PR 101

I don’t know what’s going on in your state, but in Wisconsin, it’s election time. Since we Badgers are purple most of the time, every political party from the Greens to Tea Party wants to talk to us. (Maybe the Greens and Tea Party could merge and form the Green Tea Party. Healthy at least.)

I have to say for someone who has done marketing for a decade or so – and was a working reporter for two decades before that – I have never seen more terrible marketing campaigns. A five-year-old with a lemonade stand does a better job marketing their product than your average politician and his/her campaign staff.

“Advertising is essentially truthful, except political advertising, which … gets worse every year … (It’s) just the artful assembling of nominal facts into hideous, outrageous lies,” Adage Columnist Bob Garfield, as quoted on the PBS Frontline Show “The Persuaders.”

What amazes me is so many people believe those advertisements and information that comes from robocalls and information provided by the candidates themselves.

Here in Wisconsin, we have tight races for US Senate and Governor. As I said, we are generally a purple state. We are a contrary people. You can never be sure just which way we are going to lean. So, every election season we get bombarded with calls, fliers, and newspaper and television ads. Each side is trying to convince us that they are the solution to all their problems.

The ads usually run along these lines:

Attack ad – “Did you know that (fill in name here) proposed barbecuing puppies on the steps of the capital? Well, call (fill in name here) and tell him/her you are opposed to barbecuing puppies on the steps of the capital.”

Reply – “My opponent (fill in name here) says I proposed barbecuing puppies on the steps of the capital. Balderdash and poppycock!! Why my opponent has proposed eliminating child labor laws so that it is mandatory that every child over the age of three go to work.”

Of course, when a candidate appears in his or her own commercials, it goes something like this: “When Moses parted the Sea of Reeds, I was there. It was I who suggested the route the Israelites took through the Sinai. Re-elect/elect me and I will steer my constituents through the desert we are in currently in. I will lead you all to a land of milk and honey.”

I have a friend who is a veteran marketing and public relations practitioner. He is so good at it, he teaches it at the college level. He is also, I think, a conservative Republican. Yet, he told me the other day he turns the volume down every time a political commercial comes on the tube. He said they are so bad they make him cringe.

What amazes me is that research indicates those commercials work. And the more excited the commercial gets the viewer, the more effective it is.

“We know from lots of good geeky political science research that ads that are able to stimulate emotions are more likely to be effective,” University of Wisconsin – Madison Political Science Professor Kenneth Goldstein. Goldstein is a political advertising expert.

As I said, I just don’t get it. Of course, it just shows me that my hero, H.L. Mencken was right when he said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

When I was a wee slip of lad back in the ‘60s (alright, I was a teenager, but I was small), Black revolutionary poet Gil Scott-Heron wrote a poem entitled “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

The first stanza said:

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

In other words, you will have to be involved to make the revolution happen. Although I am not sure Scott-Heron would make the connection, I think his poem applies to what is happening in countries like Moldova and Iran. Social media – which demands involvement – is bringing people into the streets. It Moldova, it is being called the Twitter Revolution.

Television has been one of the key tools those power use to stay on top. That’s why the first target of any revolution was always the broadcast outlets. It used to be he who controlled the outlets controlled the information. And he who controlled the information controlled the outcome.

Well, that’s how it used to be. But, as we saw in Moldova and now in Iran, social media trumps old media. It is social media that is sustaining the protestors in both countries. Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and YouTube have become the instruments for protests.

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi has a Facebook page, where he, or most likely an aide, give updates on what is happening inside their country. Moldovans and Iranians tweet about what is happening inside their country. Powerful amateur videos of protests in both countries are posted almost daily on YouTube.

I am a social media advocate. I firmly believe it is rendering conventional marketing and advertising obsolete. But what social media is being used for now is far more important than selling a few more widgets. Social media is allowing people who used to be completely shut out of any say in their own political futures to make themselves heard.

The media has always been important to anyone trying to make changes. This is especially true in free countries where the government does not control the media. In August 1968, protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago started chanting “the whole world is watching” as National Guardsmen and Chicago Police officers beat them. They knew what was happening to them would be seen because the national networks were recording it. What happened in Chicago gained even greater impact when then CBS news correspondent Dan Rather was punched on the floor of the Democratic National Convention.

“What an official report later described as a “police riot” did more damage to Chicago’s reputation and the fortunes of the Democratic Party than anything the protestors could have done,” according to blogger Jo Freeman. What did the real damage is that people found out about it. Many historians now believe that what happened in Chicago was when mainstream America started to turn against the Vietnam War.

It used to be different in places like Iran where the rulers control all of the official outlets. I think they thought they could control the flow of information during what looks to be a deeply flawed election. They used the old model of the media lecturing to its audience. What they didn’t understand is that social media fosters conversations, arguments and information sharing. It is the democratization of information.

“What Twitter and Facebook can do is spread information to large groups. In any crisis, that’s important, both to the participants and to the outside world. But what is the true value of Iranian tweets,” Forbes Deputy Editor Elisabeth Eaves asks in a column. “On one hand, they are more valuable than crisis tweets would be in a country with a free press, because they are one of the few sources of information the government has not found a way to control.  Gaurav Mishra, founder of a Mumbai-based social media analytics company observes … “in Iran … social media are the only things you have.”

Mishra estimates there are only be 10,000 tweeters in Iran. But I suspect those 10,000 are the leaders of the protest, or at least the leading communicators. I have no idea if all 10,000 follow each other, but I suspect there is a lot of following among the group.

So, say the 10 of those tweeters spread the word about a protest. That tweet reaches all 10,000. Each of those 10,000 uses the oldest form of social media known – they talk to their family, friends, and neighbors. Each talks to 10 of their neighbors. That’s 100,000 people. Each of those 100,000 talks to another 10. Suddenly you have a million people pouring into the streets. I think that also explains why the protest seem to be an urban phenomenon. People live closer to each other in cities.

Twitter seems to understand the power of social media and what is happening in Iran. It delayed scheduled maintenance so as not inhibit the Iranian protests. That allowed the protestors time to organize more demonstrations.

As I write this, it appears the Iranian government is beginning to use violence to stop the protests. The protestors are fighting back. Although no one can predict what will happen, it appears the Iranian people are willing to take their protests to the next level. Will they succeed in toppling the current regime? Who knows? But, if they do, it means social media has moved from the marketplace to a much a larger stage.