An Untamed Colt Lyerla

By now most Oregon Ducks fans have moved on from Colt Lyerla, the once-promising tight end who had started twelve games for the Ducks over the last two years. It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to see Lyerla leave as he and head coach Mark Helfrich had been battling ever since Helfrich suggested that Lyerla sat out the Tennessee game for reasons other than an illness.

Lyerla had shown flashes of brilliance over the past two years with the Ducks. But he also had far too many dropped passes and missed blocks mixed in there to make him a truly consistent threat.

He also wasn't exactly what you would call a team chemistry guy and had a penchant attracting too many headlines for the wrong reasons.

After not traveling to Colorado with the team this week to play the Buffaloes, Lyerla officially announced that he is leaving Oregon, effective immediately. He indicated that he will not be trying to transfer to another school in the meantime, but plans to make his way to the NFL.

I'm not entirely sure how Lyerla expects to make it there, except maybe as the towel and Gatorade boy on the sideline. There is no doubt that Lyerla is talented and could be playing on Sundays if he got his head on straight.

But the NFL, more so than any of the big four, places a premium on a player's character. Lyerla would certainly get dinged for that, in addition to his relative inexperience at the college level.

Worst of all for Lyerla? This doesn't really hurt the Ducks. Obviously having a focused Lyerla around would benefit the Ducks offense. But he hasn't demonstrated the maturity or consistency at this point for the team to continue planning on him reaching that level any time soon.

Johnny Mundt has demonstrated himself a capable replacement for the time being and the Ducks already have numerous other weapons on offense. Sure the teams they have been playing haven't exactly been the toughest around; but they are still hanging 50 on teams like their lives depend on it.

This is just addition by subtraction. The Ducks lose a guy who was clearly butting heads with the coaching staff and had already proven to be a distraction off the field with his immaturity. Something tells me that the team harmony doesn't change with Lyerla leaving as the Ducks are just focused on winning the day each and every day.

As for Lyerla, well, I wish him the best. I hope that he proves me wrong and grows up and makes it to the NFL. But a wild Colt won't make it far with the attitude that he has now.

Why PR Pros Can't Treat Journalists Like A Punching Bag

Bad public relations professionals make me cringe. I don't consider this to be an easy profession, but there are far too many bad PR pros out there that give the rest of the industry a bad name.

I follow dozens of journalists on Twitter and they will frequently post about bad pitches, off-topic press releases and general pet peeves of theirs when it comes to my profession. There are many more public relations representatives in the world than there are journalists, which puts them in a position of power. They are the gatekeepers to what becomes news and what doesn't. Adhere to their requests or fail to see your company name in the headlines.

At first, I feel my blood boil when I see them bad-mouthing PR pros. Then they post about the pitch/release and why they're frustrated becomes abundantly clear. When a reporter covers health and fitness, don't pitch them on auto news. In my world, pitching a cloud reporter on the topic of hardware is tantamount to a glove slap and a challenge of their honor.

Misguided pitches are one the surefire ways to get ignored by a reporter on future efforts. Journalists are not stupid and can tell when a pitch has good intentions behind it, but may have just found its way into their inbox instead of their colleague's. What they can't stand, and what they shouldn't have to put up with, are pitches that don't even fall into the realm of their coverage scope. Reporters at the top of their industry will receive anywhere from 50-60 pitches a day--and that's probably on the conservative side--so they do not have time to put up with bad PR pros blasting them with an irrelevant press release.

PR people will be quick to pin the blame on their clients. As PR is truly a job in the service industry, we are at the behest of our clients' requests. But any good PR professional knows when to push back and how to set expectations. This prevents you from having to reach out to the Wall Street Journal when you should be contacting the Boston Herald.

We have to stop pounding these reporters with these poorly constructed, off-topic and ill-timed pitches and press releases. They can't cover everything and your best chance of being that nugget is to really tailor and target your pitches to fit their coverage area.

And we need to convince them that we aren't just robots that believe in blasting press releases and other content our clients give us. Only once we have done that can we change the power dynamic between us and preserve the symbiotic relationship that should exist.

The Toronto Raptors and the Drake Effect

The Toronto Raptors named hip-hop star, Drake, as a team ambassador today, making him the third musical artist in the last couple of years to invest in an NBA team (Jay-Z and the Nets; Will Smith and the 76ers). The Raptors have struggled since entering the league as an expansion team in 1995 as they have only made the second round of the playoffs once - in 2001 with Vince Carter as their star. In addition to poor play on the court, the team has not been able to draw attendance despite the large Toronto market.

