PR, Politics And The Upcoming Election

PR clearly plays a huge part in politics and has done increasingly over the last 20 years. At the same time as it has, in many cases, become so important to political parties as to actually form the very basis of those parties (a position argued well by Adam Curtis in The Century Of The Self, regarding Clinton’s and Blair’s election strategies), it has also come under increased scrutiny from the public, to which programmes such as The Thick Of It and Bremner Bird & Fortune play testament. It’s interesting to note that Brown is married to a PR woman, and that Cameron himself is an ex-PR professional and that their advisors, especially those who put together manifestos, are predominantly PR people. These facts have been viewed with mixed feelings by the public.


When I was training for a brief time in advertising, the classic text books would always make the point that the product has to live up to the message. If you’re advertising the best cakes in town, they’d better be very good cakes, or customers will have an instant turn off. The same is true of PR. Your clients’ messages about their environmental work, or green credentials, should bear up to analysis, or the whole things will blow up in their faces when Dispatches broadcasts an expose.


The same can’t be said of political parties, however, which are very unlikely to live up to their hype once elected. For all their promises that everything will be amazingly better, the best the general public can really hope for is an overall improvement in most areas that affect them, rather than the opposite. The fact that an opposition party has very little overview of the inner workings of government departments means that any manifesto can’t be taken too seriously until they have their feet under the table and a general grasp of the realities. The public are wise to this, which is why over-statement and grandiose claims are treated with suspicion, while realistic reserve is appreciated (look at Vince Cable, playing the ‘everyman’ to good effect on the Chancellors’ Debate).


However, what all of the parties are yet to do is come clean about how difficult things will really be post-election, instead concentrating on the usual give-aways and tax breaks, giving YOU the ability to sack your MP, putting the YOU back in YOUnited Kingdom. To a certain degree that have hinted at the big task ahead, and hinted at where money will be saved, but the whole debate is still couched in the idea that tax hike will be staved off and that there will be ways to avoid the ‘medicine’.


Some would argue this is a valid PR tactic, that winning the election by whatever method necessary is the most important thing, arriving on a wave of fickle support from a public that takes decisions based on sound-bites and TV performances. Once in office, one can then start the heavy-weight political work that would be too hard for the pubic to swallow. After all, that’s what you expect your competitors to do, so you will do it too. But this means that whoever comes to power will be unpopular very quickly as they start imposing the inevitable taxes (NI or VAT) and swinging the axe madly across the public sector.


Surely a better PR campaign would have been to manage expectations properly as well as promoting the benefits of your manifesto? Gaining power is one thing, staying in power is another, and the strategic plan for that has to start before you are elected. Certainly, the opposition will try to use the fear of cuts and taxes to their advantage, but the public is wise enough to see when they are not proposing a genuine alternative. The public know there will be no magic pot of gold at the end of the election rainbow.


A deft handling of the issues is what real PR is all about and what skilled PR professionals thrive on. It can also create a very firm case for a new government to be elected. Sometimes, honesty really is the best policy, and the public need to be given more credit for its comprehension. With government more exposed that its ever been, the same smokescreens of giveaways are no longer good enough.

Recruitment vs Social Media?

A few weeks ago, I was having drinks with some friends and acquaintances, when a question was put to me


"Why would clients hire you when they can approach people directly over social media?"


The person asking the question had good reason – they been approached directly by an agency MD who had got to know them over twitter. An interview or two down the line and they had a new job. No recruiter involved.


So was this person the living embodiment of recruitment’s downfall?


It certainly is the case that, in many instances, I’m actually competing with my own clients on their own briefs and that well connected, social media savvy clients will always save money. Its much easier now for potential employers to connect with potential new staff members in the virtual world and even find out quite a lot about their personalities over twitter, a tool which often lies somewhere between the corporate face of Linked-In and the nights-out on the town inappropriateness of Facebook. It’s a bit like industry drinks events, taken to the internet.


Except that it doesn’t quite work as well as that most of the time. Many MDs, or other staff members for that matter, are unable to dedicate much time to tracking down new staff when accounts are screaming to be serviced. Twitter is limited in how revealing it is and not everyone uses it to its full potential. In fact, not everyone uses it. Direct approaches can be risky – they can get you a bad reputation for poaching staff – so often the middle man is an important way of distancing yourself from this task. And when the business picks up and everyone is pitching like crazy, agencies really don’t have the time to do their own recruitment.


I think the approach works best for agencies that are at that stage when they are large enough to have an HR person who can spend time searching, but not so large that the HR person has too many other things on their plate, and also when searching for the seasoned account executive through to account manager levels. At the very junior end, PR people are still getting the hang of self-promotion online, the best things to say, and with limited overall knowledge of PR. While as you get more senior than senior account managers, its really less appropriate to be recruiting over twitter, and as the salaries and packages become larger, you really need a broker. You also need a much more targeted approach at this stage, as personality is even more critical.


Then there’s also the key question of how many twitter profiles and Linked-In trawls that you undertake, only to be disappointed at interview when actually the person doesn’t present themselves in reality as well as they do online. People approached directly will automatically have a higher expectation of their chances, as well.


Don’t get me wrong. I’m well aware that there’s a very healthy referral system going on, online, right now as many digital PR people (in particular) move around (usually into each others shoes at different agencies). But rather than competing with social media, it has become a complimentary tool, both in terms of client recruitment strategies, and in terms of the recruitment consultant’s armoury.


Because that’s a recruiters job. Generating leads, meeting the people in the flesh and then submitting to their clients people who are close to the mark of the brief, explaining suitability for the role, guiding the candidate through the process, and handling the final negotiations. The efficiency of this process is the cost saving, and the new online tools available today make the research part of that role easier. But you still need the filters, the networks, the recruiter relationships, not to mention a sales person who knows the business, its personalities, culture and atmosphere and yet is disassociated from it. This advocacy is one of the key ways a recruiter adds value.


If, however, your recruiters are not providing these consultancy services and are still just sending irrelevant CVs to you like the old days, then maybe you should try a bit of online mingling. You’ll have nothing to lose.