Ten months ago I wrote about the media's bandwagon smack on Crocs (Man Bites Croc(s)), those rubber garden shoes people love to hate. It's a great case study in how a brand can get memed out of existence without a proactive response to bad news. Without a response to PRNewser from the internal PR person at Crocs or their AoR, it's hard for us to say if they faltered in their approach, or didn't react at all.

Though their statement today resulted in well-positioned articles in the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, the stock price is telling: Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX) is trading at about $10 bucks today versus $57 at the time of our first post.

They're in a tough spot. Denver PR blog attempts to paraphrase what's inside the head of the internal PR people Tia Mattson and Shelley Forslund, "with a cartoon bubble that says, 'Inattentive parents: Give us a @#&! break and don't let your kids shove their feet into the teeth of a moving escalator."

Full text of the statement about escalator safety awareness is after the jump:

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(household products likely to contain BPA, via Science News)

The issue of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) has been brewing--or leaching out--in to the media for some time now. Found in some clear hard plastic products, it's bad stuff that can act like estrogen. The main scare is the affects BPA may have on babies nursing on plastic bottles.

I've argued that Wal-Mart is at its best on the PR front when it flexes its corporate might in ways that benefits the consumer--a great example is how they pushed compact florescent bulbs in spite of GE--and the move by the company to remove baby bottles with BPA has snared some good publicity. The megastore's unlikely bedfellow is Fenton Communications, whose formadible client list has put them on the same side, according to a Fortune article on BPA:

Fenton Communications, a Washington, D.C. PR firm, is another key warrior against BPA. Fenton's clients have included Born Free and its BPA-free bottles; the Environmental Working Group , which has led the fight against BPA for years; and trial lawyers. Fenton also works for liberal advocacy groups like MoveOn that support Democrats in Congress who have sponsored legislation to ban BPA from children's products.

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Here at PRNewser, we're not lawyers, so therefore we won't speak to the legal implications of the Associated Press instituting guidelines on how bloggers can use their content.

You may have already read the above linked story from the New York Times' Saul Hansell that set off the firestorm. Basically, the A.P. sent a blogger a cease-and-desist letter, claiming he was violating copyright law by excerpting part of A.P. stories. Now, some are reporting they want to charge bloggers $12.50 to quote as little as five words from them.

If you're looking for the official government definition of fair use, you can find that here. Additional legal perspective here.

The PR battle can almost be summed up in this one quote from Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P. "We are not trying to sue bloggers...That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music. That is not what we are trying to do."

What a perfect analogy. Everyone still remembers how well the music industry did with suing their own customers, and clearly the A.P. doesn't want to head down that road.

The problem is, now that the coversation has already been framed, (AP = bad, money hungry old media. Bloggers = good, little guy getting picked on) their PR department surely has some work to do. And, whenever PR mixes with the legal department, as it must in these cases, things tend to move a bit slower.

We'll stay tuned to see in which direction the converation turns.

According to a survey released exclusively to Advertising Age, it does.

In the survey, completed before former referee Tim Donaghy's allegations of game fixing by league execs and referees, 41% think it's either, "very likely or somewhat likely that the NBA alters the outcome of games."

This is despite the fact that only 46% respondents claimed to be, "aware that an NBA referee was recently investigated by the FBI for receiving cash payments in return for passing inside information along to friends and gamblers."

Writes reporter Michael Bush, "It has long been thought that NBA Commissioner David Stern, in comparison to the commissioners of the other three majors, has best understood the benefits of good PR and developing a global positive brand image. Mr. Stern dismissed Mr. Donaghy's allegations as baseless."

Are things getting quieter, or at least changing, on the Wal-Mart front? So says Michael Barbaro in today's NY Times:

Over the last several months, the company has shut down a campaign-style war room set up in 2005 to do battle with Wal-Mart Watch and another group, WakeUpWalMart.com, which is financed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

And Wal-Mart has disbanded an advocacy group, called Working Families for Wal-Mart, intended to rally support for the company (and serve as a counterbalance to the anti-Wal-Mart groups).

A Wal-Mart spokesperson would not go on record for Barbaro's article.

As to another reason why things may have slowed down: "You can't keep up that white hot level of energy," says Meghan Scott, deputy campaign director at WakeUpWalMart.com.

We can imagine this is welcome news for Edelman, who has held the Wal-Mart account for some time.

(image cred)

The big PR "damage control" story for today is American Airlines' decision to charge $15 for each checked bag.

BusinessWeek's David Kiley sent this "memo" to Weber-Shandwick, American Airlines agency of record, suggesting they forward it to their client:

Dear Client: Instead of instituting a fee for checked bags, which will be a lightning rod of bad publicity, please consider burying the cost of rising fuel in across-the-board ticket price increases. Consumers understand that many consumer prices are rising because of increasing fuel costs. What they don't like, or understand, is when companies begin charging for items they have previously gotten for free-a single checked bag, a soda, a bag of chips, a WiFi connection, etc. The best solution to this problem is to stay out of the news, not to lean into it and ask for a pie in the face.

