Filed under: Political | Tags: budget, communications planning, Obama, politics, public relations, reputation management, target audiences
Our country is at an interesting time in its history. Not only are we struggling through a recession that’s causing widespread economic hardship; we are also in the early stages of a new Presidency. These two factors have filled news pages and websites with political communications, as special interests and those with strong political convictions jockey to be heard, and to position themselves favorably with their target audiences.
For most of us, political communications are inherently interesting, because we all have a vested interest in outcomes: lower or higher taxes, better or worse healthcare, accessible higher education… the list is endless. But as hard-working people who are interested in the success of our own businesses or organizations, political communications are interesting in terms of what they can teach us about successful (or unsuccessful) messaging.
There’s nothing like huge amounts of money to make a political fight interesting, and the Obama administration — displaying its typical communications savvy — presented its initial budget proposal as a fight in the making. That’s why his unveiling of the budget — and the Republican response to it — is an interesting case-study in communications, with plenty of lessons.
On the White House’s official website, the very first words they wrote in the days after the budget was presented to Congress positioned them for battle: “President Obama explains how the budget he sent to Congress will fulfill the promises he made as a candidate, and assures special interests that he is ready for the fight.”
Lesson: If you know your messaging will face critics or competitors, acknowledging that — or even embracing it — can be a good way to highlight your strengths. For example, if you sell goods similar to what’s available at a national chain store, but at higher prices, your messaging can incorporate your community ties, local commitment, and unsurpassed expertise, while pointing out that the lack of these benefits make competitors more costly in the long run.
The Obama administration also highlighted parts of the budget that delineate specific benefits that it says will accrue to the American people: expanding health insurance, reducing carbon emissions, improving education, creating jobs, and increasing taxes for those higher up the income scale.
Lesson: Always have proof-points for your main messages. Simply saying you have a great product or service is useless unless you prove it. Make sure every proof-point is something you can demonstrate as true, and impresses your target audiences. The key difference here, however, is that politicians (no matter their party) can promise benefits that may never materialize and blame other factors; we in the private sector, in businesses and non-profits, will actually be held more accountable.
The manner of the President’s presentation of the budget proposal is a time-honored, smart approach for two important reasons. First, presidents always must portray themselves as being on the side of the people, and vilifying special interests is one of the best ways to do that. Second, almost anyone in the U.S. can benefit from an image as the tenacious advocate who’s ready to prevail against the odds. Americans are hard-wired to admire anyone who fights against “entrenched powers,” and they support it.
Lesson: Know what your audience wants. If your audience values price above all other considerations, then talking about quality, craftsmanship, or a tradition of excellence is a waste of your effort.
President Obama’s budget messaging has the added benefit of adhering closely to the campaign themes that swept him into office: hope and change. “Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington,” he said of his plan.
Lesson: Be consistent in your messaging. If you have always positioned your auto repair shop as ASE-certified and master-mechanics only, then suddenly switching to a low-price message could severely undermine your image and damage your business. Accordingly, you’ll find hope and change is a theme that will continue throughout the President’s term.
But what about those who opposed the President’s proposed budget? They too are a group of polished communicators, and they did essentially the same as the President: positioned themselves as protectors of the people. But their positioning is based on protecting people from what they characterize as profligate spending by irresponsible bureaucrats.
House Republican Leader John Boehner had this to say in response to the President’s proposed budget: “This budget taxes, spends, and borrows its way toward a bigger, more costly federal government at the expense of small businesses, family farms, middle-class families, retirees, every American who owns a 401(k), and anyone who flips on a light switch.” There wasn’t much else released from him on the matter.
If we look at the lessons we have observed so far, the above message doesn’t necessarily adhere to any of them, except the admonition to be consistent. There’s little acknowledgement of the competing message, there are no proof points, and it doesn’t really offer anything of real value or specificity to the target audience.
On the other hand, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who gave the Republicans’ official response to the proposed budget, made a much longer presentation. He repeated essentially the same message as Rep. Boehner, but took it an important step further by incorporating an alternative vision to the Obama budget: We believe Americans can do anything, and that they can pull us out of the recession if government stays out of their way.
Simply pointing out that the Obama budget would raise taxes is inherently negative and offers nothing for people to believe in. Gov. Jindal’s message, however, pointed out specific Republican proposals that counter the president’s, and addresses the very same issues: healthcare, taxes, education, job-creation and more.
