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I had an interesting conversation recently with a source close to the Romney campaign: The source, a prominent Utah businessman, said “Romney is young and now looking to 2012.” What will the Romney platform look like in 2012? Because he’s pandered so much to the far Right (which many feel was a mistake), he’s now stuck there. He can’t flip moderate, he’s cast his lot with the party. But if Obama or Hillary win the Presidency (which is very likely), Romney could be the clear conservative nominee. He’ll still have to figure out how to beat the evangelical “darling”. Whether it’s Mike Huckcabee (Heaven save us) or someone else, they’ll make their voices heard.

So I guess the question is this - what does Romney do in the meantime? Does he work for the RNC? Hope a cabinet position comes his way? (not likely), start a foundation? (the Al Gore route) . . .guess we’ll see.

As a big fan of college football I was intrigued with Michigan opening the season 0-2, especially with one of the losses being at the hands of Appalachian State. What intrigued me more was Michigan’s Mike Hart guaranteeing a win against Notre Dame after getting beat by Oregon. In his words this is what he said:

“We’re going to win next week,” Hart said. “There’s no question in my mind. I guarantee we will win next week. I’m going to get this team ready. Guaranteed.”

Hart set himself up for criticism and you could tell the media would have liked to have seen Notre Dame win, too. Had Michigan lost, that clip would have been played countless times by the media and would have become fodder for the media.

Businesses can learn a lot from Hart’s prediction and that is don’t guarantee anything — sales, products launches, etc. There’s a reason PR pros tell executives to message product launches to say a product will be available in Q3, because it gives the organization a window to work in case something disastrous happens.

Provo, Utah’s own Apx Alarm had some bad press in Indiana recently, and I have to say they did an amazing job responding in the press. (You may not be a fan of summer sales companies, but that’s not the point). Watch and see what they did to respond.

Apx Alarm Video 1

Apx Alarm Reponse in Video 2

Word coming out of Draper is that SNG just fired all of their junior staff, with the exception of one person. Is this the demise of SNG PR? Currently their logo is off of their building, so it would seem so.

I heard a story on KSL News Radio this evening on my way home from the office. There’s a local school district that had it’s board members vote for themselves to get quadruple the pay they are currently getting.

Sounds pretty outrageous right? Sure does, and that’s about all KSL decided to tell the listeners in the radio version of the story. What they left out was that the board members currently spend 20 hours a week working for $3,000 per year! So, yes, they quadrupled their pay to a whopping $12,000 per year. These are the same people who oversee an $850 million budget.

The odd part of the story, which KSL did report online is that these people can forgo District Health Insurance, which would add an additional $17k to their paycheck. Interesting stuff, but a poor revelation of the facts on radio, which leads to misrepresentation and misunderstanding in the minds of news consumers.

As I was reading the online version of the Deseret Morning News today, there was a sports article that caught my eye. The Orem Owlz, a single-A affiliate in the Angels organizations, are trying to flex their muscles with the media by threatening to pull credentials of reports if they don’t refer to the stadium as the Home of the Owlz.

A little background in a nutshell:
- The Owlz rent Utah Valley State College’s baseball field for their home games.
- Recently the school received a $1 million pledge from local businessman, Brent Brown, for the naming rights to the field.
- The Owlz claim the stadium is the Home of the Owlz during their home games and should to be referred to as such because of a Minor League Baseball rule.
- School officials insist the stadium’s name is Brown Ballpark.

One of the first things that the GM, Zach Frasier, who sent the threatening e-mails, should consider is that unless he is Microsoft, Google or another of business’ 800-pound gorillas, you shouldn’t call the media out like that unless there are some absurd inaccuracies in their reporting. Second, he should have followed the lead of other sports organizations like the Utah Blaze and the Salt Lake Bees, who are RENTERS of their stadiums and been happy to have a place to play. Also having a lead sponsor may present the organization with additional sponsorships and publicity.

The actions of the organization may not directly affect their current fan base, but it is a black eye to the team. Bottom line is no one likes an arrogant executive that thinks they can dictate editorial content. What should have the Owlz done? Dealt with the stadium naming rights behind closed doors with the school and not threaten the media and been happy that they’re covering your games instead of damaging a relationship.

It’s too bad they handled it the way they did because minor league baseball is fun to watch and needs all the support it can get.

Giuliani’s membership on the Iraq study panel ended last spring because he never showed up for a single meeting. This prompted the group’s chairman, Jim Baker, to say “If people can’t make the meetings, we’ve got to find people who can.”

On May 18, 2006, the panel gathered in Washington, but Giuliani was busy delivering a $100,000 speech on leadership at an Atlanta business awards breakfast. On April 12 he skipped the session to a keynote speech at an economic conference in South Korea for $200,000.

Giuliani responds? Yep, sending a letter to the Iraq study panel stating the he needed to quit the group because it was interfering with his “previous time commitments”, meaning his lucrative speaking engagements that included $11.4 million in 14 months.

Wow. What a ridiculous statement. Did Giuliani’s communications director take a sick day? At least it was honest I suppose.

According to an article in Rolling Stone, “Giuliani: Worse than Bush”, Giuliani pulls down $16 million a year, including a $2.7 million advance for a book about himself titled “Leadership”, riding the 9-11 wave. This guy is cashing in on 9-11 and is a leading candidate for the GOP nomination? It’s in plain view people; let’s open our eyes.

Giuliani is a classic, politically corrupt New York politician whose track record will certainly catch up with him. So for the GOP: Romney? Fred Thompson? Now Bloomberg is making noise as a possible independent candidate . . . all a better choice than Giuliani.

CEOs are in the spotlight everyday. With trigger-happy board members, demanding customers and a cynical media, they need to be careful of their behavior. And thanks to YouTube, corporate settings are no longer safe (ask Mr. Ballmer).

However, good behavior is not enough. CEOs can no longer have their heads buried in the sand. They need to be constantly engaged with the media. In many cases that includes the blogosphere. It’s too late to begin building relationships with the media during a crisis; that needs to be done beforehand.

What does that mean for PR people? Our responsibility is greater than ever to help our executives communicate clearly with stakeholders. I’ve had the opportunity to work with media savvy executives from large corporations such as 3Com and Burger King to hot start-ups such as Control4 and RemedyMD. It’s very rewarding to see media training in action and know that you’ve helped facilitate a key message to the public. Today’s business climate calls for PR pros to take a larger leadership role.

Guy Kawasaki recently caused some stir by running a “top ten list of Why PR doesn’t work”, citing Margie Zable Fisher’s theprsite.com. Obviously, sometimes PR can fall flat if the client and agency are out of sync. The list is pretty insightful. Certainly most of us (on the agency side) have seen some of these things happen. As professional communicators, sometimes we do a poor job communicating with our own clients. Here’s a link to Guy’s blog containing the list.

After the Utah Jazz beat the Golden State Warriors Monday night in Salt Lake City, Warriors forward Stephen Jackson delivered the following press statement in response to the question of wheter he expected the Jazz to come out fighting like they did in the first quarter. (That was a mouthful).

“Isn’t Utah a fourth or fifth seed?” Jackson said. “They had a great year. They’re a good team. They’re not the Atlanta Hawks.”

Point well taken.

Metaphors can be very powerful in getting your point across with the press, but you should be careful about doing it. Just ask Sen. Ted Stevens about using metaphors to describe the Internet as a series of tubes. Google now has 660,000 references to the blunder indexed online. (Make that 660,001).