat,” but being here for just a few hours has driven the point home with a force I could never have anticipated.

Jonathan Choat, General Secretary of IPRN, “Lord Choat” to me (he is a dashing British dandy, a TS Eliot lookalike given to cinch-waisted tailored suits and flamboyant pocket scarves) and Maggie Fox, a British PR legend in high technology and pharmaceuticals, and I went exploring today before the official start of the AGM. After a cheap taxi ride to the “creek,” where dhows were being loaded with all manner of goods produced in China—air conditioners, tires, toys, refrigerators, blankets and colorful plastics—as well as canned fruit juices and other desert produce, we walked through the dark alleys of the souk, or market, working our way through the spice souk (“would you like saffron, boss? Do you know myrrh? Like Frankincense and myrrh. Cinnamon, cardamom, come inside and smell, sir.”) to reach the gold market. Scores of stores displayed all kinds of gold jewelry, from simple, elegant necklaces to the truly ostentatious.

So now it’s off to the welcome cocktail party where we’ll reconnect with friends and colleagues we’ve been seeing for the past 10 years of AGMs around the world and meet the new members from Spain, Sweden, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, France, Singapore and Portugal. Our dear friends Geoff and Inge Drucker from Australia, Mike Stringer from Boston, Larry Weis from Detroit, Keith Webb from the UK, Guido Minerbi from Buenos Aires, Marilyn and Jeff Weiss from Toronto and Karri Vesa from Finland can’t make it. We’ll miss them and hope they can make it to the next meeting in Milan.

More later.

Storm your brains to water the fields of creativity

There’s a lot of hard, slogging work involved in PR and advertising, but it’s the brainstorming sessions that are really fun. As long as everyone understands that no idea is wrong, that we must entertain every idea as royalty for one may turn out to be king, then things go smoothly.

We had a brainstorming yesterday for our friends at the Cupertino Inn and the Grand Hotel in Sunnyvale. We had to come up with two ad headlines and copy for a special promotion encouraging local residents to get away for the weekend, close to home for some peace and quiet. You’ll have to look in the Mercury News and the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers to see the final result.

But one piece of advice that may help any communications professional reading this…don’t be too quick to dismiss what may sound as a silly concept. With verbal massaging and a quick burst of inspiration, a winning headline that attracts the reader can develop. Watch this space.

Avoid the media ambush

Even the most seasoned, media-savvy executive can be bushwhacked during an interview with a reporter. For a funny take on this phenomenon, we used to start our media training workshops with a clip from the famous Bob Newhart episode, “Who Is Mr. X?”. It demonstrates how an interviewer can skewer a well-meaning professional by twisting what he or she says, jumping to false conclusions and taking the offensive in questioning. Stephen Colbert is a master of these techniques as well. Here’s a classic example:

We’ve been training people how to get their message across for about 20 years, and media training is a prime specialty here at PRx. We work with actual journalists who have been prepped about the client’s business and its current issues so that during a mock interview the experience is as real as possible. Lights, a prominent microphone and a professional video camera with a monitor all lend a sense of reality to the process, especially if the interviewer is a face you see on TV every night.

But we don’t jump into the interview without a thorough prep session that gives the client practice with key messages and examples of answers that bridge back to the message. Politicians on the Sunday talk shows are masters of bridging back to their key messages, regardless of the question being asked.

As spokesperson for Second Harvest Food Bank for seven years, I quickly learned by trial and error how to craft a sound byte that was guaranteed to be aired on the nightly news. And my partner in our media trainings is veteran broadcaster and NBC11 political analyst Larry Gerston, and he is famous for turning a provocative phrase.

During one session with mid-level managers of a large energy company, a question about EPA regulations led to the astounding answer that said the EPA-certification was their license to pollute. Of course the manager didn’t mean to say it in that way, that small amounts of gassy wastes are allowed by law, but when he saw his answer on tape, you knew that he will never phrase his answer that way again.

So if you’re going to be interviewed by the media, it helps to learn how to say what you mean to say and then stop talking before your tongue gets you and your company in trouble. Call us to learn more about media training. At PRx, the doctor is always in with the right prescription for your communications needs.