Having owned or worked at public relations agencies for 25 years, I have never been on the client’s side of the table. I have noticed certain characteristics, however, that would drive me to distraction (or out the door) if I were a client.

This led me to write what I view as the six fatal errors agencies often commit against clients. It was instructive for me to write them down, and, though obvious as rainwater, perhaps useful for others.

Editor's Note: The following is Michael Willard's speech May 22 to Ukrainian editors at the Conference on Professional Journalism in Kyiv.

Good afternoon. Yes, you're right. I'm a PR guy. I once was a newspaper guy.
And as a guy in the news business, I didn't particularly care for PR people like me. I mean, I might say hello to a PR guy if no one else was around-but I sure wouldn't ask him down to the pool hall for a beer and a game. And it is for certain I wouldn't introduce the fellow to my young sister.

Such was the attitude of news people to PR people in the 60s and 70s. But, I believe, times change….a little.

Let's go way back. How many of you remember the old Linotype machines for setting what was called hot type? . How many of you remember off-set printing called cold type before computers.

A design student from Portland, Oregon developed a symbol for a small sporting goods outfit. She was paid $35. The owner of the store indicated he wasn't wild about the design but thought it might grow on him.

That store owner was Phil Knight, owner of Nike. The design, of course, was the famous swoosh.

I can pretty much guarantee that had that design been put to a focus group it wouldn't have passed muster. Too simple, some would say. Too abstract, others would opine. Too, too nothing would be the collective chorus.

Marshall McLuhan is momentarily famous for five words: "The medium is the message."

With those few words, he got it wrong.

While he wasn't specifically thinking about television-even a common light bulb is a medium-he wrote these words during the golden age of television. Television at the time was the most important medium.

Today, the most important medium, in my view, is digital or internet or social media. Some people call it new media. I think the word "new" gives too elementary a focus to what is merely an evolutionary process, probably an inevitable one.

Surviving professionally after 50 is all about attitude, not age. But sometimes it is hard to convince the 35-year-old boss in the corner office whose historic frame of reference is Aerosmith--not Elvis. .

When I was in my 20s, I looked at someone approaching 35 as middle-aged, slightly mildewed; someone at 50 as definitely over the hill and someone my age, close now to mid-60s, as a fellow who plays checkers all day and waits for the grim reaper's visit.

These days, if you are looking for a job at 60, you have about the same chance of landing one as being caught-as they say about 40-year-old divorced woman getting married-in the crossfire of a terrorist attack.

It's not easy out there.

Dear International Olympic Committee,

Get a grip.

The IOC has issued what appears to be a lawyer’s equivalent of a Rube Goldberg device in handing down what Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic participants can and can not do when it comes to social media.

The participants—identified as “Accredited Persons”—can only blog about their own Olympic related personal experiences when posting anything that has to do with Olympic content.

In other words, even though some of the more famous sportsmen and women might have thousands of fans following them on Tweet, they can’t post a blog commenting on anyone other than themselves. They are also similarly restricted in pictures they post

Some 20 agencies in Belgium have gone on what they call a "pitch strike" which is tantamount to going into battle armed only with a toothpick.

The agencies-and we're talking many major network agencies here-obviously have never head of what one-time Young & Rubicam CEO Tom Bell called the Golden Rule: "He who holds the gold, rules."

It is not that the agencies in Belgium, and elsewhere for that matter, don't have a solid case. They are saying they will boycott every pitch that has more than three contenders and an incumbent participating.

Some businesses tend to be worse than others at communicating their messages. Let’s consider attempts by professional firms –such as law and accounting firms—who often believe it’s less expensive to hire in-house staff than a professional marketing firm.

It’s not. It’s also generally ineffective.

Every week another communication from a professional firm, usually a law firm, crosses my desk. I promptly use it to soak up the Coca-Cola Light that invariably spews from my nostrils from laughter.

I don’t mean to be cruel here, but the publications tend to look like bulletins from some obscure department in the bowels of a very bureaucratic government. Most resemble stir-fried gobbledygook.

I just saw a survey by the iVOX people who say Ukrainians trust the so-called “new” internet media over traditional media but a whopping 70 per cent wouldn’t consider paying for such content. What’s going on here?

For starters, this is not Ukrainians being cheapskates. If it is, most of the globe is as stingy as Scrooge McDuck.

But why is it this way?

The European Business Association's staff wants to get into the lobbying business for individual companies. It shouldn't.

There are two reasons for this:

1.) It shouldn't compete with its own membership.
2.) And, there is a better than even chance that being paid by one member to lobby on an issue will be contrary to the interests of another member.

Carlos Gutierrez blames the CEO for corporate communications people so often being kept in the dark.

Gutierrez is a former U.S. commerce secretary and former CEO and chairman of Kellogg Co. Since he worked in both government and business, he knows both landscapes.

In his view, the government communications people tend to know a lot more about policy and are simply better informed than their counterparts in corporate communications.

"It's no your fault," he old a gathering of business PR pros at a meeting a few months back in New York. "It's the CEO's fault. It is the CEO's responsibility to see communications as a strategic tool."

On most levels, the field of governmental relations, as it applies in Ukraine, is an oxymoron. It is about money, bloc voting, and realizing that most officials (everywhere) will do what they perceive is in their own interests.A client of mine once used the slogan: "My only special interest is you." In an age where politicians were going to jail in my home state of West Virginia for accepting bribes, it resonated and he won.

But, at Willard, we have governmental relations as one of our disciplines. As I looked over our history in preparation for a pitch, it became evident that most of what we did - including current work - involves some governmental relations.

Tiger Wood's bimbo eruptions make a former U.S. president's escapades appear amateurish by comparison. By last count, it was 14, and the majority of these ladies suggest Bill Clinton's Paula Jones was a classy lady in comparison.

So what to do with the greatest celebrity meltdown in U.S. sports history? Tiger has chosen a path to redemption that strands his sponsors, the golf business and the television ratings in, at best, purgatory.

On the nuclear scale, Tiger's scandal is Defcon One: He was a serial cheater and not merely the victim of a one-time misfortunate liaison. With his beautiful young wife, he has an infant child and a two-year-old. It was so shocking because we all thought Tiger was better than, well, us.

Mr. Lewis, I am perplexed. Why is it that given a choice of two decisions, so many organizations opt for the public relations blunder? It is as if shooting oneself in the foot is what these folks do for target practice.

I'm speaking of the Ukrainian Credit Banking Union and its decision to, as reported by Interfax, "threaten mass media with advertising reduction for providing information on how to cheat banks."

Two points here: First, I question whether publications were actually counseling credit-challenged consumers to defraud banks. If so, the Ukrainian organization still took a ham-fisted approach to the problem.

At one time, advertising was about a creative force coming together to move people to action. It was about targeted messages and concrete promises. This was good.

This is not to argue that the dancing and singing monkeys in old ad jingles represented the apex of creativity, but perhaps they represented more honesty.

At one time, the leading light in advertising was a copywriting genius named David Ogilvy. He founded Ogilvy and Mather. Now, the acknowledged leader - at least from his press clippings - is a green eyeshades-type named Sir Martin Sorrell.