Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

So I've been grading the RNC convention, from a PR perspective, as around a D. Last night was the final night of the convention and included Mitt Romney's keynote. So let's delve in to the final PR rating. Mitt Romney's keynote: B Mitt did a good job in his keynote. Much better than I thought he would. He personalized himself with stories of his past. He got the crowd to laugh a couple of times. He used religion heavily to make his points (something the GOP base will like). And he laid in to Obama in a 'nice cop' kind of way. He painted Obama as a good guy who got in way over his head and as a result the country suffered. The reason I didn't give him an A for his keynote is simple, it was all pandering and no substance. He says he's going to fix everything and create 12 million new jobs, but doesn't explain how he will do this. In essence, what he gave was a 2008 Obama 'Hope and Change' speech, except he used different wor...

So the other day I gave the RNC Convention a grade of D when it came to PR. Day two was a tad better, but not enough to move the needle and change my view of the convention so far from a PR perspective. The three big speeches the other day were Rand Paul, Condolezza Rice and Paul Ryan. Condolezza Rice Keynote: C Rice's speech was fine all in all. It's the standard a strong military means a strong America speech. I thought it was a bit absurd that she argues, as do the Republicans, that Obama has a weak, unclear foreign policy. Of all the things to knock Obama on, foreign policy is not one of them (at least not from Republican perspective, from a Democrat perspective it would be). I mean, Obama: Passed NDAA Kept Guantanamo open Has kept all the wars going Was fine getting involved in new wars  Has done nothing to broker peace with Iran and Israel Has not cut military spending I mean, Obama has done everything a Republican president would do when it come...

So apparently RIM has been showing off BB10 to its carrier customers and according to RIM the carriers are in love with BB10.  “The response that we got back from the executive team at some of the Canadian carriers was tremendous,” Andrew McLeod, managing director of RIM’s Canadian operations, said in a media briefing near the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ont. on Thursday. “They were visibly positive and visibly enthusiastic.” This makes no sense to me.  If BB10 is truly as amazing as RIM is saying then show something, anything, to the general public. Heck it can be a flash demo of cool features even. RIM is trading at $6.72 a share today in part because RIM is doing nothing, literally nothing, to market BB10.  The Blackberry Web site is still the same as it has always been No definitive features of BB10 have even been announced (other than what people have known for months) No screenshots of cool apps have been leaked No videos of beta BB10 f...

Interesting report out of Israel about how folks are stocking up on (free) gas masks for fear of imminent war with Iran. Just what the world needs, more war. Maybe by 3012 we'll move beyond killing each other. I don't know much about Middle East politics, but this stinks of a PR stunt. If you want to drum up support for war one good way to do it is to actually equip every day citizens with protection against an attack. It reinforces the belief that you are first and foremost concerned with their safety, establishing you as the 'good guy'. The reality is if there is a war it will be initiated by Israel. Ergo, there was no need to go through this exercise (since they will determine the start date, not Iran). They could have simply waited a week or so before the war was going to start and then distribute gas masks to every citizen in the country. The whole process would take maybe two or three days (assuming you've pre-planned logistics, which is a given). ...

The other day I was driving about and noticed an ad on the back of an Ottawa bus that I thought was so genius I had to take a pic.  I love ads that use as few words as possible in which the words have multiple layers of meaning and juxtaposition. Such ads generally are memorable.  Even though this ad is basically only four words (five if you include the url), the words tap in to many different notions.  Finally obviously is a word you would use to describe anything related to death. Death is after all final . Yet, it's also humorous in that they are using it to express the notion that people have been waiting for an affordable funeral. I mean, who says 'Ahhh finally it's affordable to die. I was putting off dying, but now I might as well since it's affordable."  The ad also plays against a recessionary background. I believe we have been in recession for the past four years and an ad like this suggests I'm right. People are trying to save mo...

So the Republican Party kicked off their convention the other day and the two big keynote speakers were Anne Romney and Chris Christie, with Christie being the more anticipated of the two. Ironically, of the two, Anne Romney's keynote was the crowd pleaser (her keynote below). Anne Romney's Keynote: B I found the first half of her speech laughable. She focused on connecting with women and went in to a laundry list of the struggles women today face and how she understands those struggles. She may very well understand those struggles, but from a PR perspective it's never a good move to have someone who is filthy rich telling the poor folks they understand their pain. People don't buy it and it comes off as sounding contrived. I don't think a single woman who is Independent or Democrat will be moved in the least by her words. She did a great job though espousing that her husband is someone who will work hard and who can be trusted. That played directly t...

