Some fundamentals never change, I can still here my coach screaming, “KEEP DRIVING THOSE LEGS, DON’T QUIT, DON’T EVER STOP.” Advice that serves just as well in the social biosphere of today’s business as it did on the football field so many years ago in college.
After witnessing an amazing and cowardly retreat by my local Republican at Westchester Republican HQ this afternoon it hit me just how frightening the social biosphere must be to the traditional masters of public relations.
Big PR agencies and their clients continue to stumble all around social media (their term – not mine) like drunken frat boys searching for their next keg.
It is this very fear of real-time conversations continuing to stifle both innovation within the public relations industry and holding businesses back from truly leveraging the opportunities within the social biosphere.
Specific politics aside, politicians represent some of the greatest PR practitioners of all time, true masters of the communications craft from the simple, repeat until we give up and believe, to the subtle and sublime audacity of hopers.
Big PR’s ultimate triumph and shining golden moment must be encapsulated by political communications – that never stray from the fundamental principal of consistent messaging. Even though it makes publics sick from repetition, being “on message” is the life blood for politicians and the better they are at staying on message, the further their careers go.
It’s always been a simple and direct linear relationship that could be properly crafted and managed with help of “press people,” big PR; both agencies and in-house counsel.
Until something went horribly wrong, now enter the social biosphere where real folks carry on real conversations in real time. Good grief, it’s anarchy!
What a nightmare for professional liars; oops I mean professional communicators. Now we’re faced with too many touch points to control and no client (not even our well-trained pet politicians) can maintain the façade of contrived message consistency throughout the social biosphere.
Back to Westchester Republican HQ on a September afternoon and witness the gaping hole in the message façade; a small, frightened little man running from a voter and citizen because he could not control the message or the rules of engagement for our encounter.
In big PR’s traditional linear world this encounter wouldn’t count, there’s an old saying in PR, “If it doesn’t happen on TV, it didn’t happen.” This is the world our scared little Republican is accustomed to, it’s the world his “press people” at the agencies and at Republican HQ tell him still exists.
But he’s a politician and he senses something is not right, things are changing and the fright factor of change is directly proportional to how much you have to lose from the looming change.
It’s a little sad to see lumbering giants groping about for purpose and meaning within the new social biosphere, but the fundamentals remain.
Keep your message consistent across all channels but understand within the social biosphere that any and every encounter occurs within a medium and with some sort of distribution channel available to any participants.
So don’t panic, don’t quit, and keep your messages clear, concise and consistent and remember that in the social biosphere even a lowly voter has media power.
And maybe, just maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
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