Politicians and PR of Remote Past
Today, everybody wants to tell the world about themselves but the world simply cannot hear everyone.
Once upon a time, PR used to be an exotic toy in Ukraine; only a handful of companies, parties, politicians did something systematic in this area. These were the times of traditional mass media with no expansion of the social media and journalists chased newsmakers but not vice versa.
And then it all started. The ratio of news topics supply and their demand changed drastically. Today, everybody wants to tell the world about themselves but the world merely cannot hear everyone. Though it has never been able to, but in the age of critical concentration of human thought waste in the noosphere it has become much more difficult to reach target audiences. And the subjects of the information space have split down the middle. The clever minority and the primitive majority.
Let us start with the majority because it is this group that produces intellectual waste on an industrial scale. Its distinctive features are simple and familiar because they are a vivid illustration of the folk wisdom, “Give a fool rope enough and he'll hang himself”.
First. These guys (I mean both professional PR-experts and their clients who interfere with the work of their PR team) believe wholeheartedly that the main thing is the picture.
A bright image that will stick in the consciousness and subconsciousness of the audience. Without any connection to the context, the object’s reputation history and the text and meaning of the message. First of all, it is a PR maneuver of the remote past, hackneyed as can be. When “Yulia” was plaiting her hair, the capital’s alien mayor was running in the stadium, diving in an ice-hole and smashing gambling machines with a sledge hammer, it was interesting to watch them because these were brilliant performances of just a few.
But when the same things were duplicated by a crowd of mediocre political and business plagiarists, it became boring – only total weirdos are usually able to struggle through the white and the black noise. Second, the effect might turn out to be opposite at the output. Like in the case of the Volnovakha bus fragment whose demonstration that did not make the speech of the guarantor more convincing and had some Western experts ask the questions they had not intended to ask before.
Second. The guys are extremely noisy and fussy, they are very fast to issue statements, their appearances in the media overlap and do not reach their addressee.
Really, the systematic approach to PR activities presupposes following all the news topics the audience might be potentially interested in. Really, if there are no natural news topics it is customary to create relative ones. Really, surfing trends and news topics of others is very useful. But one should not yell hysterically when commenting on the events he/she is not involved in, or when criticizing people whose work he/she can only vaguely imagine.
Third. Working is substituted for PR, and a wish to look a la “dressed in all white” goes to ridiculous lengths.
Don’t think that journalists and experts are idiots. Mercenary motives of businesses are clear, don’t pretend that the essence of their activity is volunteering and social responsibility. Even a little novice wordsmith does not yield to head-on corporate quacking and attempts to sanctify CEOs cum owners.
Even a young advanced campaigner can get through the legal framework that regulates the work of public servants and their responsibilities, peculiarities of the budgetary process and norms of anti-corruption legislation. To illustrate, let us remember the latest epic fuck up by Shkiriak of Kathmandu that is being relished by the media and the expert community. And attempts to prove that black is white, the most important mission of a ministry of the country at war was surely a tour to Nepal, will not help any more.
So when watching the activities of the primitive majority there arises a feeling that a village idiot with his limited vernacular is trying to retell works by Thomas Aquinas. Paris does not wear this any more, as women of fashion from pre-revolutionary times would have said. Only losers still do.
That is why the world highly prizes not that much communication but reputation earned systematically and meticulously. Whose key objective is to provide a seeming agreement of words with actions and to prove to the audience that the social subject is conscientious and earnest. That is to win trust.
This is how, basing on these principles, the clever minority “does its PR”. They understand that the world has changed and we are all living behind the glass now. And we can simply rub a hole in our image cum reputation samovar because of our silly schoolboyish zeal – like the character of the famous “Overdoing” cartoon.