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Paul Graham on PR
ralejs writes "Paul Graham takes on PR. From the article:'Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.'
As always, it's an interesting, surprising and slightly provoking read."
outside of the geek community and high-tech development communities, suits are back?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
You're right. This clearly belongs in YRO. ;)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
This seems like a contridiction. PR people don't lie, they tell selective truths.
It is like the late night commercials for diet products. "WE GAURENTEE YOU'LL LOSE 20 POUNDS IN 2 WEEKS idividual results will vary"
Why don't we call PR firms what they really are? They are designed to confuse people. Even when they are giving you the truth, they are not giving you the whole truth. Imagine if our court system was run that way. "Mr. Simposn was seen in that neighborhood wearing a brown blazer that brought out his eyes and smile that all people love. yada...yada...yada... and Mr. Simpson wishes to express deep condolences to the Brown family."
It is the same problem I have with FOX news, they spin the news so much, editorialize the news, and people use that information when voting. Even the "left" they bring on FOX news are really more moderate conservative arguing with right wing conservatives. What do you get? People think that anything more left than "moderate conservative" if extreme left wing. So the moderate liberal is now an extreme left winger. By changing names and labels, they have changed politics. Will we every get good old democrats, in the tradition of LBJ and JFK, the ones who believe in the great society? Or will we keep getting Clintons who are more republican than democrat.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
The more powerful the role of PR in the media and the mind of decision makers, the weaker the role of reason when it comes to technology selection. If one company can spend millions on FUD and get that FUD published or cited by seemingly reputable journalists, then less well capitalized technologies such as OSS are at a disadvantage.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I mean really, whose left on American Idol should be something you read in TVGuide, not CNN.
In a article about how PR firms write stories to get attention for their clients, there is a link to the PR firm the guy worked with and a statement that they are the best... hmmm... Maybe we should learn a lesson from the article?
http://www.pterrys.com
During my MBA Program, our marketing instructor told us that having newspaper stories written about her company was a part of their marketing strategy.
It doesn't seem like a big deal on the surface, but once you start to critically read various articles (and not just limited to business in general), as Paul suggests, you see a lot of it.
mcho
http://www.messagingreminder.com/
Fox just takes Reuters feeds and sets up expert panels to discuss them. It's very cheap to produce.
The other kind of news is the political op-ed that's dressed up like a news story but it's not really a story. These, at least, provide some value to the voter concerned about understanding who he is voting for, but very little value. Countless news "stories" are just recitations of a public figure's opinion. This sounds like it should be valuable to it, but it's a carefully crafted, generally ambiguous and misleading statement, intended to befuddle and confuse the casual reader into agreeing.
For example, say I dislike the new pope. I go find a reporter and say, "I'm concerned and dismayed that the College of Cardinals believe that a former Hitler Youth is the best choice to guide the Catholic church through its unsure future."
This isn't a news story, it's not even an event, it's just one guy saying what he thinks. Now, this has value to intelligent people because we can research the statement and determine that the author is a manipulative jerk and not vote for him. But most of the population fails to do this. I suppose there's something to be said for not depriving the rest of us of information to compensate for the ignorance of the masses.
I don't really have a point to all this either. Oh! I know. By not having a point and just complaining I'm disguising directionless ranting as an intelligent Slashdot post. Ok, just as a Slashdot post. And by doing so, I'm demonstrating by example the very phenomenon that I distrust. Man, I'm brilliant!
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
No. They are suggesting you keep your eyes open, and when you read in your favourite magazine that "suits are back", think about who is telling you that, and what they have to gain from it. With increased awareness comes increased immunity.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
I don't see what these people who are complaining this story has nothing to do with technology are complaining about, this is perfectly relevant in my opinion.
Ultimately, the article's point is that PR people aren't necessarily bad, but that lazy reporters who don't do work beyond what the PR people give them are. Lending weight to this is how the "liberal" mainstream media has refused to report on the Bush administration concerning little beyond what are in the press releases the White House gives them. So there is a problem with the media, but it isn't liberalism: it's laziness.
