Lessons in Media Relations from Tiger Woods and the NFL

Buried deep in Sport Illustrated senior reporter Peter King's most recent edition of Monday Morning Quarterback (a must read for any fan of good journalist), he tells the tale of being a beat writer and spending two hours with Bill Parcells, visiting the notoriously cranky coach's childhood haunts.

King notes that he can't imagine any beat writer having that kind of access to a pro football coach these days. The pressures have changed on both sides of the equation.

Those pressures mean less time less time to develop the relationships that lead to that kind of access. While the shrinking outreach of the media has change some parts of how media relations, it does not mean the industry will follow the way of the Dodo. Good PR can still repair images and grow bottom lines.

For Exhibit A, let me refer you to the media barrage Tiger Woods's PR machine has stoked up ahead the Thanksgiving weekend that lead to his fall from nationwide billboards. Tiger's troubles began when it turned out that his family man image was a sham. Restoring Tiger's image as the face of American marketing starts with recreating his family guy image. In the past week, we have been subject to a round of "Tiger Woods the World's Greatest Dad" stories.

Brilliant as a strategy but ineffective as a quick look on Google finds plenty about affairs and divorces but nothing on the good dad Tiger.

Of course, returning to his ways as the most dominant player in golf would do more to reclaim his corporate image than any series of father knows best articles.

Winning drives decisions in the NFL too. In 2010, season tickets sales fell for the third straight year, and three teams that moved into spiffy new homes for the new 2010 season are on the hook for very high construction costs. Even though the television rights paid to the league have climbed faster than basic cable rates (in 1986, the networks combined to pay the league $420 annually while the current contract calls for a shade over $3 billion annually), winning puts fannies in the seats, especially the expensive comfortable ones with licensing and VIP parking.

This season two head coaches lost their jobs in mid-campaign, an unprecedented event in the NFL. Normally conservative owners prefer to clean house at the end of the year. But we live in unusual times and importance of image management is paramount. Ask Tiger's management team.

Many have discounted the power of PR, but in billion-dollar commercial enterprises PR folks have engaged in media relations programs that because they think it will drive top line success.

Over the weekend, Robert Scoble asked the reoccurring question: why do we need the tech media? If you skip down and read iSocialize's metrics of what works and what doesn't, you understand how the media recognition drives sales. Even Scoble acknowledges that Apple watches the media buzz to see what companies to promote, making PR an effective use of marketing dollars for the successful companies.

The death of media and other non-news

I read another piece on the death of news and thought really? That story has become a cottage industry of its own.

There will always be a place for unvarnished information, if only because people will pay for it. But with a wall of information out there, readers are trying to prioritize their information flow. To do that, they are relying on trusted names, who more than likely share their world view. It's always been that way. Go back to the turn of the century, not this past one but the one before it. Read a respectable news paper. You'd be surprised how strongly the publication's slant shows through. Fox News is only today's version of the Hearst Empire.

Yes, investigative journalism is dying. It's expensive and we no longer think there is a public need. The shame is that without investigative journalism, corporate malfeasance and government corruption will go undocumented as baseless claims fly unchallenged

From a PR perspective, that's not a bad thing. We realize we have the power to communicate directly with our audiences. Media provides third party validation, but the power of media to inform is being sapped by the new methods of delivering content: websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook. The media may not be happy about it, but the direct link to our users makes public relations, well easier.

Been a while, but I am back

Time moves on and people do too. Some times they come back.

In the past year, I shed the PR skin that I'd worn for 10 years and took on a new role in the learning and development community working with a company that does sales training for executives and managers at technology companies. I still have a communications role, but I also do a lot of tech work and serve a Guy Friday for special projects. Life changes and you either adapt or declare bankruptcy.


In the short time that I have stepped away from the full time grind of PR, the industry has been transformed, contracted and expanded by social media. A wild ride, and change that came a faster and bigger clip than the introduction of Web 1.0.


It's like I've gone away to college and come home after a year only to find out that my parents moved to a hipper, more sophisticated part of town. There's is no need to waste your time by detailing the changes here, there are better forums for that, might I suggest all of the good work that is coming out of #444pr.

So, now that the neighborhood has changed and I am no longer a full-time resident, what does that mean for this blog? I'm not sure. At a minimum, it will likely reflect my new emphasis on sales training, but I think it's also going to look at two other passions: social media and the changing nature of work.


The last I think is a biggie. Official unemployment hovers around 10 percent in this country, and the number of people who have given up or are underemployed is considerably higher.

Before the downturn became a meltdown, a friend said what he feared was that we would not be able to create jobs for all of the unemployed. Technology has rendered many positions obsolete. And as the cultural barriers to off-shoring recede, more and more professional jobs will be sourced through international competition.


In the next five years, what we think of work, and thus what we think of ourselves will change as much as PR has changed in the last two years. And to paraphase Bette Davis, "Fasten your seltbelt, it's going to be a bumpy road."

Surviving the next five years will require two things: shock absorbers (cash) and a map (insight).