bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1986) — Fall 1986 // Automne 1986, pp. 37–38
by W. Allan Bonner
Even casual observers of the media are asking why so many worthy people, institutions and ideas are publicly drawn and quartered these days because of poor communications campaigns. One also wonders why so many businesses fail to get their messages through the media to the public when the entrepreneur could be immeasurably helped by getting some favourable publicity.
For many readers, Brian Mulroney has already come to mind. How did he go from overwhelming support to being called a liar in public in the short space of a year. Why did the media at first cynically scoff at Pierre Trudeau’s peace initiative as an election ploy and then embrace it as super-charged statesmanship? And why has the media not made the same leap of faith with Mulroney’s free trade initiative?
Similar to the Prime Minister’s fate, Ontario’s doctors went from being the second most highly trusted public group in society to being accused of holding their patients for ransom and being called butchers by the media following their 25-day strike to protest the end of extra billing.
A related series of questions involves how some companies fall victim to protesters. Many readers will have had personal experiences with peace protesters, acid rain activists, anti-sealers and nuclear protesters at Greenham common and elsewhere.
Perhaps the best/worst example of all involves Connaught Laboratories in Toronto. The value/need of the drugs produced by this company is not at issue; this is a case study in communications management.
Some months ago, animal rights activists descended on Connaught and so did the media. Protesters wanted the company to stop using animals for research and the media wanted a story.
Here’s what the media got: protesters climbing a chain link fence, a security guard pulling a protester off the fence (the guard happened to be black), a woman collapsed on the sidewalk from heat (the woman happened to be quite elderly), chanting, marching, passive resistance, placards, and finally a PR man offering a nervous, defensive statement.
This was a disaster, especially considering that scientists have the highest public confidence rating of any societal group. That advantage was thrown away by using the PR man, and the situation was allowed to get completely out of hand. What should have been a non-story or 45 seconds of copy and cover film became a three minute feature and pictures in the paper.
These scenes at Connaught were actually much worse than one might think. First, the animal rights group probably got about $15,000 in free, negative publicity. Second, studies of the communication process point to how readers’ and viewers’ interpretation of events makes these scenes even more damaging.
Researchers have pointed out that receivers (viewers, listeners) bring far more to the communication process than senders (writers, speakers) ever can. To prove this, simply tree associate after reading the following unrelated groups of words: Cuban missile crisis. .. KAL KALairliner… Olympic boycott… Suez Crisis. In addition to dating yourself, you spoke and imagined volumes in your mind in the space of seconds. This was far more information than a writer could ever have transmitted, yet those words unlocked that data by striking a “responsive chord” (the title of a book by Tony Schwartz).
One classic study involves showing someone a picture of two men on the subway. One man is black; he is seated, reading a newspaper. The other man is white; he is standing, holding a knife. Respondents usually modify reality and regularly see the complete opposite and even an exaggeration (ie: the black man has a knife at the white man’s throat).
But back to Connaught. Using these principles, it may be fair to assume that a significant minority of viewers had numerous stored images of 1960’s riots evoked by the presence of the uniformed guard, chain link fence and chanting protesters. What may have come to mind is water hoses, barking police dogs, billy clubs, bleeding, crying protesters and many other things that actually didn’t happen at Connaught. (Was that elderly woman struck on the head and was she bleeding on the sidewalk?)
These images are extremely easy to avoid.
Do they appreciate these things at Connaught, in the Ontario Medical Association, the Prime Minister’s Office and in information offices around the world? One suspects not, and that’s what’s wrong with most communications campaigns: a lack of knowledge of how communication works and what the needs of journalists are.
If you tell Connaught that these negative images are avoidable, they’ll say it’s pretty hard when protesters and the media get off a bus without warning, “cameras rolling.”
In fact these images are extremely easy to avoid, or at least cut down to one minute of TV time versus three minutes. All TV is looking for is the confrontation visual. The answer is not to give it to them. Get rid of the chain link fence, don’t have a uniformed security guard, don’t allow guards to pull or push anyone, provide chairs for elderly protesters and cold drinks on a hot day, don’t allow anyone in the building and, if you have to supply a spokesperson, make it a mainstream senior manager and don’t allow a statement to turn into a debate; that is, avoid confrontation.
If you don’t want the protesters in the building, lock it. This is also a good way to avoid supplying a spokesperson. A sign can be put up indicating that the building is closed for disinfecting and will re-open in 45 minutes. The media rarely have time to wait around that long. Your spokesperson, if necessary, should be a scientist in a white lab coat with lots of pens in his or her pocket. Dull, boring remarks about gene splitting would be most appropriate. A written statement could be read, followed by apologies about pressing business inside. The PR person’s role here is to train the spokesperson, not appear on TV as a hired gun.
