Dean Beckman’s Blog

The National Football League is most likely at the height of its popularity. Television revenue, television ratings, ticket sales, and sponsorships are all up, up, up. So why would they take one of the best feel-good stories to come around in a long time in the New Orleans Saints and do anything to spoil the fun of their fans and small businesses that have hung with them all these years (even through Hurricane Katrina)? Saints fans have, for years, used the phrase “Who Dat?” in various forms as a way of supporting the team. But now that the Saints are playing in Super Bowl 44, the NFL has claimed rights to the phrase and, as this Wall Street Journal article asserts, has “issued cease-and-desist orders against New Orleans vendors who sell Saints memorabilia adorned with the wording.”
Naturally, the vendors, residents and local politicians are upset. But the NFL’s heavy handidness is so ridiculous that even the head coach of the Saints, Sean Payton, said it didn’t seem right. It’s terribly greedy for a league, which is at an all-time high in popularity, to be this concerned with the dollars made off of merchandising Saints’ gear. Sadly, it epitomizes all that is wrong with professional sports.

In an earlier post, I mentioned I was looking forward to reading a book called “Walk the Walk” by Alan Deutschman. Well, I’m a few chapters in now and it’s definitely as good as I hoped it would be. While you should read the book yourself, the main premise is that great leaders establish and live out one or two values they deem most important to the success of their organization. He uses leaders from all walks of life as examples, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Ray Kroc, Charles Schwab, and Eleanor Roosevelt just to name a few. I can’t wait to read the rest of it and I hope you get a chance to as well.

Top 5 reasons I hate Top 10, 20, 30 “how to” or “advice” lists:
5) To get to the exact number, writers usually add things that are painfully obvious
4) If there’s really that many things, I probably won’t do them all anyway
3) As busy as people are, they usually just read the first 3-5
2) They sound “preachy” after the first 5 points
1) See, wasn’t this about the right number for a “list”?

Before last year, I had never really made a new year’s resolution I intended to keep. I don’t know why; I guess my ideas were always too unreachable. But after seeing my leisure reading time declining, I decided at the start of 2009 to read at least one book, for pleasure, a month. I’m happy to report I was successful reaching that goal (and then some, though I didn’t keep track of exactly how many books I read).
So this year I decided to make another work-related goal that is both important and achievable. My 2010 resolution is do a better job of tracking, reading and commenting on the blogs maintained by Saint Mary’s public relations’ students. In the past I’ve started with good intentions to do just that, but seem to get away from it as the semester progresses. But as the importance of blog writing increases, so too does my responsibility to hold students accountable for a professionally acceptable blog. That can’t happen unless I’m paying attention to what they’re writing and validating their blogs’ significance.

Here’s to a new year……happy blogging everyone!

A truly great business book transcends industries and financial structures (profit, non-profit, etc.). While I have yet to read Alan Deutchman’s “Walk the Walk,” its synopsis and reviews go to the very heart of what I believe public relations is all about and what separates the genuine person from the charlatan. Why is it the ones who scream the loudest seem to be the last to hear and act upon the message? I believe part of it is a lack of sincerity; the message is more about the desired self-image and less about an authentic dogma. Part of it might also be about the excercising of authority. Whatever the reasons, I look forward to reading this book that calls us to practice what we preach. If only those who need to hear the message (myself included) actually listen.

Anyone who knows me understands that I like sports and appreciate student-athletes. In general, I think being an athlete leads to being a better student because it requires excellent organization, motivation and passion to do both well. But I was surprised to learn from an article on page A3 in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, August 29 about a law in Texas that allows athletes to take sports-related classes and earn academic credit for them. I was even more surprised to learn the state legislature in Texas is considering expanding the number of credits earned in such classes from 2 to 4 (of 26 total credits needed for graduation). While I realize it compensates the athletes for the time they put in to film study, lifting weights, etc., I believe those are extracurricular activities that should be considered part of getting better at the sport and are not worthy of academic credits. As study after study shows high school students are less prepared for college than ever before, more demands should be made on reading, writing, mathematics, science and other more traditional academic subjects. It stands to reason that unless they increase the number of credits required for graduation, athletes will spend less time learning the fundamental topics that will be required for college and for life after their athletic ventures end. That’s bad for everyone.

Social media have evolved from an exclusively under 25-year-old personal “club” to a “global village” (a term that used to be applied to “old” media) where anyone and everyone is accessing them and using them for everything from personal diaries to marketing products and brands. While young adults might not like the infiltration of companies and older adults in “their” world, the fact remains social media users need to be more careful than ever about what they post. My advice? Be personal, yet be professional. Careerbuilder.com has a wonderful article about the risks of being “unprofessional” in your Facebook, Twitter or blog postings. College students especially, in what will be a tough job market for years to come, need to be conscious that employers routinely check social media for a job candidate’s degree of online professionalism. Common sense should dictate what is and what is not viewed as acceptable, but one rule of thumb is this: Would I be embarrased if my parents (or other adult authority figure) saw this?

An advertising executive in Europe helped craft a new Public Service Announcement that warns about the dangers of texting while driving. It is currently being shown in Europe, but not on U.S. television because it is said to be too graphic. Huh? Has anyone watched some of the shows and movies that are targeted at teenagers? Graphic is one way to describe them. But perhaps there is opposition to the PSA because it involves real-life consequences, not the feel-good endings associated with both fictional and reality programming that dominates the media. The PSA is of high-quality and doesn’t pander to those who want the unpleasantness of life filtered for them. This is a serious issue that deserves this kind of wake-up call. The publicity the PSA is generating is itself successful in furthering the cause of making people think before they text-and-drive. Count me in as supporting more widespread distribution of the PSA. Yes, viewers should be warned it is graphic, but give them the opportunity to see it if they so choose.

The title of this post is the name of a book I just finished reading authored by Howard Rosenberg and Charles S. Feldman. The authors take a very critical view of today’s 24/7 news cycle and its impact on individuals, the media and society. While I agree with the authors’ premise that most of what passes for “news” is not really news, I found the book a bit repetitive and predictable. There was even one really weird chapter (8) that consisted of a transcript of their conversation with one another. Still, there are some wonderful examples to support the authors’ claims and it was refreshing to read these views from the pens of industry insiders and experts. The best chapter, in my opinion, was chapter 9 where the authors cite examples of how the speed of today’s news cycle can impact and indeed influence public policy decisions. Unfortunately, this chapter is also the shortest in the book coming in at just over 8 pages.

“No Time to Think” is a quick and worthwhile read. While the thoughts themselves may not be new to the reader, the supporting examples and anecdotes will be.

This has not been a good summer for the airline industry. First there was a high-profile delay in early August when passengers on a Continental ExpressJet flight from Houston to Minneapolis were stranded on a grounded plane in Rochester, MN for six hours after landing there due to weather conditions. Then the usually public-relations minded Sun Country airlines had a similar incident in New York. You could argue the Sun Country incident is worse, since it happened just weeks after Continental was vilified internationally. But really, both lack common public-relations sense from the people on the front lines. Someone, somewhere should have stood up and said “This is wrong and I don’t care what rules we’re breaking, let’s get these people off the plane.” Unfortunately, that kind of leadership seems to be lacking in rank and file employees. Whether they don’t feel empowered to make such decisions or simply don’t care, poor customer service is making the entire airline industry the butt of jokes. As you would expect of Sun Country, an airline that has its own Bill of Rights, the company is taking ownership of the damage caused and is doing something about it. A little late, yes, but it may go a long way to avoid similar problems in the future.