Accidentally send him your PR company's dossier on him.

Alright, to be fair, it wasn't a dossier that was sent but an interview briefing book. It's still, however, lifting the PR skirts a little higher than most PR companies or their clients would like them. 

This isn't a China case, but it's interesting enough from a PR point of view that I thought it was worth posting. In arranging an interview with Wired Magazine journalist Fred Vogelstein, Microsoft accidentally forwarded to the Vogelstein the briefing memo prepared about him by their PR agency, Waggener-Edstrom.

• Here is the entire briefing memo (pdf), posted online at Wired.com.
• Here is wired editor Chris Anderson's post on the situation.
  
• Here is Vogelstein's post on the situation.
• Here is Waggener-Edstrom president Frank Shaw's post on the situation. (It's not a dossier, he says, correctly, but in scant mitigation.)
  

Some PR observations from your resident China flack:

At least it was Microsoft that sent the memo, and not the agency. It's not a good that I would want to make.

Even without e-mail, these things leak sometimes. Briefing books get left lying around all the time. Printed copies get handed out to execs before interviews, and they are often careless with them. I always make my team keep an eye open for stray briefing books left lying around event meeting rooms.

It can be embarrassing to lose one, but not usually a tragedy. There is not generally really sensitive information in an interview or event briefing book, because if its really sensitive we won't be talking about it. But they do contain messaging points, journalist background and guidance of answering tough questions we'd prefer not be asked, so it's not our preference to make them public. The last thing I want to say to a journalist is, "And here are the questions we're absolutely terrified of!"

As far as containing journalist background information, avoiding distribution is more a matter of courtesy than anything else. Journalists know PR agencies keep dossiers on them just as we know journalists often bin our lovingly crafted press releases without looking at them. From my point of view, this is simply good practice (dossiers, not binning my press releases). It's great if I know all about journalist X, but that doesn't help anyone else in my company that may need to deal with him or her. Dossiers aren't particularly negative. They include areas of interest, examples of articles and --let's be fair-- a journalist's usual approach to interviews and PR pitches. About the most negative thing I can recall seeing in one is, "Tends to be short with PR people. Have a good, concise pitch together or be prepared to be hung up on." Notice the avoidance of pejorative words such as "asshole".

But dossiers by definition objectify people, and that's why I don't like them circulated. Journalists may know we keep them, but I don't particularly want to remind them that we sometimes reduce them to database entries. It undermines the time invested in building the actual human relationships and understanding that have a lot more to do with good PR. Also, it's competitive. I don't want my hard-won intelligence falling into the hands of my crosstown rivals.

The great irony of this situation is that the interview was about Microsoft's corporate blogging initiative, and the new transparency it has brought to the company's communications. I'm a fan of it myself. In his post, Wired editor Chris Anderson pays Microsoft a backhanded complement:

[Microsoft's blogging initiative] is something I've been really impressed by. Today the company has more than 3,500 bloggers and its corporate messaging has gone from mostly press releases and scripted executive speeches to more of an authentic conversation in public between rank-and-file employees and customers. It's a fascinating shift in culture for a company that was once known for being fanatically obsessed with trying to control its image and messaging. The case study tells the story of how this happened in the most unlikely of places (okay, Apple would be even more unlikely, but you get the point).

Yet the old company culture is not gone, as evidenced by an executive briefing memo from Microsoft's PR firm, Waggener Edstrom, that Vogelstein was inadvertently sent in the body of a scheduling email. At nearly 6,000 words, it's an amazing document and a telling counterpoint to the laissez-faire spirit of the open blogging initiative. Because it so aptly illustrates the parallel open vs. closed cultures that now exist at Microsoft, as in any big company trying to evolve a command-and-control messaging process to an out-of-control age, we decided to post the whole thing online in the spirit of transparency.

Um, okay. But Microsoft's discovery of blogging notwithstanding, get real. A more transparent and conversational era isn't going to stop companies from trying to make the most of mainstream media interview opportunities any more than it is going to make Wired stop editing articles. An interview briefing is not opaque corporate intrigue. It's just good preparation. Journalists prepare and our clients --the interview subjects-- also prepare, with our help.

Preparation, even if it includes messaging and such, shouldn't overshadow a good interview. Nothing is nastier than an interview that sounds overly scripted and mechanical. Speaking as a PR person, the best interviews allow the interviewee's own personality and ideas to show through, and are interesting and lively enough to justify a good story. But that doesn't mean sacrificing preparation or our objectives.

However, as with e-mails, I think PR people drafting briefing books should also ask themselves what would happen if the briefing books were go public. This is true not just with regard to confidential information, but also with regard to descriptions of journalists and competitors. Briefing books are not meant to be distributed, but any document forwarded to a group of people and printed and carried into an event might end up in the wrong hands.

When they've asked, I've actually discussed with journalists I know here in China how I have described them to clients. I don't think its anything to be concerned with as long as we are fair and respectful. It's also worth noting that, my cartoony example above notwithstanding, I have found that while many foreign correspondents here in China are tough and demanding, almost all have been courteous and a pleasure to deal with. Even when they are rejecting me.