William J. Holstein

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     REVIEW
     From O'Dwyers PR newslwtter

     Feb. 15, 2008
     MANAGE THE MEDIA
     (DON'T LET THE MEDIA MANAGE YOU)

     By William Holstein
     Harvard Business School Press (March 25, 2008)
     Softcover; 112 pages; $18.00 from amazon.com

     Most CEOs just don’t get PR. That is the basic premise of
William Holstein’s book, Manage the Media (Don’t Let the Media
Manage You). He faults CEOs for believing that PR staffers
“have a black box of tricks that they can play to guarantee positive
coverage.”
     Holstein is a guy who gets both PR and the media. He spent
more than 20 years as world editor at BusinessWeek, senior writer
at U.S. News & World Report, editor-at-large at Business 2.0 and
editor-in-chief at Chief Executive and Directorship magazines.

     Holstein has interviewed dozens of CEOs and found that many of
them downright despise the freewheeling nature of the press,
preferring to remain secluded in a corporate cocoon and letting their numbers do the talking.

     Since CEOs give PR little respect, communications departments are woefully underfunded. “It’s no surprise that, if you attach scant value to the PR function, you would not allocate large sums of capital to it,” writes Holstein.
     The upshot is that PR units are overwhelmed by media calls and must “engage in a kind of triage operation when deciding to whom they will respond and to whom they won’t.”
     That leaves many journalists angry, an emotion that is clearly reflected in their coverage.
     Holstein cites Home Depot, Wal-Mart Stores, Verizon and Countrywide Financial in the first chapter of the book called “How Not to Manage Relations with the Media.”

     Part of DNA
     With the emergence of sophisticated labor activists, coalitions and non-governmental organizations backed by Internet-based communications, companies need to incorporate PR into their very DNA. “Communications can no longer be a sideshow,” writes Holstein.
     CEOs, today, are groomed to address challenges posed by rapidly changing technology, globalization and finance.      Holstein believes PR needs to be tossed into the mix. Boards need to recognize that “candidates for CEO and other high-potential leaders should have the benefit of media training and be exposed to media interviews on their way up the corporate ladder so that they are trained and seasoned.”
     A CEO with sharp PR skills will look for a communications “consigliere,” a “senior, trusted, nonpolitical advisor who could whisper the truth to Don Corleone” writes Holstein in a “Godfather” reference.
That top person does more than media relations. It’s somebody who can “understand the business through the CEO’s eyes.”

     Shaping the message
     One of the worst mistakes CEOs make is falling into the “airline syndrome,” which is responding to media calls only after a plane crashes or when there are major service disruptions.
     Holstein believes CEOs should go on the offensive with their message based on personal relationships and the framing of the intellectual content.
     He recommends CEOs reach out to the news people who cover the business. A monthly dinner with three or four editors is a good place to start. “The relationships created by personal contact can be crucial,” writes Holstein. “And they can be particularly crucial in the event of a crisis—it makes a huge difference if a CEO has actually met the reporter on the other end of the phone call.”
     David D’Alessandro, the former head of John Hancock who moved up its PR/marketing ranks, divulged his cardinal rule to Holstein: “You don’t talk to the press when you have to. You talk to the press on an ongoing basis to form relationships, to give them a sense of trust so that when you are in trouble, they give you the benefit of the doubt.” PR-savvy CEOs define a story by creating a set of issues that the media pays attention to. “The architecture of the message must be credited with the CEOs personal involvement because it is central to how he or she intends to run the business,” writes Holstein.
     The author gives Johnson & Johnson’s William Weldon (commitment to health and wellness) and General Electric’s Jeff Immelt (environment) as examples of two chiefs who have successfully framed their company’s story. Immelt overcame the corporate stigma that GE earned from its long fight against cleaning up the Hudson by agreeing to do the right thing.
     That repositioning led to the launch of GE’s “Ecomagination” program, a plan to tackle the earth’s environmental problems while making millions of dollars.
     Richard Edelman, whose firm handled the “Ecomagination” launch, told Holstein that GE is “not just about corporate social responsibility as philanthropy. It’s CSR that makes money.”
     Holstein writes that a “CEO who takes the PR challenge seriously and builds the right teams and right messages can be hugely effective in shaping media perceptions.”
     He feels it’s possible for a CEO to spend a modest amount of time and money to greatly improve the way a company is perceived.
     A CEO doesn’t have to spend 10 percent of his or her time on PR. It just has to be more than the current zero percent. “The rate of return on that investment could be huge,” writes Holstein.