Cut-It-Out Communications: PR and Politics

Election Night Contrast: Spin Versus Public Relations

The term “public relations” conjures up many different thoughts among people outside the industry. It is often mistakenly confused with the political term “spin,” an appropriate topic to consider during tonight’s election-night contests.

Spin refers to slanting your reaction towards news stories to put them in the most favorable light for your candidate or political party. Public relations, on the other hand, represents a marketing strategy through unpaid publicity, or news stories, as opposed to paid publicity, generally advertisements.

While both spin and public relations attempt to influence their target audiences with favorable material, spin represents a more blatant and forceful slanting of the facts, going right up to the border of outright untruths. Public relations involves framing a news story about your client in a way that will generate a favorable reaction among the public and lead to increased business.

Sometimes, “spin doctors” can take the same set of facts and slant them to reach polar opposite positions. Public relations, on the other hand, tries to inform the target audience with positive benefits about a given product and is held to a much higher standard of truth among business reporters and other media.

Public relations is a respected industry, and trade organizations such as PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) promulgate standards and efficacy requirements among their members.

So, next time you heard the word “spin,” don’t confuse it with PR!

Public Relations and the Tea Party

The Tea Party desperately needs some elemental public relations lessons, and one of its main problems in this area derives from its basic composition. As a decentralized movement, with no real head or leadership, the Party is dependent on the media depiction of its actions without any ability to influence them.

They have no spin doctor unless you count Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, two messengers widely viewed as prejudiced in their portrayals. If the Tea Party consists of average Americans, it needs some way to show that without images of the crazies holding up racist protest signs.

Electoral victories in the primaries this Tuesday would go a long way towards cementing their gains and improving their image. There’s no PR better than success.

However, this continues to ignore the fundamental problem: the need for leadership or a national spokesperson to rebut negative stories and highlight the good ones.

If Ron Paul can serve as a titular head for libertarians, the Tea Party must be able to organize enough to choose a similar representative. And Sarah Palin won’t do. She’s just too controversial and too self-interested.

Frankly, I’m just as glad to see the Tea Party go on like it is. They provide a perfect foil for President Obama and continue to be viewed as far outside the mainstream. However, from a PR perspective, they have a long way to go.

Public Relations and Oil

As the saying goes, oil and water don’t mix. And they certainly aren’t mixing very well in the Gulf of the Mexico where the oil and gas industry is undergoing a public relations disaster.

As revelations continue to mount about a fast-and-loose attitude towards regulations and environmental laws -- new details came out in The New York Times this morning -- one wonders how oil and gas companies will recover. It didn’t help to hear the head of BP repeating over and over in testimony to Congress that the company would pay for all “legitimate” claims.

This is where you see the fault lines between legal advice and public relations advice. Repeating a buzz word such as “legitimate” ad nauseum is an obvious talking point or legalese developed after much consultation.

This tactic proved to be a disaster when Chris Matthews replayed it in all its variations on Hardball last night. And the public can see through it as a ploy used by an extremely untalented representative of BP.

What’s needed instead is a mea culpa with an overly generous attitude toward those affected by the disaster. With prompt, solicitous care, BP can undo many of the adverse reactions it is experiencing. And in the long run, this can prove more profitable to them. They should look at it as an investment of the billions of dollars in profits they are still racking up.

Another Blow to Wall Street's Image

Wall Street received another blow to its image today with the announcement of an investigation by Attorney General Cuomo’s office today into the relationship between investment banks and ratings agencies. This is one field in sore need of some professional public relations.

The investigation comes on top of an action by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a civil fraud case. And that adds to the publicity about the enormous bonuses executives on Wall Street are continuing to receive.

It almost makes you feel sorry for financial institutions.

Is there a PR fix for Wall Street, or are they condemned to public approbation and denouncement?

Clearly, Goldman Sachs is in the worst situation of them all. What they need to do is some bold gesture for the investing public. A counterintuitive move that actually costs them some money in the short term but with long-term implications that will grow their business and attract investors.

Obviously, if I had the answer to this dilemma, I’d be calling them up and not sharing it on my blog. However, the outlines of the strategy should seem elementary to any public relations professional.

In general, Goldman Sachs could implement some program with attractive terms designed to attract John Q. Public.

Will they do so? It remains to be seen.

Differences Between Traditional and Online PR, Part 3

In the previous two posts, we looked at the push versus pull model of public relations and the presence of gatekeepers to regulate online and print publicity. In this part, I want to examine some of the structural differences between online and traditional PR.

Just as print media consists of various formats such as industry trade publications, business journals and newspapers, online public relations utilizes different vehicles including online press releases, content provision sites, blogs, e-newsletters and social media.

In many cases, structure determines style and vice versa. Content provision sites offer articles for other people on the web looking for materials, and contributed pieces can be used as long as the author’s URL is included.

Online press releases generate automatic pickup depending on the distributor, such as PR Newswire or PRWeb, and the newsworthy nature of the content. Blogs, similar in structure to online diaries, can also provide short informational blurbs about the author’s industry.

Social media sites each have their own culture, and the prudent contributor will “lurk” to observe the interactions before posting anything.

Of course, many newspapers and magazines have started online editions, and the rules for these are similar to the print world except they are not bound by any space considerations.

Developing a familiarity with the online world takes time, but it is time well spent because of the amazing return involved. There are whole new target audiences online unreachable through print media.

Differences Between Online and Traditional PR, Part 2: A Gatekeeper

In addition to the push versus pull models of public relations described in yesterday’s blog post, there are other important areas of difference between online and traditional PR.