Using these techniques, protesters are free to picket, chant, throw blood on your steps and any number of other things, but TV cameras won’t pick up a confrontation visual to show. This is often the difference between running a story or not or the difference between a one or a three minute item.
In this particular case, the TV report featured what appeared to be stock footage of animals in pain during experiments. That footage will continue to be used until someone thinks to distribute stock footage of happy animals involved in experiments.
All of which leads to why PR people don’t know these things. Ad agencies and big PR firms will do this work for you. They charge about three times the salary of the person working on your account. They often have a printing subsidiary, so like to sell glossy press kits which, with mailing, can cost up to $10, but are usually thrown out by working journalists.
The proper knowledge is as near as a library.
A profile of the PR person you get through these companies might well be someone with some post-secondary education but no degree, three to five years in small town papers or electronic outlets and a salary of about $30,000 to start. This person got tired of the grinding shift work in the media and wanted a change of pace. A person with this type of experience can be hired directly or a small consultant with low overhead can be retained to give more personal attention.
What so many firms in need of communications policy seem to forget is that a good campaign has less to do with glossy press kits, lunches with reporters, computer terminals, expensive annual reports, or even inches of press clippings, and more to do with how newsrooms and journalists work and think.
The beginnings of acquiring the proper knowledge are as near as a library or bookstore. It is estimated that just one U.S. academic journal publishes an abstract of 1000 studies on communication per year. Chances are that many of these pertain to your area of need. Bookstores contain publications which run the gamut from popular first-person memoirs to detailed academic investigations.
Three recent publications from this spectrum come to mind. First, a primer by Judith Ridgway focuses on the British experience of one PR consultant and is titled Successful Media Relations (Gower, distributed in Canada by Renouf, 214 pages).
The author takes us from generalities of the media relations game to the specifics of free samples, receptions, news conferences, press releases and a host of other tools. Chapters are well laid out with periodic headings and lists of review points at the end of each.
Since experiences with the British press are not necessarily transferable to other countries, the book’s strong point, a focus on a particular market, may also be its limitation. Further, the book is long on grinding away at manufacturing and package goods accounts and short on high profile political accounts and how to avoid negative publicity. But students of the topic can easily start with a few such primers and move to more specific titles from their own turf.
Ridgway’s attention to detail is evident in her brief discussion of the title of releases to the media. The adjective ’press’ can be mildly offensive to the electronic media, and ’news’ can be presumptuous (it is the journalist’s job to decide what news is). ’Media’ release is suggested.
Towards the middle of the spectrum, and having much more international perspective, is a small book (177 pages) put out by the International Labour Office in Geneva (in Canada, Renouf). It’s called Profession: Journalist and is a thorough study on the working conditions of the profession.
This is an invaluable beginning for any public or private concern operating in several countries, or for those wanting to compare how the media fit into society from one country to the next.
This title is an important start in understanding employment conditions, ethical considerations, career problems for practitioners and such mundane issues as pay, health and safety conditions and other industrial relations matters.
Charts, tables and graphs abound and valuable lists can be found, such as the one compiled on various laws from country to country governing the conduct of journalists. This is great ammunition for a discussion on what role journalists play in society and how a country’s laws affect freedom of the press.
A third new title doesn’t just speak to having good relations with the media or keeping informed on journalism as a profession, but attempts to construct models for changing public behaviour. This is not as sinister a topic as one might think, considering that preventing forest fires, improving health, stopping smoking, planning families and other worthy causes are the focus of most of the studies in the book Public Communication Campaigns edited by Rice and Paisley and published by Sage (323 pages). In fact, this book is the product of a national conference on Communication Strategies for Wildfire Prevention held in Asilomar, California.
The chapters summarize existing knowl edge about the communication process and offer some important suggestions. One useful piece of information involves the ’entitlement’ consent. This proposes that there must be a balance between the communicator’s involvement with an issue and his or her relationship to the public. Apparently, the public will accept straight information from almost anyone, but a more highly charged message involving admonishing, confronting or demanding necessitates a more highly charged involvement in the issue. Therefore, Yul Bryner, who died of lung cancer, is accepted when he begs people not to smoke. Michael J. Fox (Back to the Future) or some other pop hero might be considered presumptuous if the message went much beyond informing.
This is a book on the mechanics of communication. There’s lots of history, the citing of some conflicting studies and a healthy dose of the value of peer groups and opinion leaders in these days of perceived media omnipotence.
What all this may boil down to is the rediscovery of the wheel: there’s no substitute for hard work and ’being there’. A big consultant’s name, a glossy brochure or a team of brainstormers working well into the night won’t replace someone who really knows what happens when a press release is opened in newsrooms across the country. Therein lies the difference between the typewriter and the garbage can.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1986) — Fall 1986 // Automne 1986, pp. 37–38. Read the rest of this issue →