Lesson: Present specific benefits to your target audience. When it comes to your business or non-profit organization, you need to adopt the same approach as President Obama and Gov. Jindal. Whether it’s a smooth-running vehicle, a leak-free roof, or their house selling quickly, your target audience should be able to see themselves benefitting from what you have to offer.
Whether it’s political ideas or the benefits of products or services, properly communicating them to target audiences can be complicated. If you happen to work in an environment in which you can expect directly competing ideas to assault your own, then it’s even more critical that you carefully plan your communications.
The core of your communications rests on knowing your target audiences and what moves them as intimately as you can, and presenting something of substance and value to them. The rest of your planning — the “how” of reaching your audiences — is a series of questions with many possible answers. That’s why the folks who are able to navigate the communications landscape successfully are much sought-after, in the public and private sectors alike.
Filed under: Political | Tags: Associated Press, Liz Sidoti, media relations, messaging, Obama, political communications, public affairs
Although political communications is a field of endeavor distinct from the type of public relations I typically practice, I’d like to point out lessons you can draw and generalize to your own business or non-profit needs. Two of the most important are the quality of your media relations skills and the power of your messaging.
Barack Obama, as we have all seen, is an absolute genius when it comes to both of thise critical factors.
First, the media relations. This story from AP is about as close as a news story can come to being a press release right from the White House’s public affairs office. The transfer of messaging from the Obama administration to the news story is almost total, with almost no countervailing opinions. The lead paragraph is positively glowing:
Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush’s unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government.
This is stunning stuff, for PR people to get such clear messaging into a wire service story. It’s as if the reporter, Liz Sidoti, cut and pasted the top three key messages from the White House PA staff’s vision document. This could conceivably be due to Sidoti’s personal bias, but that would require the collusion of her edito(s) as well. While not impossible, as a former journalist I would hope it’s unlikely. So what we’re left with is that the PA staff is really good at its job.
The second factor is the power of the messaging. In Obama’s case, as is the case with any President of the United States, the issues he’s addressing are weighty and of concern to virtually everyone. When it comes to our sinking economy, our standing in the world, and the ethics of politicians (appointed and elected alike), there are plenty of low-hanging fruit to pluck when it comes to improvements, and Obama’s administration has leveraged them to great effect.
When powerful messaging is used, it can translate into very positive news coverage. It also can serve as a shield against criticism. If one frames the discussion in terms of saving the economy, repairing our damaged international image, and cleaning up government, there are few counter-messages to worry about. Nobody is in principle against these things, and therefore critics are put in the difficult position of trying to counter the messaging with detail-oriented messaging.
So a visionary president can propose saving the economy, while critics have to counter by saying, in essence, that they also want to save the economy (making them sound like “me too!” afterthoughts), but they disagree on the way it’s being done. Then the visionary messagers can counter by dismissing the critics as “nitpicking” or practicing the “politics of divisiveness.”
Messaging that allows you to set the agenda and frame the discussion, therefore, is critical to success. Repeating the messaging and ensuring that you have plenty of proof-points is also important. As you keep up on news coverage of politics, look for these tactics among politicians… that can inform your decisions in the much more civilized world of business or non-profit communications.
Filed under: Political, reputation management | Tags: Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Israel, media relations, New York Times, Palestine, public relations, reputation management
Disclaimer: It’s a dicey proposition for me to draft a public relations blog on the war in Gaza, because I am not an objective observer; nonetheless, I present my thoughts on the image- and reputation-management implications of this horrific situation and leave it to the reader’s judgement whether my bias shows through.
Throughout this conflict, Israel has let its media-savvy show. Their spokespeople are relentless and disciplined when it comes to repeating their key messages, and their audience-targeting is absolutely perfect. They have used a combination of carrot and stick – proactively showing reporters the damage by Hamas rocket fire, while actively preventing reporters from entering Gaza, where the death and suffering of Palestinians dwarfs anything the PR flacks can display in Sderot or Ashkelon.
This is from a NY Times reporter’s blog:
for an 11th day of Israel’s war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it wait in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel.
Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one, the government is seeking to control entirely the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy. [emphasis added]
In terms of messaging, Israel sticks to those that give it the broadest possible latitude for action in the densely-populated Gaza Strip: 1) This war is a defensive action that is not targeting Gaza civilians, 2) Its real target is Hamas, which is a terrorist organization lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians, 3) Hamas hides fighters and weapons amongst Palestinian civilians.
