If you don’t believe it, visit their site* and check out the News and Information section. Here you’ll find abundant press statements and testimony by Director Leon Panetta [okay, so there's no press contact on the releases -- we'll take the job if it's open]. Off to the right: quick links to the CIA YouTube channel and Flickr site. As of Feb. 7, the site offers a new “CIA Interactive” section with “popular, fun and educational interactive content.”  There is even a Kid’s Page with half a dozen games geared to various age levels, and a coloring book. Accompanying graphics feature cartoon images of cloak & dagger types in black trench coats and dark  glasses. That’s right: the CIA has a sense of humor. In addition, right up front, the site presents historical material and current features. Overall site impact: well-designed, highly accessible to a range of audiences, good use of social media. They know how to make optimal use of great content to tell their story — a knack many companies would be well served to emulate.

Granted, we have no insight on how the CIA handles day-to-day media activities. But in terms of managing their public image via the latest new media tools, they are on top of their game.

Coming at this topic with cool, aloof James Bond stereotypes firmly fixed in my mind, I was at first astonished. Whoda thunk, eh? Then I remembered a years ago conversation with a retired CIA employee who pointed out that some of the best field operatives have outgoing personalities like salesmen (and I guess by inference that could include PR people, too). Makes absolute sense when you think about it. Having sound “people skills” is essential to gaining trust — thus key to gathering intelligence. PR people working the tech beat should take a cue from that insight and work tech clients as a seasoned field operative might. Pointers:

• Be Fluent in the Local Language.  You’ll never break through the communications barrier with elusive engineering types if you don’t take the trouble to learn how to “speak” their business.
• Build Trust. Clients that turn down interviews are a resistant for a reason: They’re not comfortable — a common sentiment among tech companies and startups with limited media experience. So never put them at risk. Bring the client along in small steps with interviews on low-key topics, brief them thoroughly and always rehearse in advance.  A few positive interviews will establish strong trust.
• “Keep it Simple.” Tech execs sometimes come off an interview complaining, “what a dope that reporter is — he doesn’t get our business, at all.”  Guess what?  It’s your and the client’s job to create and tell a great story that’s readily accessible.  If the reporter doesn’t “get it,” that’s your fault, not his.
• Look Behind and to Both Sides. Consider everything that could possibly go wrong with a PR initiative, make it failsafe to the best of your ability, and always have a back-up plan.
• Look Ahead, Too. Learning the client’s technology is good for openers, but don’t stop there. Be familiar with key trends in the business the client should know and which may lead to story opportunities. A good PR agency representing a telecom company will be up on current stats regarding global IP traffic. An excellent agency understands by what percent the carrier must reduce capex and opex to maintain margins in the face of rising traffic and static end user pricing. A really outstanding agency knows about experimental OpenFlow interfaces and software defined networks that can handle traffic growth while cutting operations costs. That agency sees this topic as an important new angle the client can speak to in future stories.

Got all that? Gotta scoot now. My shoe phone is ringing.

* This link is to a Central Intelligence Agency Internet resource.

Clocking in at a large corporation day in, day out certainly seems less alluring than whatever the wild liquid avenues of Venice offered Byron in his day, hence all the more cause for tedium. Boredom — and fear of what that may generate in the markets — may be the principal reason why Google just booted Eric Schmidt as CEO and handed control back to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. With many of its brightest engineering minds defecting to startups, and its growing culture of innovation through acquisition, Google more and more resembles a slow-moving giant that has lost its edge.

Page’s rationale for the shake-up is “to get Google to be a big company that has the nimbleness and soul and passion and speed of a start-up.” Good luck with that.  Somehow the words “big company” and “nimble” always clash. The news might have been more exciting if Page and Brin had left Schmidt in place and gone off to conquer new worlds. More Byronic, anyway. Time will tell if this new challenge provides sufficient motive for each to wake and face the world.

For us, helping start-ups topple giants and smaller competitors defeat monopolies has always been the guiding passion. Creating a story that transforms markets is what gets us out of bed in the morning. What about you — what do you live for?

