Last night I spoke at the Leadership Institute‘s Public Relations School on writing effective press releases. It’s a talk I’ve been giving since 2002, but since then it has obviously changed pretty considerably.
The most significant change has been in the forms a press release has taken. Eight years ago a basic press release was a one-page document written like a news story that was emailed and faxed to a media list, or distributed through a press release service. Today, through formats like social media releases, plus tools like easy blogging and media hosting platforms (like Flickr and YouTube), organizations and campaigns can augment their news releases with all kinds of extras.
And frankly, if they aren’t doing that, they’re missing out.
Just as important, platforms such as YouTube have given long-shot candidates ways to circumvent political reporters reluctant to cover campaigns they don’t believe have much chance of success…Most prominent is Florida, where former House Speaker Marco Rubio, a darling of the “tea party” movement, had nearly 20 times the video views in late May as Gov. Charlie Crist, whom Republican leaders had recruited into the race. Mr. Crist has since fled the Republican Party to run as an independent.
One key element of public relations hasn’t changed, of course: the importance of having a strong, well-framed message. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one’s around to tweet about it, it won’t make the front page – but the tree has to fall first.
For starters, the best way to win over the American public is not with an English accent. Going back to the 18th century, America, Great Britain, and stuff dumped in the ocean that interrupts commerce have a less-than-stellar relationship. But more than that, it’s clear that the top leaders of BP are not personally invested in the region. They may care a great deal, but they’re from England – it isn’t their home.
Stylistically, the use of still frames is artistically poignant, but doesn’t make the cleanup effort come to life the way video could.
The bottom line is that BP can say very little right now (outside of, “Hey, the oil stopped gushing!”) to mollify a justifiably upset American public. But their strategy of replying from the highest levels of the company with detached sympathy does them no favors.
More likely to hurt Obama is the perception that he is at once corrupt and incompetent. Politico details the frustration many Democrats have with the White House’s failed meddling in Democratic primaries – but it’s the accompanying hilarious picture which cuts the administration’s political shop deepest.
The White House may or may not have offered Joe Sestak a job to stay out of the primary he won last week. Either way, it certainly isn’t doing him any favors now.
Sestak is the clean one in this controversy – no matter what the White House offered, he didn’t take it. That could turn out to be a positive for the Congressman. But with neither side talking about it, it continues to be an issue – and even though it isn’t damaging to Sestak, it certainly is distracting. He probably has a lot of things he’d like to give stump speeches about that don’t involve the fact that his story and the company line don’t exactly match:
Many of the analysts have been trying paint this week’s elections with a very broad brush as general examples of popular unrest with Washington, D.C. While true in part, this overlooks an important fact: each race that happened this week happened in a unique set of circumstances.
Pennsylvania Democrats did not repudiate the concept of incumbency when they cast their vote for a sitting Member of Congress; they did repudiate Arlen Specter. Specter was not a Democrat, as Joe Sestak so successfully pointed out:
Similarly, the idea that Sen. Blanche Lincoln is “too conservative” for Arkansas Democrats doesn’t hold water, either. The state has a long-standing strong history of dumping incumbent Senators in primaries. And Lt. Governor Bill Halter’s national appeal to liberal special interests helped his campaign infrastructure, but it didn’t necessarily win him votes:
The darling of national liberals and labor unions got powered into a Democratic U.S. Senate runoff in Arkansas on Tuesday by the support of good ol’ boys in South Arkansas who either didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t care, both entirely plausible… Halter waltzed into a runoff using liberal money and a conservative backlash.
There is a strong undercurrent of unrest with national elected officials, but that alone doesn’t win an election. That spirit may have manifested itself in similar way in Pennsylvania and Arkansas, with incumbent Senators underperforming, but it came about for different reasons.
YouTube is celebrating not only turning five, but reaching 2 billion views per day. In the decade before YouTube, internet publishing and blogging had become commonplace. But though the internet had long been a place where anyone could put their work out there (as long as they didn’t mind not getting paid for it), YouTube’s video sharing platform – along with technology that made quality video devices cheaper – turned everyone into a video producer. Anyone could be Cecil B. DeMille.
That said, not everyone can effectively communicate on YouTube.
1. Video is now essential to message delivery.
Political communication has always been a matter of telling stories, and no medium can tell a story like video. In 1960, the story of the cool, collected, and telegenic JFK as the harbinger of a new political generation was cemented by his now-famous debate performance; in 2008, the story of Barack Obama as the idealistic, optimistic harbinger of a new political generation was cemented by a music video adapted from one of his speeches that seized upon the phrase, “Yes We Can.”
Politicians can try to position themselves with stump speeches and media appearances, and their surrogates can attempt to provide “objective” support. People believe what they see. That makes effective online video a must-have.
The reality of modern politics is that if you can’t make your case in a YouTube video, you have no chance of winning the hearts and minds of the public.