Whether the spokesperson is from the military or the civilian government, they do not stray from the approved line, and it is repeated on media outlets all over the world, hour after hour. Regardless of the credibility you attach to the messages, the simple fact is that by repeating them under all circumstances, they work… but only with the target audiences.
There are huge swathes of the world – comprising the vast majority of it, in fact – that opposes Israel’s assault for various reasons. Public opinion around the globe is decidedly against the war and regards the civilian deaths as deplorable and avoidable. But Israel isn’t wasting resources trying to convince the world that it holds the moral high ground; its messaging targets only those audiences that matter, and those that want to believe them: the United States and Israel’s citizens.
This illustrates a key consideration in public relations: some audiences will never believe you, and you should therefore not bother trying to convince them of anything. Ignore them. Say things they would regard as pure fabrication; from a strategic standpoint, they simply don’t matter. In the U.S. and Israel, however, the three key messages are believed by many, are high-impact, and result in strategic gains: financial and political support for Israel.
One of the key factors contributing to this credulity in the U.S. is the vast difference in coverage of the war by U.S. news outlets compared to foreign ones. From the beginning of the assault, foreign news organizations have tended to focus on the human suffering in Gaza, with painful images of the Palestinian injured and dead. American news coverage, by contrast, did not show as many civilian casualties until days into the conflict. And, interestingly, the Israeli line is evident even when civilian casualties are being depicted. On this CNN slide show, for example, babies and other civilians injured and killed by Israeli bombs are shown under the headline, “Israeli forces target Hamas sites in Gaza” [emphasis added].
The Israeli PR machine, I must note, is not successful in the absence of supporting facts; it is undeniably true that Hamas continues to fire rockets into civilian populations of Israel, regarding all Israeli citizens as legitimate military targets. This, of course, is a notion completely at odds with reality. From a PR standpoint, one can point to decades of injustice and oppression under Israeli occupation as reason for the ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas, but relatively few are convinced that this means all Israeli civilians are legitimate targets. What about peace activists in Israel who deplore their government’s actions against Palestinians and actively advocate for Arabs’ rights? What about Orthodox Jews who believe the state of Israel shouldn’t even exist as a political entity? How can they be regarded as military targets?
As long as Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israel, thereby creating randomly-selected Israeli victims, they will be giving Israel all the rhetorical ammo it needs to continue the assault and further brutalize Palestinian civilians under the umbrella of “a defensive action.”
Filed under: Political, reputation management | Tags: Brad Ellsworth, Congressional raises, Dan Burton, Dianne Feinstein, Evan Bayh, Ginny Brown-Waite, Gus Bilirakis, media relations, Mel Martinez, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, National Taxpayers Union, Pete Sepp, political communications, politics, reputation management, Steve Ellis, Taxpayers for Common Sense
Members of the U.S. Congress long ago figured out a way to give themselves raises every year without having to vote on it each time, but this year the mechanism has served to further tarnish their already horrendous image. From a PR standpoint, this story offers another illustration of the dangers of clamming up in the face of uncomfortable media inquiries.
From your perspective as a business owner, PR person, head of a non-profit, or someone else whose image and reputation impact your effectiveness, the short version of the lesson is this: if you are faced with media scrutiny that threatens to make you look bad, the last thing you should do is refuse to respond, either by telling the reporter you have nothing to say, or simply by being inaccessible. Why? Because it allows others – primarily your detractors – to tell your story for you.
In the case of Congress and its 2.8 percent “cost of living” raise, the issue is a no-brainer: almost everyone around the country – that is to say, the people represented by Congress – are losing jobs, reducing work hours, going without raises, wondering if their businesses will survive; in this climate, for Congress to give itself a raise to $174,000 is extremely unseemly. I understand fully the argument that we need high-salaried positions in Congress to ensure that we can attract qualified people and provide at least a modicum of disincentive to bribery and kickbacks.
However, this is an issue of perception during one of the hardest economic downturns in a generation. Surely these people can come up with something to say about it, right? Apparently not:
Finding anyone brave enough to defend the pay hike in Washington these days is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. When they’re asked to comment, usually accessible members quickly go missing, are on vacation, are extremely busy with family members or can’t be reached on their cell phones because they’re in remote locations.
And…
Pelosi’s office declined to comment on the raise.