It was quite astounding how the guy managed to spin things around to make them sound easier to digest (justifying became "Educating and Explaining", relaxing pollution laws became the "Clear Skies" etc (reworded from memory)). It is reasonably justifiable to see companies doing this...but it is disconcerting to see governments do it (not just the US govt...I'm sure others do it too).
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
After reading the article, I found some parallels to the political world and the media in general. I tell my kids that television is nothing more than other people programming us how to think. We're told how to think, for whom to vote, what to eat, and how to dress. People pay for all of this in order to maintain control or to get exposure.
Think of those silly ug boots. You know what I'm talking about. It's those suede boots (some) girls wear with shorts or skirts. Yeah, they never caught on because they suck. Truly ugly shoes, but we know about them. Why? Because some ultra-retarded fashion designer wanted to market his or her new nastiness and paid people to tell the whole country that these new boots were all the rage. That's right, everybody is wearning them, and if you want to be somebody, you'll wear them, too. What a load of total crap.
So what's the moral of the story? Think for yourself, live your own life, and don't believe anything that comes out of the mouth of the media unless there is definite substantiating evidence. Rarely do you see or hear definite substantiating evidence. Your brain is there for a reason...use it.
BDR Gear
Outdoor gear, MREs, and more!
It's surprising because the article says the exact opposite of what you just did. You didn't read it very carefully.
What it said is that for a fairly small amount of money, an amount that fits into the budget of a small business, you can have magazines all over the world say the same nice things about your company at the same time and disguise it as something the magazine found out on its own.
The rich and powerful in this country like to say bold, stupid, brash things with the media they control. Microsoft goes out and labels Open Source a communist conspiracy. Some weirdo like Dvorak agrees and we all sit about shaking our heads at how crazy he is. That doesn't convince anyone of anything.
The example Graham uses of articles about suits coming back is subtle and insidious. Instead of using advertising to tell you what you should do, they hire reporters to tell you everyone else has already done it... and they do it without all that much power. The Men's Warehouse is no media conglomerate.
The entire notion of journalistic integrity goes out the window in a way that's much harder to compensate for, even as a clever consumer. When MSNBC says that people still trust traditional media more than bloggers, it's easy to assume they may be biased. When MSNBC says that people are consuming more ice cream in an attempt to build strong bones, it's difficult to see how they might have an interest in selling you ice cream.
If the answer is just that the reporters were stuck for something to say on a deadline, then we're selling our minds for glass beads. Trinkets. Nothings.
The news is, nobody has to bribe the media for the media to suck. It sucks on its own.
My favorite quote from our ex PR firm: "That is what they said, now I am going to tell you what they meant." This was in response to a focus group clearly stating they did not like something and the PR people were trying to spin it to positive. I never listened to them again.
You had the 1-way mirror the wrong way round. The shiny side was meant to be facing outwards so that your market saw themselves looking good instead of the machinations of your company, while you got a good look at *them*.
What you got was the PR company trying to make *you* look good to yourselves by reversing the glass, obscuring the fact that your potential customers were actually scowling at you through the glass, able to see how crap you were.
Okay, not a great analogy.
But, having said that, why would a PR company be doing market research for you? Surely the two are different things altogether...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
What's worse, the fact that PR companies exist? Or that people are so uninformed, they fall for them?
I think the fact that PR works speaks VOLUMES about why it exists in the first place. People would rather believe in a slightly less real reality that they prefer, than believe in the one they don't. That, and the fact that most people are too lazy and uninformed to do any double checking about spin.
Not that anyone needs any proof or reminder about how effective PR is.... but look at the recent election. Something like 40-50% of the people who voted for Bush still thought Iraq had something to do with 911.
I believe this sort of disinformation is criminal and should be abolished from our society. But since it [PR practices] really isn't against the law, and won't be abolished, it is considered unethical AT best.
So who's fault really is it? If America suddenly developed a decent bullshit detector... what would happen to PR companies? What would happen to politics? What would happen to us? We'd probably evolve as a society, that's what.
I actually admire their single-mindedness and stunning success at it.
