SC JOHNSON REVIEWS PR.
SC Johnson, the family-run consumer products marketer, has begun a tight-lipped review of its outside PR as the company begins life under new CEO Fisk Johnson.

Kelly Semrau, VP of global PA & communication, called the review "part of routine business practice" in a statement supplied to O Dwyer s. "As a privately held company, this evaluation process will remain confidential." Senior PR manager Steve Peckham noted: "This is the only information we will be sharing."

Weber Shandwick is the main outside PR firm for SCJ which markets household brands like Pledge, Ziploc and Saran. The account is pegged in the mid-six-figure range.

CEO William Perez resigned last month to take the top post at Nike, paving the way for Johnson--who was chairman and rose through the company s marketing ranks--to take the reins.

KOSMOS PICKS BKSH.
Burson-Marsteller s BKSH & Assocs. unit has signed on as the Washington representative for Kosmos Energy, the Dallas-based firm formed in `03 to drill for oil along the coast of west Africa.

KE is backed by a $300 million investment by Wall Street players Warburg Pincus and Blackstone Partners. The region holds 14 billion barrels of oil and "sizeable fields" of up to 780M barrels, according to KE. The corporate strategy is to establish ventures with countries from Morocco to South Africa that have oil fields of at least 500M barrels.

BITE TAKES BITE OUT
OF BIG APPLE.
Bite Communications has recruited Waggener Edstrom s Jonathan Gandal to open a New York City office for the San Francisco-based high-tech firm.

Gandal, a 17-year PR veteran, was senior VP at Wag Ed posted in Stamford, Conn., and handling the MasterCard International business.

Previously, Gandal was at Brodeur Worldwide, where he headed the firm s flagship IBM account. He also has counseled AMD, American Lung Assn., Philips and Eastman Chemical.

BC is part of U.K.-headquartered Next Fifteen Communications Group. Its blue-chip client roster includes Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, Iomega, Siebel Systems and Toshiba.

Burghardt Tenderich is general manager of BC s North American operations.

RL&M SCHOOLS KLEIN
ON WAYS OF PR.
The New York City Dept. of Education, which once paid Clark & Weinstock $33K a-month for PR duties, is now getting pro bono help from Robinson Lerer & Montgomery.

C&W, part of Omnicom, had been organizing talking points and writing speeches for Schools Chancellor Joe Klein, according to The New York Times.

The firm was axed after media reports surfaced that it was hired without putting the contract up for bid.

Stephen Morello, a spokesperson for Klein, said the Board is using RL&M because of its "corporate turnaround" experience. The Young & Rubicam Brands unit has represented Texaco, Pfizer, America Online and German media company Bertelsmann.

Klein had headed Bertelsmann s U.S. operation prior to joining the restructured school system as its first chancellor. He was in charge of the Justice Dept. s antitrust unit before joining the media combine with more than $20 billion in annual revenues.

Klein s biggest splash at the education department was in luring Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John Kennedy, to do volunteer fund-raising for the public schools. She recently announced plans to exit the Funds for New York Schools post.

RL&M is headed by PR heavyweight Linda Robinson.

WPP/GREY DEAL HITS SNAG.
WPP Group filed incomplete documentation for its $1.3 billion takeover of Grey Global Group, and must resubmit its merger notification, EU regulators ruled Nov. 23. The Brussels-based bureaucrats had been expected to okay the deal by Nov. 26.

The new filing requirement makes it unlikely that WPP CEO Martin Sorrell will meet his goal to wrap up the paperwork regarding the Grey deal in January.

WPP beat France's Havas and investment banker Hellman & Friedman for Ed Meyer s ad/PR combine.

PRSA DISREGARDS
ASSEMBLY ACTION.
The PRSA board and staff have thus far refused to obey a 159-98 vote by the Oct. 23 Assembly directing that the individual votes on decoupling APR from Assembly membership be revealed.

The vote in favor of decoupling came after an hour of debate and has made possible non-APR Assembly delegates for the first time since 1973.

PRSA/Boston member Paul Wetzel and PRSA president Del Galloway engaged in an extensive dialogue on action needed to record and publish the individual votes on the motion.

More than a dozen queries about the vote to PR director Janet Troy and PR manager Cedric Bess of PRSA have resulted in no information on it.

Troy on Nov. 17 said COO Catherine Bolton would have some information on it Nov. 22.

