3 PR lessons from the Charlie Sheen saga

Picture from @charliesheen 's Twitter stream

Charlie Sheen. Over the last couple of days you’ve heard a lot about him. The stories have been everywhere – press, TV, internet, radio. Putting aside the players and issues in this story, I’d like to focus your attention on three communication practices which I believe the actor’s public relations team has been doing really well.

Express clearly your side of the story and stick with it!

First, and most important of all, over the last week the actor and his team of publicists have been openly sharing their side of the story. Charlie Sheen, being a spokesperson for himself, tells his story in a transparent, honest and direct way, in a language that is easy to understand by everyone. The message he wants to communicate is very clear, he sticks with it all the time, and repeats it confidently over and over again – he is clean, ready to get back to work, and the twitter hashtags #winning and #tigerblood are well-known nowadays.

In contrast, there has been almost no word from the camps of Chuck Lorre and CBS. Those two parties have missed on the opportunity to present to the wider audience their own side of the story. As a result of that, the public might turn against them in the near future and take the side of Sheen later. Hearing only statements like “no comment” will most certainly not help their cause.

Increase exposure to your message!

Second, the actor’s camp has generated enormous level of exposure for their message. Charlie Sheen interviews have been broadcasted, published and streamed all over the place. And all of them happened in the time frame of 48 hours! Moreover, various different media have been utilised to help increase the exposure levels. You open a newspaper and you read about the actor. You switch on the TV and you can see an interview with him. You tun on the radio and you can immediately recognise his husky voice. You go online and you are overwhelmed by the amount of material streaming across various social networks, blogs and other sites. You simply can’t avoid it – you’ve been exposed to the message. Job well done PR Team Charlie!

Pay attention to new technologies!

Third, Charlie Sheen’s communications team did not ignore the importance of new technologies. In this particular case, the actor’s team acted quickly to get him on Twitter and start spreading the message on the social network. And what a result that was! His account (@charliesheen) has become the fastest growing twitter account ever. In two days the actor accumulated more than 900 000 followers. At the time I am writing this post he has more than 1,3 million followers! No one has ever done that in such amount of time. By starting a Twitter account, the actor quickly expanded his network and was presented with a great platform where he can express all his thoughts. Using this medium, the actor can easily share his side of the story and continue to increase the exposure to his message.

To sum up, going in front of the public with a clear, honest and easy to understand message, using various media to increase the exposure to this message, and adopting new communication technologies has allowed Charlie Sheen to present his side of the story surrounding his personal life to a broad and influential audience.

This is what I find most interesting from this whole story. What about you? Can you infer any other good communication practices from this case study? Let me know in the comments!

The most important media corporation – YOU!

The most important media corporation!

I believe that in today’s interconnected world each and every one of us is a media corporation with several media outlets. If you are reading this, you are a member of my audience. You probably found this content on platforms like WordPress, Facebook, Twitter or similar. So, you’re also using these channels. You produce, consume and share content on them. Therefore, these are your media outlets – all of them part of your media corporation: YOU. We can also look at it as your personal brand.

Reinventing News

People from my generation don’t consume news in the form they are at the moment. We are losing interest in the way information is being transmitted. Information, which characteristics seem to be so outdated.

News need to be reinvented!

Don’t worry I am not actually going to reinvent news (at least not for now). In fact, it might not be a person that reinvents news, but rather news themselves will evolve in the near future.

I was thinking recently about the fact that today I am no longer interested in knowing everything that is going on around the world – well, I don’t need to know the details, so just a title is more than enough to get the idea what the story will be all about. Of course, I am from this generation that does not look for the news. The news find me through various channels – Google Reader and twitter, to be precise. And all the information I consume is based on my interests and reading habits. My news stream is very personalised. In this way I am able to isolate most of the noise and avoid going through tons of irrelevant stories, but I also save lots of time for myself. Time which I highly regard, is valuable, and I can use for focusing on both my professional and personal development. And I believe that this is the case for most of my peers and members of the so-called “Generation Y.”

So, what are the characteristics of a member from this generation?

Well, as I said already I think that almost all of my peers and I have quite a lot of things in common. First, we are the group that is constantly aware of new technologies, both as a consumer and creator.

Second, we are very flexible and adopt new trends easily, making them part of our lives earlier than any other group of the population. Our habits and behaviours are constantly evolving based on developments shaping our environment.

Third, all the time we are looking for ways to improve the way we live, by making simple tasks automated. We are not worried about giving a machine the responsibilities of taking care of these time-consuming, simple choruses. In this way we have more time to focus on ourselves and the people around us. We have more time to think, help each other and make new relationships in- and outside the workplace.

Fourth, because of this non-stop changing world we live in, we are facing the challenge of becoming overwhelmed by information and technologies. So, we’ve come to adopt various techniques to help us get through all the “gadget-and-information garbage” out there. We are aware of our own interests and we use those as a filter that lets in only what’s valuable and useful for us. For instance, we are using tools like RSS readers (Google Reader, Feedly), twitter feeds, and the Facebook news stream – all of these are highly personalisable, and they know our consumption habits. We have authorised machines and tools to make the dull job of gathering the relevant stuff and put it in one, easily-accessible place. Saving us the time and the effort.

You know what? All these characteristics are not just characteristics of the generation Y-er. There is someone else out there sharing the same characteristics. That’s right – THE NEWS! Like the people from my generation, news are highly influenced by developments in the technological world. Their form and ways of distribution change fast and easily according to these new trends. A good piece of news is also concise and to the point. And news are based on the needs and interest of the consumers.

Seems like there’s no better fit than the one between the news and the generation Y-er.

This is why I believe that like us, news will reinvent themselves in the near future and will become this constantly changing, flexible entity that makes a valuable contribution to our lives.

Inspirations

Being passionate about what you are doing (or going to do) is probably the most important prerequisite you need to have. Passion is what is going to help you through rough times when you are facing certain challenges with your work or life. It is the force that drives you forward and is your co-pilot when you need to stay focused, persevere and put that extra effort.

Changes

A new logo for a new beginning!

Finally a new post!

It has been more than a month since I last posted in my blog. Actually, the last time I posted something here was last year! Well, as you can see I am back writing again and this time I am introducing a few changes to this project I started in late October.