So what’s the result? The story is heavily skewed against the Congressional pay raise, with taxpayer watch-dog groups excoriating Congress members for their perceived perfidy:
“When you look at the rest of the country, people are hoping to hang on to their jobs, much less get a salary increase or a bonus,” said Steve Ellis , the vice president of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Other critics say that Congress has done nothing to deserve a raise. “The general public can’t help but think that lawmakers are patting themselves on the back, and padding their wallets, for presiding over the worst fiscal-policy blunders in recent history,” said Pete Sepp , the vice president for policy and communications for the National Taxpayers Union.
And this:
While members of Congress will receive a raise, 12 percent of seniors are living at or below the poverty line, said Daniel O’Connell , the chairman of The Senior Citizens League. A senior who receives average Social Security benefits will get a $63 monthly increase in 2009, he said. The congressional pay raise is expected to cost taxpayers $2.5 million next year. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter,” O’Connell said.
So now the story has been framed by Congressional critics. A few folks who have adopted a voter-friendly position come off as heroes in this discussion:
Four members of Congress from Indiana have announced that they won’t accept the pay increase: Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, Republican Reps. Mike Pence and Dan Burton and Democratic Rep. Brad Ellsworth. In Florida, Republican Sen. Mel Martinez and Republican Reps. Gus Bilirakis and Ginny Brown-Waite said they’d vote to block the raise if congressional leaders allowed a vote. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she wanted nothing to do with the raise. Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee , intends to donate her raise to charity, spokesman Phil LaVelle said Tuesday.
These folks look good not because they talked to the media, but because they are talking about turning down taxpayer-financed raises. But this illustrates another important point: the more you clam up in the face of scrutiny, the more you’re going to have your story written for you, and your options restricted when you finally decide to talk.
What can the holdouts say, once they become accessible again? Naturally, they’re going to have to toe the line and turn down the raise. They’ll have a hell of a time coming up with messaging that resonates with their constituencies if they take any other position.
Filed under: Economic, Political, reputation management | Tags: bailout, Neel Kashkari, public relations, public relations ethics, Treasury Department
To some, ethical public relations is an oxymoron, and this story about accountability for bailout funding fuels this perception. The story relates how the Treasury Department is releasing documents about the bailout with huge chunks blacked out. What chunks, you might ask? The parts that delineate how our money is being spent, of course!
This is transparency?
Assuming that the primary information taxpayers are interested in is where their money is going, this release of documents is sure to disappoint. Nonetheless, here’s the quote from the Treasury Department describing how they see themselves:
Neel Kashkari, an interim assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, sought to ease concerns about how the just-enacted $700 billion financial bailout plan would be implemented. “We are committed to transparency and oversight in all aspects of the program,” Kashkari said, “and have already taken several important steps in this area.”
Predicated on the notion that people in general are not idiots – especially people who are concerned about huge amounts of their money – my judgement as a PR professional is that Mr. Kashkari committed PR sin number one: he lied. Perhaps it’s a failure of imagination on my part, but I can’t think of another way to describe the juxtaposition of his quote with the release of such redacted documentation.
Today’s obvious lesson: don’t lie; it looks bad.
Filed under: Business columns, Political, crisis communications | Tags: Department of Defense, media relations, Pentagon, public relations, spokesperson, Susan Davis International, Washington DC
Not even highly-experienced public relations firms are immune to incompetence in the face of poor publicity, as evidenced by this story about a Washington, D.C. firm, Susan Davis International. The story summarizes the findings of a Pentagon report concluding that Susan Davis International ran a PR program for the Department of Defense that was a multi-million dollar waste of our taxpayer dollars. In response, a Susan Davis International spokesperson “declined to comment on the report.”
Just to be clear, this is a spokesperson for a PR firm in our nation’s capital – one of the toughest PR environments in the world – and he declined to comment. That’s so mind-boggling, it deserves a little thought and commentary.
The PR program was pretty straightforward to begin with: it was a campaign to demonstrate to U.S. combat troops that they were supported by the folks back home. But apparently it morphed into something more (something that involved a lot more billable hours, in other words), when the PR firm began actively soliciting support for the troops from various groups of people, and set up a private non-profit to collect donations, using the same name and logo as the DOD program. The whole thing ended up bringing $9.2 million to the PR firm.
It’s no surprise that a PR firm would want to convince their clients to spend more money on a more comprehensive program, because every element they can add will increase their profits. And, to be fair, the program as a whole might have achieved more than the client had initially thought possible. Maybe. But perhaps most importantly, when it comes to feeding at the taxpayer-filled trough… well, let’s face it; that’s what firms in Washington are there to do, whether lobbyists, PR, law, caterers, whatever.