However, e-mails to PRSA h.q. Nov. 22 and 23 were unanswered by Troy and Bess. The latter sent an e-mail to Jack O Dwyer, meant for someone else, asking, "RE: decoupling vote. Can I just e-mail (O'Dwyer) a smart remark to p–s him off? :-)"

Bess apologized on Nov. 29, saying PRSA's policy is to "treat all members of the media with the same respect and my e-mail, while intended for internal communications only, was inappropriate ... an unfortunate mistake." continued on seven

WATTS ROLLS DICE
FOR CONN. INDIANS.
Former Oklahoma Republican Congressman J.C. Watts is representing the Golden Hill Paugussetts, which has been fighting to win designation as a tribe by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The GHP need federal approval so they can negotiate with Connecticut officials to build a casino in Bridgeport.
The BIA rejected the tribe s application in June, and an appeals board refused to reconsider the ruling in October. A tribe spokesperson said the lobbying effort continues.

J.C. Watts Cos. received $40K in lobbying fees from the GHP during the first-half of this year.
The firm also repped FM Policy Focus ($180K), National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners ($100K), SBC Comms. ($80K), Robinson Aviation ($80K), Oklahoma Heart Hospital ($60K), Bowl Championship Series ($60K), Government of Senegal ($60K), Mississippi Valley State University ($20K), Langston University ($20K) and Texas College ($20K).

Xyant Technologies ($40K) and Luther Speight Co. (less than $10K) terminated their accounts during the period.
Watts, 44, was a key ally of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

SOFT DRINK MAKERS
UPDATE IMAGE.
The National Soft Drink Assn. is now the American Beverage Assn. to reflect the growth of nonalcoholic beverages in the marketing mix.

Kathleen Dezio, of the ABA, told O'Dwyer s that most people walking down the supermarket aisle don t know that soft drink bottlers are providing the myriad of beverage choices. For instance, single-serve bottled water sales increased 22 percent in `03, while sports drinks were up 18 percent. Sales of traditional soft drinks have been hammered by consumer concern over obesity and other health issues.

Coca-Cola CEO Neville Isdell told analysts on Nov. 11 that the company planned to scale back the amount of annual sales growth from six to three percent. Classic Coke sales are down nearly six percent this year, while its health-oriented Odwalla juice and Dasani water brands are up 18 percent and seven percent, respectively.

The ABA uses GCI Group for PR matters.

BLACKWELL EXITS WHITE HOUSE.
Robert Blackwell, the White House s top advisor on Iraq, has taken a lobbying post at Barbour Griffith & Rogers.

The 22-year member of the State Dept. s foreign service was mentor to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, when both served on the national security staff of President Bush I.

Blackwell, a former U.S. Ambassador to India, was recently involved in an alleged pushing incident in Kuwait. The woman, whom Blackwell allegedly pushed, has not filed a complaint. Blackwell denies that anything untoward happened.

‘PRINCESSES' RUN
NYC's FASHION SCENE.
Don t call 28-year-old golden-haired, bottled water scion Lauren Davis a "publicist." The director of PR for fashion house J. Mendel prefers to be called "a young girl who is out and about and loves fashion and really believes in her products."

Davis was profiled along with other Manhattan swells who are "leveraging their network of rich friends into a lucrative career of their own: seamlessly promoting both charitable and commercial causes," in the Nov. 14 New York Observer.

The weekly says Davis is part of a "new breed of socialite-cum-publicists–socialists?–publicites?" It includes "alpha women," such as Emilia Fanjul Pfeifler, the daughter of sugar baron Jose (Pepe) Fanjul, and honorary co-chair of the Young Collectors Night at the Winter Antique Show, and Countess Vanessa von Bismarck, the great-great granddaughter of "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck in the bunch. Both ran their own PR firms.

Slightly lesser lights are Ashley Schiff, the polo-player sister-in-law of Karenna Gore, who works for Rubenstein Assocs., and Tinsley Mortimer, who is married to Standard Oil heir Topper, and "until recently the ‘list girl at the hard-partying firm of Harrison and Shriftman."

Other PR "princesses" are Samantha Gregory, spokesperson for leather-goods company Hogan; Allison Aston, daughter-in-law of society plastic surgeon Sherrell and the flack for jewelry designer Robert Lee Morris, and Alexandra Kimball, great-granddaughter of former Brazilian dictator Getulio Vergas and VP-corporate communications for Oscar de la Renta. Kimball, 31, prefers to be called Oscar s ambassador, and said her job, in part, consists of wearing the designer s clothes.

The Observer says veteran PR hands Peggy Siegal, Lizzie Grubman s former partner, and Paul Wilmot believe the cross-pollination of young society women and fashion PR makes perfect sense. Siegal said these girls know fashion because they grew up in wealthy homes and their mothers and grandmothers wore the most beautiful clothes.

