There is a marketing/pr strategy that says when the opposition, competition, or the proverbial "other side of the road" gets too close to winning a battle against you, a great solution is to move the playing field and the goals. Essentially, you redefine what is important to consumers and change the order of the copy points. While individuals are smart, masses are not. The "masses" are more easily swayed when being asked to redefine what is important to them. Case in point, if you are losing ground in a political campaign discussing a war, then you stoke the embers of something else like economic troubles and point out that if economics aren't solid, war is almost irrelevant.
While the concept of distraction and repositioning is not new, the formal strategic approach sometimes referred to as Brand Framing is significantly more advanced. This deep integrated approach between the psychological state of the target group with traditional marketing methods creates a significantly more effective approach.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The Changing Gatekeeper
So, we finally survived the never ending election cycle. Can it really be called a cycle if it never ends? Anyway, this last election, regardless of who your choice was, taught us a lot about the new state of media, journalists, and public relations as a whole.
Here are some of the keys you can take away from the last couple of years:
1. Journalists are no longer the gatekeepers of information they once were. The advent of the social media scene and the need for readers(or viewers, listeners, etc), ratings, and revenue have usurped any real ability to filter actual news.
2. Bias always exists. I don't care how neutral you think you are, you just aren't. This has always been true but never more evident. We know MSNBC is liberal. The numbers prove it, the studies prove it. We know Fox News is more right leaning although will periodically attack "their" side to prove they are "fair and balanced." The fact that the Editor of a major newspaper in San Antonio wrote an editorial shortly after the election explaining why their bias wasn't real bias was laughable. Basically, and I am taking a lot of liberty with my paraphrase, the statement was: yes, we should have done things differently in reporting and been less one sided, but we didn't. So now that our candidate won, we really don't want you to think any less of us. P.S. Please keep paying your subscription for our sub-par reporting.
3. If you really want to get a story or information out, you need to remember the implication of the name "Public Relations." By definition, Public Relations is about getting messages to the public. If the gatekeepers of journalism are no longer as relevant as they once were, then you must go to the public directly. Mr.Obama's campaign was incredibly good at this while McCain's approach was stale and old. The frightening thing about this is it leaves the responsibility for the conveyance of truth at the hands of the publicist instead of the journalist which further adds to the relativistic culture that has become the United States. As a publicist, this is both an opportunity and a responsibility. As a Journalist, it is a wake up call.
Here are some of the keys you can take away from the last couple of years:
1. Journalists are no longer the gatekeepers of information they once were. The advent of the social media scene and the need for readers(or viewers, listeners, etc), ratings, and revenue have usurped any real ability to filter actual news.
2. Bias always exists. I don't care how neutral you think you are, you just aren't. This has always been true but never more evident. We know MSNBC is liberal. The numbers prove it, the studies prove it. We know Fox News is more right leaning although will periodically attack "their" side to prove they are "fair and balanced." The fact that the Editor of a major newspaper in San Antonio wrote an editorial shortly after the election explaining why their bias wasn't real bias was laughable. Basically, and I am taking a lot of liberty with my paraphrase, the statement was: yes, we should have done things differently in reporting and been less one sided, but we didn't. So now that our candidate won, we really don't want you to think any less of us. P.S. Please keep paying your subscription for our sub-par reporting.
3. If you really want to get a story or information out, you need to remember the implication of the name "Public Relations." By definition, Public Relations is about getting messages to the public. If the gatekeepers of journalism are no longer as relevant as they once were, then you must go to the public directly. Mr.Obama's campaign was incredibly good at this while McCain's approach was stale and old. The frightening thing about this is it leaves the responsibility for the conveyance of truth at the hands of the publicist instead of the journalist which further adds to the relativistic culture that has become the United States. As a publicist, this is both an opportunity and a responsibility. As a Journalist, it is a wake up call.
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