Following-up on Monday’s entry (two posts down from this one), the topic is, once again, PR blunders.

#2: THIS LITTLE PIGGIE WENT WEEWEEWEE ALL THE WAY TO COURT.

The National Pork Board is threatening the makers of Canned Unicorn with a copyright infringement lawsuit. One would assume the Pork Board did not want this issue to become widely publicized. However, I learned about it from a TIME tweet. At last count, TIME.com had 2,088,677 followers on Twitter alone. Oops.

Here’s the story: On April Fool’s Day, Think Geek—a web-based novelty product shop—introduced (for $9.99 a pop) Canned Unicorn, under the headline Pâté Is Passé. Unicorn – The New White Meat. Obviously, that last part is a play on the Pork Board’s 23-year-old slogan, Pork: The Other White Meat. A slogan which, Think Geek notes on its Facebook page, the Board is strongly considering replacing anyhow.

Apparently, the Pork Board was not amused. On May 5, Think Geek received a 12-page Cease And Desist letter from the international law firm of Faegre & Benson—ordering said novelty shop to forever refrain from using the slogan The New White Meat.

To be fair, I can see why the Pork Board would want to protect their own brandline’s integrity. Even from obviously fake products like Canned Unicorn.

But it seems to me that the best way to handle a case like this would be to call the happy-go-lucky folks at Think Geek.com personally, and ask them real nicely if they’d please not use the line anymore. Maybe even offer to buy a few cans of Unicorn as a token of goodwill.

If that approach didn’t work, for a fraction of the money they spent on Faegre & Benson’s Cease and Desist letter, they could’ve hired a freelance copywriter to offer Think Geek alternate brandlines.

Or they might have even had some fun with the whole matter by posting a tongue-in-cheek entry on their own Facebook page assuring Pork fans that Canned Unicorn contains no pork—and should, in no way, be confused with the Original Other White Meat. If, of course, they had a Facebook page. Which they don’t.

Instead, they paid a lot of money to get a lot of unwanted publicity that rightly makes The National Pork Board look, yes, downright pigheaded.

We recently started work with Baggett Transportation, a privately-owned trucking firm specializing in military equipment and munitions transport. They needed a new driver recruitment ad campaign.

The first thing we learned about Baggett’s folks was pretty much the same thing we heard from every driver we interviewed for background: They’re really nice people.

Their drivers (all Owner Operators, not Company “employees”) consistently reported what a good company Baggett is to work with. And how proud they were to be serving the armed forces.

All of which led to a pretty dramatic overhaul of their ad campaign. Click on the images below to see the ads in a larger size. Then you can zoom-in on the larger images by holding down your Ctrl button and rolling your mouse-roller forward.

The copy pretty much came straight from the couple profiled. When I read it to Wayne and Bonnie over the phone, Bonnie said, “Boy! I got chill bumps.”

Now that is why we’re in this business.

BEFORE

AFTER

Our topic is PR blunders, and was inspired by two classic gaffes I discovered just today.

NUMBER 1: THAT’S YOUR LAST SHRED OF CREDIBILITY SAILING AWAY.

By now, you’ve surely heard that BP CEO Tony “I Want My Life Back” Hayward gloriously reclaimed some of his old life this past weekend by competing in a yacht race. Unsurprisingly, that bracing jaunt was in the jolly clean seas around Great Britain’s Isle Of Wight. Not the Gulf Of Mexico—where Hayward has, once again, defied predictions that his image couldn’t get any worse than it already is.

Let’s be honest here: There is nothing good Tony can do for BP at this point, short of allowing the company to fire him—and issue a tersely-worded press release announcing the decision.

Let me make this point clear: Hayward would be doing BP an additional disservice by resigning. The public doesn’t want to see an act of sacrifice from Hayward—and wouldn’t believe him if he said it was his decision. We want to see his ass summarily tossed to the curb. And if he ever wants people to like him again, a public firing is a lot more effective than a resignation in generating the sympathy “foundation” on which he can begin rebuilding his image.

So what else would I do if I were BP? First, I’d hire another PR firm. One, by the way, that’s smarter—and more experienced—in crisis management than I am. But off the top of my head, I would start by using Social Media the way it’s intended to be used: As a dialog medium—not a broadcast medium. Angry people are going to be posting nasty messages about you all over Facebook anyhow; why not give them more freedom to do so on your own page—where you can at least control the response?

Second, I would expand the campaign BP has already launched—profiling actual Gulf area residents involved in the cleanup effort. I like Barryl Willis, the Louisianan whom BP has featured in print and TV ads, discussing his commitment to Gulf residents in leading his company’s legal claims process. For starters, he’s not Tony Hayward.

