And This is PR!
“It’s like a rock hitting a pond. And
the ripples spread pretty far. The Internet is a great new tool for
that.”
This more or less explains
several forms of communications and marketing in a networked world.
It brings to mind the Napster phenomenon of peer-to-peer power,
email rumours, spam and Web logs. Often the ripples they create,
grow into tidal waves. What’s interesting, is that this quaint
little ripple theory was articulated by an outfit called Maverick
Media, the ad agency for the George Bush re-election campaign.
Now I know you may be wondering what in the world an ad agency could
do for a ‘product’ that’s taking a beating on the domestic and
international stage. There’s only so much of value addition that any
hot-shot brand fixer-upper could do in a networked world. But lest
you think it’s peculiar to political animals, think again. Things
aren’t quite hunky-dory in the business world, too, where we’re used
to hearing that information is power. Unfortunately those wielding
the power lines aren’t on the payroll of the corporate office.
In June this year GlaxoSmithkline PLC agreed to publish the results
of its drug trials on the Web. As impressive or predictable as this
may sound, the decision wasn’t spontaneous. Rather, Glaxo’s hand was
forced by a highly public and very messy lawsuit brought against the
company in Britain and the US. You and me and my next-door neighbors
dog may not wake up each morning anxious to log on to the Glaxo site
to check the latest clinical trial. Clinical trials aren’t exactly
edge-of-your-seat page-turner, but this story does have a Steven
King sort of twist.
The Glaxo case centers around the controversy around one of its
leading drugs, Paxil, causes suicidal tendencies among young people.
More specifically, the company was sued by New York’s Attorney
General, Eliot Spitzer, who has accused Glaxo of concealing results
of a study. The company was forced to admit that this drug is indeed
dangerous to kids. The GSK Clinical Trial Register will be available
online to physicians and the public, the company says. Especially in
cyberspace, that’s not the type of press release a company’s PR
department wants to write up. The news was already buzzing around
online chat-rooms. If I may mix metaphors (and paraphrase William
Butler Yeats at the same time) things leak out; the center cannot
hold.
Speaking of leaks, in the same week that ‘the excrement hit the
ventilation system’ for Glaxo, news seeped into newsrooms that yet
another White House memo was about to trickle in. The White House
moved quickly and released previously classified Defense Department
memos on prison interrogation techniques. It certainly was a new
approach to damage control. USA Today, in a June news item, said
that an un-named
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government
official had told the paper that this in order to counter “the daily
damage from news stories” about prisoner abuse incidents in Abu Ghraib prison, the White House wanted to “get
all the information out.”
Now if I was Dick Cheney, I would publish my own Web site called
“Republicans on Trial Register” and dump about ten thousand pages of
my notes and idle doodles just to test the theory. But transparency
is a scary thing. Just ask Michael Jackson. No, wait. Wrong Michael. The man of the moment,
Michael Moore, director of the documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” is all
for cinematic transparency –you know, pulling back the curtain and
sticking a camera lens in front of your face. He’s also a master of
online promotion. One of Moore’s claims, on his much visited Web
site, is that “The right wing” are always hiding information from
people, or jamming the truth, just to keep them dumb and powerless.
His movie, as you may know, was originally blocked by Disney, which
instantly made it a global topic of interest. Which refines my
theory: Things seep out. The censor cannot hold!
Moore goes on to urge people to demand that their local theaters
screen the movie. “Tell them that … we believe in freedom of speech
and the importance of ALL voices being heard.” He even warns of
hackers trying to bring down his Web site and explains that he now
has a backup site at www.fahrenheit911.com/ The site is also a trove
of visual material (bad digital camera shots taken with low-pixel
camera phones) of long lines of young people, old people, people
queuing up at night, with cutouts of Bush etc.
And then, there’s an interesting form of counter-PR against Moore,
an organization calling itself
Move America Forward.org/ On its
“News” page, three of the seven stories posted were “Fahrenheit/911”
related. One was titled “terrorist group Hezbollah endorses Michael
Moore film.” What’s most interesting, is that the Web address of
Move America Forward was supposedly registered to a PR firm. Is this
the new PR playing field, or what?
So it finally comes down to whether PR will adapt to the new
realities of an always-on, open-source, transparent world of online
communications. We know that deleting files (the Arthur Anderson
tactic), unleashing an army of lawyers (the tobacco industry ploy in
the eighties, and Microsoft until recently) and ‘spinning’
(dismissing the Iraq prison pictures as fraternity horseplay) have
always exacted a price, public relations wise. Many organizations
–governments included—still imagine they could lock down the data,
issue gag orders, and build bullet proof, vacuum sealed walls around
themselves. Be forewarned: Today it is digital cameras, email and
memos. Tomorrow it will be something else. You will never be able to
predict the shape and form of the next set of ripples, when the rock
hits your pond.
Things fall apart.
Put your press release on hold! |
