Ethics edict at Fleishman *
In an email sent to the staff today, embattled PR giant Fleishman-Hillard announced a ban on corprate campaign contributions, set up a hotline for employes to report questionable practices directly to the CEO and come up with a new system for verifying billing. An unnamed outside academic also was brought in to "assess the ethical commitment of the firm." It's all part of the continuing fallout from the Doug Dowie era in the Los Angeles office. PR Week has the story.
* Friday stories: Times (not online), Daily News
11:38 AM Thursday, July 29 2004 •
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From the PR Week article, quoting Richard Kline, regional president and GM of the Los Angeles office:
"This is a reiteration of what we've done in the past, some new and some refined . . .Fleishman has for years been a leader in quality service, ethics and moral values. We want to make absolutely clear our recommitment to that position."
Why do troubled companies keep saying stuff like this? Fleishman obviously has had a giant ethical lapse, and now it's trying to repair the damage. If there was no such lapse, why all the frantic deck-shuffling?
Fleishman could get some breathing room and maybe even some sympathy just by announcing without flinching or equivocating what we already know. Better to say nothing than trot out this mush-mouthed corporate boilerplate.
The very word "recommitment" gives the game away. If Fleishman had been so morally upright as Kline claims, there'd have been no need to recommit to morals and ethics it supposedly had been upholding all along.
Fleishman also has apparently failed on a lesser but telling point. Employees on SBC's account had been falsely identifying themselves as SBC employees, according to SF Chronicle columnist David Lazarus. In May, Lazarus wrote that Fleishman employee Marc Bien had been passing himself off as SBC vice president of corporate communications, including on his business cards. (If Lazarus was inaccurate, Fleishman is invited to set the record straight in a reply to this post.)
A few weeks later, Lazarus wrote that Fleishman had since forbidden the practice, requiring those employees to identify themselves as consultants.
Here is a depressingly familiar quote Lazarus got from Fleishman.
"It was never our intent to confuse people about the representation Fleishman-Hillard has with SBC," said Ed Presberg, a Fleishman spokesman.
I'm confused about why Fleishman would allow this practice in the first place. It's well-known that Fleishman represents SBC. I've often dealt with their people in their capacity as SBC spokespersons. To their credit, these people have never tried to pass themselves off to me as actual SBC employees. Their not being actual employees didn't make much difference.
(Let me be clear: Of course, I'd really rather get a high-ranking SBC executive like Ed Whitacre on the phone. But the distinction between in-house PR and contracted PR is minimal. Neither are decision-makers, and both give official statements.)
I know that public relations can be a very difficult way to make a living. And there are some excellent PR people out there who have earned my respect by always clarifying facts when there's a possibility of confusion. They don't wait until a scandal erupts to loudly proclaim their moral purity. If you're always honest and known for that trait, scandals usually aren't a worry.
I hope the leadership at Fleishman and its parent company realize that "quality service, ethics and moral values," need a lot more than press releases during a time of crisis and jazzed-up recommitments.
As for the other PR firms watching this debacle, Fleishman has given you a wonderful example of what *not* to do. If you have any incipient issues, best to deal with it now and make all the information public, rather than wait for it to spin out of control.
Reporters are in their element digging up damaging information that powerful entities don't want disclosed. Editors see all that hard work and praise the reporters' initiative. But reporters have little fun when all the damaging information is handed to them by the party in question before a scandal erupts, especially when the same information has been emailed to all their competitors, or posted on the Web.
This really should not need pointing out to PR folks, especially those that once were reporters and editors themselves. They should have known better.
From the PR Week article, quoting Richard Kline, regional president and GM of the Los Angeles office:
"This is a reiteration of what we've done in the past, some new and some refined . . .Fleishman has for years been a leader in quality service, ethics and moral values. We want to make absolutely clear our recommitment to that position."
Why do troubled companies keep saying stuff like this? Fleishman obviously has had a giant ethical lapse, and now it's trying to repair the damage. If there was no such lapse, why all the frantic deck-shuffling?
Fleishman could get some breathing room and maybe even some sympathy just by announcing without flinching or equivocating what we already know. Better to say nothing than trot out this mush-mouthed corporate boilerplate.
The very word "recommitment" gives the game away. If Fleishman had been so morally upright as Kline claims, there'd have been no need to recommit to morals and ethics it supposedly had been upholding all along.
Fleishman also has apparently failed on a lesser but telling point. Employees on SBC's account had been falsely identifying themselves as SBC employees, according to SF Chronicle columnist David Lazarus. In May, Lazarus wrote that Fleishman employee Marc Bien had been passing himself off as SBC vice president of corporate communications, including on his business cards. (If Lazarus was inaccurate, Fleishman is invited to set the record straight in a reply to this post.)
A few weeks later, Lazarus wrote that Fleishman had since forbidden the practice, requiring those employees to identify themselves as consultants.
Here is a depressingly familiar quote Lazarus got from Fleishman.
"It was never our intent to confuse people about the representation Fleishman-Hillard has with SBC," said Ed Presberg, a Fleishman spokesman.
I'm confused about why Fleishman would allow this practice in the first place. It's well-known that Fleishman represents SBC. I've often dealt with their people in their capacity as SBC spokespersons. To their credit, these people have never tried to pass themselves off to me as actual SBC employees. Their not being actual employees didn't make much difference.
(Let me be clear: Of course, I'd really rather get a high-ranking SBC executive like Ed Whitacre on the phone. But the distinction between in-house PR and contracted PR is minimal. Neither are decision-makers, and both give official statements.)
I know that public relations can be a very difficult way to make a living. And there are some excellent PR people out there who have earned my respect by always clarifying facts when there's a possibility of confusion. They don't wait until a scandal erupts to loudly proclaim their moral purity. If you're always honest and known for that trait, scandals usually aren't a worry.
I hope the leadership at Fleishman and its parent company realize that "quality service, ethics and moral values," need a lot more than press releases during a time of crisis and jazzed-up recommitments.
As for the other PR firms watching this debacle, Fleishman has given you a wonderful example of what *not* to do. If you have any incipient issues, best to deal with it now and make all the information public, rather than wait for it to spin out of control.
Reporters are in their element digging up damaging information that powerful entities don't want disclosed. Editors see all that hard work and praise the reporters' initiative. But reporters have little fun when all the damaging information is handed to them by the party in question before a scandal erupts, especially when the same information has been emailed to all their competitors, or posted on the Web.
This really should not need pointing out to PR folks, especially those that once were reporters and editors themselves. They should have known better.
Posted by: Bradley J. Fikes at July 29, 2004 09:43 PM