But I’d take that idea a step further: I’d start profiling non-BP employees working with the company on the cleanup. LOTS of them. I’d even consider building a website featuring those people. Maybe even allow them to blog about their experiences.

Yes, there’s clearly a risk this idea could lead to some negative blogging. But if BP demonstrated absolute goodwill with those people in its mission to make things right, and faithfully followed-up on problems those folks encountered in their own cleanup efforts, I’ll bet they’d start winning some converts.

Got a classic PR gaffe—new or old—that you’d like me to add to this column? Shoot me an email ( francis@harebrains.com ), and I’ll post the best of the best.

COMING SOON…Part Two: This Little Piggie Went WeeWeeWee All The Way To Court.

I was at lunch the other day with a buddy who posed a question I stopped asking a long time ago: “Why is radio in Birmingham so bad?” The broad answer is, “Because radio is bad everywhere”.

That said, this is not a Bash-The-Radio column. There are plenty of good people working in commercial radio—and there are any number of clients to whom I have enthusiastically recommended it as an effective, cost-efficient medium for targeting their clients.

However, as an artistic medium, I have long used radio as the quintessential example of the danger in ad agencies always doing exactly what their clients ask. In general, smart clients (who, by the way, constitute the vast majority of accounts we’ve served over the years) hire communications firms like ours because we have experience and expertise they don’t have, and we know things they don’t know.

Thankfully, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard a new business prospect say, “I have a computer at home with a whole suite of layout programs—so why should I hire you to produce my ads?” You know what, I have a piano at home. That doesn’t make me Thelonious Monk.

All of which is to say that we don’t always agree with our clients’ ideas and suggestions. Of course, we don’t fight with them (who wants an agency like that?). But we’ll certainly offer well-reasoned arguments for pursuing ideas we believe to be more strategically-sound. As far as I’m concerned, that’s one of the main services they pay for—and following a direction I flatly consider unwise, without breathing a word of concern, is (in my opinion) nothing short of professional negligence.

So whenever we disagree with a client, and they absolutely insist on having it their way, I tell them (in so many words): We’ll do what you want. After all, last time I checked, you hired us to produce work for you—not ourselves. But if this develops into a pattern, and we do only what you suggest, eventually you’ll end-up hating us. Just like people hate the radio.

So the more specific answer to my friend’s question (which I’m going to re-word): Why do people hate the radio? Because radio stations play exactly what research says they want to hear.

Once upon a time, before the suits in Research started controlling playlists, commercial radio stations had DJ’s who actually knew—and cared about—music. Yes, there was, in fact, a time when commercial radio DJ’s actually had the authority to play what they wanted people to hear. And a lot of what they played was stuff that took some getting used to. Yes, there was, in fact, a time when commercial radio listeners were actually willing to give challenging new music a chance.

Radio was cool when stations routinely played cool stuff people had never heard before. Which is why research killed cool: People don’t know what they don’t know—and very few of us are willing to invest the time and effort needed to investigate stuff they don’t already know.

So when you ask listeners what they want to hear, all they can tell you is what they already know—which usually isn’t that much. And the longer playlists are based only on what people already know, the dumber those playlists get—which is why, inevitably, those same listeners will eventually hate you.

Which is also why clients inevitably end-up hating agencies who do only what they ask for. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this complaint from prospects working with other shops: “I don’t know what we pay them for. We give them the ideas, we write the copy, and all they do is lay it out and take the 15% commission.” The problem: Either the client has a dumb agency, or the agency has a dumb client. Or both. Regardless, nobody’s best interests are being served.

Needless to say, ad agencies aren’t the only businesses routinely facing the same dilemma. Think, for instance, how many litigators have looked like utter morons because they couldn’t convince dumb clients to stay off the witness stand.

So how you deal with a client who absolutely-positively won’t listen to your best advice? If you can afford to fire them, do. In most cases, for the sake of your reputation, you can’t afford not to.

But every now and then, that simply isn’t possible—without, for instance, people you employ losing their jobs. In cases like that (to paraphrase one of Birmingham’s ad legends—who preferred to comment off the record), do what they say. Make absolutely-positively certain they’ll never forget you tried to give them your best professional advice. And take the money. After all, they’re going to pay somebody to follow orders. It might as well be you instead of the guys down the street. At the same time, know that the relationship isn’t going to last—so start looking for their replacement immediately.

Originally published 5/28/10 in the Birmingham Business Journal. http://bit.ly/hearno