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: Business columns, Customer relations, reputation management | Tags: corporate ethics, Customer relations, IRS, peter kurer, public relations, public relations ethics, reputation management, Swiss banks, UBS Bank
At its most basic, public relations is an effort to achieve the intimacy and trust of interpersonal communications. What makes it so difficult is to achieve this goal while targeting tens of thousands, if not millions, of people. But there are strategies you can adopt to make your tactics more effective. One of the most important is to behave ethically at all times: do the right things, and when you stray from the straight path, own up to it completely and without excuses.
Whatever misdeeds Swiss bank UBS is guilty of, this is the tack they are taking now. The bank has admitted wrongdoing on a large scale, according to the NYT story about it:
In a striking admission, UBS said that from 2000 through 2007, some of its private bankers and managers had “participated in a scheme to defraud the United States” and the I.R.S. by helping American clients set up and conceal offshore accounts. The scheme involved falsifying or not properly obtaining or filing certain tax forms required of both the bank and its clients.
Another important step in the PR process is to have a high-level executive perform the mea culpa, to demonstrate the organization’s commitment to avoiding malfeasance in the future. UBS can cross this off its list as completed; the words of its Chairman, Peter Kurer:
“UBS sincerely regrets the compliance failures in its U.S. cross-border business that have been identified by the various government investigations in Switzerland and the U.S., as well as our own internal review. We accept full responsibility for these improper activities.”
In a nutshell, that’s what’s required. A statement admitting not just guilt, but summarizing the extent of the guilt. Then, the statement of regret/remorse from a high-level executive, to humanize the statement and make it resonate with target audiences.
If you ever find that you or your organization has abrogated the trust of its target audiences (clients, customers, shareholders, etc.), do NOT prevaricate. Come clean right away, so that you can salvage your image and reputation, and move on to bigger and better things.
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: politics, media relations, reputation management, political communications, Congressional raises, Nancy Pelosi, Evan Bayh, Mike Pence, Dan Burton, Brad Ellsworth, Mel Martinez, Gus Bilirakis, Ginny Brown-Waite, Dianne Feinstein, Steve Ellis, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Pete Sepp, National Taxpayers Union
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: reputation management | Tags: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, celebrity news, image management, People magazine, public relations, reputation management
In general, building a positive image through the news media takes a lot of work and can be accomplished only over an extended period of time. Building a good reputation, by definition, takes even longer. You’re going to have to put in lots of time, thought and effort. You’re going to have to share your expertise with people for free to show them what you can do, and share with them what you’re about. You have to contribute positively to your community and to the communities of your target audiences. And you have to do it consistently over time; shortcuts don’t work.
Exceptions are few, but they’re notable. For example, you can build a positive image immediately by jumping into a river to save somebody from drowning and get your story in the news. But even this flash of good will can disappear quickly; the only way to keep it going would be to leverage the single incident by continuing to do good things (although presumably less dramatic than life-saving) and keeping your profile high.
Similarly, folks who have become famous can leverage their fame to move the needle on their image and reputation, as long as they don’t foul it up by the typical fame-induced foibles (anti-Semitic rants while drunk, chronic substance abuse arrests, domestic violence, messy custody disputes, etc.). A New York Times story from yesterday details how Angelina Jolie has managed her press exposure to build her image into something closer to what she wants it to be. The reporter describes her in the story as skillful, savvy, and expert at manipulating press coverage to ensure positive publicity. But as any PR person will tell you, there’s almost no limit to what somebody can do when armed with the kind of unparalleled media demand commanded by Jolie. She has journalists and photographers watching her every move 24 hours a day because their readers are ravenous for photos and information about her. She has helicopters flying over her house for a shot of her, for goodness’ sake.
So is it any wonder that she was able to demand millions of dollars from People magazine for pictures of her newborn twins? Is it any wonder that she can dictate terms to the publication about the kind of story it’ll write about her? Of course not.
Naturally, People magazine denied that they skewed their editorial approach in order to get the exclusive shots; I’m sure the agreement was all verbal, leaving no incriminating paper trail. But I’m also sure that if the magazine had gone back on the deal, it would have been the last time they ever got an exclusive from Jolie (or her partner Brad Pitt), and in fact, the couple probably would have made a point of granting such access to People’s direct competitors in order to hit its bottom line: advertising revenue.
