When Campbell Brown of CNN asked McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds about Palin’s experience, Mr. Bounds did what he was trained to do – he answered the question he wanted to answer and not the question asked.  But instead of doing what political media often (sadly) do and moving on to the next question, Ms. Brown pressed Mr. Tucker to answer the question he was asked.   Mr. Tucker was woefully unprepared and looked like he was avoiding the question (Watch the video and judge for yourself – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxMCp1vydEI).

Now, the McCain campaign has canceled a Larry King interview supposedly as punishment.    The result is risking a reputation for looking like they can’t or won’t answer the tough questions which opens up another “just like Bush” line of attack.

The problem was that Mr. Tucker, like most people in politics, was only trained to answer the question he wanted to answer.  While this is a well established and practiced media relations practice, it shows an incomplete media relations training.   Mr. Tucker was obviously not trained on what to do if a journalist presses on a tough question. 

We work most often with business and trade media.  While we do train our clients to get their message out by redirecting to answers they want to give, we also train and prepare them to make sure they answer the question asked in the most direct way possible.  It’s not simply to avoid a Tucker Bounds situation but to show transparency and create goodwill both with the audience and the journalist.  Whether it is a politician or business executive and regardless of whether a journalist pushes or not, people see when the person being interviewed is avoiding the question.   For audiences, avoiding the question reinforces the lack of transparency and truthfulness in politics.  Just imaging if a CEO avoided answering a question on explaining why the company missed earnings and simply talked about their vision?  One word – skewered. 

Beyond the PR lessons, my main hope for this political season is that, regardless of who wins, more journalists take note of Campbell Brown and realize that when they ask a question they should get an answer to that question.  And when they don’t, it should be noted publicly.  If this was standard practice, we would start seeing the transparency and truthfulness from politicians we all seek.

Protecting and enhancing your search reputation is still an often overlooked component of reputation management, as the Obama campaign found out.  Using a marketing tactic known as ambush ads, The Wall Street Journal’s recent article on the McCain online strategy outlined how McCain is using Obama related keywords (such as Biden) to direct viewers to McCain controlled content.  The result? For many people looking for more information on Biden and Obama, the first impression will be one formed by the McCain campaign.

Search continues to be dominated by marketing and sales by search reputation is an area that should be considered as basic as media relations, if not more so.  The problem lies not in PR teams realizing the importance of search, but in the understanding of how to manage a brand’s search reputation.  To do that, several basic skill sets and steps must be taken:

1. An understanding of your audience and their use of search.  Like any other medium, the importance of search reputation management will be more less important depending on your audience.  For example, a young professional audience may likely use Google for a first stop for information while a high end business audience may use a high end research service such as Factiva for corporate information.  Understand how and why your audience is using search.
2. Analysis and ongoing tracking of user search habits so that the PR team understands what people are looking for when they happen to or should come across positive and accurate information on your brand.
3. An understanding of organic and paid search engine optimization.  This means learning how to manage Web page optimization and paid search results so that the first search impression of you brand is the right one.

These are just three basic rules to follow.  The reality is more complicated and difficult as it requires PR teams to be as well versed in search as they (hopefully) are in media relations.   As an industry, we’re still at an early stage.  How many PR job descriptions have you seen with search engine optimization skills as part of the requirement?

I’m not going to critique each ad, you should do that, but they are worth looking at to see interesting alternative ideas for how candidates can communicate their message.  Of course, some also highlight why the ad agency approach is not the best choice to lead in political campaigns which are zero sum  (e.g., do we really want the world voting as one proposes? It would raise awareness but being the global winner can easily backfire domestically).

Reading this did remind me that companies should also be looking for new ways to communicate their brand messages.  This does not mean constantly firing agencies (a common mistake), but having alternative sources of creative and strategic inspiration that the agency(ies) can then put into action.

The problem for McCain is that there area easy counter attack lines for both these messages and the commercial as a whole smells a lot like Bush era scare tactics using making fact time claims that have a fairly shallow basis – something voters may be very wary of at this point.  From Obama’s perspective, it’s easy to show how he’s in fact against foreign oil and may try to wean the nation off oil (even T Boon Pickens will side with Obama on this…not good for McCain).  As for higher taxes, Obama’s main tax message has been on too many tax breaks for the wealthy over the last few years while the rest of the nation saw little gains in earning.  

One early indicator can be seen in the last two months of blog posts.  Just in the last week there is an update of posts that come up with McCain and the keywords rove, negative, and attack ads.  All these are words that, with an average politician would not be a big deal. But this is supposed to be John McCain, the non-Bush (Rove), non negative, non attack-ad politician. 

Per some of my previous posts, I wonder how much reputation forecasting the campaign management did before putting out this commercial.  While negative campaign works (sadly), did they also consider how this particular type of negative campaign may be overplayed?  Did they also calculate how doing commercials that go against McCain’s historical appeal of being a straightforward, no spin politician may cause a greater than average backfire?  If they did, I’m betting their calculations were off.  We’ll find out soon enough.