David Columbia, editor of newyorksocialdiary.com, applauds the socialists for working at all when they could be living off their trust funds. They could have turned out to be drug-dealers or go-go dancers, Columbia joked to the Observer.

PEOPLE LIKE 'SEARS'
BETTER THAN 'KMART.'
Three-out-of-four Americans prefer the name "Sears" over "Kmart," according to a survey of 1,050 people conducted after the announcement that Kmart is taking over Sears, Roebuck.

Sixteen percent of respondents like the Kmart name better. Rivkin & Assocs. commissioned the poll, which was done by Opinion Research Corp.

Steve Rivkin, who runs the Glen Rock, N.J.-based marketing communications firm, believes the survey shows that "Kmart is a damaged brand, while the Sears name has vastly greater brand equity."

WSJ's HUNT JUMPS
TO BLOOMBERG NEWS.
Barney Calame and Albert Hunt, who have each spent 39 years at The Wall Street Journal, are leaving.

Hunt, the Journal s Washington, D.C.-based executive editor and bureau chief, is joining Bloomberg News in January as managing editor for government reporting. Hunt also wrote a political column for the Journal.

Calame, who has been deputy managing editor since 1992, is retiring this month. He started as a reporter for the Journal in 1965 in New York.

Rich Jaroslovsky, who left the Journal to join Bloomberg News as an editor-at-large, was named managing editor for government and economy in the Americas at Bloomberg.

Jaroslovsky spent almost 30 years at the Journal as chief White House reporter during the Reagan administration, political editor and as the first managing editor of WSJ.com.

Rob Hertzberg, editor of Bloomberg News, recently left to become editorial director for Thomson Media s Advisor Group.

CORP. TAKEOVERS
GET MOST COVERAGE.
Problems related to mergers and acquisitions are the most frequently cited crises reported in major global publications, according to Crisis Metric, Burson-Marsteller s new monthly corporate crisis survey.

The average monthly results of CM s surveys from August to October 2004 indicated that mergers and acquisitions (40%) led the 13 types of corporate crises listed, regardless of region.

Merger and acquisition crises were covered in the U.S., European and Asia-Pacific media more than twice as often as bankruptcy/financial demise (17%).

The next most frequently mentioned crisis was union issues, pensions or strikes (9%).

The least covered crises in the three-month period were crises relating to terrorism/war-related problems (1%), natural disasters (0%) and deaths (0%).

PEOPLE
Julie Anne Quay has joined V magazine as executive editor from Richard Avedon's photo studio.

Leslie Smith, previously managing editor at now-defunct Lifetime magazine, has replaced Kim Cheney as managing editor at Marie Claire. Cheney recently joined Redbook as managing editor.

Jaime Martinez, who worked as editor-in-chief of Playboy Mexico, was hired as chief editor of the Mexican edition of Penthouse.

Sarah Min, formerly managing editor at Vibe, is now managing editor at Domino. Zoe Woff, previously with Time Out New York, is senior editor of Domino; Lindsey Taylor, formerly at Martha Stewart magazine, is garden editor, and Stacie McCormick, formerly at Martha Stewart magazine, is photo editor.

SURVEY FINDS
MANY UNHAPPY EDITORS.
Thirty-nine percent of the editors in the American Society of Business Press Editor s 2004 survey are more satisfied in their job now than they were two years ago, while 37% said they are less satisfied, and 23% feel about the same.

Arcola Research in Montgomery Village, Md., conducted the survey in May on ASBPE s website.

The total response was 606, a rate of 15.6%. More than 80% of the respondents were senior level and executive level editors.

The editors, who are more satisfied now, cited a better economy, flexible hours, more money, more responsibility and editorial control, better understanding of the market their magazine covers, more management support, new challenges and better staff.

Editors who are dissatisfied said their reasons were frequency cutbacks due to the economy, less print space due to fewer ads, layoffs of expert colleagues, fewer dollars available for freelancers, and more pressure to serve advertisers.

Mean salaries of editors increased 6.6% from last year s $62,702 to $66,870 over all job titles.

ESPN EXAMINES
DRUG ENDORSEMENTS.
ESPN s "OTL Nightly" show recently examined the growing role and responsibility of athletes who endorse prescription drugs.

One of those mentioned on the show was Gil Pagovich, the director of celebrity relations at PTA Entertainment, who maintains a 75-page list of sports personalities with medical conditions, and who hopes to broker endorsement deals with drug companies.

The average deal is anywhere from $250K-$350K and some deals get close to $1 million, Pagovich told ESPN.

Sidney Wolfe, a spokesman for Public Citizen s Health Research Group, believes it is a serious breach of ethics to put your name on something that you are not fully informed about. Dorothy Hamill, who endorsed Vioxx, which was recently pulled from the market, was cited as an example.

