Then the dot-coms started dropping like flies, changing the once favorable story line into a joke and a center of ridicule. The dot-com downturn has spawned satirical websites like Fucked Company (a parody of the tech magazine Fast Company), and a barrage of scathing headlines that make P.R. executives cringe. "Oh, it's been a disaster," says Pete Pedersen, vice president of Seattle P.R. firm Edelman, whose clients include Microsoft and Barnes & Noble. Now, headlines in dailies like the P-I read, "MyLackey shutdown typifies plight of Seattle dot-coms" (October 2000) or "For many dot-coms, the party's over" (June 2000). According to many of Seattle's public-relations firms, the negative publicity surrounding dot-coms has created a stigma that needs to be extinguished. So what does a nervous P.R. firm do to control the gaping wound of negative publicity? Simple--change the dot-com's name, eradicate the phrase "dot-com," and associate the client with bigger and more established companies.
The first tactic to remove the dot-com stigma seems like an obvious idea: remove the dot-com from the company's name. "We're in the business of establishing trust with consumers, and removing the dot-com is a step in that direction," says the savvy Pedersen. For example, Pedersen counseled one of his clients, a Kirkland-based online greeting card company called Birthday Express, to drop the dot-com from its name a few months ago. Another method, one that would make George Orwell proud, is to pretend the phrase "dot-com" never existed. Instead of calling a company a "dot-com," P.R. executives like Bob Silver, owner of local P.R. firm the Silver Company, prefer to reframe the language. For example, Silver avoids the term "dot-com," calling his tech clients "businesses that use the current technology." In fact, when asked about dot-coms by The Stranger, many P.R. executives, like Carie Table of P.R. powerhouse Shandwick International, wouldn't even admit they had dot-coms as clients, instead replying, "No, but we have a full roster of solid technology companies." (By the way, Shandwick's "solid technology companies" include dot-coms like Halifax.com and Unilever.com.)
Another way to get a dot-com in the news is to associate it with a bigger and more established company. This does two things. First, it builds the credibility of the dot-com in the public's mind by linking it with a household name. Second, it changes the focus of the story away from the dot-com to a story about a bigger company, thereby increasing the chances that the dot-com will get positive media coverage by extension. For example, last week a story about Nordstrom using a new software program to help customer relations ran in the business section of the P-I. The trick is, the source of the P-I story was a press release put out by Outlook Marketing--a P.R. firm that represents the makers of the software, a dot-com called Intentia. Outlook Marketing's Jeff Rappaport admits that using a bigger company like Nordstrom is "a key strategy" to getting its dot-com client in the news, even if Intentia is not the main focus of the story.
All three tactics used by the P.R. industry--dropping the dot-com from companies' names, erasing the phrase altogether, and associating them with successful businesses--are intended to convince the media and the public to forget about dot-coms as we once knew them.
Last week, The Stranger met with a well-known Seattle public relations exec (who wanted to remain anonymous) and brainstormed ways of "adjusting" the dot-com story. These were some of the media master's suggestions: "Would you please point that thing somewhere else. It's just that if me and the wife hadn't been away, there really wouldn't be so many unanswered questions about the Cuisinart. That'll do."
