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Loading ...“When it comes to leveraging user generated content and social media, should we reveal ourselves or hide in plain site? The new rules of transparency afford us both options. Sometimes good publicity entails anonymity – lest we reveal the man behind the curtain. And sometimes it is the man behind the curtain, the inside story, that we want to highlight.” Via Bernaise Source
Oh, come on! Anything and everything is game in modern PR and marketing. Seriously. While “real” and “fake” and “serious” and “entertaining” are all meaningless in new PR, steering away from from full transparency (and transparency is different than disclosure) always results in severe blowback. If you want to avoid 90% of all blowback, just be transparent.
My business partner had a great analogy,
“Let’s say you tap your girl on the shoulder opposite the one you’re nearest and then when she looks the wrong way and then looks around quizzically, look away and pretend like it wasn’t you. That’s funny — as long as you fess up for having played the prank in the first place when she catches your eye and then wink, smile, and share in the goofy prank, the shared humor, no matter how immature. The jerk, the asshome, taps her shoulder and then, when she figures out the game, refuses to ever admit to ever having committed the tease. Now, that guy is an ass and took something that actually can bond two people through humor and touch and has turned it into a game of deceit and control.”
I fucking hate that guy and so does Mark. We fucking hate that guy, and most of of the astroturfing, splogging, flogging, and blogger outreach blowback has been all about firms doing that same sort of bullshit.
That said, don’t be scared. Try shit out and see what works. It’s like sex: you can read books about erogenous zones all you like, but each partner is new and you don’t ever really know until you get in there, get touching, explore, play, and see what works — and what really works — and where the boundaries really are.
Also like sex, marketing and PR is intercourse between consenting adults: transparency is essential all the time, no matter how kinky you’re willing to get, you need to know who you’re dealing with. Role playing is fine, right? But misrepresentation is serious poor form in any sort of relationship, sexual, or otherwise.
New marketing and PR is about playing, teasing, titillating, exploring, pushing, pulling, toying, seducing, and communicating: amuse me! Here’s the secret to new media marketing and PR: try shit out, get creative, fail fast, and be creative! The only thing one need navigate is blowback!
And, even blowback is recoverable! Come on, sometimes fucking up is just the kind of thing that can catapult both you and your client into the stratosphere. Like I said in a previous post, “eminding products, services, and brands that they are bound to get beat up online and that it is by their response that they are judged rather than on the initial slight.”
Finally, like with sex, have fun but be responsible and think before you commit. Making dumbass, irresponsible choices can at best get you a beating (in the media) and at worst get you dead (your career or your firm).
Filed under: Blowback, Extreme Publicity, Fake News, New Marketing, New PR, Transparency
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CHRIS!
All this talk about sex and fucking…
Are you with anyone?
If not, I have a beautiful, smart, funny, partying woman I want to introduce to you (and she doesn’t wear her hair with bangs…it is long, dark, and curly).
XOKat
Oh, Kathe, I love you. Sure, I’ll meet her; however, I need a girlfriend like a fish needs a bicycle.
[…] media is like sex? Yes indeed, according to Chris Abraham at Marketing Conversations. In a somewhat “racy” post, Chris compares […]