Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

I almost never follow celebrity news (what some actor is wearing or eats for breakfast has never interested me). That said, Charlie Sheen is definitely going over the edge in his recent interviews with the media . It's almost like he's taking a page out of the Lindsay Lohan playbook of celebrity PR. The problem though is that the old saying "any PR is good PR" is not true. Celebrities, just like companies, have brands to manage. For a celebrity, appearing nearly delusional (as opposed to irrational, which is common for celebrities) doesn't help your brand. It may garner you attention (as the public tends to have a sick fascination with seeing celebrities implode and self destruct) but it destroys the image the public use to have of you, which means after all the drama stops at some point they will no longer connect with your brand. What you create is a state of cognitive dissonance where the different brands you have presented them with clash and they no ...

Macleans recently published an op-ed discussing the issue of usage based billing entitled The Internet should be fair—not free—to everyone . I was really surprised at the op-ed because Macleans is owned by Rogers and the op-ed is heavily slanted towards explaining why UBB is fair and how it's a travesty that the CRTC is back tracking as a result of political pressure. If the issue was actually debatable the op-ed wouldn't be so bothersome. Yet the very crux of the issue - selling something that costs 3-cents per gig at a cost of $1.50 per gig  (a markup that is truly mind boggling and excessive) - is totally ignored in the editorial. UBB as a concept makes sense but UBB in a duopoly market does not (and making the independent ISPs charge based on what Bell is charging - minus a 15 per cent discount - isn't competition at all if the service is already being marked up 400 per cent).  Op-ed's are opinions, so at least Macleans published this from an opinions perspect...

[indulge me this non-PR related post]... So as those following my blog know I've recently switched from cable to DSL and I'm now a TekSavvy customer (one of the ISPs that run off the Bell network). So how has my experience going from Rogers to TekSavvy been? Overall I have to say I'm super glad I made the switch. I can't explain it but I'm on a 5mbps download DSL service and it runs FASTER than my 10mbps download service that I had with Rogers. For downloading media they are about the same speed, but when it comes to the Web - loading Web pages or watching YouTube videos - I find it much faster than when I was with Rogers. So thumbs way way up!  I'm paying half as much, not sacrificing speed and getting three times the 'cap' - I can now download 300 gigs a month for 36 bucks after tax (versus 96 gigs a month for 60 bucks with Rogers). On the negative side, the independent ISPs still have a long way to go on tech support. When I had problems w...

For those of you with an interest in documentaries / investigative journalism movies, Inside Job is worth the watch. It's much in the vein of The Corporation , Capitalism: A Love Story , and Fog of War .  Fog of War is my favorite movie that looks at the folly that can unfold from the powers that be making decisions based on certain pre-conceived notions of risk and reward. Personally I think all of the above movies should be mandatory viewing for students studying public relations, because they are all what I might call post-PR reviews of certain events (the PR that's left over when no one is actively generating any more PR related to the event in question).  Which brings up an interesting question that I think is rarely talked about but is so essential to PR, which is, do you base your PR strategies around immediate returns, short-term returns or long-term returns? Or is even that a false choice, can you perhaps have all three? The reality is that PR generally opera...

So Shaw Communications has just proven that they have some damn good PR people who clearly have a seat at the management table (this goes to show you how critical it is to have your PR people truly integrated with operations and listening to what they have to say during a crisis). Shaw has recently announced that it will not implement usage-based billing and that it is reaching out to its customers to find out what they want. Iain Grant, a technology analyst with SeaBoard Group, is quoted in the linked story above as saying the move is... "extraordinary. We've got a cable company that says it wants to talk and listen to its customers."  Now, I don't know a lot about Shaw as they service the West Coast of Canada and I'm on the East, and so I deal with Rogers and Bell. But I'll say this, Shaw reacted perfectly to all this from a PR perspective.  While my earlier suggestion was that these companies apologies for trying to push UBB through, we all know ...

I've been playing around with video lately and wanted to convert various video files from one format to another. This is a task that I think PR folks are well served knowing how to do given the role video is going to play in PR as time goes on. Whether that's converting video for use on YouTube, iPhones, BlackBerry's, the Web or a variety of other mediums. Each outlet has its own video format preference. With the right video converter though formatting your video to suit the medium is as simple as a click. Some of the programs I've tried out and like have included: WinAVI (my favorite) NHC Prism Video Converter Ojo Total Video Converter There are lots of others on the market, but I find these ones do the job just fine. Generally speaking you can rip a 100 meg video to another format in less than five minutes. I've also been playing around with Magix Movie Edit Pro .  This is more for editing videos... slicing up sections and re-arranging them, or merg...

