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First of all, we took the train, passing by this beautiful World War I memorial:
And by this renovation marker:
Don’t know yet? Maybe this will give you a clue. Here we are!
Still need help? How about this?
Stumped? Well, try this:
Tonight we saw it in the original venue, Her Majesty’s Theatre:
This is the theatre after the show. Keep scrolling:
We enjoyed the show very much.
Today we visited the Royal Aeronautical Society, where that toy above was on display. We met with Clifford Beal of Strix Consultancy. He’s a Vermont man, by way of Sussex, who is a former editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly and has worked closely with Raytheon for years. Strix is essentially a boutique public relations firm, providing strategy and extra PR hands (primarily) to weapons manufacturers.
This was a great meeting. I took a lot of notes.
Beal talked about the need for building relationships, every boutique firm talks about this. But he has a few points that stand out from the rest.
“My clients create serious products that often have life and death consequences. That sets them apart from other industries.”
One of the challenges they face is that there are often hostile perceptions of arms manufacturers. Historically, he said, that changed briefly during WWII “because that was the good war,” and then reverted. Those perceptions have large and small implications. For example, Beal said that robotics and drones are words that aren’t used anymore. Instead, the acronym UAV is employed. Similarly, the term “cluster bombs” posses an “emotive language that removes credible debate.”
Beal said it can be difficult to conduct a PR campaign or share a message against such a bow wave of public opinion. (Sound familiar to anyone in PR?) But there are good arguments. The economics of scale involved in the weapons industry makes production cost prohibitive. There’s the legitimate self defense aspect that each sovereign government would maintain. And the U.S. and U.K., he says, have the toughest export regulations in the world.
“You can’t just ship to anyone.”
Another challenge, though, is that all of the aeronautic agencies clients are governments. They often have a limited need for public relations at the national level. Locally, that’s a different game. There are work force/private sector concerns, employee safety issues and, of course, the environment. The clients and audiences are demanding different things there. But at the national level the topics are things like costs to taxpayer, cost to profit and safety and reliability.
So we talked about the F-35 boondoggle right there.
Beal looks at from the idea of talking to people directly to help guide or even turn an opinion. This is about helping to influence outcomes, but he’s taking this from a macro level.
“The media is a megaphone to your audience, not an end to itself. It is a conduit to decision makes. When it is done right, it will provide your message from a different corner,” he said.
We got started on a topic of useful tools and he said, straight up, “I wouldn’t include press releases any more.”
And my guess is you’re going to hear more of that in the coming years.
The inverted pyramid and subsequent style still holds, but the delivery has changed. This is about storytelling, which is what we’ve been telling our students for some time now.
Obviously social media is a part of the recipe now, but Beal said that aeronautics agencies, generally conservative creatures, are behind in that realm. There are control issues over subject matter. That makes sense, particularly in those very sensitive areas in which they often work. Because of that, he said, it is often stage-managed and not spontaneous.
Beal is a big believer in a successful network of contacts. This makes sense, it his defined his last decade-and-change worth of work at Strix. But that’s on the B-2-B side. He talked about the B-2-J side, specifically.
“Journalists are now under much more (time) pressure. They’re not going to give you a lot of time if they don’t know you, or until it is a really big story.”
The networking, he said, “gives you an incredible amount of good will. Bring them along from the beginning of the story, not just during the crisis.”
And then we got into the part of the media that applies to people working in aeronautics or corporate banking or non-profit PR. We talked of the many media channels now available, and how that fragmentation presents a challenge. This is the professional material and the guys sitting at home pecking away.
“You have to cultivate, pay attention to them as well … Each channel has its own ways of doing things. You have to tailor your message for each of them.”
Hmmm. Where have I said that before?
That’s not just in how they present media, though, but in what they’re looking for and, of course, what they’re asking about. The trade publications, Beal said “are asking questions that execs might not want asked.” Those trade pubs, though, (Remember, the guy was the editor at Jane’s. He knows what is going on here … ) are “reaching two different levels, but you have to reach both to be effective.”
He talks about a colonel or a major who is reading all of these trade pubs and then flagging the important material for general officers, where some real impact is being made. So if you think of it as middle- and upper-management, you have a lot of people to hit in one message, if you want to be successful.
Also, Beal said, those trade pubs know weaknesses and are being primed by plenty of other potential sources. Broadcasters, meanwhile, are looking for news hooks. Papers, the high end products at least, are often the outlets that “influence decision makers. They are noticed at a high level.”
Generally, though, in journalism, he is encountered by the same industry problems that we regularly bemoan. There is a continual decline in resource knowledge and institutional history. There are, he said, fewer defense correspondents and far fewer war correspondents than once upon a time. So often he is having to peddle Widget 101 to a general journalist. Of course, from his point of view, there are plenty of potential PR wins in a circumstance like that.
We discussed the future outlook of the weapons making industry, including budget crunches, technology costs and increasing development time and technology transfer offset trading. He had a few pointed geopolitical ideas about that topic.
He also talked about entering global public relations, generalized the quality of media across different regions of the planet and, of course, closed with the timeless nugget of crisis communication.
“If something went wrong and it was your fault, say so. Say so.”
So, yes, if there are typos above. They’re mine. Sorry.
Here, now, is another model on display at the Royal Aeronautic Society. And it is not a Manriot plane, but actually the Fokker Spin.
From the top of the Arc, you can see the Russian Orthodox Church, Parc Monceau, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, the Organs of Flanders, the Church of St. Augustine, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Tour Hertzienne de Romainville. You can also find the beautiful Sainte-Trinité, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, the opera house, pantheon, the Sorbonne, Notre Dame and about a dozen more high profile locations.