A shocking study out of the UK has found that there have been an additionally 1,000 suicides in the UK between 2008-2010 above what pre-recession trending would have resulted in. Just as shocking is that in the US military, active soldiers are now committing suicide at a rate of one soldier per day. More soldiers are dying from suicide now than from actual combat. Politicians who like to preach that things aren't great but they are getting better need to keep in mind that they aren't. Forget unemployment stats (which are rigged anyway, yet currently stand at 8.3 per cent), forget net worth statistics (which in the US show a 40 per cent drop in individual net worth since 2008), forget a broken stock market (which while going up is seeing company after company getting slaughtered, RIM, Zynga, Facebook, etc.)... forget all those 'metrics' which clearly show things are not getting better. Just look at the suicide rate. Nothing measures the sense of 'hope and h...

Kittens that Conrad Black saved I'll give it Conrad Black , man he is a good writer. In a recent op-ed piece in the National  Post he writes about how he and his wife saved two kittens who were trapped in some kind of storm drain on his property. From a PR perspective, this shows that Conrad is a sharp guy when it comes to PR because rescuing kittens is pretty much a sure fire way to ingratiate yourself back in to the public's good books. People (at least some) may still feel Black is a crook, but with moves like this they start think of him as a 'nice-guy crook', which is a major step towards shaking the 'crook' brand all together. One of the best ways to shake a negative brand is to implement cognitive dissonance, which is to say if the viewer holds two opposing views of your brand that contradict each other - such as in this case the views of 'nice guy' and 'crook' - then they move from being solidly biased against you to being ope...

Just mind boggling that this kind of thing is going on in the world in the year 2012. A group of striking (platinum) miners were confronted by police in Johannesburg, South Africa. When the miners approached the police (apparently armed with sticks and machetes), the police gunned them down, leaving 18 dead. Reuters has the video below. The National Post has the full story as well. Warning: I normally wouldn't post a video of people getting shot, even if its from Reuters, but people need to wake up to increased use of police forces to protect corporate interests.  I'm not saying illegal behaviour shouldn't be addressed, but gunning people down is not the solution to addressing workforce grievances. This is why I believe in PR so much. A PR person whether at the mining company or the local police force could have argued strongly that confrontation serves no purpose. It's better to lose money than to destroy your brand by slaughtering workers in an attemp...

No, I don't think Obama is reading my blog, but it's a nifty coincidence that just the other day I compared Obama to a snake-oil salesman and today Obama is out on the campaign tour saying that Romney is selling "Trickle down snake oil" . The campaign continues to unfold just like I said it would, with both Obama and Romney making the case that they should be president not because of their own strengths, but because of their opponents weaknesses. The reality is that both of them are snake-oil salesmen and if the world weren't in such a mess, it would be humorous to watch two snake-oil salesmen trying to convince the public that its actually the other guy who is selling the placebo and that they are selling the actual cure.

Epic rant on The Young Turks by Cenk regarding politicians being bought off. This is the kind of 'news commentary' that you'll never see on ABC or CNN. Now obviously you wouldn't want the news to sound like this all the time. But an honest rant now and then is a good thing because sometimes you just have to call bullshit what it is... bullshit. (warning: mature language)

The 2012 campaign is well under way now, especially after Romney picking his VP candidate in Paul Ryan. Having said that, the PR messaging is nothing to be impressed by. Both candidates are pressing full-steam ahead with messaging points that have little or no relevance to the real issues facing Americans (and the world). Obama is not running on his record (because his record sucks), nor is he running on where he will take America by the end of his second term. Instead he is attacking Romney at every turn in an attempt to convince Americans not that he is good, but rather that Romney is bad.   Romney on the other hand is using the age-old technique of taking the low road while acting like you are taking the high road. He recently told the president to take his 'campaign of division, anger and hate back to Chicago." Ummm... Mitt, just a heads up, that sounds pretty divisive and angry. It also fuels the hate those may have towards Obama.  It's a ...

