Clive Simpkins

Allocating Radio Frequencies

I guess the last remaining Gauteng FM radio signal licence could have been allocated by ICASA’s Paris Mashile to some black consortium in order to be politically correct. But that would have been a pity. I first wrote on the topic on Moneyweb on 1st November 2005 (http://www.moneyweb.co.za/economy/soapbox/512075.htm) suggesting that 702 qualified on a ‘grandfather clause’ basis for the signal. This in the face of a Mother Teresa-like plea against the notion, ‘in the public interest’, by Kagiso Broadcasting’s Omar Essak (pictured).

In a Mail & Guardian online response to my article, Essak dredged up the following scintillating riposte: “I read recently on the 'Exclusive Books’ website that you were inspired to write by reading Enid Blyton. Perhaps it’s best that you stick to fairy tales….as a pedestrian wordsmith, I beg your indulgence while I clumsily make the case for a more critical look at the possible motives involved in this case.” Perhaps if Essak had commenced his reading career with Enid Blyton, he wouldn’t today need to crave indulgences for his self-proclaimed literary ineptitude? He’d also have correctly read that my imagination was sparked and I was motivated to read by Blyton’s writing. I wasn’t inspired by her to write.

Let’s say ICASA followed Essak’s notion to empower a ‘greenfields’ operation. Radio is not simply a matter of sitting behind a microphone and nattering on, or spinning a few CDs. In today’s heavily competed environment it requires significant marketing nous. You need only to look at the early travails of P4 and other ‘empowerment’ managed stations to confirm that. Forget the conventional wisdom that Medium Wave (AM) is used for talk radio ‘throughout the world.’ Certain close-quarters urban environments make it absolutely non-viable. And the 702 output has reached that stage. It’s become impossible to hold on to what masquerades as a ‘signal’ even when going under motorway bridges.

I disagree that Mashile or ICASA have made an inappropriate decision. I can’t accept that the job of a regulator is simply to ‘level the playing fields’ as Alec Hogg, CEO of Moneyweb, suggests. Any bureaucrat or ‘cop’ could do that. The role must surely also be (in my view) to make intelligent judgement calls about the business sector or environment over which it has oversight. Such a mandate might well include throwing a sustainability or viability lifeline to a Gauteng institution – which is what 702 has become. A better choice I’m persuaded than potentially whittling away the value of that signal allocation in the hands of engénues or incompetents.

I continue to marvel at our national predilection for levelling accusations of bias, bribery or collusion as soon as things don’t fit with our concept. You can’t even write about something without someone alleging a vested interest – as some asinine idiot is already almost certain to have concluded in regard to this article.

Talk radio is not everyone's forte - and one assumes the licence conditions would not permit a 'conversion' to music other than as a percentage of the programming. But it will mean a dramatically improved listening experience and when music is played, it will at least be recognisable.

Regardless of your like or dislike of Primedia or its executives, and I carry no brief for them, an FM signal will ensure continuity for 702 and continued pleasure for its listeners. It provides a valuable forum for public debate – even if the IQ ratings of the debate are sometimes a tad suspect! ;-) Now let someone go look at digital broadcasting as the next evolutionary step in democratising the airwaves of Gauteng and South Africa. Maybe Omar Essak’s up to the task?

Getting your PR placed

Whoever handles the PR for law firm Sonnenberg Hoffmann Galombik deserves a score-card showing of 10. In a day and age of heavily-competed and very limited media space, getting your client consistent and valuable exposure ain’t easy. This law practice has featured in PR terms with a frequency that’s flagged my attention.

Media competitiveness has led to more publications, lower advertisement to editorial ratios and therefore a nightmare for the PR folk trying to get free placement of articles or features. Sometimes the fact that one is a frequent advertiser in a publication provides a wee bit of leverage. But ‘low-interest’ categories (and I would categorise law firms as one of those) would face an uphill battle to get exposure unless the ‘angle’ was of particular reader interest.

I learned an early and valuable lesson years ago from a woman with an amazing ability to get her pieces placed. She’d phone the journalist concerned, tell ‘em briefly what she was thinking of doing and then add: ‘What angle would make this story most useful or interesting for your readers?’ That’s darned clever because the journo knows (or jolly well should!) the reader profile better than anyone else outside of the publication.

