All week, members of the media and political pundits have been chirping about how well or how poorly President Barack Obama has conveyed his key messages. Are he and his cabinet and advisers giving mixed messages about the economy? When did they know about the outrageous AIG bonuses and why didn't they do something earlier?

Whether or not one thinks the President has done a good job of getting his message out clearly, one thing is certain: our President and his communications team are setting new standards for combining old-school and social media tactics to create a multi-faceted PR campaign. That topic — how to strategically integrate social media into tried-and-true communications campaigns — is under constant debate among public relations practitioners. The key word is "strategically." Racing to start a blog or set up a Facebook page for any organization seeking publicity may or may not make sense, but that hasn't stopped some PR people from making a knee-jerk recommendation to do so.

In the past couple days, the President has demonstrated how to combine the old with the new. A sampling of his communications activities includes:

Two town hall meetings in California to tell large numbers of people — in person — about the proposed U.S. budget and encourage them to tell their representatives in Congress to support it. A town hall meeting is about as old-school as it gets, as today's town hall meetings harken back to New England in the early days of our nation.

Social media calls to action to educate the President's enormous number of supporters. The President's blog and various social media pages carried his latest messages. Definitely new school.

Appearing on the Tonight Show to talk about the economy — and, yes THE DOG and his March Madness picks — to promote likeability and confidence in him as our leader. Considered cutting-edge for a sitting President to appear on the Tonight Show, this is really about as old-school as you can get: appear on late-night TV to pitch your position or project. It's impressive that the President can put a new twist on an old publicity tactic. That's what all good PR people should be doing, every day.

Placing a video on Iranian TV. On one hand, one could consider this a classic propaganda technique. Much-despised leaders such as Fidel Castro and Osama bin Ladin have created videos and broadcast and distributed them to audiences they are trying to influence. Yet, here is President Obama appearing on a video distributed in Iran — with Farsi subtitles — wishing the people of Iran a happy new year. And, the video is described on the President's White House blog, and circulating globally over all mainstream and online media outlets.

Whether or not one agrees with the President's politics, he sure presents a good lesson for PR people about how to combine new and old communications tactics.

A video made by a cultural
anthropology class at Kansas State University is making the rounds in the global dialogue about the differences and needs of the generations in the workplace.This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o  represents a recent installment
shared among those who participate in Vistage, the world’s largest organization
of CEOs.vistage.com 

Today’s employers of all
generations need to be aware of the experiences and expectations of employees
of all generations, including those of the Millennial generation, who are the
stars of the Kansas State video. While the
world and workplace today certainly are different than they were in any other
decade, the Millennials are not so exotic that they don’t share characteristics
with other generations that have gone before them.

I’ve noted many times the many
similarities between the Millennials www.millennialgeneration.org/ and Baby Boomers, www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/006105.html  the generation to which I belong. Members of both generations love to
learn, grew up multi-tasking (although it wasn’t called that yet in the 1960s
and 1970s), saw huge changes in technology (albeit faster now than for the
Boomers), and for a variety of reasons have been considered and have considered
themselves “special.”

Most striking, however has
been the shared commitment to cause. Boomers followed John F. Kennedy and
“asked what they could do for their country” when the Peace Corps started. Today’s
Millennials are looking for ways to make a difference and are marching in
droves in Sen. Barack Obama’s Hope campaign.

In the Kansas State video, the students flash hand-made signs and computer screen messages before
the camera, expressing the facts, experiences and expectations of their
generation.

Interspersed are quotes from scholars and leaders of past decades
and centuries, which still are true. On the most basic level, I don’t see all
that much new here. There is a reason the antique quotes in the video are still
relevant today. The old cliché is correct: The more things change, the more
things stay the same.

You can click on the video to
see what the Kansas State students think and
want to share about their generation. I’ll share here some similarities to
those of my Baby Boomer generation:

• The world was as scary and
  uncertain to Boomers as it is to Millennials. When I was in junior high, older
  friends were out protesting the Vietnam War and every night on TV we watched
  the body bags of dead soldiers return. My first boyfriend in high school had a draft
  lottery number and we worried about whether he’d get sent to war and die. When
  I was in college, a recession loomed, there were daily protests about the Shah
  of Iran and against Apartheid, and the year I graduated the Three Mile Island nuclear power disaster happened.
• Technology changed rapidly for
  Boomers, too, although since then the definition of “rapid” has changed. In the
  first two years of my first job, my main tool at work changed from a manual
  typewriter to an IBM Selectric typewriter to a DEC computer.
• Millennials aren’t the only
  over-stimulated generation to have turned away from what it considered
  irrelevant, too slow or too “old school.” While the Millennials spend time on
  Facebook and using e-mail or text messaging, we diverted our attention in our
  preferred ways. We skipped class, watched TV for many hours, went to movies,
  goofed around, talked to people in bars, in coffee shops, on the phone and on
  the Quad, slept through class, passed notes to friends, and multi-tasked when
  we should have perhaps been reading books in school. Were we more or less
  engaged in education than the current students? Hard to say.
• Young Boomers shared the
  hard-wired need to learn, learn, learn. We were brought up in the post-Sputnik
  education run-up and the global race to the moon. 
• Both generations think
  they’re “special.” Much has been made of Millennials who have grown up in a
  world where everyone on the little league team gets a trophy and “helicopter
  parents” hover. As a generation, we Boomers were “special,” too, mostly because
  there were so darn many of us. We were “special” because we were a marketer’s
  gold mine. Businesses at all stages of our life have worked to figure out how
  to make money off of us. We were the generation that the Barbie doll first
  enticed, after all.

Maybe some Millennials and
Boomers don’t want to believe it, but I believe our two generations have a lot
in common and can do great things together. Bring it on.