In a short ceremony on April 23, 2010 Governor Janet Brewer signed SB 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, also commonly referred to as the Arizona Immigration law. There was little explanation and no apologies to those who might be affected adversely.  Just a ham-fisted “take it or leave it” approach. Those of us who make a living from conventions and tourism were left on our own to explain to our customers what all this meant.

I asked several colleagues and clients to read the law before they made any drastic decisions about continuing business in Arizona.  They said they didn’t need to because the national media and the White House had already explained it to them and that there was no way they would risk coming to Arizona.  The choice had been made for them.

I don’t think anyone knows for sure just how bad this law is going to be for the local economy.  One way or the other all of our livelihoods are affected by conventions and tourists – and they won’t be coming here as they had before.

Phoenix was one of the final three cities for the 2012 Republican National Convention.  Winning would have meant some $200 million in economic stimulus flowing into the state from visitors and convention organizers.  I think we lost in a fair fight, but I am sure ultimately SB 1070 was the tipping point driving the RNC Site Selection Committee to choose Tampa, Florida over Phoenix.

This has been a textbook case of bad public relations.  It could have been handled so much better.  We will all be living with this bad communications plan for some time to come. I can only hope that businesses and tourists will continue to spend their money in Arizona, knowing that a boycott of the state is not the right way to fix this legislative debacle. I’m confident if we all work together, we can arrive at a solution that will fix this problem and restore the state’s reputation to what it once was – a great place to visit and live.

Sincerely,

Gordon James

www.gcjpr.com

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has garnered media attention across the world as it continues to pour hundreds of thousands if not millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day. It’s not only been an ecological disaster for the company and gulf states, it’s been a PR disaster from day one as well. Everyone is lining up to make sure BP knows it.

I remember picking up a case study book in my PR 400 level class in college, and in it was a study on how Exxon Valdez handled their spill. It spoke about the major blunders Exxon made while trying to minimize the effects of the spill. I have little doubt BP’s utter failure on the PR front will replace the Exxon case in this book.

In the early days of the spill, BP continually tried to downplay the amount of oil leaking out of its pipe. BP CEO Tony Hayward even went so far as to call the amount of oil “relatively tiny” when compared to the “very big ocean.” That may be a bit hard to swallow given the vast amounts of oil covered waters and beaches.

While in an interview with NBC where Hayward attempted to apologize for the disruption the spill called he even went so far as to caustically remark, “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. I’d like my life back.” Whoa. Come again? Did he really say that?

As reports began to surface about large underwater plumes of oil caused by the dispersant BP used to break it up, BP’s chief engineering officer even went so far as to try and debate what constitutes a plume. Instead of owning up to the problem, they tried to play word games around the definition.

The company has been less than cooperative with the media as the spill progresses, often denying members of the media access to flyovers to photograph the spill or to speak with workers on the clean up crew. All while claiming an open door policy. The problem with denying the media, and then saying you aren’t, is it’s the media that gets to report whether you indeed are or not. It’s hard to cover the truth behind photos though such as those in this incredible, evolving New York Times photo story.

Word games, quick outbursts of insensitive comments, the inability to control the spill despite saying they could and denying media access have all built on BP’s PR disaster, rapidly destroying the companies credibility. Even spoof Twitter accounts have popped up to satirize and criticize the company, gaining a large audience of followers.

So when BP rolled out it $50million dollar ad campaign across TV and print publications like the Wall Street Journal, with Hayward apologizing and saying, “We will make this right,” it was a case of too little, too late in the public court of opinion. They had virtually nothing left to bank on and little credibility in the eyes of the American public.

BP’s mistake was to try and do anything but accept immediate responsibility for their actions and the conviction to see this problem solved. Instead they tried to pass blame, seemed perturbed to be bugged by this and have continually played games of misinformation or half information with the media and public.

When working with crisis clients, we always advise them to step forward and take responsibility. While its difficult to face the immediate criticism, and the truth that you’ve caused a fault, the perils of trying to downplay and hide your crisis will always come back to haunt you. In today’s open digital world, the truth will find a way to surface.

