Communications Malpractice?

Sharing Time

Recent tunes on the iPod..."Woman in the Wall" by The Beautiful South. I remember when my kid sister introduced me to this light little ditty thinking how nice the tune was -- until I listened to the lyrics. Comes from a great album though titled "Welcome to the Beautiful South." Also, Elvis Costello's "Veronica."

Cooking tip...here's a quick and easy recipe we like:
Vegetable Shrimp and Pasta

Makes 4 servings

Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 15 minutes

¼ cup corn oil
1 lbs medium fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 cup water
1 cup dry white wine
1 package Knorr Vegetable soup and recipe mix
1 tsp dried oregano
¼ tsp crushed red pepper
8 oz. linguine pasta, cooked and drained

PREPARE pasta according to package directions and set aside to drain.

HEAT corn oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add shrimp and garlic, stirring frequently until shrimp is pink (5 minutes). Remove shrimp and set aside.

ADD water, wine, soup mix, oregano, pepper. Set heat to low, and simmer 5 minutes.

RETURN shrimp, simmer 2 minutes. Spoon over pasta, toss to coat.

Three questions:

• I learned that my anger at the oil companies might best be directed at (surprise, surprise) the government...maybe. More on that later
• I'm proud of stepping up to volunteer for a couple efforts in the local IABC chapter, helping to run the Silver Inkwell judging and meeting with the Career Move folks to talk about how the local chapter can add more value to its membership.
• A happy moment came at work when we were discussing how we can provide all the best professional counsel we have to give based on our very good collective experience, but senior management and business areas won't accept it as valid unless it comes from outside. So we decided maybe we all ought to come in wearing blue blazers and name tags and act like an outside agency..."Where's the restroom?" Got us all laughing silly. Guess you had to be there.

Something about communications...

Lee Aase, manager of syndications and social media (formerly media relations manager) at Mayo Clinic, states an interview for the cover story in March 2008 Ragan Web Content Report "For communication professionals, being unfamiliar with social media tools borders on malpractice." I agree but with an additional thought. Too often, even we communications professionals will rush to social media because it's cool and we think we need to be in that space, if even just to learn the stuff. I think being unfamiliar with social media and rushing to it without bringing along the basic business communications fundamentals (what's our business goal? What's our communications objective? Who are our audiences? etc) is malpractice.

What do you think?

Now about that thing in my craw...

Spoke with someone I know who works at Exxon Mobil, who has been to Valdez, and who understands the profit structure. His explanation of the Valdez Supreme Court argument is that a) the folks in Valdez all became millionaires a long time ago with what Exxon paid out previously. All their boats paid off, all their lives significantly (financially, anyway) better, b) the area is now one of the most pristine, beautiful areas you can find, in part because of cleanup, but mostly because over 19 years Mother Nature has done what she does well, adjusting and cleaning up on her own, and c) because the people of Valdez have all been paid their millions, the punitive fine -- even reduced from $5B to $2.5B amounts to the government saying "Okay, now we want to teach you a lesson." Exxon is saying, "Look, believe us, we've learned the lesson. We've paid out billions already on settlement with the residents of Valdez and the affected businesses and on the clean up."

I'm still skeptical, but bringing it back to communications, if those things are true, why don't we see those arguments from Exxon. Go to their site and search "Valdez" and you get nothing. Were they ever out in the public with those arguments? Certainly not in the article I noted. Maybe their strategy is to save the arguments for the court and not worry about the court of public opinion. I know I have not typically used Exxon, partly because they're always more expensive but in part because of my desire not to reward companies I feel have done wrong. I'm sure there are others more passionate than I about embargoing Exxon based on that same reasoning. Perhaps that represents too small an amount of potential business.

This last could be the reason they may have opted not to communicate on the issue, particularly if what my friend explains about the profit structure is true. Exxon makes relatively little on the sale of gasoline, the majority of their profit coming from selling the oil they pull out of the ground to other countries and companies. He says the vast majority of highly priced stations are independently run and are ignoring the suggested retail price Exxon gives them. He says the biggest element to the high prices we're seeing are because of local, state and federal taxes.

I'm still skeptical on that explanation of pricing because the taxes don't fluctuate on a daily basis or rise over time like the gas prices have. But that's another issue. What do you think about the communications issues around the Valdez thing? Anyone from Exxon communications willing/able to talk? Anyone hear if there was a decision by the Supreme Court yet? Did I miss it? What was it?