Timing: Early days of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  Our engineer didn’t want to talk about that, though, just the technologies used to stop blowouts. Press were already calling him, and he wasn’t calling back. Somehow he thought they would hold their questions if they were sitting in front of him in the same room.

Crawford receives inquiries from all manner of technology, engineering and scientific enterprises. We never charge for the initial consultation, thus often steer companies to a decision on PR before they spend a dime. In this case, we told the prospective client to forget his seminar idea.  Why:

• We’ve never seen press pay to attend an educational event.
• However, some might because the BP oil spill is hot and reporters want to know every detail on why the blowout prevention equipment failed.
• Once on-site, journalists will ignore the “no question” rule.
• If you refuse to talk, they’ll corner other attendees instead.
• Even if nobody talks, journalists will still write about the seminar.
• Their next call will be to the companies involved in the oil spill to see if you work for them.
• Get the picture?

End of seminar idea. We hung up. No charge, and no big deal — the time spent was worthwhile for both sides. The young engineer avoided a potentially embarrassing and costly mistake. We reinforced a long-held view: Brilliance in technology doesn’t necessarily translate to innate understanding of PR.

In the tech arena, we encounter companies with misguided ideas on PR fairly regularly. Most misconceptions are innocuous.  There are execs who:

• Think press releases are advertisements (granted, many read like ads).
• Believe that a meeting or call with a reporter is a guarantee of coverage.
• Are disappointed when their 30-minute interview is boiled down to two sentences — or omitted entirely — in a multi-source feature story quoting a dozen other companies.
• Dismiss reporters as “naive” or “stupid” for not knowing as much about the interviewee’s field as the interviewee.
• Express outrage when they do get coverage, don’t like their quotes and accuse the reporter of taking their remarks “out of context.”

Smart folk know when they’re out of their depth. It just takes a brief chat with the lifeguard to learn if the risk outweighs goin’ in the water.

As they should. I might own a poodle for a pet, but I’d never hire or work for one. Give me a pit bull that goes for the throat.

A company we know faced the policy battle of its life against a large telecom monopoly. They went through three fat & happy agencies, all of which whimpered away in defeat, before finding one with the blood lust attitude they needed. Scary what happened next. Caught that over-confident telco dozing and tore them up in the media, ensuring a favorable policy decision.

A software firm entered a market dominated by an incumbent many times its size. Dare they go head-to-head and bring down the wrath and might of this giant? The cut-throat band they hired for an agency said Hell Yes. Goliath-size coverage ensued, and the giant squeaked thereafter.

I like positive thinking. . .when it ends in results. Social media sermons make me feel good for 5 minutes. Like it or not, business realities can push aside one’s finer impulses. Self-preservation is noble in its own right. All companies know, if few admit: Turn the other cheek, but never your back.

We often put clients in front of reporters at Business Week, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal and every conceivable IT or telecom trade, for a briefing. Journalists listen 5-10 minutes, then cut in with: “Who’s using your product?” If a company names 2-3 high profile customers, they’re home free. If not they hear, “Great story — come back when you have a client.”

Customer testimonials and case studies are among the most important tools in any company’s PR arsenal. You don’t need a slew, even one will do.

A smallish OSS firm once won the Telecom Italia account. They milked it for all it was worth — so much that competitors sneered “Is TI their only customer?” Didn’t matter. Whatever that company wrote or said, whatever the medium or forum, they led with TI.  Result: continuous coverage.

A single customer became their ticket to credibility, and ultimately, to a very healthy buy-out price by a larger company. By leveraging just one customer, that smart little OSS firm proved the case for case studies.

Joe Harar, Principal, Telecommunications Development Fund, said his group has already funded one start-up this year.  In all, he foresees up to 25 IPOs across the telecom industry in 2010, not too shabby a showing considering what he termed the “dry spell” of the last decade. “Telecom’s due,” he said.

Tom Cohen, Partner at the Kelley Drye law firm, sees opportunities blooming as a result of the Broadband Stimulus initiative, at least for large, established carriers with lots of long green.  Don’t expect to see any explosion of choice and competition.  Fundees for the most part — and certainly those that bid on the FCC’s promised 500 Mhz in new spectrum — will be the usual cast of Big Boys.

