Damned if you do, damned if you don't

P.T. Barnum once said there is no such thing as bad publicity. After 20 years in the PR business I know that's not the case.

In the 1990s the utility company I worked for needed to trim some trees in Boulder, particularly around an always contentious and incredibly ugly monstrosity known as the Grape Street Line. The Grape Street Line was part of the original infrastructure in Boulder and it was a huge, ugly power line that ran up Grape Street and on up the mountain to service Nederland, Eldora, and other mountain communities. I'm 99% sure it's still there today.

The neighbors on Grape Street hated the line. Every few years they'd organize in an uproar to request the utility company bury it. The cost of burying the Grape Street Line was phenomenal, and the utility had responded on numerous occasions that they'd be happy to bury it if the residents wanted to join together to pay for it. Stale mate.

So here we were after a particularly glorious spring in the Rockies and the forestry crews were preparing to go samurai on the tress that hid the Grape Street Line. Our quandry was whether to just show up with chain saws (the company's usual modus operandi, always causing a stir) or inform the citizens first.

We decided we wanted to be the kindler, gentler power company, so in addition to a carefully crafted letter "from" our forester, we enlisted his help and his movie star good looks to educate the community (a very tree hugging, berk wearing activist community) about the environmental benefit of this particular form of cutting. The Shigone method, or something like that, which leaves the tree with a giant hole (shaped like a "V") in the middle. It's bizarre, ugly, and supposedly the healthiest thing for trees that live around power lines.

Anyway, the plan sounded good, I personally handled Forest Boy's media training, and booked him on TV shows and with the editorial board at the Daily Camera. With the Dear Resident letters off in the mail and a fresh shirt for the himbo (who in all fairness really knew his stuff when it came to trees), we set off to Boulder, feeling good about what we were about to do -- for the good of the trees in Boulder.

Our campaign was wildly successful from a shear "impressions" standpoint. We made the front page not only in Boulder, but as the story grew we made both dailies in Denver. Then it went national -- Today Show, USA Today -- and foresters nationwide debated with activists in San Francisco and Bend and Vermont on CNN. Thankfully the internet did not yet exist.

But I've blocked out most of the rest of the details at this point, except for the team wide face-to-face with the CEO, who demanded to know whose idea it had been to be proactive about the whole tree cutting thing. I took the blame and learned a valuable lesson which was "never take the blame."

No matter what happened the results were the same. The company got its trees trimmed and the local paper got photos of college kids chained to the trees while bucket trucks loomed in. It was awful, horrible, but it was wildly received "publicity," talked about in every coffee shop in town. People knew about it, and they knew who was behind it. The company's name was on every tongue. There were opinions on it on talk radio and letters to the editor for nearly a week.

It was all packaged up neatly with a bow -- the biggest story ever until the Douglas County sheriff shot somebody's dog because the meter reader couldn't get in the back yard.

In hindsight, it was pretty dumb. Today I would insist on a different path. But I was pretty young back then, and we liked the idea of being open and forthright so much better than the idea of just showing up with chainsaws.

But every year since, residents along Grape Street (and Elm, and Walnut, and, and, and...) are awakened by the sound of chainsaws. No warning. No education. Just Cut and Run. It's the only way to do it. Quick and painless. No newspapers, no TV crews, no neighborhood uproar. No publicity.

Sometimes you can wag the dog, and other times the dog wags you. P.T. Barnum was wrong. There is such a thing as bad publicity.

The importance of planning ahead

Last week a really good guy -- a green builder and environmentally friendly real estate developer in Houston -- ran into a bit of a communication problem.

There was a street demonstration complete with protest signs and television cameras in front of a high profile corner property he owns and is redeveloping in inner Loop Houston. The protest wasn't really about him or his company or the townhomes he plans to build. It was about the development process in general and the fact that some residents of the area feel they don't have enough of a say in the development of property in their neighborhood.

As a result, this good guy developer became the poster boy for "bad" development. My new client, who cleaned up the neighborhood by demolishing a burned out crack house and desolate service station on a blighted corner, was only getting started with construction when the protesters showed up in force to cry foul that the development had been "rushed," insinuating to the television reporters and their giant audiences that this developer had somehow avoided the usual public hearings or city processes.

The truth is that my new client did only one thing wrong. He dotted all his "I"s and crossed all his "T"s when it comes to the building process, but where he erred was in the commmunication process. No, there is not a public hearing requirement for the plat of land he purchased. No, there's nothing to require him to tell anyone -- even his closest neighbors -- that he's going to build townhomes. Yes the zoning was for multi-family housing, and No he was not taking away any green space but planned to actually add a little back.

But none-the-less, his property came under the microscope because of a failure to communicate.

Now I can't take the blame, because I didn't know him BEFORE this problem and only met him after it occurred. But we're communicating now: to city council officials and homeowner's boards, nearby neighbors and the media. Although placed in a position of defensiveness, we're not being defensive. We're communicating our concern about the neighbors' concern, and we're moving forward with a strategy that would have been a good one to put in place before the demolition or redevelopment ever began.

The lesson here: proactive is better than reactive, but when it's time to react, do it quickly and get the help you need. This new client was lucky to have a good friend who has my number and knew I would help -- even on Easter weekend. By Monday morning, we were alerting those that were alerted by the protesters that we were concerned for the protesters' concerns and ready to disclose everything anyone wanted to know about our plans for our property AND help them figure out a better way to tap into the city process.

So far it seems to be working, and this developer now believes in the value of plugging in a little planning and preparation time for the communications surrounding his developments. Before he moves an inch of dirt.