"I wouldn t ever go so far as to say athletes are blame-worthy for endorsing a drug that later turns out to be unsafe, but they do share some level of responsibility," said Robert Kravitz, Univ. of California-Davis professor.

MEDIA BRIEF
"The Black Press Yearbook: Who's Who in Black Media," a directory of minority news professionals in the U.S., has been published by Diversity City Media, a PR firm based in Long Beach, Calif, which also owns BlackNews.com, a distribution service that sends news releases to more than 800 African-American news outlets.
The directory, which sells for $80, can be ordered at 202/452-7450.

(Media news continued on next page)

PR PROS DEAL
WITH MISTRUST OF MEDIA.
Ben Silverman, who writes a column for eReleases.com, called PR Fuel, said the preliminary results of his reader survey show media credibility does not matter much to PR pros.

"Yes, the media s credibility took a serious hit this year, but it doesn t impact how PR pros are doing their job," wrote Silverman, who said the survey results are based on "a couple hundred responses."

Here are some of the responses to the media credibility question:

—"I think the credibility of the media remains low. But unfortunately, I think the credibility of PR pros remains lower. It doesn t make much difference."

—"I think the credibility of the media has come into question, but not as much as the credibility of corporate America, so it s all relative. There s been too much other crap in the way, so media credibility isn t as big of an issue as it should be."

—"From my perspective it means that the facts have to be crystal clear, and you have to find a way around the media to reach audiences for some issues."

—"Doesn t affect me personally any. I think I ll do better if journalists want to make up news stories. I can make up PR success stories and get a raise."

—"I think the feeling the public is left with is that the news is all partisan, that it s all biased, that `news can t be trusted no matter who is delivering it.

Maybe most of us involved with PR, even peripherally like me, already thought so and use that knowledge to the advantage whenever possible. I don t think it makes the job harder in that media bias has always been a factor."

Kerry's Campaign Was Worst

An "overwhelming" number of respondents named Sen. John Kerry s failed Presidential bid as the worst PR campaign they saw this year, Silverman said.

Others getting a "prominent number of votes": Fleishman-Hillard s scandal involving the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power, the Abu Gharib prison scandal; the Merck/Vioxx scandal; Dan Rather and CBS News for the Texas National Guard memo debacle; bloggers for their use of questionable—and unattributed—exit poll numbers; Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake/MTV/CBS/NFL for the Sugar Bowl "Breastacular"; Ashlee Simpson for her "Saturday Night Live" lip-synching performance; Kobe Bryant; Michael Moore, and Howard Dean s "I Have a Scream" speech.

President Bush got the most votes for having run the "best PR campaign," while Oprah Winfrey got several votes for her "free Pontiacs" as did Martha Stewart for her public apology which softened her image.

Getting a "prominent number of votes" for having "not best, but most effective" PR campaigns were: the Republican National Committee s leafleting churches with literature linking Bush and "moral values"; Wal-Mart for opening up to the media, and Halliburton for never addressing the charges made against it.

FRIEDMAN JUICES UP
CNBC's PROGRAMS.
Steve Friedman, former head producer of NBC-TV s "Today" show, is overhauling CNBC business news, starting with "Squawk Box," its flagship morning show.

Ratings for the three-hour show, which features Mark Haines, David Faber and Joe Kernan, have fallen 25% this year, according to the New York Daily News.

The new "Squawk," which will debut on Dec. 6, will have some new segments like "Media Inc.," and the "Squawk Index," which would track executives ups and downs, according to the News.

Rebecca Quick, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is joining the "Squawk" team on a permanent basis.

Friedman is expected to tackle CNBC s "Power Lunch" next, the News said.

The changes to CNBC come as Fox News prepares to launch its new Fox Business News channel next summer. FBN will take direct aim at CNBC, which is the leader in the market with an 0.1 rating.

CNN is shutting down its CNNfn channel this month.

PLACEMENT TIPS
Adam Carheden, who was just hired as product and technology editor for Windows IT Pro magazine, based in Loveland, Colo., will oversee product review strategy and produce both comparative and reviews of new products and technologies for the magazine. WITP has a paid subscription base of 102,000, and is published in 13 languages with an international reach into 160 countries.

Carheden, who is a former consultant and IT auditor for Deloitte & Touche in San Jose, Calif., will test products, write reviews, and investigate new products and technologies to provide readers with information they need to make buying decisions.
He can be reached at 970/613-4928.

PEOPLE
Gary O'Sullivan, 33, communications manager for the Irish Jesuits in Dublin, was named editor of The Irish Catholic, the 116-year-old weekly magazine.