As for BP, it’s brand reputation will take decades to recover from this incident, if it ever does, costing it billions of dollars in the meantime. The only hope for the company now is to quickly find a solution to the spill and work toward repairing the damage its done with humility and honesty.

Campaign season has been ramping up and we’ve inundated ourselves with more than a fair share of political meetings, fundraisers and rallies. From organizing Phoenix’s bid to the RNC Site Selection Committee (we unfortunately lost to Tampa) to McCain rallies, to Jim Ward and Ben Quayle events, and to a special visit by former First Lady Laura Bush to sign her new book, we’ve been keeping ourselves quite busy.

We’ll have lots more info on each of these campaigns in our upcoming newsletter release, but in the meantime we thought you’d all enjoy this photo gallery of events over the last three months. Just click on each photo to view a larger size.

Held for the third consecutive year, the employees and contractors of Palo Verde organize more than 40 booths dedicated to safety topics ranging from radiation protection to heart health to the proper ways to use tools.

With the goal of teaching about safety in a creative and fun way, each department designed a booth and offered an array of prizes ranging from Wii game consoles to flat screen televisions in order to get people to stop and learn about safety.

Some booths featured game show themes such as “Are you smarter than a nuclear scientist” and Palo Verde “Idol.”  Others offered interactive games such as miniature golf, remote control car racing and a live version of the Clue game.

Even though the event isn’t open to the public, over 2,000 employees and contractors attended the event throughout the day and the event was covered by ABC15 and the Business Journal.

Palo Verde is the largest power producer in the U.S., providing electricity to more than 4 million customers throughout Arizona and the Southwest. The plant is operated by Arizona Public Service.

In that spirit, we’ve added a new plug-in to the GCJPR blog that will allow users of touch-phone devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch, Google Android and BlackBerry Storm to access our content in a faster loading and easy to manage format. If you’re looking to take your brand mobile, we highly recommend adding the WPtouch plug-in to your WordPress blog as well.

I am not much for referencing Eminem songs, but this one happens to fit. The recent case of the mysterious Ellie Light letters (LTEs) that popped up in newspapers across the nation is an interesting one. Having experience handling letter writing campaigns, I find it especially intriguing. Mostly because I know how time intensive it is to research and send a LTE to multiple newspapers across the country; especially without the right media software. Of course you can do this through the Internet, but imagine what lengths you would have to go to find all of the correct contacts and email them the letter. The only time this mysterious letter writer saved was by not changing his/her name.

According to FOX News- the letter had “shown up in 68 newspapers across 31 states and the District of Columbia. Three national publications – Politico, The Washington Times and USA Today – also ran the letter, as did two foreign publications.”

Now, two people have come forward claiming to be Ellie Light, which is confusing in itself because one is a man and one is a woman who claims to be married to the man, while the man denies this. Sketchy. Also, the supposed reasoning for using the fake name, was to protect himself/herself from the “right-wing crazies” or any retribution, which of course, is now moot since he/she has come forward with their true identity. “Ellie” scoffed at the thought that this had DNC or White House fingerprints all over it, rather saying “he wanted to defend Obama both from the right and the “ultra-left” that demands ideological loyalty rather than results.”

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I am not buying it. I have a hard time believing that one person, would go to the lengths that “Ellie” did, just to get a letter out supporting Obama. And, consider the timing – just under two weeks before the President’s first State of the Union. Kudos to “Ellie” and the machine that was behind this effort, while I disagree with its content and method, it is quite impressive to get a letter run in 68 plus publications.

I wonder how much “Ellie” is being paid to keep quiet about who really is behind this. As with all things, eventually they come out into the open, no matter how much denying is done in the beginning. Just ask John Edwards.

As technology continues to advance throughout the decades, it has become a stronger force in shaping our opinions, the speed with which information reaches us and how we communicate with each other. From radio to television to computers, Internet, mobile devices and now social media, each revolution of media has increased its presence and influence in our lives. Both older and younger generations collectively plug in to this technical takeover.