Obviously, the fact that the Raptors are generally terrible at basketball has not helped them put fans in the seats. There is the added element that the people in Canada just generally do not care that much about basketball as hockey is the only true national sport there.

Insert Drake. The Toronto Raptors are trying to pull a Brooklyn Nets here by bringing in a hip-hop mogul to serve as the face of the franchise. Drake's actual involvement will likely be minimal in the day-to-day, but he'll be front and center at games and will probably serve as a primary spokesperson for the team. Basketball and business decisions will be made behind close doors by others, but Drake will be the smiling face to help deliver the news.

So what does this mean for the Raptors moving forward? From a basketball standpoint, not much. Free agents and franchise-altering players are not overly interested in moving to Toronto. It's cold, they have to compete with hockey and taxes are a bit more taxing than, say, Miami. The Raptors are still shackled with high-paid players who just don't deliver.

From a business standpoint, I will be interested to see what happens with Drake. Jay-Z transformed the Nets, taking them from a franchise that has to give away tickets for basically free to a team of swag-stars that sells out the Barclays Center despite mediocre results. Of course, Jay-Z didn't have everything to do with this. Mikhail Prokhorov has cavernous pockets and isn't afraid to spend money to improve his team. Running the Nets to him isn't a business investment like so many NBA owners. But the allure of Jay-Z - a legend in the rap game - and his consultancy helped expedite the transformation process for the Nets.

Drake isn't Jay-Z. Maple Lead Sports and Entertainment (Raptors' owners) and Prokorhov are a little different in how they conduct business. The Raptors don't have the roster that the Nets do.

But I will be interested to see how this plays out. Like it or not, rap artists have ties to the athlete community and do hold influence in some form there. I'm not suggesting that Drake is going to bring LeBron to Toronto in 2014--especially in light of his Miami locker room fail after the Heat won in June--but I do think he'll benefit the Raptors as a business. And I don't think that he'll be the last rap star to join the ranks of an NBA team either.

Is JC Penny Promoting Bullying? No. Just No.

This isn't a serious question, is it? God, I really hope that people aren't actually that upset about this.

On CNN this morning, they ran a segment on JC Penny's newest back to school television advertisement. The story was about how many were upset with the recent spot as it seemed to promote bullying in schools, which has become a seriously hot button topic lately, particularly in the wake of the recent video capturing three 15 year old students beating a 13 year old student on the bus.

Take a look at the new commercial:

People's outcry stems from the :14 second mark in the video. The advertisement's suggestion is simple: wearing the wrong clothing could "make or break" your first day at school. By the looks of the lonely boy at the table, his first day broke in a big way.

I am a little confused though. Why is this all of a sudden considered bullying? TV advertisements have been telling us for decades that if we aren't wearing the right shirt, lipstick, deodorant, shoes, jewelry, etc., that we aren't superior, the fastest, the smartest, the sexiest, the absolute best in the world. That is how these companies sell their product. They pinpoint a certain "critical" characteristic that society deems so necessary and brand their product as the gateway to whatever pinnacle we are trying so desperately to achieve.

If I don't drink Gatorade, I'll fail to succeed in sports. If I don't wash my body with Axe, girls won't want to be sexual with me. If I don't buy a huge diamond and propose in a completely outlandish way, then my girlfriend won't marry me.

This is not a new trend, everyone. Commercials have long tried to convey to us how we can better ourselves with whatever product they push. The reason that you buy Gillette at the store instead of the generic shaving cream is because deep down you truly think that Kate Upton will want to sleep with you if you are grooming the correct way.

So JC Penny says that the outfit that a kid wears on the first day could make or break the year. Exaggeration? Of course it is. But so are all of the other examples above as well. Nobody ever remembers what anyone wore for the first day of school. And even in grade school and middle school, when first-impressions are so critical with judgmental peers, it doesn't alter your entire year.

At no point in this video is there even a scene of anything remotely close to bullying. That two second clip of the kid at the lunch table alone got everyone so bent out of shape--nobody says "Oh, man, what a loser. Look at what he is wearing!" or anything remotely close. The scene passes so quickly that if anyone were paying half attention, they wouldn't have even noticed.

Yet, somehow this ended up as a serious segment on CNN this morning. "Is JC Penny promoting bullying with their new advertisements," they asked. No, CNN and reactionaries, they are not. Put down your pitchforks and open your eyes. Because if this is the type of advertisement exposure that gets you worried about how your kids will turn out, you clearly aren't paying close enough attention to the world around you.

