REICH COMMUNICATIONS

Back in New York - Back at Work

After a great vacation, it's always good to be back in New York.

We Remember

 

Vacation

Relaxing vacation, so no new posts for a few more days.

 

 

 

What We Do: Speed Kills

 

As the Governors Highway Safety Association conference comes to close in Anaheim, the group, which represents top traffic safety leaders from all 50 states, announced plans for a major initiative to deal with an old and ongoing traffic safety issue – speeding.

Speed is a factor is fully one-third of all fatal traffic crashes, killing about 9,700 people every year.

Yet it doesn’t receive the attention that other issues like drunk driving and distracted driving get.

To help deal with this, the GHSA, along with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and my client, The National Road Safety Foundation, will begin a project to offer grants to five states to develop and implement measurable programs in local communities to help deal with speed.  It will include consulting with states on a variety of solutions, including communications. I’m pleased that I’ll be part of the team to help with communications and PR.

We all have to understand – speeding can result in far more than getting a ticket.  It can cause a crash that takes lives and devastates families.

Does (Should) Business Have a Social Conscience?

 

Does big business have a moral obligation to do more than earn profits and returns for shareholders?  It’s an issue that surfaces from time to time and too often the reality makes big business look like evil money-grubbers with a single-minded goal of profits and damn everything else – employees, customers, the environment and society at large. 

The public relations profession generally tries to offer business a moral conscience  -- make money and also do good.  I say “tries,” because in many companies the PR voice gives in to the company goal of profits, profits, profits – coupled with stock price and shareholder return.

Before I continue, let me say many companies do good.  Whether under the heading of public relations, community relations or simply goodwill, many large companies do things to support their communities, charities and customer constituencies.  But in too many cases, the good is offset by the shortsightedness that comes from the pressure of the perceived need for ever-growing profits and bigger shareholder dividends.  Add to that the outright greed of some top executives whose pay and/or bonus are pegged to profits and share price.

That’s why the Business Roundtable’s position on corporate responsibility, issued Monday, is significant.

Leaders of 181 of the nation's biggest companies signed on to a new "Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation" that says companies have "a fundamental commitment" to all of their stakeholders, which puts employees, suppliers and the broader community on a footing that has, for a long time, belonged only to shareholders. This puts social responsibility higher on the scale of corporate priorities than it's traditionally been.  These CEOs have gone on record to say profits, share price and dividends, while certainly important, cannot always negate or diminish responsibility to society.  This can translate to concerns about green energy, recycling, fair pay and employee benefits and more, that should be factored into decisions where in the past, the driving -- and often only -- concern was profits and return. 

I was disappointed that The Wall Street Journal, in its lead editorial, seemed to take the old-fashioned and short-sighted view, saying executives shouldn't "abandon" shareholders.  I don't think it's about abandoning anyone, but about doing the right thing while making money and rewarding shareholders.  The two do not have to be mutually exclusive, which is what the Business Roundtable is saying.

The New York Times reports that a major investor group, The Council of Institutional Investors, disapproves of the Roundtable's position, saying government, not corporations, should address societal needs.  That sounds like the attitude of "the 1 percent," the super-rich who push for special tax breaks and the destruction or defunding of government programs that help the rest of us who are lower down on the economic scale.

The Business Roundtable is acknowledging that big business has a broader responsibility beyond profits and shareholder value.  I think it's time.

 

 

Two years...

The memory of her smile lights my day, every day.

What We Do: Christopher Awards Winner on WABC-TV

One of the winners of a Christopher Award in May was a Brooklyn native who now teaches middle school in his old neighborhood. 

Torrey Maldonado, whose young adult book "Tight" won an award, says he didn't like to read when he was a kid because he didn't see people like him -- Latinos -- in books.  So he decided to write books for kids, using his childhood experiences and those of his students as inspiration for the stories.

We arranged for Torrey to be interviewed by Joe Torres on Tiempo, the weekly show that deals with topics of interest to New York's Latino community.

 

The interview was taped Tuesday and aired Sunday, Aug. 18 at 11:30 a.m. on Channel 7 in New York.  Click above to see it.

Torrey is an inspiring man and the students who have him as their teacher are fortunate.

