Make Hill & Knowlton Strategies feel the heat?

[DrakeGrimm]

We don't need to make the PR firm feel the heat. We just have to let them know the stove's on.

[Victoria Victrix]

These guys don't have any say in what goes down. They're a firm to make NCSoft look better, but they don't choose what NCSoft does. At worst they just polish the turd. Maybe they could advise them to sell or maybe they've advised them to remain silent as a way to generate good PR, but either way they're not the ones actually making any decisions. If anything they've probably already made them aware of the negative PR they have and what they can do about it.

This would be like trying to convince a fry cook at McDonalds I frequent to have him sell my car to you. It makes no sense.

Not entirely true.  When one's PR firm comes to you in hysterics saying "this is beginning to have impact in the marketplace and we can't save you", companies generally start listening.

And if the PR firm can point to one thing--like being willing to sell the CoH IP and ALL of this will go away--companies generally at least take that into consideration.

[Rae]

One thing I noticed from their FB page is that they have recently lost one of their top guys, who died.

So..you know. If you feel you need to approach them, please consider that.  We don't want to be, or look, disrespectful.

[Turjan]

Folks, the one group of people who are likely to know exactly how much panic (or otherwise) is going on behind the scenes is the group of people hired to spin the corporate face to the public.

Which means criticising NCSoft to H&K's face is like waving a cap gun at a battle scarred mercenary.
An empty cap gun.

It is a PR company's job to speak with a forked tongue. They have to spin the facts about their clients to make those clients look good - and as you'd expect, in order to do that, they need to be in possession of at least some of said facts.

Sure, try to strike up a friendly conversation with them if you like, but remember that to them, you are not a friend. You are someone who's turned up out of the blue with a bunch of criticisms of one of their clients. So do not expect them to respond positively to any advance you might make - if they respond at all.

And if they do respond...don't be surprised if their response makes us look bad. Because their clients pay their wages, not us.

To paraphrase our own slogan : They are Public Relations - spin is what they do.

[Osborn]

Not entirely true.  When one's PR firm comes to you in hysterics saying "this is beginning to have impact in the marketplace and we can't save you", companies generally start listening.

And if the PR firm can point to one thing--like being willing to sell the CoH IP and ALL of this will go away--companies generally at least take that into consideration.

Maybe I'm giving H&KS too much credit and NCSoft too little, but if we're doing as much damage to their PR as you're assuring me we are (and I'll take your word on that because I frankly don't know how hard we've hit them and you're the one with the inside ear not me) then it seems likely that a business devoted to PR would had noticed that already, considering that's their entire job.

It seems more likely to me that NCSoft is either being coached by them to stay silent by their PR firm (which, me being a pessimist, I could see happening, because gamers have a sort of reputation for being feckless and easily distracted or discouraged, so maybe they're hoping to just stay silent until we just get tired of this and go "Eh, well I'm not winning and I'm not going to punish myself by not playing GW2, so I'm going to buy that now", which is pretty much the attitude that allows EA, Ubisoft and Activision to exist at all) or (realistically more likely) has just disregarded H&KS' advice to do what they want.

NCSoft's leadership, to be honest has seemed to be a mixture of terribly incompetent and massively arrogant. They're holding most of the cards and they know it and it doesn't seem to matter to them that a few of them are facing the wrong way or from an UNO deck, or that they're folding or chewing on them. So it wouldn't surprise me if some western firm came up and just threw a fit about how they're circling the drain and they were like "Meh, I got this" as they continued to poke their eye out.

But you know, if you guys think it'll work, have at it, I guess. I just don't expect this is the best source of our attention.

[frostcoh]

Maybe I'm giving H&KS too much credit and NCSoft too little, but if we're doing as much damage to their PR as you're assuring me we are (and I'll take your word on that because I frankly don't know how hard we've hit them and you're the one with the inside ear not me) then it seems likely that a business devoted to PR would had noticed that already, considering that's their entire job.

It seems more likely to me that NCSoft is either being coached by them to stay silent by their PR firm (which, me being a pessimist, I could see happening, because gamers have a sort of reputation for being feckless and easily distracted or discouraged, so maybe they're hoping to just stay silent until we just get tired of this and go "Eh, well I'm not winning and I'm not going to punish myself by not playing GW2, so I'm going to buy that now", which is pretty much the attitude that allows EA, Ubisoft and Activision to exist at all) or (realistically more likely) has just disregarded H&KS' advice to do what they want.

NCSoft's leadership, to be honest has seemed to be a mixture of terribly incompetent and massively arrogant. They're holding most of the cards and they know it and it doesn't seem to matter to them that a few of them are facing the wrong way or from an UNO deck, or that they're folding or chewing on them. So it wouldn't surprise me if some western firm came up and just threw a fit about how they're circling the drain and they were like "Meh, I got this" as they continued to poke their eye out.

But you know, if you guys think it'll work, have at it, I guess. I just don't expect this is the best source of our attention.

My goal with bringing this up here and on twitter, was more of the "multi-pronged attack advocacy" idea.  Let them (the PR company) know we know who they are, and we know NcSoft's rep is being damaged (because of Nc's own actions).  This is not meant to be a large focus, just something I'm going to needle them with once a week or so until CoH is dead and buried, or is rezzed.

[frostcoh]

I think they are hearing us, their #hkstrat tag now only has stuff from COH.