Me too. I highly recommend Gibsom's "Pattern Recognition" for a a good nerds-eye view of the advertising industry. Ever since reading that book, whenever I see an attractive woman in a bar, I stop and wonder who they're working for. Is Absolute paying her to order an Absolute and tonic, and tell everyone how much she loves it?
Kinda a surreal world we're in anymore. Gibson's book captured that surreality perfectly.
Fox News is just the latest symptom of our political disease. This all started a long time ago.
Before Fox News there was the Cato Institute. They were a far-out right-wing libertarian "think tank" who decided that they would invest money in making sure they ALWAYS had an "analyst" ready to give an opinion on any political story whatsoever. So for years, any time ANYTHING happened, someone from the Cato Institute was always quoted with their position. And guess what? Now Cato is considered mainstream. The populace now considers an army composed of "private security contractors" to be good business sense instead of an end-run around the Geneva Convention. Cato won.
Before that, there was the televangelists--collecting HUGE sums of money and putting it to political use. Counterintuitively, they helped kick the born-again Jimmy Carter out of office and get him replaced with the mildly-religious Ronald Reagan. Why? Reagan's policies (low taxes for rich people, deregulation) favored the televangelists. Not that Carter didn't help matters by being an abysmal president.
Anyway, the point is there are two basics to politics in the US: get lots of money and be taken seriously. If you get those two things, you become a political force. It doesn't MATTER how you get the money (televangelists bilked the faithful and people blamed the televangelists, but didn't care where the political donations went). And all you have to do to get taken seriously is wear a suit, shave your dreadlocks, and speak in a calm, normal tone of voice in a place where people will hear you. If a nut factory like Cato got taken seriously, even LaRouchites could get taken seriously by following this formula.
The problem is, the left has "pride" and "convictions". They need to lose those first. Then they won't be ashamed mugging people on the streets for cash and putting vacuous talking-head-bots on the news circuit. The left hates to stoop to the tactics of the right. That's why they lose.
I'd like to clarify this. Consider the problem that a big company like Amazon has. They have thousands of products. One day they will probably have millions. The problem they face is showing you the product you wanted to buy when you came to the site.
Now, I have no problem with honest PR. If a product or service or company really is good, then by all means, promote that to the ends of the earth using whatever legal methods you can think of. This is like taking all the computational and intellectual resources at a company like Amazon to find you the one product you are looking for. it's not a problem, and frankly, it provides a service for us "cattle".
But the problem comes with dishonest advertising. When people are trying to sell something by calling it something it is not, then that is a serious problem. Take for instance the mail I get about home loans: "1%!" the tagline reads. But the reality is very different: "Prime + 1%, or about 6% right now, and maybe 20% in the future."
This would be like going to Amazon to look for a book, being shown a book that appears to meet your needs, buying that book, and discovering it isn't the book you wanted at all. That is bad. That is terrible.
I don't mind being cattle. As long as the farmer is honest, and I understand what I am getting out of the deal, and I can enter into it at my own free will, it isn't a bad thing. I do mind being told I will be a sheep and then being treated like a cow. That's the problem.
How do I prevent myself from being taken advantage of? By some fairly simple processes that I think everyone around here is familiar with. Enter into every deal cautiously. Look for 3rd party independent reports. Identify the spin for what it is, and question the motives of those who praise or detract from it. And never deal with dishonest people, period. This is all stuff we should be teaching our kids and we should be teaching at school.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Propaganda is the manipulation or fabrication of information for the sake of influencing public opinion, which is exactly what these PR companies do.
There is no discernible difference between propaganda and PR drivel. They both spin the facts to put a positive shine on their team and a great stinking stain on the opposition. See political ads. See those adds from Exxon on how they are helping to preserve the environment for tigers.
Buson-Marsteller, the worlds largest PR firm, has in the past contracted their services to governments, including brutal dictators.
The better name you seek... is propaganda.
Nice Marmot
Submedia?
Well, as an attorney in Silicon Valley, I express my thanks to the "geeks & nerds" for bringing common sense to corporate dress codes -- since we don't want to be too overdressed when we meet our techie clients, your dress code has had a "trickle-down" effect on our dress codes. Even though we are not allowed shorts at work -- common sense has not progressed THAT far -- at least we don't have to wear suits every freaking day -- only for court appearances, just like the rest of the perps!