In fact, a new study released by the Kaiser Family Foundation now finds that kids ages 8- to 18-years-old spend the rough equivalent of every waking hour of their time in front of some kind of screen.

Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week).  And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’’(using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

This Mashable.com report has some interesting conjectures on how prevalent media consumption is in our children’s lives. But at a staggering 10 hours and 45 minutes of media time, there’s no doubt that media consumption plays a role in shaping the opinions of the younger generation. If you have children, think of how often they are watching TV, on the computer or texting on their phones.

The real question remains, has it replaced parents or friends as the dominant influencers in a child’s life? It’s a provocative question that holds significance for parents and for the companies and organizations that will adapt to create life-long brand advocates from very early on in our children’s and grandchildren’s lives. These groups have opportunities like never before to shape the way we and our children think. But is it right? Is there an age limit on ethical influence?

How these influencers can positively or negatively affect future generations has yet to be seen, but I’m confident it will be an integral part of how organizations and PR companies operate moving into the future. In part, it already is.

In just over 56-hours since the quake struck, the Red Cross has raised over $10 million in $10 donations from Americans by texting “Haiti” to 90999. It’s a staggering amount of money in such a short time period. In fact, it doubles the amount of money raised by charitable text message campaigns for the entire year of 2009. And there’s no sign donations are slowing down either.

None of it would be possible without social media. Word of the campaign spread over Twitter and Facebook like a firestorm. Friends updated their status reports letting others know they donated, and showing them how to as well.

So why now? What is it about this crisis that allowed the Red Cross to amass such a huge amount of donations so quickly?

It comes down to a collaboration of both new and traditional media; a merger of TV and print, social media and technology.

The first step in the chain is the ability to text message a donation without using a check book, credit card or other form of payment. The technology, provided by mGive in cooperation with mobile phone carriers, has never made it easier to donate. A major problem with past methods of donating, is that a message for help has lost its impact by the time a person is in a position to give. With the use of this text message donation system, donations can be collected instantly while the donor is emotionally impacted.

That emotional impact is delivered by non-stop coverage from the news media. With photos and video of the tragedy, on the scene reports and accurate journalism, we all learned about the disaster that struck Haiti. Traditional news media still has a critical role to play in this whole process, especially in affirming the accuracy of reports and access to hard to reach locations.

That message, and nearly the entirety of the donation campaign, was then spread through social media like Facebook and Twitter. It was social media that provided the person-to-person networking that empowered donations. Traditional media only picked up on the text donations after they had accumulated over $800,000.

This powerful combination of traditional media, social media and technology provided the means for individuals around the U.S. and world to react instantly. It’s something we’ll see again, and it will the job of companies and organizations to figure out how to use it again in the future.

Make no mistake, social media entered the world of charitable activism in a big way during the Haiti crises. We look forward to seeing how it is able to help others in need.

On Tuesday, January 5, news cameras and media personnel packed the GCJPR office to hear Steve Forbes, Congressman John Shadegg and Dr. Eric Novack speak about their new ballot initiative that would allow Arizonans a choice of care under new federal health care.

The ballot initiative, the Arizona Health Care Freedom Act, advocates that each Arizonan should have the right to choose their own insurance, not one approved by the government.

“Arizona Health Care Freedom Act is not about doctors, it’s not about members of Congress, it’s about all of us Americans. And it’s about the rights of individuals to be in charge of their own health and health care,” said Dr. Novack.

“This amendment is critical not only for Arizona, but indeed for the nation,” said Forbes. “This is the center. If Arizona gets it right health care can survive and thrive in America again.”

“What’s wrong with the current structure of [the federal health care]bill, is that it is going to point a gun at every one of your heads and say, ‘you must buy insurance,’” said Congressman Shadegg. “But here’s the real rub, it’s not that you must buy insurance that you like, it’s that you must buy insurance that the government approves.”

To find out more, view the Arizonans for Health Care Freedom Web site. You can also find a gallery of photos from the press conference at our Facebook Fan page.