Search This Blog

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Spin, Marketing and PR

“Don’t believe everything that you hear, and half of what you see,” goes the old saying which brings me to something of interest this week: Spin. PR. Marketing. Call it what you will, how we feel about certain things, and the items that we buy and sell, have a lot of thought and energy behind the creation of an image.


In his new book Deadly Spin, Wendell Potter writes about corporate spin-manship and industry. In his previous role as chief of public relations for CIGNA, Potter pulls from vast experience with corporate culture and the ability to make the sausage of information into the Andouille of desire. More importantly, the book gives thought to the ethical considerations of public relations and the need for a bit of soul-searching.

The spin or the ruse has a rich history. Think about the Trojan Horse and the spin that some smooth talking Greek Soldier created as he left the gift of a giant wooden horse at the sealed gates of Troy. Deadly Spin reviews the history of spin, which he traces back to the Potemkin Villages of Catherine the Great. According to myth and legend there were fake settlements erected at the direction of the Russian Minister Potyomkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. According to this story Potyomkin had fake villages constructed along the desolate banks of the river in order to impress the monarch and her travel party. Seeing the value of her new conquests, his standing was enhanced in the empress' eyes.

There are many examples of this type of spin or what is now called “Potemkin Villages” many times in history from the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Nazi Germany also called the “paradise ghetto”, to the work supported by New York Mayor Ed Koch in 1982. Koch had a team affix decals with plants and venetian blinds over the windows of abandoned buildings in the Bronx to hide the blight. The contemporary urban shopping center has been called a Potemkin Village Shopping center as it works to mimic the feel of a village as opposed to a mall atmosphere.

Modern PR was greatly influenced by Edward Bernays, author of the 1923 book Crystallizing Public Opinion, the first book entirely dedicated to PR. Among his clients were the cigarette companies for whom he orchestrated a campaign equating cigarettes with “thinness, grace, and beauty.” An insufficient number of women were smoking, so he began an early PR project to encourage women to smoke.

Just a little bit of research has led me to some of these ideas today, and to ask you to please do one thing: Think. Take the time to consider why something is being said, and what it means to the speaker. Follow the economic trail to discover true motivation. Even great philanthropy, or health care, or politics or buying a particular type of milk, has had great effort placed into creating how you feel about the purchase or the contribution or the vote. Caveat emptor or Let the Buyer Beware.

No comments:

Post a Comment