Two smart things here: One, she’d make contact with the journo who would therefore be expecting the article or item. Two, she’d almost guarantee placement because of the readership-targeted angle if there was space and no other headline-grabbing event occurred simultaneously.

If you’re a low interest category and you’re up against large opposition with fully fledged PR and marketing departments, your life can be a misery. But getting the PR machine on a roll and maintaining the momentum may lead to your company (regardless of size) becoming the accessible ‘voice’ or spokesperson for that particular professional or industry sector. Most radio stations have a studio list of ‘topic experts’ and if something surfaces in a show, they call the resident guru. Getting to such a hallowed state is very desirable and also a valuable corporate advantage.

OK, so why the applause for Sonnenberg Hoffman Galombik? I’m sure Peter Bruce, esteemed editor of Business Day, won’t mind me borrowing his pic and article of 16^th March to illustrate the PR exposure that this law firm got. Even though the Law Society decided in 2003 to encourage attorneys to render pro bono (no charge) services, they can’t compel anyone to do so. So when attorneys in a practice don’t just fulfil the recommended 24 hours per year of pro bono service, but go the added mile of opening a pro bono practice in an area like Mitchells Plain in the Western Cape, that’s real news!

If you want your community to choose you, make use of your service or offering, you have to be seen to give something back. This is an absolutely brilliant way of doing so. This kind of exercise is ideal for getting a schpiel in every Caxton newsie around

South Africa

. And the readership of those ‘local rags’ as someone inaccurately and disparagingly called them, is in depth and quite amazing. This demonstrates that we do things and read things that are in our interest.

When advising a young man who was having difficulty in his business, I asked, ‘What do you do each day to better market your services on the next day?’ The short answer is that he didn’t. So for each of us, the question at night should be: ‘What am I doing to market or promote my service or product tomorrow?’ That in-advance, proactive thinking, although incredibly simple, creates a discipline that leads to good exposure. You can be sure someone at Sonnenberg Hoffman Galombik thinks like that.

And now guys at SHG, on to my legal problem….. ;-)

Reputation, Risk & Reward

One impulsive statement, a single injudiciously timed comment, a lie, obfuscation, a sexual peccadillo, an inappropriate PR response, playing the corporate gorilla with those who ‘get in the way’ – and years of carefully nurtured personal, corporate or brand reputation can go down the tubes in a nano second. Are you at risk? You might well be.

The personal and corporate world in which we live has moved unobtrusively but inexorably into radically uncontrollable territory in the last few years. Although Blogs (informal, opinion-based web logs/sites/postings) may not have become the mighty corporate club they were predicted to be, they remain an unpredictable guerrilla element in the reputational marketing mix.

Clients, customers, service providers, manufacturers, contractors, politicians, individuals, all have instant, virtually cost-free access to global media via the Internet. Their voice or opinion on any issue can be and often is picked up and debated around the world. There is a ‘transparency’, visibility and immediacy via digital media that potentially nullifies the previous ‘protection’ of even the most powerful customer relationship management (CRM) program, PR division, lobbyist and spin budgets.

Your shareholders or stakeholders would vilify you for not having in place carefully crafted strategies for the survival and future growth of your business. Yet very frequently, the question of ‘how would we (appropriately!) respond in the event of a crisis?’ or to being trashed in a blog, is not even on the strategic radar screen.

A few months ago a female CEO took more than 24 hours to respond to a Financial Mail request for information and clarification and they went to press without the benefit of her comments. She then complained bitterly in a reader’s letter to the editor about the ‘treatment’ she’d been meted out. She claimed she’d been ‘very busy’ and was therefore unable to respond timeously. She should in fact have been severely rapped over the knuckles by her fellow directors for dereliction of duty. That sort of egotistic prevarication and naïveté simply doesn’t wash in the immediacy of the digital world. Years of careful corporate brand-building were flushed down the loo because of her ineptitude.  Those who did read what she claimed were ‘inaccuracies’ about her company didn’t necessarily also read her letters-page response. Even if they did, the damage wasn’t undone.

