Module 8.7 – Deciding When to Release Specific Information

 

Module Introduction

            If you talk to comedians, they will tell you that the secret of comedy is timing—having just the right number of beats between the set-up and the punch line. It is the same with financial information. Getting the timing right requires you to understand what else is happening in your organization, your field, the stock market, the government, the news, and the economy in general, and how your release and other events could react together.

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1. Deciding When to Release It

            If you talk to comedians, they will tell you that the secret of comedy is timing—having just the right number of beats between the set-up and the punch line.

            If you talk to musicians, they will tell you the secret of music is the same. While the notes they play are definitely important, they are not really “music” until they have mastered both the notes and the timing that they have to be played at. In fact, we don’t even recognize music by the actual notes as much as we do by the relationship—in both tone and time—between them. Take a simple song and transpose it to another key. None of the notes will be the same. But when you hear these “different” notes you will still recognize the tune because of the relationship, or intervals, between the notes, and because of the timing that each note is held.

            Journalists say that a few things in life are as worthless as old news stories. They are great for the history books, but they don’t have any news “value.”

            It is the same with financial information. Getting the timing right requires you to understand what else is happening in your organization, your field, the stock market, the government, the news, and the economy in general, and how your release and other events could react together.

            There are times when the best thing to do so cancel a planned release because no one would pay any attention to it, or because other events would change the “meaning”—the way people interpret it—what you are doing or trying to do.

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2. When Fantasy and Reality Collide

            We have already seen how important timing is to comedy, music, journalism, and financial information. Let’s look at some actual examples.

            The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon caused repercussions that are still being felt, and affected the entire world, often in unexpected ways.

            Hollywood studio executives delayed the opening of two new movies that were about to be released because they considered then to be in bad taste when looked at in the context of the terrorist attack.

            The Tim Allen comedy Big Trouble didn’t seem that funny after 9-11. This farce features terrorists, a stolen atom bomb, and getting that bomb on board an airplane after getting it past some (at the time) comically lax airport security.

            Other movies and TV shows, as well as scripts for a number of others that were in production at the time, went through edits and revisions to make sure there were no similarities to the 9-11 attacks.

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3. When Fantasy and Reality Collide (Continued)

            Sometimes, however, reality can give fantasy a boost.

            The key plot point, or gimmick, in the 1981 comedy First Monday in October revolved around the appointment of the first female judge to the United States Supreme Court.

            The fact that the movie was released around the time when real life jurist Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female justice of the United States Supreme Court gave the movie a definite boost and a great deal of free publicity.

            The Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro’s political satire, Wag the Dog, is the story about the United States staging a phony war with Albania to get the news media’s attention away from the fact that its’ fictional president was involved in a sex scandal with a young girl who had visited the White House.

            The fact that it came out just as President Bill Clinton was involved in a real-life sex scandal with White House intern Monica Lewinsky turned it into a news story itself and generated more free publicity, discussion, commentary, an ticket sales than Hollywood could ever have dreamed of.

            What caused the damage to Collateral Damage and Big Trouble’s trouble? The same thing that made First Monday in October a first-class hit and why Wag the Dog sent several million tongues to wagging—timing.

            The fact that it was all accidental—a quirk of fate—is meaningless.

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4. Riding a Hot Topic or Story

            Getting good publicity—good media coverage—for your organization and the information you want to release about it doesn’t mean that the story has to be about you exclusively.

            Sometimes you can get good coverage and a lot free publicity by being part of a bigger story.

            If you make competition widgets that are used by some of the top cyclists in the Tour de France, and if they generate a significant portion of your sales and income, you just might want to have a presence at the Tour de France, and make sure that the media notices you.

            If your widgets are also used on bobsleds, or to make skis or ice skates, appearing at the Winter Olympics might also be a good idea.

            If any of your employees or executives wins an award, accomplishes something important, or makes the news for a “positive” reason, you can make sure that the media knows that you’re “proud” of them, too.

