Three years ago, the San Francisco 49ers hired a new Vice President of Communications to do a job – polish the image of the San Francisco 49ers.

Last night, actions of the 49ers leadership reflected none of the intended changes of the communications department.

After ongoing speculation, Mike Nolan was released as head coach of the 49ers and replaced on an interim basis by the assistant head coach Mike Singletary.  These rumors started around noon yesterday.  At about that time, the 49ers twitter identity began confirming rumors.  The big news outlets and radio shows were not satisfied with the tweets and hearsay and anxiously awaited official word from the Niners before confirming the coaching changes to the public.  It wasn’t until 10:15 Monday night until the press was officially informed about the personnel change via teleconference. 

This teleconference was held in the 49ers Santa Clara headquarters. The press was seated in a room located 15 feet below the polycom that Jed York delivered the news. 

Three years ago, the 49ers Vice President of Communications was quoted in the Silicon Valley, San Jose Business Journal in saying that the 49ers had a communications problem – “it’s not so much bad PR, but no PR, or at least no one helping them communicate.”

Last night’s press conference has yielded headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle and Mercury news that criticize the organizations lack of leadership.   

If your VP of Communications realizes that messaging is a problem and communications efforts have changed little over three years, the problem isn’t in the communications department – it’s the leadership.

Jed York couldn’t be bothered to moderate a live press conference.  The news wasn’t released until 6-7 hours after ESPN’s Mike Smith reported the “leaked” report.  Insight broadcasted in the teleconference was so poor in messaging that the news reporters and radio personnel criticized the 49ers communications rather than celebrating the commitment to change.

These are signs of ineffective communication that can’t always be helped by a communications program.  If leadership won’t approve effective messaging, there is no reason to have a communications program.

Moving forward, the 49ers will only see changes to their public image when the 49ers leadership can make a commitment to change the way they communicate with the public – and by necessity the media.

The Oakland Raiders have never been known for their marketing.  Al Davis seems to enjoy attracting a boisterous crowd that is not particularly interested in flashy social media or marketing campaigns.  You know what I am talking about.  The black hole is termed for a reason.  When my friend on the Panthers comes to the coliseum, you can bet that I will resist showing any shades of light blue with my black and silver attire. 

Recently, however, a Web Site has emerged that has looks to be a step in direction of softening the brand.  Raider creator (http://www.raidercreator.com) is a unique approach to the overall softening of the Raider image.  The site allows fans to print and personalize eye patches, take pictures with the finished product and send it to the Web Site.  The pictures will be used in interactive media around the bay area to promote the brand.

My favorite part about the campaign is that it aims to appeal to every Raider fan.  However, this campaign will have little or no impact on the softening of the raider image if the images that come from fans are familiar faces of the black hole.  Furthermore, media relations efforts need to reflect this new image before I begin to think about families lining up to buy season tickets.

I wanted to highlight this effort to shed some light on the fact that even the Raiders have realized the benefits of new media. 

With less than a month left until the draft, combine buzz is filling up the pages of ESPN.com and sports news across the country. Why do we not hear the same buzz about baseball when draft time comes around? The answer is simple – the NFL is unique. Players are typically drafted after their third or fourth college season and can make their way into a pro starting lineup shortly after fall training camp.

Because the results of the NFL draft can directly impact the success of a pro team’s season, fans like to be informed. This demand for draft information has resulted in televised combines, entire magazines dedicated to draft candidates profiles and continuous coverage though the months of February, March and April about the combines. Furthermore, ESPN will devote April 26^th nearly entirely to the NFL draft, giving football draft coverage unlike any other sport.

At Oregon, our local papers are filled with updated about Jonathan Stewart and Geoff Schwartz – two of the University of Oregon’s top draft picks. Both Steward and Schwartz are used to the media attention because Oregon sports reporters have little else to fill headlines with in the fall other than Duck football. Both players have had air time during the combines, getting them ready for the national attention that will start to really come in on April 26-27.

With the national attention comes a need for PR. Potential draftees are already being contacted by pro teams and information has been gathered about them accordingly. Fortunately for the pro teams, both Stewart and Schwartz have excellent track records with the media and generally great guys to work with. This, however, is not always the case and quite often media relations people from professional teams get bombarded with attention on draft weekend.

In order to prepare for their new class of draftees, NFL PR people arm themselves with information about draftees and any media attention that information may bring. Because NFL draftees can have an impact early in their career, it makes the job of an NFL PR person unique to any other sport.

American sports fans have long enjoyed a three-sport powerhouse – football, baseball and basketball. Many other sports have made a run at being considered part of the family such as hockey, wrestling and golf. Within a past few years, however, NSACAR has become a close fourth.

NASCAR, the popular American sport in stock car racing, has a 57 year history, though only recently has seen National growth. Every weekend for 10 months of the year, tens of thousands of racing fans gather to watch 43 drivers maneuver their colorful, high-powered American cars around a close track.