James Kaminsky, formerly editorial director of Playboy, is joining Rolling Stone as a deputy managing editor. He will share the title with Will Dana, features editor, and Joe Levy, music editor.

Stacey Duguid, previously PR director of Prada, has joined Elle as the London.-based magazine's executive fashion editor to work with publicists and handle long-term editorial projects.

Martin Smith has left American Media's headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla., where he was editorial director of the Globe, Sun, National Examiner, and Weekly World News.

Omega Travel CEO Gloria Bohan (page 7) has expressed a press policy that is all too rare in these days of "single spokemanship."

Her policy is to have numerous company people who can talk to the press and to have them respond to press calls "immediately."

Omega has about 200 offices throughout the U.S. and having all press requests funneled through a single office would be counterproductive.

But many companies with multiple offices and divisions do have "single spokesperson" policies. In struggling for press control they end up having little if anything to control.

That is the way many of them want it. They'd rather have nothing than take their chances in the free-for-all editorial columns where anything may happen.

Bohan feels that press mentions have helped her company to grow but she is by no means totally satisfied with reporters.

"Quite often they call with a particular angle in mind and it s hard to budge them off what may be an inaccurate story line," she says.

"They are determined to bolster a preconceived notion that may not be correct," she adds.

Nevertheless, she feels that business reporters are in need of "education" about many topics and it s the job of line executives to take the time to teach them.

"They want to be educated and they re very grateful for it," she added.

Numerous companies we ve encountered over the years have the attitude that press calls can take up so much time of executives that it s too costly to the company to deal with reporters.

So such executives should not complain when reporters take the wrong tack. Executives, PR pros and reporters all have a duty to make sure the public is adequately informed.

Speaking about unreturned press calls, our e-mail and phone call to Jack Irvine of Media House, Glasgow, Scotland, about PR pros not returning calls was not returned.

We called the firm after U.K. web journalist Mike Magee said PR has become depersonalized and there are few relationships anymore between "journos" and "PRs." He complained that PR pros don t talk to journalists and don t return their calls.
Irvine was quoted in the i of Scotland saying this was nonsense because PR depends heavily on personal relationships with reporters.

We called up Media House, one of the larger "strategic communications consultancies" in Scotland, with offices also in Edinburgh, London and New York. No one was available to talk to us about the Irvine quote, nor did anyone return our call, proving Magee s point.

The withdrawal of Duffey Communications from the rankings of the Atlanta Business Chronicle (Nov. 24 NL) is a loss for the PR counseling industry, the Chronicle and Duffey.

The Duffey firm was never in the O'Dwyer rankings because it declined to provide proofs such as top page of the latest income tax return and the latest W-3 (total of W-2s which is due to the IRS by Jan. 31 each year). Net fees of a PR firm are usually about double the payroll.

Duffey, which took the No. 1 position in the unsubstantiated rankings of the Chronicle each year, said it was at a "competitive disadvantage" in revealing its numbers because so many other firms were not (even though the Chronicle ranked 25 PR firms).

The Duffey move draws attention to an article in the December Atlantic titled "The Confidentiality Fetish," which claims that lawyers are grabbing too much power by demanding that nearly everything be confidential. This shifts control of a situation away from CEOs, CFOs, boards of directors and others and into the lap of the lawyers, says the article.

It says, "The bar s commitment to confidentiality is not just an ideology; it is also a marketing strategy. In the bar s competition with other professions, confidentiality is often a more important advantage than legal experience."

Specifically mentioned is how lawyers have twisted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to their own ends.

"Although the reporting that SOX calls for is financial, lawyers, rather than accountants, determine what is to be disclosed," says the article by William H. Simon, Columbia University professor.

PRSA's stonewalling on the Assembly decoupling vote (page one) puts the spotlight on PRSA s governance and particularly the parliamentarians that PRSA leaders use to help run the Assembly meetings.

Although delegate Paul Wetzel went through a long dialogue with the parliamentarian and PRSA president Del Galloway to make sure the vote of individual delegates on decoupling would be revealed, and the motion was passed, this has not happened.

Parliamentarians told us that conference delegates often employ their own advocate, a so-called "floor parliamentarian" who will take their side.

"You can t depend on the chair s parliamentarian," they told us. Rules may or may not be enforced and it s not the duty of the chair s parliamentarian to tell the chair what to do, they said. In this case, we were told, a floor parliamentarian would have directed that either a standing roll call vote be taken or the Assembly could have ordered the tabulation and printing of the votes by the end of the Assembly. The delegates were using numbered devices.

– Jack O'Dwyer