What Spin Doctors Don’t Want You To Know: Part 1

Every profession has a “black box” that it’s not keen for customers or the public to look inside. Or, where it hides the little tricks of the trade that create the industry’s perceived value and operators’ return on investment.

“Black boxes” pay for a lot of ski holidays in Aspen and private school fees on the North Shore, and can therefore be firmly jammed shut lest their contents become commodified.

When it comes to media management and public relations, the “black box” can be even harder to get inside because it’s an industry based on words and images. It’s therefore pretty good at making you look where industry insiders want you to.

But let there be light, I say! Let’s de-spin the spin.

Why? Because it’s inevitable. We live in a society where people not only have the massive means of access to information — they’re exceptionally skilled at using them to obtain info that’s relevant to their lives. Effectively, the whole concept of media and stakeholder communications, and trying to somehow inform or influence community attitudes and behaviours, is short-lived if it’s practitioners don’t move as fast as community expectations do.

Here therefore are two aspects that spinners — be they PR consultants, media managers, stakeholder communication professionals or several other related monikers — have historically not wanted you to know.

Spinners want you to think that journalists and the media are strange, distant, sensitive, out-to-get-you, and all-powerful. (Journos are none of those things.)

Indeed, spinners would have you and their clients believe that journos are like some mythical acid-spewing dragons that live in newsroom caves and that one needs to be extremely cautious around. Apparently, only a high-priced PR gun — often an ex-journo themselves — can whisper to and tame these mysterious and frightening beasts who are somehow out to devour you as a tasty media morsel. Spinners counsel you that “journos are not your friends” and that “everything is on the record” etc, and suggest things like “look, I usually don’t, but I know this journalist from the old days that I will talk to.”

All this is a load of bollocks.

Here’s a newsflash: Journalist Are Normal People. Indeed, they’re just folks trying to do their jobs of reporting and editorialising about current events and issues. They’re generally highly trained at those jobs, including with regard to respect for the facts rather than ideological perspectives, and very often have to do their jobs in quite trying circumstances. Modern newsroom reporters might have to file numerous stories nowadays — for print, for social media, for websites — whereas production expectations were much different in an era of non-digital news cycles.

So, given their training and their time pressures, their main expectation is not to destroy you, but rather that you engage with them in competent (read: honest) and timely way. You don’t get a journo off-side for what you believe, but rather how you behave. Like providing requested facts in a timely way.

Complicated, huh? Nup.

Spinners want you to think that your reputation is super important and that damage to it will lead to untold repercussions. (They’re flattering you.)

The truth is the very simple converse. You’re actually not that important. Even if you’re an MP or a CEO or somebody who actually does something meaningful, like the captain of the Australian cricket team, you’re not that important. Why? Because few people notice what’s going on with your reputation and fewer still give a rat’s.

I once had a client who was convinced that a string of bad daily coverage in a major newspaper was somehow destroying him and his organisation. We kept reassuring Mr Big Shot that it didn’t really hurt more than his ego, but he wouldn’t buy it. So, we slapped on some focus groups of people representative of his target audience in western Sydney. We couldn’t even get the majority of the people in the groups to recall any of the constant coverage no less register any impact on their views!

Guess what, Mr Big Shot. Most people have way more significant things to think about than whether you stuffed up. Like their bills, their kids, their holiday plans, their shithead boss… Also, don’t forget how fast media markets and structures have and are changing. It’s likely for example that the combined circulation of the Chinese languages daily newspapers in Sydney is greater than that of the Daily Telegraph. It also points to a trend toward niches in media audiences rather than the still-prevailing myth that there are some God-like media operators. Did someone say Ray Hadley?

Additionally, it’s another myth that there is a direct cause / effect relationship between bad PR and your or your organisation’s standing. While spinners go blue in the face talking to you about how valuable your reputation is and throw around important sounding terms like “reputational risk”, corporate history is filled with experiences, instances and evidence quite to the opposite.

Share prices that go up in the middle of corporate crises. Deals that get made because partners think they can get a bargain at the bottom of the market. A base audience that thinks you’re right in toughing something out and respects you for it even if it’s “unpopular”.

The fact is that things happen in business and other organisations for many more reasons besides headlines. Or, hell, even market valuation for that matter. The Tesla Effect is way more significant than some spinner’s self-serving spiel about how bad things are gonna be for you. Remember Y2K?

So, what’s the bottom line? Yes, people in the PR and communications industry can certainly perform an important professional service of ensuring that what you say is understandable, reasonable, and connects you to your audiences on an emotional and rational basis. That’s all really important and requires specialist insights and experience, and I don’t denigrate it.

But the next time some well-heeled “strategic comms” dude or immaculately-presented PR lady gives you the “leave it with me” bullshit, think of the black box and leave them alone.