You can’t “Just Do It” in communication and public relations. I remember when I first graduated from college and my family began obsessing over my newly developed resume – what it should say, what it should look like, who else should review it…and on and on and on. Then my brother finally said to me that a resume going around in circles among family members wasn’t going to get me a job. No amount of wisdom or graphic design inspiration would do me a bit of good if a prospective employer never laid eyes on my fledgling documentation of credentials.
So perhaps this was the genesis of my particular approach to marketing and communications work: I like to jump in and get a project moving – and done. I welcome feedback, review, edits, and approvals. But I do grow impatient if this phase of the work is repeated on the same project over, and over, and over. When the reviews and revisions drag on, I get a tad frustrated and think: Come ON! Something out there is better than nothing out there.
But recent work with a very thoughtful, deliberate client has given me pause. Fools rush in, after all. It’s so very, very easy to make a mistake (which often happens in a hurry) or inadvertently become the subject of a “viral” news story. And in the public arena, mistakes are remembered far longer and stretch out to the masses much more than successes do. This is particularly true, as we all know, in the age of the 24-hour news cycle and instant social media broadcasting.
A recent and dramatic example of this point was summarized in an article in USA Today about Beef Products, Inc., the little company that now has big “pink slime” fame. As the columnist noted, “Every company — or institution, or individual, or politician — has to be on guard if not entirely paranoid about the social echo chamber, or God forbid, a negative viral tsunami.” Whew, that’s pretty intense. It made me aware of the fact that words really do matter (you’d think with all the writing I do I’d remember that…)
But it is so hard to keep caution at the forefront while faced with a project in dire need of publicity and the public’s attention and a looming deadline. And frankly, these two facets are what drive me to want to get the message out there, now. And in the aforementioned 24-hour news cycle and instant social media-broadcasting world, “the best defense is a solid offense.” Meaning, building up a positive, open and transparent rapport with your target audience will go a very long way if you get “pink slimmed.” Trouble is, you can’t build that rapport retroactively or open those channels after a PR or business stumble. You must invest the time and energy, and do so proactively.
But another note of caution must also be sounded – and this is one my fellow PR professionals will recognize. The message or event really must be newsworthy – and newsworthy to people beyond your closest friends and family members. This recent Samsung launch is a great example of trying to “make a splash” in nothing more than a backyard baby pool. It didn’t work – and it undermined the integrity of the Samsung brand. As TechCrunch noted, “It smacks of desperation and insanity to rent out the biggest hall in New York so some orange-faced actor and a stilted marketing manager can banter about software updates. The show came off not as crazy fun but crazy crazy.”
So, it turns out there is plenty to be cautious about in communications. Having a resume that is endlessly re-written and never sent won’t help land anyone a job – but having a resume sent to 100 employers with a typo in it won’t help either. Like so many things in life, it’s a balancing act.