Watch the ad here :

And Obama’s reply:

That said, the only candidate I don’t think has a bitterness problem is McCain.  Clinton’s complaints about media and right wing conspiracies may show she has a similar bitterness problem.   McCain, on the other hand, has not given out such cues…or at least they haven’t been reported on as heavily (and if the media – including bloggers – are silent , it can be as if it hasn’t happened as far as the public is concerned).

Regardless, I’m still an Obama-Clinton-McCain supporter (in other words, I can live with all three of them) and  I still think the debate is a huge waste of air time as compared to less sexy but far more important issues to voters (how about a little more on the specifics of health care?). 

So why write about this?  Any senior executive that is consistently in the public eye should pay close attention.  Your words, attitude and stories give out cues on an ongoing basis.  Those cues can be as powerful, and sometimes more powerful, than the messages the communications team so carefully crafted.  So mind your Qs.

PELLEY: But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world. You must have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would infuriate many Americans.
AHMADINEJAD: Well, I’m amazed. How can you speak for the whole of the American nation?
PELLEY: Well, the American nation–
AHMADINEJAD: You are representing a media and you’re a reporter. The American nation is made up of 300 million people. There are different points of view over there.

I hate to say it but a solid point is made here.  The reporter is asking a question that assumes a fact rather than presents fact-based proof.  Had the reporter asked the question by saying “You must have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would outrage many Americans and I say this as we have a national survey showing that over 90% of the public would consider themselves outraged if you visited” then it might have forced a straight answer.  Instead, the reporter assumed a fact thus opening an opportunity to question the questioner instead of being forced to answer.

This reminds of a media training exercise Edelman put it’s senior management through when I was there about five years ago.  A reporter would interview us and start asking questions that assumed facts (e.g., explain why your company is stealing money instead of I have evidence here that shows your company is stealing money).  Of course, the right answer to the first question was to question where the reporter got these supposed facts and assumptions.  It was a good reminder that how questions are asked open opportunities to turn the tables in the interview.   I wonder who Ahmadinejad uses for media training? 

Today’s Carl Bialik column in the Wall Street Journal (read it here and in his blog- subscription required until Rupert Murdoch says otherwise) shows how candidates need to pay more attention as well (incidentially, the political consultants/pr pros in politics are, I believe, the biggest over-spinners).   Sites such Factcheck.org and Politicfact.com are now checking the accuracy of candidates statements.  

Reading this reminded me of the key difference between business and political reporting (my subjective view as a reader).  Political reporters seem to focus on reporting a candidate’s position and key messages so that audiences can decide for themselves.  Business reporters focus on what a company says, and then research the facts and reports that research so readers can decide the future of a company’s market position.

Imagine if political reporters were more like business reporters.  They would report not only on what candidate says but how also research its factual basis.  Like business reporters, they would note on an ongoing basis how accurate the facts out of a campaign were and the full context of those facts (e.g., Romney implied that military spending was cut under Clinton…how many reporters noted the spending level cut took place under Regan?…and no, I have not fact checked this fact check).  Or, as many have asked, what if the news media had focused not only reporting but qualifying the facts the Bush administration put forward to justify the Iraq war just as business reporters research the facts put foward in a company’s earnings reports. 

This comparison also reminds me of one of the great ironies of the non-political public relations industry – that PR gets the blame for turning fact into fiction.  In fact, while a few bad apples certainly help shape this reputation, I often find that it’s non-PR executives pushing the fact-based envelope and it’s the PR professional or agency providing warnings on how messages that can’t be backed with facts can backfire.  However, like lawyers, counsel is what we provide and, even more than lawyers, our counsel is often ignored (probably due to the punishment not including jail time…usually).

John Edwards apparently told a labor group he would ask Americans to sacrifice their SUVs and drive more fuel efficient vehicles.

Is he going to sacrifice his mansion and move to a more fuel efficient house? After all, his mansion eats up far more energy on a monthly basis than my Honda Pilot (which is as fuel efficient as the sedans that drive him around – see here).

This is an obvious area of attack on John Edwards for anyone that would love to focus on a candidates personal and policy hypocrisy.  And there’s always a long line of people. 

So much for this campaign being a good model.  Did anyone do any proper message preparation and training for John Edwards before letting him loose with this political statement?

As Jon points out, unlike marketers, campaign consultants are in a zero sum game. They either win and election or lose. That means they don’t have the luxury of experiementing with cutting edge marketing, they must go with what works. While many people do get information online, consultants know that many are still watching television and ads. They also know that only a small portion of the population has Tivo or similar capabilities which means people actually watch the ads, versus ignoring online ads while reading online information.

Personally, I’m not a big television advertisement fan. It seems a bit expensive for an ad outlet that so many people hate. And while I do think political ads will move to digital platforms like Websites, mobile and more, it will only happen as viewer habits move and to other non-TV mediums. It will happen, but it takes more than a few years of Internet penetration to change decade old viewer habits.

And I live in Connecticut where Lieberman lost to Lamont, due, many said, to online activism. Online activism may have helped boost Lamont, but I sure saw a lot of Lamont TV ads being used to push down Lieberman. Event Lamon’ts campaign seemed to know that old media isn’t old. It’s just older. And often, the older more experienced entity can be a lot more effective than the louder but still developing one.