Likely taking that into account, the audit blamed the public affairs staff at the DOD, not the PR firm itself; after all, they wouldn’t have been able to do squat if the public affairs folks hadn’t authorized it.
So a messaging opportunity for Susan Davis International (SDI) was squandered in a big way. Very rarely, it’s wisest to keep quiet and not say anything to the media about something potentially damaging to image and reputation, but this is not one of those circumstances. The audit blamed the DOD public affairs staff, not SDI, so the SDI spokesperson could have said:
Susan Davis International provided a comprehensive program to keep morale high among our fighting men and women overseas, and we’re proud of the work we have done in this area.
or
We haven’t had a chance to look at the entire report, as it was just issued today, but we are confident that we provided high-quality services that were authorized and requested by our client.
or even
We haven’t had a chance to see the report, but we’d be happy to get back to you once we have looked at it. Can I call you back on Monday?
The latter response, I grant you, could be construed as “declined to comment,” and for all we know, it’s something like what the SDI spokesperson said. But generally, a reporter of good conscience would note in the story that, “An SDI spokesperson said he had not had an opportunity to see the report, and declined to comment.”
And I swear to you, these are just off the top of my head. My wife just showed me this news story less than an hour ago, and the above statements are the result of about 12 seconds of thought – 2 minutes and 12 seconds if you include how long it took to read the story first. So how can an SDI spokesperson let himself get burned? Here are the possibilities:
1) Afraid of speaking without authorization: Maybe SDI is a very rigid, heirarchical organization, and nobody can say something about a client as high-profile as the DOD without Susan’s go-ahead. This would require that the spokesperson was taken by surprise when the reporter called, which means he’s a woefully unprepared spokesperson (see the next point).
2) The spokesperson didn’t have any information about the report: No friggin’ way. The audit began in July, 2007. SDI had to have known about it, because DOD made policy changes in its public affairs area before the audit results were even finalized. The very fact that an audit was taking place at all should have alerted SDI to have some statements in place in case it came out looking bad for them.
3) DOD told them not to comment: I suppose this is possible, but since the DOD folks had a few statements prepared (they have put policies in place to address the problems, and the person responsible for the program has resigned), I can’t imagine they would require silence from SDI.
Again, this situation highlights the importance of always providing the media with a statement; otherwise, everyone shapes the story except you. Even PR firms need a refresher, it seems.
Filed under: Political, crisis communications | Tags: AP, Associated Press, FDA, FOIA, Food and Drug Administration, Freedom of Information Act, image management, infant formula, media relations, melamine, public relations
Journalists are looking for good stories that dig up malfeasance, obfuscation, irresponsibility and so forth, thereby forcing accountability on one or another entity. This applies to governmental, non-profit, or corporate bodies. It’s an essential component of a healthy republic, and we should applaud their role.
We should also recognize that reporters are human, and will react just like you or me. So if a reporter approaches the Food and Drug Administration and doesn’t get what he’s looking for, his legal recourse is to file a freedom-of-information request. But consider that if you make a reporter go through this process, you have virtually guaranteed that the story is going to abrade your image. Consider the situation behind this story about the FDA’s response to melamine in infant formula:
FDA officials didn’t tell the public they had found melamine in U.S.-made infant formula until after The Associated Press published a story Wednesday based on test results obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
That’s the fourth paragraph of the story, which is pretty high; it signals that the AP wanted us to know that the FDA was reluctant to tell us the news. So what’s the backlash? The story is negative toward the FDA, of course. Here’s the lead:
Federal regulators set a safety threshold Friday for the industrial chemical melamine that is greater than the amount of contamination found so far in U.S.-made infant formula.
In other words, they set the level so that neither they, nor any of the formula companies, have to take action. And even if that’s not what they did, it’s clearly what it looks like, since they had to have the information pried out of them.
Generally, the federal government has some pretty savvy PR people advising about how to conduct successful media relations. However, my experience has been that public relations advice is often overruled by people who are nervous about negative backlash and somehow figure that clamming up will make it go away.
Not in a free country, folks. Cooperate with the media – be the first to tell them bad news, because they get justifiably indignant if they have to make you tell them.