Tim Armstrong Creates Headaches for His PR Team

Everyone has had moments where their tempers get the best of them. When I was in high school, I screamed a few expletives at a referee in my basketball game after he repeatedly missed calls. As quick as the swears were out of my mouth was as fast as I had received two technical fouls, an ejection from the game, and one extraordinarily disappointed mother on the ride home from the game.

But one good thing about my incident is that it took place in a half-full gym and the ramifications certainly didn't extend beyond my driving privileges for the next week (although, when you are 16, this is the world to you). Tim Armstrong is the CEO of AOL and is known for his brash persona. In charge of the once leader in the internet experience, AOL has had a hard time reinventing itself as it fell further and further behind competitors.

Naturally, this whole situation has caused stress throughout the company for the better part of a few years. Earlier this week, Tim Armstrong held a company call to announce the reduction of AOL's hyperlocal news websites, Patch, from 900 to 600 total. This, obviously, meant that there would be staff reductions.

While Armstrong was delivering his presentation, a member of the creative team was taking pictures of the presentation. Armstrong was not entirely pleased with this action and lost his cool. He didn't just have a few choice words for the man like I did the referee; no, he fired him on the spot. Told him that he could get up, leave the meeting, and not return the next day to AOL.

Naturally, this leaked to the press because when you are a high profile executive at a name-brand company and you act like a child in front of 1,000 employees, news will get out of it. Armstrong isn't exactly beloved at AOL and this didn't do anything to help his reputation. The press picked up on the story immediately and stories were being posted around all the major news and tech outlets.

Armstrong, the head of the company and main public-facing employee, couldn't control his temper and acted like a child. It is as simple as that.

Naturally, this story combined with the Patch reductions dominated the news cycle for the full 24 hours as the AOL PR team did the best they could at picking up the pieces. In many crisis situations, there is an opportunity to turn the issue around and capitalize off of it, if the company handles it correctly. However, in this instance, there wasn't exactly a lot that AOL's team could do.

Armstrong ultimately apologized to the employee, but that is an expectation at that point. There was no way that the director would come back to AOL at that point, even after the apology. There is no way for Armstrong or AOL to undergo proactive actions that demonstrate company reform or a commitment to righting the wrong. All they could do was field calls from reporters and provide "no comments."

The danger of a CEO like Armstrong is that they're a ticking time bomb. PR teams shouldn't have to have a crisis response plan to "Your CEO lost his cool in front of 1,000 employees during a recorded meeting and unjustifiably fired the creative director, so now what?" No amount of media training and coaching of an executive can change the outcome of a situation like that.

No matter how heartfelt the apology, no matter strongly committed Armstrong is to the regretful rhetoric, and certainly no matter how many phone calls from reporters the PR team takes will allow Armstrong and AOL to recover from this particular black eye. For the next couple of weeks, maybe even months, AOL will be connected with this event.

There are times where good PR and crisis management skills come in handy. This is not one of those times. Sometimes the instance is small, but the consequences are severe and essentially irrevocable.

Yes, Google Killed PR...If Agencies Only Focused on Press Releases

For those of you who keep tabs on the world of public relations, there was a particular article that was floating around from agency to agency. It provided quite a bit of talk around the water cooler. Although it spread spread like a wild fire, it certainly didn't elicit the feelings of angst and worry as one would expect. In fact, the general consensus was bewilderment and general amusement.

Tom Foremski is a contributor to the technology website, ZDnet, and a notorious PR-loather. On Thursday of last week, he posted an article titled, "Did Google just kill PR agencies?" following Google's changes to their page ranking in their search function. In an effort to deter people from trying to chat Google's search algorithm's by pumping their press releases full of SEO language, Google announced that it would actually be purposely lowering these search results to punish those offenders. This should come as no surprise as Google's search engine algorithm is the foundation of the company and they certainly don't want people trying to cheat the system.

Foremski, however, suggests that with these rule changes, Google is turning PR agencies obsolete. Essentially, he bundles all of PR into the development of press releases and warns PR professionals that we are all doomed because Google will now start to punish companies that try to maximize their coverage through as many links and press release repostings that they can muster.

Sigh. I don't even know where to begin with this.

Let's just start with the obvious fact that when we develop press releases, most agencies are not just looking for repostings. On the contrary, while marketing folks and product managers may consider a reposting a press success, many PR professionals only aim for original coverage. This frequently means sending out the release (or more commonly a pitch on the story), arranging a briefing for the vendor and the journalist, and providing the rest of the information over email for a story that the journalist crafts himself (by the way, PR people, if you want a good laugh, please check out Foremski's article from 2006 on what he would like PR professionals to send to him to help write his story. You'll get a kick out of it).