So the day has finally come. A few months ago I canceled my television with Rogers and today I canceled my Internet - I now no longer have any services with Rogers (or at least won't come Feb 28th) for the first time in what must be at least 16 years. I've jumped over to the DSL camp now through TekSavvy. It's simply too hard to justify paying $55-65 bucks with Rogers for 95GB  a month when you pay $36 bucks (after taxes) with TekSavvy for 300 GB a month. Sure, your download speed is slower (5MB versus 10MB) but you can get by with 5mb just fine.  I have to say one thing about my experience today (something PR folks should take note of). I was on the phone with Rogers and their customer service representative was amazing (warning, if you sign up with TekSavvy they treat you nice and are great folks, but they do lack the customer service polish that Rogers has - it's clear they are ramping up that division and have a lot of new folks working the lines and being tra...

I was thinking the other day that one of the most significant changes that is occurring in the world today which has gone pretty much unnoticed is the evolution (or some might say de-evolution) of the human vocabulary and a shift in meaning associated with various words in our lexicon.  One of the things that makes communicating possible is a common understanding of what a word means. When I say giraffe the same image pops in to our minds and a common understanding is established. String hundreds or thousands of words together and ideally enough 'common understanding' is shared that we establish what might be best described as a 'shared reality' - a degree of understanding of another's views where we feel there are very few unknowns. Failure to achieve this shared reality results in miscommunication. To no surprise, effective communication has always been difficult because of the clarification process usually required - so when you say 'unlimited' do y...

There's a service in the US called ProfNet from PRNewswire. Basically what it does is allow journalists to identify their need on a given day. I've used it in the past and while you won't get a ton of opportunities from it (or at least I didn't), there were some that were applicable. And it's really nice not to have to do anything to find an opportunity... you simply view a list of areas of interest that journalists are looking for help with on any given day. I was pleasantly surprised to see a new free service called SourceBottle . I was even more shocked to see that the fees that are associated with the service are actually fees journalists have to pay! So basically, their model is the exact opposite of ProfNet (at least based on the last time I used ProfNet a few years ago, where it was the PR people who would pay the fee and I believe it was free to journalists to use). The only draw back? It's a service out of Australia and so most of the editorial o...

For those of you in PR, you know that the one thing that is essential to your job is your list of media contacts. Over the years my media list has grown to thousands of names. Personally I've always enjoyed Marketwire's service which is reasonably priced (I won't state cost as I don't want to define their market offering for them as I know prices can fluctuate). Recently, as I typically do to stay up-to-date, I was checking out what other PR services were out there and stumbled across a really interesting offering from Cision .  Basically when it comes to contact databases you pay an annual fee. What Cision has done though is allowed you to build a media list and pay a one time fee. What I found interesting was the cost per contact, which was 70 cents. So a media list of say 200 names would be 140 dollars. It's an interesting model. I think it's still more convenient and cost effective to sign on to an annual service myself - and from past experience I...

So the Ontario government sent me a brochure the other day about electricity prices and how they will be changing. This is in response to the new time-of-use pricing model they will be putting in to effect. It's a very simple, full-color, five-page brochure which is mostly images (if you live in Ontario you've probably seen it).  Well, it's actually 10-pages with five in English and five in French. Ontario has just over 13-million people so (and I'm totally guessing here) this brochure probably went out to say four-million households - let's be ultra conservative and cut that projection down to two-million households. Now, let's say each of these pamphlets cost 50-cents, which I think is a very conservative figure for 10-pages of full color  - that would put the cost at a million bucks. This doesn't include the cost of mailing it all out (even if it only be man-hours). So while receiving a pamphlet in the mail might seem like no big deal, in this ca...