  

                            Above:  Torrey Maldonado (right) with Tiempo host Joe Torres  

Final Edition

 

I was going to write about a special insert that was in the New York Times two Sundays ago, but then the nation got caught up in the horrific events in El Paso and Dayton, along with the aftermath of accusations, denials and the usual "thoughts and prayers" that too often seem to replace any meaningful action.

The Aug. 4th editions of The Times included a standalone section titled "A Future Without the Front Page."  The lead story began with some important questions:

"What happens when the presses stop rolling?  Who will tell the stories of touchdowns scored, heroes honored and neighbors lost? And who will hold mayors, police officers and school boards accountable?  Local newspapers, starved for advertising and subscribers, are closing across America, leaving a void that the splintered threads of Facebook and Twitter may not be able to fill."

It's happening at a time when the nation is in turmoil, with a government that's out of control and trying to operate in the dark, outside the vision of its citizens.  In many cases, it's been newspapers that have exposed lies, self-dealing, and many things the administration has tried to do outside the public's view.

The section tells the story of the last days of The Warroad Pioneer, a weekly paper that's served the people in northwestern Minnesota for 121 years.  And it tells the larger story of local newspapers nationwide struggling to keep people informed of local happenings.

A sidebar cites some sad and alarming numbers...  Over the past 15 years, 2,100 local papers -- nearly a quarter of all newsrooms -- have closed or merged.  It's not only the small papers like the Warroad Pioneer that have been hit, but also dailies in major markets like Denver, Cincinnati, Tucson, Tampa and New Orleans.  More than 200 counties throughout the U.S.now have no newspaper to inform of local happenings -- local politics, local businesses, local issues and the ultimate local news -- deaths in the community.

There are still about 8,600 local newspapers, but many are a shell of their former selves.  To save money, publishers often decimate the newsroom -- the place that creates the product that gives a newspaper its value. 

A few large media companies like Gannett have swallowed local newspapers, often rolling them up under one regional masthead.  But inevitably, local news coverage suffers.  One example close to home for me is The Journal News.  The northern New York City suburbs had been served well for decades by a few small chains like the Macy newspapers.  But when Gannett bought them, it shut down more than a dozen truly local mastheads and lumped them as one as The Journal News, covering three counties that include several sizable cities including Yonkers (population 185,000) and Mount Vernon, New Rochelle and White Plains, each with upwards of 65,000 residents.

Where the local papers each had reporters dedicated to the local city hall, school board and police, the combined papers now have one reporter who covers the education beat for the entire area -- an area with more than a dozen cities and several dozen towns and villages, each with its own school system.  Coverage of local schools, understandably, is almost non-existant.

The Times section refers to papers like these as "ghost papers."  They are now little more than a means to carry national and regional ads for area car dealers, supermarket chains and department stores, and the big healthcare systems.  Gannett provides pared down national and international stories via its USA Today, and it runs some regional stories that it picks up from other regional Gannett papers.  The Journal News has a handful of feature and local reporters who tell me they are hard-pressed to cover any but the biggest regional stories.

Many areas now have regional cable news channels.  But TV news is a different animal and it's costly to produce local news stories that do more than skim the surface.  And logistics make it impossible for a local news channel to do truly local reporting, since they cover large regions in order to be economically viable.  NY1 News is an exception, but it covers all of New York City, with 8 million-plus inhabitants.

A house ad on the back page of the special section explains why we need local newspapers.  It says...

   Securing one more interview.

   Fact-checking claims.

   Listening to unheard voices.

   Triple-vetting sources.

   Braving intimidation.

   Reporting from multiple angles.

   Asking the right questions.

   Following the full story.

And the tagline... 

      The truth is worth it.

 

This is why we need newspapers.  We need to be informed if our Democracy is to function as a democracy.  Newspapers do a crucial job. 

We need to support our papers so they can continue that crucial work for us.

 

 

Is this America?

 

 

 

"Thoughts and prayers" are not fixing a very big problem in this great country of ours.

 

The problem, actually, is two-fold.  While racial, religious and ethnic prejudice has long been an undercurrent in American society, the blatant and unacceptable rhetoric of hatred spewed constantly by our president has contributed to a documented rise in acts of hatred and violence.  The tacit acceptance of such damaging presidential talk by conservative Republicans leaders who are afraid of tweets serves to further embolden those whose minds are poisoned by hatred.