So, no, Tom, if the release I write doesn't end up on 30 press release aggregator websites anymore, I won't really lose any sleep over it. Nor will my clients. Because the one article that I land in an InformationWeek or your own ZDNet will draw more impressions that those release websites would in ten years. For PR pros who hold themselves to a high standard, a straight cut and paste of a release isn't a victory and these rule changes will only continue to whittle out the lazy individuals.

The next biggest issue with this article is the suggestion that PR agencies are just machines that churn out release after release: mindless zombies that insert marketing-speak into carefully designed templates, day in and day out. Foremski makes it seem like our job is to sit at our computer, just trying to load the system with so much of our client's information that Google will help boost our efforts with their algorithms.

I would invite Tom to come join me for a week at work to see what we actually do. Executive messaging, thought leadership campaigns, media pitches (not press releases), social media, digital content development, crisis management, etc. In fact, of all things associated with public relations, the press release is the one that I spend the least time developing. In the 14 months I have been in the industry, I have written one press release and one newsbyte. That's it. I've also managed to secure coverage for my client in a variety of respectable technology publications through the tactics I mentioned above.

We are not robots. We don't push out press releases with the same frequency that we drink cups of coffee. We do not settle for press release repostings. And we certainly don't rely on Google to produce positive news coverage for our clients.

If a PR agency's business actually suffers from these rule changes, then they are doing a disservice to their clients as it is. The press release is merely one sword in our arsenal as public perception shapers and one that should only be drawn in completely necessary situations.

Google certainly didn't kill PR. The search behemoth is just trying to make us develop all of our skills, not just the press release.

600 Meters to Golden PR: The Farah-Bolt Challenge

For those of you unfamiliar with the world of track & field, here is a quick background for you: Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter who is better known as the fastest person in the history of mankind, was challenged by famed British distance runner, Mo Farah, who recently completed one of the more impressive gold medal doubles winning both the 5k and 10k at the 2012 Olympics. They are the pinnacle of their respective events and hoards of fans admire them for their dedication and success on the track.

Both Bolt and Farah, however, also have accomplished a significant amount off the track as well. Mo Farah has set up the Mo Farah Foundation, which is aimed at providing life-saving aid to the population of east Africa. Usain Bolt's foundation is aimed at empowering the youth in poverty-stricken areas to fight their way out of the poorest of neighborhoods through education. Bolt and Farah have taken their star status and used it to address the places they came from, generating positive change for thousands of individuals in desperate need of help (Note: while Farah competes for Great Britain in races, he is a naturalized citizen, originally born in Somalia).

It doesn't take an expert in track & field to tell you that running the 100 and 200 meter dash as Bolt does requires a completely different type of athleticism, training, and mentality as running a 5k or 10k a la Farah. And certainly nobody would expect the two to line up against the other for an unfamiliar race. Neither would have anything to gain.

But Farah made an interesting proposition to Bolt: lengthen the race to anything over 600 meters and let's go toe-to-toe. The kicker? Fans get to decide just how long the race will be through a vote. A race that is 600 meters is not in either's wheel-house (although my gut says anything over 400 and Farah has the advantage) and would certainly make for an enticing event.

And because these two understand how to use their fame and opportunities for society's benefit, the proceeds of the race would be split between their two charities. Something tells me that both of these men's publicists know a thing or two about how to do their job well. A Farah-Bolt showdown would certainly draw a great deal of publicity for the athletes and their charities. Even something so simple as televising the race in an hour-long special -- where a TV station could then take the ad revenue it normally receives, donate it to the charities and ultimately generate their own positive story -- would bring in thousands of dollars for their causes.

It is incredibly refreshing to see athletes recognize that they have enormous opportunities to benefit others less fortunate than them and actually follow through on those chances. These are the types of activities that make professional sports athletes such gold mines of opportunities for positive change. And with some simple PR, athletes can build out their own brand off the track, outside the arena, off the ice and in the places where people really want to see change.

If the Farah-Bolt challenge goes through, this could be a fantastic case study in the way that PR professionals should consider leveraging their athletes. This does require individuals such as Farah and Bolt who are committed to making changes outside of their lives as athletes, but the opportunities are ripe for the taking. It just requires a little outside-the-box thinking, but a single event such as a crowd-sourced race between two track stars is exactly that.