Some damage, although seemingly a pinprick to a corporate giant – will never go away. Mention South African Breweries (SAB Miller), PR and Justin Nurse of ‘Laugh It Off’, Black Labour White Guilt infamy, springs to mind. Lesson: You can make as big a balls-up, by going for overkill (an SAB speciality) just because you have heavyweight corporate lawyers in your corner as you can by responding inappropriately or not at all.

Smaller business owners in particular, without the benefit of a formally configured marketing or PR department, run the risk of responding ineptly to media-interest issues. In large corporates, where guidelines for ‘who may speak with the media’ are sometimes fuzzy – all hell can break loose. I recall a journo calling an ad agency at lunch-time (yes!) to ask about their black empowerment credentials. Dunno if that was a brilliant strategy, a stroke of luck, or an accident. Whichever, the phones had been put on ‘night service’ so whoever was around would dial 9 and take the call because the switchboard operator had also gone to lunch. The journo lucked out and got himself a marijuana-mellowed creative type who knew diddly-squat about the actual BEE component but was very comfortable to slur his views on the subject. These puerile perspectives then appeared in print as the ‘official’ albeit un-named spokesperson response from the agency. Undoing that lot can’t have been easy.

I had a recent encounter with Cats Digital Experience in Sandton City (previously blogged) over some tacky service. I got back an e-mail from their clearly untutored-in-matters-of-PR CEO. In a rambling quasi-apology he positioned their firm as the little guy fighting the Goliath of the established electronics retailers. Incomprehensibly, in an attempt to justify the experience, he described his company as ‘the best of the worst’ in the sector. One heck of a payoff line you must agree!

Can you any longer believe anything that minister of public enterprises Alec Erwin says? I can’t. One lie, followed by another in the form of a ‘denial’ that he made the first comment and anything he says now gets blocked by my neurological spam filter. He was once a highly-rated, credible source. Even if it was in compliance with ‘His Master’s Voice’ that he make the infamous Koeberg nuclear power station ‘human instrumentality’ sabotage comment – he’s now a credibility lame duck – which is a pity.

As for former deputy president Jacob Zuma of ‘moral regeneration’ campaign fame, the masses will continue, as the  Bard said, to toss their sweaty night-caps in the air and remain forever in his thrall. The cognoscenti however, will dub him a sleazy opportunist - beyond reputation rehab - whatever the outcome of his indictment on rape charges.

So just having the experience to do what you do as your ‘speciality’ is no longer sufficient. You could be a personal or corporate liability in waiting. The remedy? There are heaps of books on the topic. There are courses. I’m convinced you could do an on-line tutorial by going Google-ing the topic. But to continue in life or business without some plan as to how you’d respond in a reputation crisis is a short-sighted and dangerous thing.

The bottom line is this: Every individual in an organization is a facet of the corporate image – a mobile billboard in effect. They’re individual ‘downloads’ of information about the company. In both personal and corporate terms, we need to revisit our risk.

Related Tags: Corporate reputation, Image, Reputational risk, Public Relations, Crisis scenario planning, Customer service, Blogs, Media skills

Foreign investment fright potential

By the time this posting hits the virtual ‘airwaves’ the South African March 1, 2006 local elections will be history. But there are some fine lessons to be learned from the process.

I’ve tracked the media exposure of our opportunistically empathic, baby-kissing, geriatric-comforting politicians in their desperate bid to garner the last vote. I’m left bemused and disgusted. A recent article in the erudite Journal for Convergence (our local ‘Harvard Business Review’) by IMD Professor of Organizational behaviour, Robert Hooijberg, deals with integrity in leadership. Our politicos would clearly benefit from a session with him.

Even minister of public enterprises, Alec Erwin, has earned my contempt for claiming, on the eve of the local elections, that the Koeberg nuclear power station failures have been caused by ‘sabotage’. If he had half a communications brain, he would have ‘revealed’ that dubious bit of information the first time Slaapstad was rendered powerless. Then it would have been a PR coup because it would have attracted sympathy, support and understanding. Now it will be seen for what I suspect it is – to get some eve-of-election support for the ANC. Hmm…that integrity article again.

