Hello again.

The fourth of July got me thinking about a wide range of things. So, this month I have some random thoughts, plus we have a guest article from friend Ty Boyd, one of America's best presenters. He has some tips on how to use PowerPoint as a tool, not a crutch.

What are we waiting for? Let's get started.

Cordially,

Harry Hoover
harry@hoover-ink.com

P.S. Charlotte Reads, our local literacy agency, is $200 richer thanks to our readers forwarding this newsletter to their friends over the last two months.

Ink Briefs
Perhaps businesses are coming around to the responsible path. Total charitable giving reached an estimated $240.92 billion for 2002, an historic level, lifted by growth in giving from corporations and estates, according to Giving USA.




Speaking of business principles, Shel Horowitz has a new book called Principled Profits: Marketing That Puts People First.

Yours truly read the draft manuscript and provided a cover blurb that says: "Should be required reading in business schools so that we can avoid another headline-grabbing avalanche of corporate misdeeds." If you are interested in business ethics or marketing, it is well worth a read.



Heads up writers who use Word for Windows. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has developed a free software that it calls the Bullfighter. It helps you catch jargon, over-used buzzwords and unnecessarily complex language. It uses the Flesch Index of reading ease to grade your writing as to its "maturity." For instance a comic strip typically has an Index of 92 while the New York Times garners a 34.

The Flesch Index is named for Rudolf Flesch, author of Why Johnny Can't Read and The Classic Guide To Better Writing. One more interesting nugget: when you talk about adding detail to a story it should be "flesching out a story" not "fleshing out."



Colleague Joe Grant turned me on to the Mindtools website, and I want to pass it along to you. The website's stated mission is "to help you understand the essential skills and techniques that will help you excel in your career." You will find a wide assortment of creativity tools for your use there.




About Hoover ink PR

Hoover ink PR helps position businesses that are serious about their success. Then, we craft and deliver bottom line messages that ensure it.

Who are we? We're a marketing communications firm with more than 25 years experience in providing services to financial, high tech, real estate, tourism and consumer products companies.

From employee relations and media relations to collateral material and e-newsletters, we develop the programs and communication tools that will differentiate you from your competitors. And that's the bottom line.
 
  Hoover At Random

Friends sometimes say I'm to the right of Attilla the Hun. Now, I believe in law and order, family values, a free press and patriotism, but I don't think I'm that far out there. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I thought it only fair to let you know that I'm a black-and-white guy in a very gray world.

Which leads me to my first random thought. Everyone in America knows his civil rights, but virtually no one wants to acknowledge his civil responsibilities. I think we need a Bill of Responsibilities to go along with the Bill of Rights. "Harry," you're saying, "what in the heck does that have to do with PR?" Stay with me.

Think for a moment about the problems we have had with what I'll call corporate irresponsibility. Business ethics is an oxymoron to many executives. They think business is war and there are always winners and losers. It's profit at all costs. Shareholders beware because I'm going to get mine first. Then, like editors who come in after the battle to shoot the survivors, the government rides in and punishes good and bad alike with counterproductive regulations. My Bill of Responsibilities would stop both business malfeasance and government over-zealousness.

The first item in the Bill of Responsibilities: treat everyone with respect. It's a restatement of the Golden Rule: do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. From a business perspective, this means you treat employees, shareholders, customers and even competitors with respect. Personally, it means you would not have to listen to the cell phone conversations of others in a movie or restaurant.

Number 2 reads: you have the responsibility to exercise self-control. Anyone with the IQ of two all-beef patties knows that if you eat Big Macs and fries everyday you are going to get fat. Once the inevitable happens, you do not have the right to file a lawsuit against McDonalds because you don't have the discipline to stay out of the drive-through. There are other business-related examples, but I don't want to belabor the point.

Random question: why do PR practitioners have such a bad reputation? Let me try to answer that. It's because many don't follow number 3 on the Bill of Responsibilities: you have the responsibility to tell the truth. This does not mean that you have to air all of your corporate dirty laundry (of course, if you are living by the earlier responsibilities, there wouldn't be as much to air.) It means that you should state your case honestly and not use half-truths to try to spin your story. And you would not lie when asked a direct question. Wouldn't that be refreshing?

Enough random thoughts. If you have other items for the Bill of Responsibilities, drop me a note at harry@hoover-ink.com.
  Make PowerPoint Work For You

Editor's Note: Author and Speaker Ty Boyd explains how to use PowerPoint to your benefit.

In the "good old days" before PowerPoint, creating professional looking presentations was a cumbersome task. Presentations were sent to Genigraphics, which in turn made 35mm slide presentations. While this approach resulted in nice looking presentations, it was slow (remember, there was no Internet to speed delivery of files) and it was expensive. You could also enlarge typewriter pages and make transparencies on a copy machine. The result was not especially attractive. And you could be very creative with fonts as long as it was Courier.

In 1987, along came the first version of PowerPoint. Microsoft did not develop it. A company called Forethought did. It was originally developed for the Macintosh. In 1990, Microsoft introduced PowerPoint for Windows 3.0. Since this introduction, there have been five major new releases of PowerPoint (not counting the minor upgrades). Today, it is the dominant presentation tool with virtually no competition.

While PowerPoint is a great tool for creating exciting presentations, many of the features are too often overused or used inappropriately. In fact, the use of space-consuming graphics and animation became so rampant in the Pentagon a few years ago that a significant portion of the Pentagon's "communication pipeline" was being consumed with excessively complex, and large PowerPoint presentations.

Find out how to make PowerPoint work for you.