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
I like this model much better but maybe I'm too idealistic.
The example I like to use to illustrate the possibility of a product succeeding on merit vice marketing is Doom.
I agree with the basic premise here, but the media and entertainment industry has trained the sheeple to shout "Conspiracy Theory" whenever someone states the obvious about the media--that it is mostly PR.
Actually, American culture itself is a product of PR, evolved over generations through the continual application of PR/Propaganda by the corporations and the Rich. American culture is like some sort of domesticated animal, so far evolved by external propaganda/PR forces that it little resembles a genuine culture, i.e., compare a poodle to wolf.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Reading the comments here is very illustrative. It shows how insidious this crap is...
/. sheep start baaaaaing about? "Suits are back in?" "Yeah, they never left!" "Hey, whattaya know, suits are back in!" "Yep, suits get you hired!"
The article explains how the "suits are back in" is a fake story designed to cause buzz and a possibly false impression, in order to generate more sales for the client.
So what do the
Pathetic.
For the record, I too have had some background with advertising and PR and its disgusting.
This space available.
I'm sorry but PR is propaganda. Propaganda is "information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause".
Well, here are a few ideas:
1. Information Roadblocks. The reason some managers take stupid decisions, is that some other managers below them are yes-men. A decision is only as good as the information it's based on, which includes the feedback from previous decisions. If the feedback only consists of "yes, sir" and "great idea, sir", well expect not just a slippery slope, but a steep one.
He/she/it just has nothing to balance the PR and marketting bullshit he's fed. The nice marketting guy, sure, comes and says that the new Snake Oil (TM) Enterprise Edition framework is the greatest thing since the wheel, it will solve world hunger, aids, and make any project take 21 days including testing. There are people much lower who know this is bull or unapplicable to their project, but the information from them has disappeared along the chain of command.
2. Ass Covering. Taking some stupid decision that just follows some stupid guideline is safe. At worst there'll be some corporate meetings whether to change the guideline, but you are safe.
3. Its variant: stupid is good. Taking a decision based on exact numbers and calculations is something that can be attacked. Taking a decision purely based on fuzzy buzzwords is safe.
Take stuff like "scalable" (even if it means "you can use a mainframe to get the same speed as other products get on a 486"), "industry standard" (usually meaning "no actual ISO/ECMA/whatever standard, but whatever wantonly changing format/API/whatever we jokingly call a standard"), "lower TCO" (compared to building a pyramid and carving your data on its walls), "synergy" (if you buy our hardware and our software, you'll also need our expensive consultants to make it work, which is a good synergystic effect for _us_), etc. How can you disprove something like "scalable", when basically _any_ program ever written scales with a bigger computer, and _any_ web application scales with a load balancer?
4. Ego trips. (Those unwashed peons have no business imagining they can question my god-like perfection. Of course my decisions are nothing short of perfect, because I'm the boss.)
5. Much to the same effect, but different disease: insecurity. (Maybe if I ask those developpers what that means they'll think I'm stupid. Let's read some buzzwords from some IT-for-managers ragazine and pretend I'm some guru by throwing around technical-sounding babble. Better yet, let's take decisions based on some ad disguised as an article, written by some paid shill who never actually used that technology.)
6. Last, but probably most important: we software developpers are notoriously bad at explaining things. We get bogged in religious details like RISC-vs-CISC, big-vs-little endian, emacs-vs-vi, BSD-vs-Linux (Linux-vs-Windows is old hat already for some co-workers), Eclipse-vs-Netbeans, etc, and fail to properly address the _real_ things that interest a manager. For him the program runs just as well on RISC or on CISC, on Linux or Windows or BSD, and the important thing is "how much will it cost?"
We also tend to complain lots, and the above arguing about details also is perceived as complaining about anything. And again, we fail to explain _why_ and _how_ that detail affects the bottom line. A lot of managers are left with the impression that "bah, no matter what you buy, they'll complain anyway. So I might as well buy whatever looks better to me."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.