The ANC doesn’t need support of course. The incredible paradox of Africa is that recent research surveys show that more people are likely to vote as a result of the conflict surrounding the incorporation of Khutsong and other townships into ‘new’ geographic zones. Such is the lack of sophistication of the voters concerned that they’re deemed more likely to vote/have voted for the ANC as a result of their anger and confusion surrounding how best to deal with the matter. Speaking of which, if press reports are correct, it sounds like defence minister and ANC chairman Mosiuoa Lekota, is in line for a refresher in communication skills and a brush-up on how to address his black elders with a modicum of respect. This after his abortive attempt to calm tensions in Khutsong.

At 02:45 of 1^st March election day I was awakened by my alarm system indicating that we were experiencing yet another power failure. What Parktown North did in a past incarnation to deserve so many outages now, only the ancestors know. And probably only because they were present when the now antique cables and infrastructure were installed. I immediately called the oxymoronically named ‘Johannesburg Connect’. In my circle they’re referred to as ‘Jo’burg Disconnect’. Having listened through the recording announcing ‘extensive’ power failures in South Hills and Ophirton, I got to lodge my complaint. I clearly ruined the sleep of the call-centre attendant to whom I had to repeat the same items of information several times.

To cut a long story short, 6 and one quarter hours later we had power back again. Jo’burg Disconnect’s promise is a 4 hour turn around time – which is outrageously slow anyhow. Once again we’ll have to cook the frozen fish from the deep freeze rather than risk it having partially thawed and refrozen. I even have a default two days ahead of event protocol now for printing out documents and learning-guides I’ll need for coaching sessions. Leaving them to even one day before the event has becoming very risky due to the utter unreliability of the electricity supply in Johannesburg. I wonder, really wonder, what impact on foreign investment confidence our inexorably and irreversibly crumbling infrastructure is already having? Would you go start a business or build a factory where (as in the case of the Cape fruit co-operatives) your entire season’s pickings could be ruined by refrigeration failure courtesy of the power utility? I think not.

The great irony is this: I open my Star Newspaper on 1^st March 2006 to find the bottom of page 2 colonised by a page-wide ad for Johannesburg City. There were several other, similar, hagiography-type ads in the same edition. It’s hilarious. I think the originators of the ads must be smoking their socks. And maybe the solution is for us to start smoking ours as well. Because then we’ll enjoy the mass hallucination that the local councils are indeed delivering. Despite (taking just Johannesburg) a chaotic water, electricity and rates billing system, ‘unrecoverable’ debt write-offs to the tune of hundreds of millions, pot-holed roads, missing manhole and drain covers resulting in regular loss of (primarily paediatric) life, water pipes bursting, chronic water leakage in underground pipes, a failing sewage and electricity infrastructure, eternally failing traffic lights, filth and inner city decay that makes Dar es Salaam look like Geneva by comparison, etc. etc. ad nauseam. I think the main problem with the ad is the payoff line: ‘The world class African city’. It should read: ‘The third-world-class African City’. Then at least we couldn’t be accused of a lack of integrity.

There’s an upside to all of this. Corrupt politicians have a growth industry opportunity spawned by their ineptitude and lack of integrity. They can go buy a franchise for home electricity generators. We’re all going to need them this upcoming Winter. They’ll make yet another killing at the expense of the unthinking idiots who voted them into office. A luta continua!

Post-script: God-gospel truth. At the exact instant I finished writing this piece, the power has gone off yet again. I’m checking the corners of my ceiling for concealed video cameras…. The guy on day-shift at Jo’burg Disconnect and I are developing quite a relationship. He recognises my voice now. Or then maybe it’s just the hysterical tone…

It’s surely also time for someone to write a counterpoint to that disingenuously titled book, ‘South Africa – the good news’ by the imbongi (praise singer) duet of Stuart Pennington and Brett Bowes? Any offers?

Related Tags: Politicians, Ethics, Integrity, Manipulation, Gullibility, Voters, Foreign Investment, Investment confidence, Opportunism