2. Brevity is art.
Part of the “effectiveness” factor is being able to boil an argument down to the point where it fits in a two-to-five-minute video clip. Case in point: one citizen activist was able, in 1:38, to sum up just how insignificant a 2009 federal budget cut proposal was:
3. The best ideas come from others.
The best part about YouTube is the opportunity for participation from the initiated, regardless of their “official” role. Obama’s nascent 2008 campaign had a lot of energy, yet it was tough for people to discern exactly what kind of change he offered. All Democrats were, in fact, plugging away at that theme after eight years of a Republican administration. But one Obama supporter – whose involvement in the campaign was tangential, though his enthusiasm wasn’t – summed it up by repurposing a famous 1984 Macintosh commercial:
The Obama campaign could not have cut this ad – it’s too direct, and it uses images and clips which are most likely protected by copyright. By supporting user generated content like this, YouTube invited a new level of citizen participation.
4. Compelling content is the most important factor in attracting an audience.
Never has publishing content been easier. Yet because of this, never has it been more important to create quality content: media consumers have plenty of choices.
It’s counter-intuitive: We think of the internet as this highly personalized frontier, where each user has the utmost control over the news he or she reads or the entertainment he or she consumes. Humans are social beings, and the internet augments that.
YouTube’s comments, video responses, subscriptions, and other site tools make it more than a place to post and share media; YouTube is a social network built on user connections.
But more that, YouTube success is based on the ability of an idea to pass from one person to another. High-ranked YouTube videos don’t amass viewers from independent searches, they come from recommendations. It’s the most obvious viral medium.
Sen. Dick Durbin’s amendment limiting credit card fees is a good example of the difficulties Republicans are still facing. With ten moderate Democrats lined up to oppose the amendment, this is one of several amendments that could have been scuttled – if the GOP understood its own stance on financial reform.
In the wake of the health care battle, Republicans claimed victory in the message war. There’s no such victory in the current financial reform debate. There are answers to the Democrats’ strategy of punishing a Wall Street bogeyman for the current economic doldrums. Republicans are running the equivalent of a prevent defense – assuming that big electoral gains are in the bag, they remain fearful of becoming the party of big business – so despite some lip service about offering alternatives, everyone is calling for more regulation in varying degrees. And when an amendment like Durbin’s pops up, it passes 64-33 – with no one asking in any formidable way, why it is that the US Senate is deciding what the First Bank and Trust of Podunk gets to charge businesses for credit card transactions.
Bill Parcells liked to say that the only thing the prevent defense prevents is victories. That’s especially true when you’re already behind on the scoreboard.
Sen. Arlen Specter finds himself in the same spot he was six years ago. He’s a long-term incumbent Senator, locked in a tight primary with a candidate favored by his party’s grassroots, and he’s hoping that support from a President whose approval ratings have dropped precipitously will give him enough credibility with the base to drag him over the finish line.
In 2004, when Specter squeaked past Pat Toomey in the Republican primary, there were many Republicans who held their noses and voted for him anyway in the general election. There were also many grassroots activists who deliberately voted against Specter or stayed home. That was in a year with a Presidential election race, when the GOTV machine that was the Bush-Cheney was dragging every last vote possible to the polls, and when independents tended to break Republican.
“Why would you want to trade 30 years of experience and seniority…for somebody who’s a back-bencher?” is how Specter himself put it in his remarks to the Pittsburgh-area Democrats after he rattled off all the funding he’s directed to the region thanks to his perch on the Appropriations Committee.
Here’s a fearless prediction: Supporters of Rep. Joe Sestak will not be good little soldiers if Specter beats him in the primary next week. They may vote for him, but they won’t make phone calls, knock on doors, or do any of the other things that have to be done for an election victory.
This isn’t a contested primary along the lines of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008, where the eventual winner could make a credible case for support to the supporters of the eventual loser. Whether or not Specter pulls out the victory on Tuesday, he may already be a lame duck. A Sestak/Toomey race would be a battle of ideas; a Specter/Toomey race would really just be about Arlen Specter in a year where incumbents are contributing to the unemployment figures in more ways than one.
Of course, not helping was that Senator John Kerry picked a Politico Arena discussion board – ostensibly set up to discuss whether the nominee is too steeped in “Ivy League education and elite positions in government” – to sing Kagan’s praises from their time working together on high stakes tobacco legislation in 1998.
Kagan’s camp could not have asked for a worse messenger with a worse message:
“Massachusetts has been Elena Kagan’s adopted home, but it’s not for such home state boosterism, parochial reasons why I think she’s a terrific choice.
No, it’s because I got to know her well not in Boston, but here in the Senate.”
That’s John Kerry, who connected so poorly with voters in 2004, the poster child for liberal elitism. And his comments have nothing much to do with the topic: he’s essentially adding his two cents to a discussion about Euros – and helped keep alive the notion that Kagan is an insider pick.
Whether you agree or not on the effect of the law, the site is really good – largely due to its simplicity.
The design is basic and minimalist, and there aren’t a ton of extraneous functions. There isn’t any space wasted with background fact sheets for anyone who hasn’t heard of the issue. There are only two prominent features: downloading a mask and sharing with a friend.
In other words, the site doesn’t get in the way of its own message.
The most powerful communication is word of mouth. This site simplifies an important issue, makes its point, plays it for smart yuks, and gets out of the way while you send it out to your social networks.
Jim Eltringham 