Filed under: Business columns, Customer relations, Political | Tags: advertising, Ben and Jerry's, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Customer relations, marketing, marketing communications, marketing to children, public relations, RBGH, RBGH-free, Susan Linn, toy advertisements
The purpose of this blog is to provide insights and miniature case-studies to those who are interested in public relations and marketing, and although this particular post does contribute to the overall purpose, I must admit up front that I’m emotionally invested in this topic and therefore label some of the players involved as morons.
The story is about a letter-writing campaign by parents who are asking toy manufacturers to stop producing advertisements that appeal directly to children. The title alone (“Parents’ Plea: No More Ads for Toys“) is enough to make me cringe. It pressures companies that make toys to redirect their marketing efforts to audiences that don’t have as much impact on the companies’ bottom line, and more importantly, it shows how completely some parents have abdicated their responsibility to raise discerning kids that have a modicum of self control; in effect, they’ve given up and are asking to be relieved of duty.
When it comes to placing the responsibility for self-control on the advertisers rather than on consumers, this is a disturbing precedent for anyone who wants to communicate with their target audiences. The underlying assumption is that if your communications become really effective, it is somehow predatory and “unfair” (a word actually used by somebody in the story referring to the kid-targeted ads). This passage of the story describes the philosophy behind the ad-ban proponents:
The director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, psychologist Susan Linn, said she and her colleagues don’t expect toy companies to stop advertising — rather, they want the ads directed at parents.
“It’s cruel to dangle irresistible ads for toys and electronics in front of kids — encouraging them to nag for gifts that their parents can’t afford,” she said. “It’s just not fair.”
I studied the psychology of advertising in college, and in fact my bachelor’s degree is in advertising and one of my minors was psychology, so I know that most children lack the cognitive ability to differentiate television ads from television shows. That’s why TV stations for decades have been required by law to delineate when the show has paused for a commercial break (“We’ll be right back after these messages!”), and when the commercials are over and the show has resumed (“And now back to…!”).
But Susan Linn apparently looks at the world as though children are sitting in front of the TV, wads of their parents’ cash in-hand, being ordered by their favorite cartoon characters to spend the mortgage payment and grocery money on a Wii. Nothing can change the fact that advertisements are simply commercial messages. And nothing can change the fact that parents can – if they are indeed worthy of the title “parents” – turn off the TV. Or, if they lack the spine for that simple move, they can – again, if they are indeed parents – tell their kids that getting all those (or even any) expensive toys is simply not possible.
If they can’t take these simple (although possibly difficult) steps, it is absurd to expect advertisers to do what the parents themselves refuse to do.
In the interest of full disclosure, my biases should be clear: I am not only a professional communications consultant, and therefore have a stake in being able to communicate clearly to whichever target audience is most appropriate, but I am also the parent of three kids, and we haven’t had TV in our house for many years. And, when times have been economically tight, we have simply told them that we can’t afford this or that toy. It’s not easy, but it’s our job to do things that are difficult; that’s what parenting requires. I don’t need the CEO of Toys-R-Us to help me exercise self-control, or to pass on that ability to my kids.
For companies or other organizations that wish to communicate to their target audiences, this trend of shifting responsibility away from consumers and onto communicators is potentially dangerous. If, for example, you advertise a product or service to disadvantaged minorities, there are “advocates” like Susan Linn who may well decide that you are being “unfair,” because your ads are so effective that they somehow prompt people to make decisions about their own money that the “advocates” think are detrimental to the consumers’ well-being. In such cases, they may – in the interest of “fairness,” – call for your ads, press releases, speeches or whatever else to be made less persuasive, or to avoid speaking directly to the folks who you want to hear your message.
If they get really riled up about it, they could start advocating legislation that would require you to communicate less effectively. Sounds absurd, I know. However, it was done to tobacco companies. It has also been done to nutritional supplement companies. The producers of recombinant bovine growth hormone are lobbying to do it to dairy product manufacturers, believe it or not. They’re trying to get laws passed that would prohibit Ben and Jerry’s and others from labeling their products as being “RBGH-free” because they don’t think it’s “fair.” Ben and Jerry’s – and many other dairy retailers – know that their customers want to know about RBGH, but it only takes some savvy lobbying by people holding “fairness” up as their goal to ensure that blatantly unfair laws are passed.
Commercial communications are, in my opinion, a matter of free speech. But, when personal responsibility for one’s own spending habits are taken out of the equation, absolutely any kind of restriction on speech is possible in the interest of “fairness.”