I love it when regular every day people essentially engage in PR stunts. I like the ingenuity they usually show and I also think it can be extremely effective at making a point, especially if it's related to pointing out hypocrisy. Alex Schaefer was recently arrested for 'chalking' in front of a Chase bank. I just found this highly fascinating in that chalk does no damage, you simply wash it off.  Yet the police arrested and fined him. The bankers on the other hand, who have caused a world-wide recession and who were behind: the predatory loans in the sub-prime mortgage crisis robo-signing mortgage without ensuring the borrowers were credit worthy selling 'junk' debt as though it was triple-A debt creating a derivative ponzi scheme that could literally destroy the global economy, manipulating Libor  gambling with money they didn't have and then required tax payers to take on their debt (which is what a bail out is) They did all those things...

Three developments with CNN over the past week have left me wondering, just what the heck is CNN thinking? 1) The first was a segment on CNN's Your Money. They ran a 120 second segment in which the host, Ali Veshi spoke with another CNN host Richard Quest as to whether people should be investing in the stock market. What blew my mind was they started by saying that Yes the markets are rigged and manipulated, but that despite this, you HAVE to invest in stocks. To me this is not journalism. This is not reporting the news. And if anything it is utterly and totally irresponsible of them to be making these kinds of statements. This is different than having guests on who state an opinion and viewers know to take that opinion with a grain of salt or to go and do further research. When its the 'host' making these comments, its safe to assume that many viewers are regular viewers and feel an emotional bond or trust with the host. So when the host says to do something, th...

It looks like the speculation trend I was predicting for RIM has finally arrived. Too bad I sold my RIM shares a week ago, probably should have held on a little longer. Unfortunately, that's the problem with RIM as a stock now, everything seems to be 'late' with them. I would have expected this speculation cycle to have ramped up a few weeks ago. Anyway, RIM has bounced up a good 10+ per cent in the past week on rumors that: IBM may be interested in acquiring their enterprise services business. Samsung may be interested in acquiring RIM But then, as quick as the Samsung rumor appeared, it disappeared. Samsung not interested in RIM If I were still holding RIM stock I'd take the recent up swing as a chance to sell. While the above stories clearly support a speculative PR trend emerging, unfortunately, both the stories were odd-ball stories to me. Heinz has said that RIM is not looking to be acquired and is committed to BB10. So if we take him at his wor...

The Globe and Mail owes RIM a huge apology. The Globe ran a story stating that RIM was cutting 3,000 employees in addition to the 5,000 announced. The Globe's exact words: "According to the report, the cuts would be in addition to the 5,000 layoffs the company announced earlier this year." It turns out that the 3,000 are merely folks from the original 5,000 announced last month. Shame on the Globe, who modified their story but never made mention of the correction. The new text reads: According to the report, the cuts would be part of the 5,000 layoffs the company announced earlier this year. That's a pretty massive mistake the Globe made. Who knows how much it affected RIM's stock, but such a material mistake should at least warrant a public apology to RIM.

All I can say is thank God I sold my RIM stock today. There was a story I read earlier today that suggested RIM would be laying off 3,000 people, but the impression I got was that it was part of the 5,000 it announced a few weeks ago. Looks like the story (or my interpretation of it) was wrong. According to the Globe and Mail , citing Cantech Letter , the cuts would be in addition to the 5,000. So let that soak in for a minute. Rim was at approximately 16,000 when they made the cuts (dropping them down to 11,000 employees). Another 3,000 would bring them down to 8,000 staff - literally shedding half the company in approximately a month. I'm all for right-sizing during tough times, but that is just insane. It's partly insane because how in the world does RIM expect to compete with half its original workforce? But its even more insane because what has changed in the past three weeks to warrant another 3,000 fires? Seriously, something had to have changed. It's a...

So I bought RIM (Research in Motion) at $7.54 about a month ago and I'm bailing on the shares as it looks like my PR thesis is not going to play out. My thesis, for those who have been following, was that RIM packed so much bad news in to one quarter, that with the bad news in its rear view mirror, we would see a news cycle of speculation and articles articulating the value in RIM beyond the doom and gloom. In addition, my thesis suggested that RIM had to start talking about the innovation in BB10 right now . In my opinion they couldn't go silent for the next three months and simply hope that consumer sentiment would not degrade further. My thesis looked like it would play out with a one time bump up 12 per cent on Amazon acquisition speculation. In addition, Prem Watsa doubled his investment in RIM and now owns 10 per cent of the company. So it looked like a speculative / value news cycle might get off the ground (there's no reason it shouldn't have, other than inc...