David Politis

Effective today, I am only going to use DavidPolitis.com as my personal blog.

Anything related to strategic marketing communications will henceforth appear on TheBettyFactor.com blog (see www.TheBettyFactor.com).

Any of my thoughts, feelings, observations, opinions and the like about the recreation, athletics, outdoor and/or sports industries will be posted on the SOAR Communications blog at www.soarcomm.com/blog.

And (at the risk of going crazy) I also intend to resurrect Utah Tech Watch after the first of the year as well at www.UtahTechWatch.com.

= = = = = = = = = =

For the newcomers out there, I began Utah Tech Watch as a self-syndicated print column in 1994. 

Robb Hicken (then business editor of Provo, Utah-based “The Daily Herald,”) agreed to publish Utah Tech Watch on a semi-weekly basis. Six months later the gig expanded to a weekly column from yours truly. And within a year after that, both the Deseret News (now the Deseret Morning News) and The Enterprise were also carrying my weekly musings, observations and occassional breaking-news pieces.

When combined with a growing email distribution of the column, Utah Tech Watch eventually reached a circulation of more than 140,000 readers per week.

However, after more than 10 years of producing 500 to 800 words of editorial copy nearly every week and writing more than 500 columns (on top of running Politis Communications), I walked away from the column (in print at least) in August 2004. (I believe my August 10, 2004 column — “It can be a love-hate relationship” — was the last time Utah Tech Watch appeared in the Deseret News, even though this link is found on FindArticles.com.)

At about the same time, UtahTechWatch.com was officially launched online, but to be perfectly honest, I was burned out on weekly column-writing. So inspite of my efforts and those of my former employee, Russell Page, postings on UtahTechWatch.com have been sporadic at best. My hope is to change that beginning in 2008.

= = = = = = = = = =

Back to DavidPolitis.com.

I intend to repurpose postings from this site that are marketing-related to TheBettyFactor.com blog. These may be exact copies or approximations; that is yet to be determined.

Either way, the originals will remain on UtahTechWatch.com and the copies/approximations will reference the original as well.

So . . . ready or not . . . crazy or not . . . four blogs at once:

1. DavidPolitis.com,

2. UtahTechWatch.com,

3. TheBettyFactor.com, and

4. The SOAR blog.

Luckily, I’ll be able to rely on my colleagues at Politis Communications and SOAR Communications to help out on The Betty Factor and the SOAR blogs. And if I’m smart, I’ll probably open up Utah Tech Watch for guest posters, writers and columnists as well.

But not yet. I need to first prove I can juggle all four blogs at the same time.

Gotta go for now, and watch this space in the days, weeks and months ahead.

P.S. Thanks, Robb, for getting me started as a columnist. FYI: Mr. Hicken is now the Managing Editor for the Idaho Business Review in Boise.

Notwithstanding Malcolm Atherton’s comment in our recent training meeting about the rule to keep headlines in news releases short in length, the truth is that sometimes reality trumps the rules. Here’s a case in point.

One of our clients at Politis Communications, HandHeld Entertainment, notified us the other day that it was going to be adding a new “outside” member to its board of directors. Obviously, adding a board member is significant news, so we began drafting up a release.

Later that day we had the first draft completed and within 48 hours the release was ready to go out the door with (as it turns out) an eight-word headline.

Then at the last-minute, the top client contact (CEO Jeff Oscodar) pointed out that the addition of this new board member would put the company back in compliance with NASDAQ regulations regarding the number of outside directors. This one observation led to a quick re-write of the headline, a modification of the lead sentence and the addition of a new sentence to the finished release.

So . . . although the rule of thumb is keep news release headlines shorter (eight words being the ideal length), there are exceptions to every rule, this one included.

Depending upon what needs to be accomplished, a longer headline may actually be required.

This was just one of the “loud and clear” messages that struck home in a recent training meeting with Business Wire’s Malcolm Atherton at the Politis Communications offices.

To be specific, news releases with headlines that are eight words long was deemed the ideal length.

Such length best for several reasons, Atherton explained.

1. Shorter headlines improve results in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.
2. Shorter headlines have greater impact with readers as there is less to read.
3. Shorter headlines don’t get truncated in returned search results. (Both Google and Yahoo! only include the first 50 or so characters of a headline in the returned summary result; everything else is cut-off in the summary.)
4. Shorter headlines force writers to truly understand the thrust of a release, boiling the content down to the absolute essence — the core of what is needed — no more, no less.

Simple lesson then: When in doubt, shorter headlines are best for news releases.

