Yesterday, I attended a Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) seminar titled, “Regulatory Scrutiny of Social Media.” The speakers were attorney Michael Lasky of Davis & Gilbert LLP and Tricia Geoghegan, who oversees several social media initiatives for Johnson & Johnson.

Lasky provided a quick overview of the recently enacted Federal Trade Commission guidelines on testimonials and endorsements. The harsh reality is that marketers (including their agencies) can now be held liable for a blogger’s unsubstantiated or misleading claims. A blogger can be defined as anyone posting information on a social media channel. Geoghegan noted that brands considering their social media strategies should factor in both the marketing opportunity and their responsibility to community. While this is particularly true for a consumer healthcare company, I think all businesses can benefit by thinking in those terms.

Lasky offered tips to the audience to avoid a run-in with the law. Here’s my condensed version:

1. Encourage bloggers to disclose any material connections (including the acceptance of free products!).
2. Monitor blogs to ensure statements about your products/services aren’t misleading.
3. If you’re posting about your own company (or your client’s), be transparent about your connection.
4. “Street team” members and celebrity endorsers should also make their relationship to the marketer clear.
5. Develop written policies and procedures for employees who participate in social media.
6. Add the subject of disclosure to your media training process.
7. Ask yourself if your social media practices are likely to deceive the average consumer.
8. Seek legal counsel on new initiatives (can’t blame the guy for including a plug!).

Bob Lutz, vice chairman of global product development at GM

This year’s PRSA conference is being held in the Detroit Marriott, which is connected to General Motors’ global headquarters.  We’re right on the river and I can literally see Canada from my hotel room window.  GM is also the premier sponsor of the conference and the place is swarming with their communications staff members, of which I learned there are 500 around the world.  This morning, Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman of global product development, addressed the attendees.  First of all, this guy is a terrific presenter and an unrelenting believer in the power of PR.  And he practices what he preaches.  Bob writes a blog for GM called the FastLane.  When asked how to drive traffic to a corporate blog,  he said he didn’t have a formula for that, but instead spoke to the importance of executives doing their own writing.  He said, “No one wants to read pre-chewed, pre-digested information with a heaping side of corporate arrogance.” 

In fact, he spoke a lot about the importance of writing in our field.  He said, “The state of writing is deplorable.  Nothing gets under my skin more than poor writing.”  He talked about how it infuriates him when he sees the phrase, “sneak peak.”  He joked, “You mean a stealth mountain?”  Ah, a man after my own grammarian heart.  I could tell he had at least 37 more examples, but held back.  Rats. 

He also accused corporate executives of using too many superlatives in their media materials.  This is a conversation we often have with our clients.  It’s important to resist the temptation to call a product or service best-in-class, revolutionary, state-of-the-art, etc.  Bob said, “Those types of words trigger antibodies in journalists who resent being told how or what to write.”  His recommendation, if you must use superlatives, was to do so using phrases like, ”It was our intention to create a best-in-class car.”  I’ve always felt it was inappropriate to use words in a release that no self-respecting journalist would ever use in an article.  But I like Bob’s compromise.

Or the “Prissa” conference as the new mayor of Detroit called it earlier today.  I thought for a moment that’s how people referred to the organization these days; it has been a while since I attended the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) annual conference.  This year, Rose Communications is a sponsor of the event.

Today’s keynote speaker was Craig Newmark of the wildly popular Craigslist.  What a humble guy.  A self-described engineering geek, Craig talked a lot about “continuous engagement” with his online community and how his success is the result of “doing what feels right.”  Upon realizing his managerial deficiencies, Craig shifted into a customer service role.  He literally reads and responds to hundreds of emails from site users each day while someone else runs his eponymous company.  That translates into about 50,000 responses per year.  Yes, I’d call that continuous engagement.  When the time for Q&A rolled around, someone apologized in advance and then asked the question surely on many people’s minds, “How do you respond to the newspaper industry’s claim that you’ve dramatically hurt their business?”  He said the decline of classified advertising revenue was only one of the many financial challenges faced by daily and weekly newspapers in our country.  After this attempt at minimizing his company’s impact, he said he felt the role of newspapers should be to expose the truths that would prevent us from making bad foreign policy decisions (as opposed to serving as a marketplace for used cars, jobs and lost pets, I assume).  He said there should be more fact checking.  Amen, Craig!  But who’s going to pay for it?  Most outlets charge less to a subscriber than it costs to print the paper.  In fact, Craig mentioned www.factcheck.org as a great, non-partisan source of truthful information about the current presidential election.  Yet another sign that the role of the daily newspaper is fading deeper into uncertainty.