One of these involves the central component of a gatekeeper. The value of traditional public relations, defined as unpaid publicity, compared to advertising, involves a neutral party who determines whether or not an article is newsworthy. The editor or reporter of a print publication generally plays this role. In doing so, the reader, or potential customer, knows there is a certain inherent value to an article, otherwise it would never have been published in the first place.

Online PR, in many instances, does not involve a gatekeeper. Thus the reader does not have any assurances regarding the reliability of the information and must find some other way to make that determination. Instead of a gatekeeper, a lot of online PR is validated by the number of visitors, generally resulting in a higher search engine ranking.

However, there still remains a possibility of being misled without a knowledgeable industry gatekeeper making a determination. This means, in many instances, that print publicity retains a higher overall value than online publicity.

It is important to note, however, that there are certain online situations where gatekeepers still play a role. Many online forums and publications are moderated, and this screening function serves as a virtual gatekeeper. In addition, many print publications have established online versions where all the original rules to achieve publicity still apply.  

Differences Between Online and Traditional Public Relations

The development of online public relations has expanded and empowered traditional public relations, but it has also led to some important differences that could trap the amateur practitioner.

Perhaps, the most important involves the push versus pull model for the creation of publicity. The push model, typical for traditional public relations, involves proactively distributing your message -- pushing it out to the general public, target audiences or other selected groups. This involves a blatantly promotional angle, even if it is framed within vendor neutral material to achieve coverage by the press.

In online PR, however, you must rely on the pull model, and if you pursue the push model in cyberspace you will alienate or be blocked by many potential customers. The pull model involves attracting interested parties to your web site or other online location (Facebook Pages, Twitter, etc) through search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Promotional material is viewed as spam on the web and inevitably rejected.

Ideally, companies should pursue both push and pull models in their respective spheres. And they should select public relations companies with experience in both areas.

Of course, there are many other differences between traditional and online public relations as well, and this blog will address some of them in future articles. (To read more articles about traditional and online public relations, visit public relations instruction.)

Another Blow to Wall Street's Image

Wall Street has suffered another major blow to its image, and this time it’s not even based on greed. The reason for Thursday’s 1,000 point slide in the Dow Jones index  remains unknown, calling into question the industry’ technical proficiency as well.

These sort of things are not supposed to happen on Wall Street in the modern world. All sort of safeguards were believed to be in place to ensure, in a fail-safe manner, against the sort of events more common during the Great Depression.

With the original explanation of an entry error -- someone typing a billion dollars instead of a million -- fading into obscurity, industry leaders and financial regulators are considering to struggle in their attempt to figure things out.

Not knowing the reason for a 1,000 point slide -- even knowing the explanation isn’t so reassuring -- means the center of the world’s financial system has some sort of glitch that could occur again at any moment.

Not the greatest PR point to attract individual investors.

That’s the problem with these so-called “masters of the universe.” They are so certain they have all the answers, that they’ve figured the system out, that they lack the humility need to spot and fix the fragilities present in any human endeavor.

Perhaps, it’s a good comeuppance for Wall Street. The sad part is that it’s the American public whose paying the price.

Public Relations and Economic Reality

There’s one field supposedly immune from public relations spin, and that’s economic markets. Traders make decisions based on underlying fundamentals, and people invest their money on the same basis.

However, the rationality of the markets is wildly overrated. Yesterday, we saw the Dow Jones plummet by 1,000 points (before recovering to a loss of “only” 300) based on a cascading set of fears triggered by a computer error.

Supposedly, when a trader in Chicago transmitted a sell order for a billion instead of a million, computer algorithms set in leading to a broad-based sell off. But humans were complicit as well, causing a panic and much consternation.

In general, financial markets may provide independent evaluation of various companies, currencies and national economic health, but they are not immune from bubbles and busts as we have observed all too clearly during the past few years. Investors are misled by feelings, stoked by unethical public relations campaigns designed to create a false impression.

Does this mean that public relations is bad per se? Of course not. Like any powerful tool, public relations can be used for good or evil. It can spread joy, inform people and create a more prosperous society. When used for more nefarious purposes, it commonly goes by the label “propaganda” instead. One remembers the Nazi line, “if you repeat a lie often enough, people will take it for the truth.”

The key when evaluating public relations campaigns is the execution of due diligence. Try to go beyond the headlines and ascertain the facts of a matter before taking precipitous action, as happened on the stock markets today.

Public Relations, Germany and Greece

Germany has a public relations problem regarding the current plan to bail out Greece and save their common Euro currency from further devaluation on the world’s market. The real fear, should Greece default on it debt, concerns the spread of the contagion to Portugal, and most importantly, Spain, whose much larger economy, if it experienced severe distress, could drag the rest of the Continent under.

But the German public has some legitimate gripes about the bailout plan. Germany had been responsible and undertaken many austerity measures while Greece wantonly spread its wealth around and lived beyond its means. Why should the German public have to assist them?

The argument is similar to the Republican fallacy regarding the stimulus plan and “too big to fail” organizations. Why should the taxpayer assist financial institutions that deserved to go out of business because of their poor investments and role in the housing crisis?

The answer simply is “Life is unfair.” There are certain actions we must take, distasteful as they might be, because of the situations we are confronted with during our daily interactions. Germany’s bailout of Greece must take place simply because the country is too big to fail. If it did, the repercussions and domino effect would be enormous. Just like AIG.

This maxim must be communicated simply and frequently to the German people to solve the German government’s public relations problem.