David Armano has a great blog and I stumbled across an image he designed that I thought was amazing...   I think this image hits the nail on the head. Basic brand building, from a PR perspective (and ideally from a marketing perspective also) is all about positive interactions, consistency, credibility, authenticity and trust. This is why I've always considered PR to be one part technical skills, one part hard work and one part art.  I say art because you can give 100 PR people the same task and end up with 100 different results along a spectrum of bad to great. The angles you take in pitching reporters, the manner in which you discuss the potential of a story with a reporter who is interest, the way in which you manage your contacts, the manner in which you prep your spokespersons, and the list goes on... there are so many variables that are intricately tied to the unique style of each PR person. It's funny, I recently had a friend tell me about a compliment they rec...

So the Liberals sent me an email today about usage based billing. Basically the email outlined how the conservatives have no digital strategy, how the Liberals are building one, and how they are on the side of Canadians. A snippet of the email that I found interesting was: Liberals have been engaged on these issues. In 2009, we worked with the Openmedia.ca / Save Our Net Coalition on Net Neutrality, a position that we support wholeheartedly. Last fall, we announced our Open Government Initiative, which will make government data accessible to all Canadians.   So why was this letter an example of both good and bad public relations? On the good side , kudos to the Liberals for reaching out to stakeholders while the iron is hot. The reality is that it shows they want me to know they care about an issue I care about. Neither the Conservatives or NDP did so. In addition, they didn't just reach out, but have a micro-site dedicated to UBB. So they are not just reaching out,...

All I can say is wow! Apparently the Prime Minister is going to reverse the CRTC usage based billing ruling if the CRTC doesn't, according to the Toronto Star.  The opemedia stop the meter campaign has climbed to over 350,000 people in less than two weeks. What makes this so exciting is that this was clearly a case of corporate greed run a-muck, a regulatory body making rules to benefit big business at the cost of Canadian citizens, and when it all came out in the wash it turns out that our government actually does listen to the people and will take the side of the people over big business. This also goes to show the power of PR... because without the 350,000+ petition signatures and associated media coverage... if Canadians had simply sucked it up and walked away quietly (like we do with gas prices for instance)... I doubt anyone would be looking at reversing the CRTC's decisions. If the ruling is reversed the next question has to be what is to be done with the CRTC? ...

This is an exciting blog entry for me as I'm announcing that I'm going in to the consulting business with the launch of Rob Mclean Communications Consulting (RMCC). My consulting services will be centered around three core areas - growing brand equity, managing your brand and living your brand. I'll be offering a suite of PR and AR services, as well as supplemental communications, messaging and positioning services. You can read more about my offering on my Web site . So why consulting? To be sure, a full time, in-house position has its benefits. Colleagues to interact with on a daily basis Benefits Never having to worry about your next job  A steady reliable paycheque Not having to concern yourself with anything outside your core duties (the CEO and management can worry about operations and the big stuff). But at the same time, an in-house position lacks many things that consulting offers, including: The excitement of running and growing your own business ...

Ok, I love Twitter as much as the next guy, but the question does need to be asked - how many tweets (per day) is too many tweets? I follow a variety of folks and continue to add people every day. Some folks are a pleasure to follow while others are spamming Twitter endlessly. I often times open up tweetdeck and see 20 entries from someone posting over a couple of hours and think 'oh come on!' I have to scan through their tweets to read the tweets from other people that I'm following and it can be very annoying. Then there are others who will post pointless tweets like "wow it's sunny outside."   Really? You just had to tell the world that? What gets frustrating is that I don't want to unfollow some of these folks, because I'm interested in what they are up to and I'm also often interested in many of their tweets. So how many tweets are too many?  In my opinion, anything more than five tweets a day is too much. If I'm following 30 ...

So CBC interviewed a gentleman by the name of Markus Giesler on their Spark radio show about the metering of Canadian internet. Forgive me rehashing the issue, but I just want to be clear so that my comments on his interview aren't misinterpreted. Basically, metered billing (or UBB -usage based billing) is a result of the ISPs reacting to a market evolution wherein they are being transformed into 'dumb pipes' and wherein innovation (primarily the internet itself) is eroding their traditional lines of revenue (ie. people are canceling TV and watching shows on the internet or using less long distance and using Skype instead). So think of it like this. Rogers use to sell apples, oranges and carrots. But suddenly people are able to get oranges and carrots for free or for much less (use your own imagination as to how this would be possible). So instead of Rogers saying "Wow, we better find something else to sell to replace the revenue we are losing from oranges and ...