Leo MacLeod’s Blog

If Sam Adams wants to reshape his image, he needs to keep a lower profile and not work so hard to get attention.  His manipulation of media backfired when he was caught spinning the truth more than once.  It gives PR a bad name as “lying” and “manipulation.”  Those of us in the profession understand that PR is not all obfuscation with evil intent.  It’s just trying to tell your side of the story, mostly through evidence and facts.  Most PR is fairly benign stuff.  Sam’s problem was that he misled us through PR.  If he wants to regain public confidence, he needs to back off using PR so much.  It only makes us suspect his motives.  Show us by your actions not by your words.  There’s a credibility gap for him to fill that more PR can only make worse.

Not At This Price
If you want something done, Adams is a go-to-guy. Under Vera Katz, Adams developed a reputation as an astute politician who loved the game and believed that winning was everything. Adams has mellowed with age and has learned to be a team player, but his drive to win at all costs is why he is now enormously respected and wholly untrustworthy.

It’s clear now that for the mayoral contest, winning meant everything to Adams. It meant orchestrating an elaborate public relations campaign, forcefully issuing statements, manipulating editors and reporters, feigning outrage, hanging Randy Leonard out to dry, attacking the character of Bob Ball, urging a young, impressionable man to lie and even having his political consultant scrub the story. The same qualities that fuel his ambitious 100-day agenda for Portland are now unraveling his legacy before it’s even begun. Potter may have been boring, but he was transparent and trustworthy. Adams appears more like the Wizard of Oz, a desperate man behind the curtain manipulating public opinion for his own gains.

The news about Adam’s scandal broke on the same day we were celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama and a new era for accountability and trust in government. The Bush administration, which believed the ends justified the means, broke laws, distorted truth and violated human rights to push their own agenda. This is a time for us to uphold our public servants up to a higher standard, not lower. If we accept Adam’s deceptions as business as usual, we are perpetuating a cycle of mistrust and political expediency that we firmly rejected in the last election. Portland deserves no less than a clean slate and a new mayor.

I recently went to a high-powered sales conference where the speaker urged the audience to find opportunities to up-sell customers by showing three options of your service or product, loading more value as price inches up, e.g., I’ll throw in the steak knives free when you get the Cadillac. While that works in good times, consumers are looking at buying less not more. How can your firm sell them just what they need, not more than they really need? Businesses are consumed with how to get by, not get a good deal on things they can live without now. When selling to today’s customer, give them options that meet their austerity budget BUT don’t undervalue your services or products. Find ways of giving them smaller bites of what you can do, rather than discounting your regular services. This sets up a dangerous formula: they’ll expect to pay less even when the economy turns around. Find ways to work with customers to get both of you through these times, without eroding your position, value or revenues.

I’m excited by Obama’s term starting and I look at my own business challenges in this economy.  What Obama was saying is that it will be rough for awhile, but that each of us has to meet our own personal challenges.  We can’t afford to wait for a rescue plan (like the banks).   For much of my time as a consultant, work was always plentiful.  It just came.  Not now.  And it’s just not making a few phone calls.  It’s pounding the street and turning over new stones.  I could be defeated by it, but that’s not an option.  It just requires more muscle and effort and has already starting to pay off.   A friend often says during these times when the work seems tough: “That’s why they call it work.”   The truth is it is how we meet the challenges of our toughest times that defines us as a country and to the person.