Almost on cue, Verizon, Qwest and Comcast today verified Tom’s characteristic perspicacity by filing for stimulus bucks.

Moderator Tom Finkenbinder of Merrill Lynch/BOA asked for a show of hands on the number of VCs noshing chicken with us there in the Tower Club.  A few mitts went up. Did they have money to fund new ventures?  Everyone nodded.  And were they funding anyone?   More nods.

New market entrants put in an appearance, among them, Alphons Mulders of The Netherlands’ Expereo International, a hybrid network operator offering connectivity solutions to carriers, SIs and enterprises. Expereo opened its first U.S. office this week.  Always good news when offshore businesses decide to land here.

So is it time to party like it’s 1999?  Some would argue that those days may never come again.  But who knows?  Things are certainly buzzing.

Although Dyer didn’t launch the movement, for many he embodies the cult of positive thinking so superbly lampooned in Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.”  Ehrenreich finds “there is no kind of problem or obstacle for which positive thinking or a positive attitude has not been proposed as a cure.”  She has no beef with feeling good.  Her targets are those who substitute “mind over matter” for Reason.  To Ehrenreich, it’s fine for Deepak Chopra to tell fourth stage cancer patients that positive thinking will improve their quality of life.  But offering them the false hope that thinking will add a single day to their lives is, to Ehrenreich, a lie or worse — an all-too-convenient way to gloss over and minimize their very real life crisis.  Equally appalling: the motivator’s mantra that we “attract” negative outcomes by thinking about them.  Try telling those who are ill, unemployed or both that it’s their fault for “holding the wrong thoughts.”

If you doubt the negative potential of positive thinking, remember that it was mindless confidence in Wall Street that led to the financial meltdown of 2008.

Ehrenreich’s ideas are anathema to many in America, where we associate optimism with “the good” and relentlessly cleave to a positive outlook.  But in abandoning the intellect for dogma of any kind, we give up something far greater: the truth.  PR, in that case, is mere propaganda.

I, for one, refuse.  Whenever some giddy optimist asks my advice on a project he or she claims “will change the world and introduce a new paradigm,” I put it to the test with 13 questions:

1. What is the core news story, in 10 words or less?
2. How does this news “move the dime” on what you’ve already done?
3. How exactly is it new, different or better than what anyone else has done before?
4. Can you prove your claim with independent third party analysis?
5. Can you support it with customer testimonials?

If the answers validate the news, I proceed to the next 8 questions:

1. Has any journalist covered this or kindred topics before, and if so, who?
2. Was the coverage positive?  Then these are the top media targets.
3. Do any analysts or journalists have a known bias against the news topic, and if so, how will we deal with them?
4. Does the planned announcement date overlap with any major industry event like a trade show?  There is little point in making a major announcement when key press are out of their offices.  If the announcement date is set in stone and conflicts with a show, it might be wise to attend the event, issue the release there and hold interviews on-site.
5. Does the announcement date bump up against any other potential conflicts, e.g., major holidays, earnings announcements of competitors (particularly larger ones), or the SEC “quiet period” surrounding your company’s own quarterly financial statements?
6. Will the spokesperson be available for interviews on the day of the announcement, and just in case, are there back-up spokespersons to handle overflow interviews?
7. Are the spokespersons media trained, i.e., when you put them in front of an analyst or journalist, will they know how to comport themselves?
8. What is your contingency plan if management pulls back from the announcement after it’s already out and TV crews are lined up outside for interviews. (Happened to me once.)

Many a Pollyanna has exited such sessions deflated and convinced I’m the PR equivalent of “Dr. No.”  Others cut me off at Question #2, angry that I would dare challenge their idea.  “You are so negative!” is the usual charge.  Not true.  I’m as upbeat as they come.  I just ask the tough questions up-front.  A realistic approach based on honest appraisal of the facts always puts me in a positive frame of mind.  Thank you for reminding us all, Barbara!