            It’s a lot like magic.

            Have you ever had anyone tell you to: “Pick a card. Any card?” Card magicians say that if you know 20 different ways to “locate” or “discover” the card that someone picked, but know only one way to “produce” it, you know one trick. But if you know only one way to locate the card and 20 different ways to “produce” it, you know 20 tricks.   It’s the same with getting your information out to the media and, through them, to the world.

 

5. How to Be Ignored … On Purpose

            In the same way that at times you want all the notice and attention you can get, there are other times when what you really want is to have you, and your organization, just melt away for a while, fall below the radar, get an extended “time out,” especially from media attention.

            Here again, sometimes the fates are on your side and sometimes they aren’t.

            There is only so much room on page one of any newspaper. There is also a limited amount of space inside a newspaper. Some “news” stories don’t get printed because there are more important ones that take precedence.

            It’s the same with radio and TV. News shows have a set duration. In terms of actual content, they present a great deal less news than even a small newspaper. Once again, some “news” stories don’t get aired because there are more important ones that take precedence.

            While it is technically feasible to run unlimited news on the Internet, the people who read it have limited time and an even more limited attention span. They will focus on the more important stories.

            In the same way that there are techniques to “plug” stories, to make them seem more important than they are, there are also techniques to downplay stories, to make them seem less important.

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6. How to Be Ignored … On Purpose (Continued)

            When you try to downplay a story or have the media ignore it, you risk having the media, government and critics accuse you of trying to hide something or cover it up. As politicians and organizations have learned time after time—a fact that so many of them insist on ignoring—the problem is not in making a mistake, but in trying to hide the mistake.

            It wasn’t the break-in at the Watergate Hotel that led to U.S. President Richard Nixon being forced to resign in disgrace. It was the cover-up.

            organizations go bankrupt all the time. The real problem with Enron was that it tried to hide its mistakes by lies, deceit and a massive cover-up.

            While you are advised and usually legally required to tell the truth, you are not required to shout it, or even to repeat it in case the media missed it.

            If you have bad news to send out, send it out the same way that you do all the other news that you send out. As anyone who deals with the media knows, the media picks and chooses the stories it wants to report and focus on. And sometimes it misses some good ones.

            Politicians regularly deliver bad news or make unpopular announcements in the middle of a speech. organizations often send out a “bad news” media release as part of a package of other media releases. It’s not always the top release, or even the bottom. But it is there and its message is clear if anyone bothers reading it.

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7. How to Be Ignored … On Purpose (Continued)

            At times, you can be almost positive that bad news will either be ignored, lost in the shuffle, or receive less attention than at other times, if you pick the right time to announce it.

            A common way to downplay a story is to release it around the holidays. People are either in too good—or too bad—of a mood because of the holidays to focus on anything else. The media is also too busy running holiday-related stories to pay much attention to anything other than a major news story.

            Another common technique is to release bad news during major sporting events such as the Olympics (Summer or Winter), the World Cup, World Series, the Tour de France, or Super Bowl. Even if the story does make the papers or the newscasts, people are usually too busy focusing on the sporting event to give much thought or time to a “project/programme purpose” story.

            Sometimes you can reduce the coverage a bad news story gets by scheduling its release for the right time. You might want to make sure that you send out the information after the last deadline for the nearest major newspaper, or too late for the nightly TV news shows.

            It will still be covered, but by the time they can report it the story could be 12 or 24 hours old. With a little bit of luck, other news will have happened in the interim that will be deemed more newsworthy.

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8. How to Be Ignored … On Purpose (Continued)

            If you understand how the deadlines work in the media outlets that will be most interested in the story, you can often time it so that the story will make the day’s paper or newscast, but the media will not have time to go to your competition, the government, or anyone else for comment.

            Since those “comments” often provide the conflict that keep news stories interesting and alive, lack of comment can reduce a story’s newsworthiness, and the time it spends on the air or in print.