Though I did not have a personal favorite in the last Sunday race, I did find it interesting how big of a part PR played. I can’t help but notice how each driver has his own reputation; the bad boy, the underdog, the veteran, etc. I am sure that there is a PR practitioner behind every team to manage the drivers images and personalities, because without the drivers personalities, fans can’t relate to the drivers and NASCAR would only attract people interested in the cars themselves.

By allowing people to relate to the drivers distinct personalities, NASCAR attracts a broad fan base that attracts advertisers (because the fan base is large and broad, giving companies huge exposure), and therefore revenue to help the sport grow.

PR has made NASCAR the fastest growing sport in America (and possibly the world).

I started thinking about how this relates to sports. Do you think Barry Bonds would hire one of these companies to make sure that his top search engine results were all positive? Probably not.

While this may be a valuable service for companies and people that are not high profile, it does not matter what comes up first in a search engine when you google a prominent athlete when you already know what you are looking for.

Search engine optimization and the service that these companies are promising is not worth the $25,000 -$300,000 per year price tag, when the media is covering national stories that are not positive and the information is out there.

You can make it hard for people to find information, but if they really to find it, they will.

If I were Reputation Defender, I would not look to target sports figures and celebrities that are regularly covered in the mainstream media. Coverage will be available to the public on these people, regardless of how long it takes to find it.

troubles to interfere with his career. The Tennessee Titans have all but guaranteed that Pacman will be cut from the program at some point. The current problems the Titans are facing are Pacman’s contract violations and his salary pay out.

Titans General Manager Mike Reinfeldt can’t serve up the assertions that Pacman will be cut, unless he plans on delivering. The media will monitor this one every day until the Titans make it official. To clarify, we are not talking about the local Nashville media.

This is a national story. When the media spotlight is on a NFL team after the Super bowl is over and before the NFL draft, it can’t be good. Thankfully, no one in the NFL is pleased with the story.

The NFL has enjoyed an image that is much superioir to the NBA’s. This is due, in part to the fact that the NBA is making recruiting out of high school, a common practice. Furthermore, NBA players have criminal records that stack much higher than NFL teams combined. This type of off-field behavior has directly resulted in a “thuggish” fan base.

I am pleased to see that the NFL is not happy with the Pacman story and would like to see it all end, but I can only hope that Pacman is not picked up by another team in the future. The NFL should not tolerate this type of behavior from any of their athletes. They already made an example out of Albert Haynesworth for his on the field assault of Dallas O-lineman Andre Gurode.

It’s time for every NFL franchise to step up and assert that they will not tolerate another Pacman – if not for moral conscious, then for the sustainablilty of the NFL.

I asked my all PR knowing cousin, what prompts your clients to get involved in social media?  Her answer surprised me a little being that it was one word – sustainability.  Social media is HUGE right now but the problem is that many people are not willing to learn how to use it.  This is not alarming because technology is constantly changing and innovating.  Who has time to keep up?

One example of an industry that does keep up, however, is the sports industry.  Sports leagues have embraced social and new media. The amount of podcasts, blogs and fantasy league sites is unreal.  Even ESPN has an RSS feed, enabling everyone to keep up with Packman’s latest mishap. 

So my question remains: Why has the sports industry kept up with social and new media, while many corporations continue to operate in their low-tech ways? 

Personally, I blame the  fact that sport are a form of entertainment and thus leading people to spend their free time at work and school paying attention to ESPN.com.  If there wasn’t an online market for fantasy football and social networks devoted to sports fans, they wouldn’t exist.  Have you seen the never ending list of comments on online sports pages?  Comment pages have some of the most heated debates I have seen about anything, let alone a form of entertainment.

If sports weren’t entertaining, no one would pay attention.  But, because they are and the fan bases are large enough to support hundreds of athletes worth multiple millions of dollars, the internet has become the ultimate way to feed the sports addiction.  Continuous news, statistics and schedules are just a few reasons why the sports industry relies so heavily on new and social media, making the sports industry an exception to Holtz’s reasons why corporations don’t always like to use social media.

After reading Jennifer Thomas’s post on “The Five Languages of Apology,” I started thinking about a specific apology that came shortly after national signing day.

A northern Nevada prep football player admitted Wednesday that he had made up an intricate fabrication to make his community believe he was being recruited to play at a Pac-10 school.

After officials confronted Kevin Hart, a 6-foot-5, 290-pound offensive lineman from Fernley High School, the day following a school assembly where Hart announced he was committing to Berkeley to play football.

Hart released an apology last Wednesday. “When I realized that wasn’t gong to happen, I made up what I wanted to be reality. I am sorry for disappointing and embarrassing my family, coaches, Fernley High School, the involved universities and reporters covering the story,” Hart said.

This apology seemed broad, and after reading Thomas’s post on Rules of credible CEO apologies I decided to analyze Harts apology.

Though I am sure he had some help, Hard did comply with some of the rules, but fell short of delivering a complete apology. Hart did not request forgiveness, generally repent, or attempt to make restitution.

Hart is however, a high school senior and not a professional. However, students need to be taught at a young age to be accountable for their actions and learn how to correct their mistakes.

In the case of Kevin Hart, he did not realize the magnitude of his lie and has yet to fully correct his mistake.