Michael Bush penned the feature story in Advertising Age, where he made the point that this announcement is also covering up other bad news for the carrier. "American Airlines is reducing capacity as much as 12% and laying off thousands...Yet those shifts were all but lost in the media coverage and PR backlash generated by a third move it's making: instituting a first-checked-bag fee of $15 each way."

Gawker's Hamilton Nolan says being first is the real issue. "American's only mistake here was being the first one to put in this fee. Now that they've broken the cherry, watch as all their fellow airlines fall in line," he wrote.

Sure enough, "United Airlines said it is 'seriously studying' the baggage matter, and Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines and US Airways said they are evaluating the idea," according to Newsday.

One question to think about: do consumers buy tickets solely based on the ticket price they see on a travel website, or do they buy based on who their frequent flier account is with, or who they've flown with before.

Personally, we buy mainly on ticket price, and tend to overlook the "extra" costs. American seems to see it this way as well, as shown by their choice to raise the "extras" instead of base ticket prices.

Either way, American will have to pay the consequences of being the first to announce this price increase, during peak summer travel season taboot. Who will be next?

Laura Collins of the New Yorker dropped a bomb in the magazine's recent issue, with her feature of famous photo re-toucher Pascal Dangin.

It all revolves around Dove's "Campaign For Real Beauty" advertising campaign, which featured "real" women (i.e. not models).

However, this week, in the New Yorker story, and then in AdAge, accusations of photo retouching started flying, because of this quote from Dangin: 'Do you know how much retouching was on that? ...it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone's skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.'"

Dangin then issued a statement saying, "My quotes have been taken out of context and my role with Dove misconstrued."

Photo retouching is the norm in the magazine industry, however a lot of hype was granted to this campaign for presenting the images of "real" women, hence all of the current fuss.

Other mediabistro bloggers have also chimed in. Writes AgencySpy, "Call me a cynic, but I'm yawning my way through this 'crisis.'" Design blog UnBeige never really liked the campaign to begin with. "Like most media or ad people, this writer has disliked Unilever's entire deceptive 'Campaign for Real Beauty' from the start, from their billion-YouTube-views 'Evolution' video to the massive push two years ago with the 'regular women in underwear' ads," they wrote.

To their credit, Dove resonded rather quickly, issing a statement within twenty four hours of when the accusations started flying, and in time for the "second news cycle." The full statement, issued by Dove PR agency Edelman, after the jump.

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Right after we posted the video of Fleishman Hillard being mocked on air during the Fox & Friends morning show, Gawker writer (and former PRWeek media reporter) Hamilton Nolan picked up on the news.

Today, Hamilton received a letter from Fleishman CMO Rich Jernstedt addressing the issue:

Hamilton, It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sometimes the commitment to generate publicity can get an agency in trouble. As you noted in your post, one of our more aggressive marcom specialists at Fleishman-Hillard developed a news release for a client that made light of the FOX News green room. Understandably, the folks at FOX didn't appreciate it. One of our strengths is maintaining good relationships with major media like FOX. We talked with our friends at FOX, and also made a note to our file on how to avoid these situations in the future.

Rich Jernstedt
CMO
Fleishman-Hillard

Sensible and well written, this just may get FH out of the Fox News dog house.

We've been waiting for something else to go down in the wake of Fleishman Hillard's ill fated dust-up with Fox News a month ago. See our previous coverage for background.

Well, today it did. FH executives were front and center on Fox & Friends this morning complete with pictures of FH President & CEO Dave Senay and talk about FH client, AT&T.

Fox & Friends were gracious toward AT&T but let loose on FH. Yikes. As we all know, having a big client associated with a scandal is never a good thing.

Will either party attempt to make amends? Or, would you like to see things continue?

(image cred)

Tainted meat. Killer pharmaceuticals. All in a days work for a crisis PR professional.

Maureen Farrell at Forbes looks into this most challenging of PR assignments, in a story featuring Rubenstein Public Relations founder Howard Rubenstein and Bill Keegan, director of crisis management at Edelman.

Some tips offered from the pros:

Be prepared: Monitor the conversation about your company or client in the media and online. Know where an issue is likely to come up.

Never use no comment: "There are a hundred ways to say 'No Comment' without saying that specifically," says Rubenstein.

Act fast: News spreads fast. The longer you wait, the longer the story is framed and debated without your input.

Keep the big wigs front and center: This is not the time to delegate to underlings.

Stick to one or two spokespeople: Any more than that is confusing.

The good news? People will likely forget. Says Rubenstein, "The public's institutional memory is very short, absent criminal or moral transgressions. [They] are ready to forgive."