            Still another technique is to release bad news on Fridays, after local news deadlines, and also after the stock market has closed for the week.

            Bad news that sends your stock price down is a bigger story than bad news that has no immediate effect on the stock price because the market will be closed for two days. If you do it before the three-day weekend, you have even more breathing space.

            Another advantage of releasing bad news on Friday is that some project/programme purpose publications do not publish weekend editions. You can hope that it will be “old” news by Monday.

            In terms of newspaper readership and TV viewing habits, Saturday’s newspapers are the least-read papers of the week, and weekend TV newscasts traditionally have fewer viewers than weekday newscasts.

            In the same way that timing can be used to generate and increase coverage, it can also be used to kill or at least reduce it.

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9. For Every Number, There is a Season

            The media, market analysts, stockholders, vendors, beneficiaries, and the rest of your sector of activity, along with everyone else in the project/programme purpose world, expect certain numbers to be released at certain times of the year.

            Quarterly reports, the annual report, dividend announcements, earnings statements, and such, are all part of the standard flow of information.

            While lower-than-anticipated figures can cause problems, not having them available when they are expected can cause even bigger problems—sometimes legal ones. In any case, the timing of these figures has already been established by law or custom. Trying to change the timing is usually more trouble than it is worth.

            Since the public, especially the media, expects this information to be released at a specific time, it is important to look at what other information you night want to release, and ask yourself it is appropriate to release it at that time, or if you might want to either release it before the “standard” release, or after it.

            Releasing too much information at one time, especially if you are releasing two different types of information—such as quarterly earnings and a management shuffle, or a dividend announcement along with a new product introduction—can reduce the sort of coverage both of them might have received had you released the two “stories” separately.

            The question, then, becomes: Do you want coverage on both? Do you want to divide the public’s attention? Or do you want to get maximum exposure on one, and then later, get maximum exposure on the second announcement?

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10. You Can Become Too Famous

            The more famous your organization is, the bigger, more inviting, and more attractive a target it makes.

            You cannot afford to be constantly in the public eye, to have every media release printed, or to have every bit of financial information you produce be read and analyzed by every commentator and analyst in the media.

            The first thing that will happen is that the public and the media will get bored with you. Boredom often turns into resentment.

            It is a maxim among tax accountants and tax lawyers around the world that when a government—any government—decides to audit someone, or some organization, they will find something wrong with their books.

            That’s because there is always something wrong with the books: perhaps some fudging, oversight, mistake, or misinterpretation. There is always something. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t have as many tax accountants and tax lawyers in the world.

            While it is important to be known, you can become too well known.

            People trying to make names for themselves in any field often do so by challenging someone who is already well known in that field. They go “gunning” for them.

            In American “cowboy” fiction, one of the standard plots of countless short stories, novels, movies and TV has a steady stream of young gunfighters challenging the old, established and well-known gunfighter to see which one of really the fastest. No matter how many times the old gunslinger wins, we all know that the longer he keeps at it, eventually he will lose his edge. Eventually a younger, faster, and smoother gunfighter will come along to beat the older man to the draw.

 

Assignments

 

Multiple-Choice (2)

 

1.         Journalists say that few things in life are as worthless as _______.

a.       Boring news stories.

b.      Old news stories.

c.       Advance news stories.

d.      All of the above

 

2.         Sometimes you can get good coverage or free publicity by _______.

a.       Sending out your information to many journalists.

b.      Being part of a bigger story.

c.       Both of the above

d.      None of the above

 

3.         Some news stories do not get printed because ________.

a.      There are more important ones that take precedence.

b.      Journalists decide it isn’t interesting.

c.       The organization the stories are about offends the journalist.

d.      None of the above

 

4.         If you have bad news to send out, send it out ________.

a.       As subtly as you can.

b.      To very few people.

c.       The same way you do all the other news that you send out.

d.      All of the above