 

The president MUST reign in his treacherous and treasonous talk.  And our elected leaders...all of  them...must strongly call him out for his dereliction of duty.  As president, his role is to represent the interests of all Americans and not only his base.  His job is to promote peace within our borders, not to stoke hatred and violence.

 

The other part of this problem continues to be our leaders' reluctance to deal effectively with gun control.  I'm not advocating for a change in the right to bear arms, but rather for a sensible system that makes it more difficult for people to get weapons without proper background checks and waiting periods, to do what we can to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them. 

 

Our elected officials MUST stand up to the big money of the NRA and change laws.  The vast majority of Americans recognize and support the need for true gun control.

 

Haven't we had enough of our children and neighbors being killed in schools, stores and nightclubs, synagogues and churches?  I don't want to see another politician send "thoughts and prayers" unless it's followed by real outrage and strong calls for real legislative action.  Otherwise, the words ring hollow.

 

Is this our America today...a nation fueled by talk of hate and violence from our top leader, with senseless mass killings coming, to some degree, from that hate?

 

 

It's not the America I know and love, and I demand our leaders fix it... quickly.  We need action, not just talk.

 

 

 

More tax breaks... for the super-rich

 

More tax give-aways to the super-rich.

How ironic that many Republican leaders criticize what they call “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare (which we pay for throughout our working lives) and other programs like Food Stamps and school lunch programs designed to help our less-fortunate brothers and sisters.  

The irony is that these same Republican leaders are giving wealthy individuals and big corporations who are their financial supporters huge tax cuts that do nothing for the rest of us other than add more than $400 billion to the national debt, which we all end up paying for through interest on that debt.

Now the administration is considering another huge tax cut for the wealthy in the form of lower taxes on capital gains from the sale of stocks and bonds.  For some of the middle class, such a tax break might mean a few hundred or maybe a few thousand dollars, while it could reap millions for the very rich.  Remember, most Americans don’t have stocks or bonds, so the price of the Dow or the proposed tax breaks will have no direct impact on them.  Instead, it would burden us and our children with another $100 billion in national debt.

We’ve already seen the administration give the super-rich a $1.5 trillion tax cut, which has added to an already-ballooning national debt.  Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, writes in today’s N.Y. Times that neither tax cuts nor tariffs are working.  In fact, he says, there’s evidence that the new tariffs are actually hurting American business while pushing prices up for American consumers.  Trump likes to say the tax cuts have helped boost economic growth to 2.9 percent last year, but a closer look shows that growth doesn’t come close to offsetting revenues lost to the Treasury by the tax cuts.

It would be nice to see our elected leaders doing something to help those of us in the middle, but their focus clearly to make the super-rich even richer.  Time for a change, I would think.

Using AI to write ad copy...good or bad?

 

Adweek reported this week about banking giant Chase using artificial intelligence to draft ad copy.

I had two initial thoughts when I saw the headline....

    Will it really work?

    Might it eliminate jobs?

The article talks about a three-year pilot Chase undertook with Persado, a Manhattan-based AI company. Persado's website says it unlocks the power of words by "applying mathematical certainty to words."

Very simply, the company uses algorithms to determine what words resonate with target consumers and/or increase the likelihood of a click to open a marketing email or a link.

It's an interesting concept, but I hope Chase and other marketers don't use it to write final copy unchecked. I can see it being helpful to show what words do a better job than others to attract attention or motivate consumer action.

The Adweek story cites an example of human vs. AI-created copy where the computer's copy performed better.

The human copy for the digital ad:. "Access cash from the equity in your home."

The computer-generated copy:. "It's true -- You can unlock cash from the equity in your home."

I like the second take, but I also wonder about the first take -- what direction the human copywriters were given and also, how sharp is the agency that let that dull copy go through to the client?

My second concern was about how many jobs might be replaced by the computer. When Adweek posed that question to Chase, they got a horrible PR non-answer..."Our relationship with Persado hasn't had an impact on our structure."

This response does not say anything about future job cuts due to the AI tool.

Time will tell, on both the copy and the job fronts.