On the surface, the headline from today’s Dell Inc. news release seems fairly straightforward: “Michael Dell Assumes Duties as Chief Executive Officer of Dell Inc.”

And yet as one begins to dig a bit deeper into the nuances of the release, I believe that clues begin to emerge as to what likely happened at Dell in the past 24-48 hours.

First some context.

According to Reuters, Kevin Rollins joined Dell in 1996 as senior vice president, corporate strategy following a stint with management consulting firm Bain Inc. After a variety of escalating promotions, Rollins was tapped as CEO of Dell in July 2004.

Note the praise Michael Dell heaps on Rollins praise in the following quote taken directly from the news release announcing Rollins’ promotion to Dell CEO on July 16, 2004:

“There is no single person who deserves more recognition for our great accomplishments than Kevin. His becoming CEO is as much about recognizing what he’s already done as it is about our confidence in his future and Dell’s.”

My how the worm has turned. Now, let’s look at today’s news release.

One, the lead paragraph explains that Mr. Dell will take over as CEO “effective immediately” replacing Kevin Rollins. Notice that the release is not about Rollins resigning; it’s about Dell becoming CEO. Interesting distinction.

The next several paragraphs are all about Michael Dell and how wonderful he is, which is fine.

But note that it’s not until the fifth paragraph that we learn that Rollins has even resigned from Dell at all, both as CEO and from his position on the Dell board of directors. Here again, note the use of the term “effective immediately.”

I point out this phrase because my experience in tracking news announcements during the past 20 years suggests that any time a release says an executive is stepping down “effective immediately” I am quite confident that the decision to resign was not made voluntarily.

Note also in the sixth paragraph that Michael Dell says that “Rollins has been a great business partner and friend,” which sounds perfectly fine, even laudable on the surface to say nice things about a former business partner. But note that the verb used is in the past tense — “has been” instead of “is.”

Obviously I understand that Rollins is no longer Dell’s business partner, but couldn’t this sentence have been written ”Rollins is a great friend and has been a great business partner” just as easily? Maybe it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well, but for something this important, I’m confident the release was written in this manner on purpose.

Finally, there are two more things in the middle sentence of the sixth paragraph that I think bear further examination: “He has made significant contributions to our business over the past ten years.”

Did you see the classic PR mistakes made in this sentence? Specifically, any public/investor relations pro or journalist worth her salt knows that the word “over” is used in PR- and news-writing to signify a place of position and not a period of time. (For example, “He held the bat over his head.”)

Additionally, with minor exceptions (and this isn’t one of them), numbers 10 and higher are always shown as a number and not spelled out in PR- and news-writing, while the numbers zero through nine are always spelled out.

Hence, the sentence should have been written “He has made significant contributions to our business during the past 10 years.”

Taken in concert, I believe all of these points suggest that this release was pulled together very quickly (my guess is within a couple of hours) without the input of PR professionals.

I also believe it was probably written overnight (probably by Dell’s legal counsel) with vetting by Mr. Dell himself and the Dell board, then prepped for distribution and publishing on the Dell Website and shoved out the door.

If I take these suppositions a step further, it would not surprise me to learn the forced decision to resign was presented to Rollins in a Dell board meeting last night.

Do I know this for sure? Of course not.

But almost every news release leaves clues as to what really happened behind the scenes, including today’s release from Dell Inc.

(For more on this topic, check out my other blog post at UtahTechWatch.com.)

Salt Lake City-based ContentWatch announced yesterday afternoon that it has acquired Net Nanny from San Francisco-based LookSmart (NASDAQ: LOOK).

Historically perceived as a market (if not a technology) leader in the Internet filtration/parental controls marketplace, Net Nanny has become something of an orphaned/abandoned product within LookSmart as management has decided to focus the company on the targeted/specialized search engine marketplace.

In fact, a quick review of the LookSmart news release archives shows that the last time the term Net Nanny appeared in a LookSmart news release headline was September 22, 2004 — more than 27 months ago!

Additionally, it appears that LookSmart has not generated any software licensing revenue since fiscal 2003 (ended 12/31) when the company generated $15.3 million in software licensing, or 11 percent of its overall revenue. (See p. 26 of LookSmart’s 2005 annual report.)

So, although the official ContentWatch/LookSmart news release announcing the acquisition does not disclose the price paid by ContentWatch for Net Nanny, I suspect CEO Sunderlage and company got a steal of a price. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that ContentWatch didn’t pay a dime for Net Nanny (but that’s just a wild guess on my part).

Regardless of the price, however, it should be a good addition to the ContentWatch stable of product offerings.

(DISCLOSURE: Politis Communications provided public relations services to ContentWatch on a project basis in 2005.)