So although she can write her own ticket when it comes to media coverage, Jolie is smart about how she uses this influence. First, she knows that the media is going to follow her every move, so she might as well make her every move count; so she gets them to focus on social issues about which she cares deeply, or she forces them to stick to issues of substance (poverty and disease in Africa or South Asia) as opposed to fluff (intimate details of her and Brad’s lives).
Second, she is ruthless about how she gets the coverage she wants, and there’s no reason she shouldn’t be. Some might opine that she is imposing on journalistic integrity, independence and objectivity, but she is not. The only folks who can really do that are dictators in countries that allow government control of the media. In the U.S., People magazine – and any other – is perfectly free to turn down coverage if they think it steps on their credibility or ethics. They alone can decide if their readers’ needs and desires would be best served by one kind of coverage or another, and there are plenty of other publications covering Jolie, so the adversarial stance certainly won’t go unrepresented in the great marketplace of celebrity news.
The lesson here is that establishing your image and reputation through media coverage is a long and arduous process, unless you’re already famous. And, arguably, Jolie put in an awful lot of time and work to get as famous as she is, and now is reaping the dividends of that work. If you’re willing to put in consistently good performances over an extended period of time, you too can write your own ticket when it comes to media coverage. Don’t expect it, but certainly don’t stop working toward it.
Filed under: Political | Tags: image management, McCain, messaging, Obama, presidential campaign, public relations, reputation management
How the candidates for president present their images to the public has hit the headlines a few times during this campaign, but now that the election is just a few weeks away, one of the biggest stories of the election season has become how the McCain-Palin ticket has failed to conduct their image management effectively. For public relations practitioners, it’s nice to see our profession in the headlines. Although I will admit, as a voter, to being insulted by the notion that mere communications about the candidates will sway me more than the candidates’ actual positions.
Nonetheless, we rely on the fact that correctly communicating a person’s or organization’s attributes can mean the difference between success and failure, and nowhere are the stakes higher than the run for the presidency.
So what’s the main critique of McCain that can be used as a lesson by those running businesses or non-profit organizations? To answer that question, let’s look at the criticism McCain is facing from both Republicans and Democrats, as reported by the AP and the New York Times:
“He has to make the case that he’s different than Bush and better than Obama on the economy,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
He’s cheery and smiling during question-and-answer sessions with crowds but becomes visibly annoyed — even surly — when he reads aloud scripted attacks on Obama and Democrats.
They said McCain can prevail if he presents himself as the optimistic visionary the public wants at deeply worrisome economic times.
“He has an opportunity to step up and be a forceful leader during these challenging times,” said Ron Kaufman, a veteran party operative who also worked for Romney. “McCain got the nomination because that’s what his brand is, but somehow it’s gotten muddled.”
The main thing he needs to do,” said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, “is focus on a single message — a single, concise or clear-cut message, and stick with that over the next 30 days, regardless of what happens.
This last point is, arguably, the most important. Public relations, when done well, is about getting your message(s) to the target audience in the best way possible. The simpler the message, the easier it is to get it into people’s heads, but the trick is finding one that’s not just simple, but also resonates with your target audiences and moves them to action. In political campaigns it’s even harder, because you have people actively working to discredit your message as soon as you utter it.
Nonetheless, it’s not impossible, as the Obama campaign has shown. They have stuck with “change” (as dull as that may sound initially) since the get-go, and made sure everything they say falls under that umbrella. McCain’s messaging has seemed to bounce around quite a bit – focusing on Obama’s lack of qualifications and other alleged shortcomings (I come at this from a totally non-partisan standpoint, so I don’t judge right and wrong in terms of content), as well as trying to embrace the “change” mantra himself. This, it seems to me, made the McCain campaign far too Obama-centric, which – in the long-run – simply serves to focus more attention on Obama.
McCain’s supporters are right to be nervous. The last few weeks before an election can be the most important, but one of the principles of good communications is that repeated messaging over a long period of time will work. Obama has made that investment already. McCain’s only hope is that those who remain undecided until just before it’s time to pull the lever almost all decide to go with him. That’s looking like an increasingly slim possibility, given the polling numbers so far.
So the take-home lessons are: carefully choose key messages that impact your target audiences positively, stick with your key messages through thick and thin, and don’t focus on the competition.
