Ron Levy (8/19):
This is classic. The board doesn't like the media coverage, and the PR guy is out instead of the board changing what caused the coverage.
What caused it was firing one of the world's most successful corporate leaders. Despite a down market, Hurd doubled earnings and share price in just five years.
Caution. Reader discretion is advised because this newsletter is about to publish in the next paragraph an f-word describing an act that may have shocked the board. The f-word describing what Hurd MAY have been guilty of--it's the old word for what plaintiff lawyers now call "sexual harrassment"--is Flirting. That's what Hurd may have done or seemed to, over dinner in a good restaurant after a drink or two. It certainly wasn't sex. The blonde, Hurd and even the blonde's lawyer say it wasn't sex.
But Hurd may have done the f-thing--or the blonde figured she could get money by claiming that things Hurd said over dinner could be interpreted as flirting, so Hurd was fired and now the PR guy is also out. Bring on the clowns. But maybe they're here.
Northern PR (8/19):
Ron, I agree with you (again!). Even more shocking to me is that HP, one of the leading and largest technology firms in the world, one that is immensely challenged in terms of its reputation and communications, hires a reporter to run their corporate communications department. Huh?! No disrepect to this new hire, but she was a Bloomberg reporter, not a battle tested PR veteran!!
Am I wrong to wonder what this says about how corporations value what we in PR and corporate communications actually do?
One thing is for certain, Bloomberg is certainly not going to hire me (with my many years of corporate communications, PR and marketing experience) to be an editor on their desk. Go figure!
Ron Levy (8/20):
In defense of Guglielmo, whom I don't know, she clearly has top communications skills plus knowledge of technology, and battlefield skills she can hire. An advantqge of hiring a great PR firm is that you can get six or eight really superb people around a table, and get research people who really do it intead of just sounding good. She can get for HP the benefit of world's finest PR minds without having to pay them fulltime.
Also, realisticaly, could the board GET better than Guglielo, or get better than her even to come in for an interview? When a board is hiring, the people a board needs already have top jobs and rewards and don't need the board.
Also how many PR experts, even among those who love the thrill of defending against attack, would be wiling to leave their jobs to work for a board that fired Hurd after he doubled earnings and share price in five years? I wish Gugielmo well.
Bloomberg, CNBC, Wall Street Journal and New York Times can hire almost anyone they want. They are at the top of the mountain so people like Guglielmo who have a job with them must be damn good.
Northern PR (8/20):
Ron, I am sure Ms. Guglielo is smart as a whip. She must be to have a job at Bloomberg. But being a reporter or editor at even a world-class media organization does not translate into becoming head of corporate communications for one of the world's top technology companies, one that is seriously challenged in terms of its reputation.
She may know media and technology, but how can she know the strategy involved in running a huge corporation's external and internal communications? That takes years on the job to learn. Hiring guns from the outside is only one part of the equation. You need to know the strategy yourself. I have served as head of corporate communications for two Fortune 100 public companies.
Believe me, I know how difficult the job is, and I had years of direct corporate communications and PR experience before I went to these companies. Again, no disrepect to her, but this just reinforces to me how low a barrier there is to our profession. It is almost breathtaking. Does not, in my view, speak particularly well to how corporate management actually values our contributions.
I would bet that something is missing in this reporting. I hope the true story is that Ms. Guglielo "formerly" was a reporter at Bloomberg and more recently was a senior person in that corporation's communications department. Still scratching my head on this one.
Ron Levy (8/23):
Come on, hiring a top editor to cope with a media problem is like hiring a doctor to handle heart trouble or bringing in a lawyer to try getting your kid out of trouble. It would have been better to minimize early the massiv emedia coverage by saying he shouldn't have flirted if he did, and the board is putting out an anti-flirting directive to all employees. But if you don'tcope eary, then cope later, and Guglielmo seems admirably qualified. By hiring a great PR firm she can access almost all the coping skills she needs but does not yet have. With PR help, a company in crisis can come out of it better than before the crisis. It's like a guy having a heart attack, getting good medical advice and then losing 40 pounds to avoid another hit.
Bill Huey, Strategic Communications, Atlanta (8/23):
There's nothing unusual about this. The board is simply being unimaginative and doing what they consider the safe thing. If you're having trouble with the media, then hire a media person to straighten things out. The only flaw with this rationale is that it assumes journalism and PR are the same thing, and that PR is just a corporate form of journalism. This is a common but erroneous assumption. Journalists don't believe journalism and PR are the same thing, but corporations do, and make this mistake frequently. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. The dogs bark;the caravan moves on.
Wes Pedersen (8/23):
Give her a chance. There isn't a reporter out there who doesn't think he can do your job better than you.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (8/23):
Once again, Ron, you leap before looking in your newest comment. As Wes has pointed out, this professional deserves reasonable time and opportunity to deal with circumstances none of us even yet really know completely. |