Click on both of these to open them in a new tab:
The front of the Church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot on Avenue Marceau. This version of the church was first built in 1740, but the parish dates back to when this street was a village outside of Paris. (We’re in the heart of Paris, by the way.) The village dates back to the 11th century.
Here’s the Palais Galliera. It opened in 1895 and, since 1977, has been a fashion museum. It was willed as a state collection, then became an industrial art museum and then home to works from mid-20th century contemporary artists.
A few more shots of the tower from various angles:
I walked back over to the carousel to take a few pictures of my favorite items there:
The horses were decorated with real horse hair.
Oh, look! The sunlight changed. No one has this picture:
Crossing the Seine as they were cruising down it:
Looking up the Eiffel Tower’s skirts, as it were:
One of the horses guarding the Eiffel Tower, with the Tricolour from the museum in the background:
This is at the train station, as we were waiting to leave. It was one of my favorite pictures of the day:
I have occasionally made the “last train out of Paris” joke. We were on the last train out for the night:
A cut of lamb I had for dinner on the train. The server pronounced it for me several times. I wrote it down phonetically. I have no idea how you really spell it, though, so I’ll keep it to myself. Point being, I had dinner on a train.
My traveling companion:
Since we walked 10 miles in Paris today — all in the afternoon, really. We saw some great stuff, too, which is why my afternoon in Paris is being divided into several posts. Enjoy.
We had a heavy snack at Boulanger Patissier on Ave Kleber at Rue de Longchamp. We were sitting on a corner just three blocks from the Eiffel Tower and maybe four from the Arc de Triomphe.
I don’t know about you, but I just don’t think about this sort of thing in terms of “Maybe one day I’ll … ” On those odd and rare and fortuitous moments that something unusual and unique happens, they just happen. And then later in the day or week I’ll look back at this thing. “We did that.”
Perhaps it is more organic that way. If we played a day in Paris and said “And then we’ll have a snack at an outdoor cafe, and eat too much cheese and watch the locals smoke,” that would just seem contrived.
Wouldn’t it?
Anyway, most everything on Ave Kleber looks like this. Here are three photos to prove the point:
And, suddenly, there we were, at the Arc, where they’re flying the tricolour. The monument honors those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars, with the names of French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces. There is also vault of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I. The monument is 164 feet tall, 148 feet wide and 72 feet deep. It was the world’s tallest triumphal arch until 1938. This is the view from Av des Champs-Elysees:
It sits on an island, a very busy piece of traffic furniture. To get to the monument you have to go underground. When you are under it you see messages like this:
Some of the work on the inside:
The next two pieces are seen on the other side of the Arc, as you’d see from Avenue de la Grande Armee.
This is La Résistance de 1814, commemorating the French resistance to the Allied armies during the War of the Sixth Coalition which finally defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba:
And this is La Paix de 1815, which commemorates the Treaty of Paris:
This one is in the attic, some 230 stairs up, which is part of the unknown soldier monument:
Nearby is this monument of World War I:
Also upstairs was a fascinating photo display of World War I uniforms. The artist, Antoine Schneck shot and produced the authentic clothes and equipment in such a way that each individual aspect is in focus. There is no blurring anywhere, so you have a terrific 2D-quality representation of the real thing. This is merely a picture of that work, so you’ll just have to go along with me here. But to see this 1918 uniform of the 2nd Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division (and of the 17 other multinational examples) is almost like seeing the man wearing it in front of you. The American men that wore this equipment fought in Verdun, Chateau-Thierry, Bois Belleau, Saint-Mihiel and during the Meuse-Argonne offensive.
The view from the top of the Arc:
Some of The Yankee’s students:
As we walked back through the tunnel, leaving the island the Arc is on, we met these men. The gentleman on the left is wearing the French Legion of Honor around his neck.
And here we are, leaving the Arc.
In the next, and final, post from Paris I’ll include two panoramas from atop the Arc. Be sure to come back to check those out, and much more!
We walked 10 miles in Paris today. Ten miles. And almost all of that was in the afternoon because we had various travel problems.
There was an unhealthy mass of people at the train station in London. (We were the last people on board an already-late train.) We arrived at the first station in France and they blocked off the platform we needed because of a suspicious package. We found a Plan B.
Plan B involved five of the nine people in our group getting on one train and the other four of us not making the train. So I had a nice chat with those people about how they needed to hurry up, and pay attention to something more than their phones. Be good little geese and get on the train.
A list of other things happened that shook every confidence that the group would be able to make original evening rendezvous, so we changed our plans. The Yankee and I were supposed to take a bike tour, but of the seven people with us I expect maybe three could have stuck with the previous plan. So we called an audible, right there under the Eiffel Tower, and we walked a lot. Ten miles! We saw some great stuff, too, which is why my afternoon in Paris is being divided into several posts. Enjoy.
First of all, we saw this brilliant ad in the London Underground this morning:
These are the tickets you use to ride the trains in Paris. There are 10 in a pack and the challenge is to not lose them:
When we finally got to downtown Paris the exit from the subway was about a block and a half from the tower. This is one of the early views:
And, after a day here, I can tell you that Paris in the springtime might be as lovely as everyone says. Now, some more shots of the Eiffel Tower. A guide told me you can see the 324-meter-high from about 30 miles away on a nice day:
Now, we’ve just crossed the River Seine:
And that’s a perfect place for a merry-go-round:
These next pictures come from beneath the Musee national de la Marine. Go to this statue and turn around for the best shots of the Eiffel Tower:
See?
