Probably not. But my theory is that it can certainly help us avoid another one. Or at the very least solve a lot of frustration with corporate communications. What follows are some random thoughts that I tried to string together into a coherent piece. I'd love to get your feedback.
Let's start with Seth Godin. He did a piece on "The difference between PR and publicity." In short:
"Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego.
But it's not PR."
Unfortunately, PR has become this:
But PR became that because of a belief (their belief) that people didn't want or "couldn't handle" the truth. (Thank you, Jack [Nicholson]). It became spin, double talk, euphemisms, and in some cases, just plain untrue. Firings and layoffs became "right sizing," whistle-blowers were hustled out of town, and CEOs went on CNBC and lied about their companies financial health.
And that brings us to Jon Stewart. If you didn't see his interview with Jim Cramer, you can see it uncut here. At the heart of the 3 part interview is Jon Stewart criticizing CNBC (and all financial journalists) for blindly airing, or even promoting the false statements and reports of these failing companies and institutions. Jim Cramer defends by saying that they were lied to by these executives and apologized for not looking into it further.
And that's where I thought there was one piece missing. The debate this morning on the blogs, the Diane Rehm show and in a lot of the 24 hour cable media is focused on how the executives lied, how the journalists were duped, and how do we bring accountability into this. But one piece that I see missing in all of these debates is the corporate communications people, the publicity people, the PR firms. Don't forget that when the companies are going on these shows, that lady in the Apple clip above is right there in the wings telling you what to say. And usually, it's a lot like what she does in that clip -- hide the real problem with misleading language.
The problem in this case was that it wasn't trying to peddle more sales, subscriptions, or sweep under the rug some bad decision behavior by corporate executives. This time it was playing with other peoples' money. Their retirement.
So what does this have to do with social media? Well, if we go back to the roots of this, it was a backlash to "corporate speak." It was a backlash formed by knowing that what you read on the corporate web site is hyper-inflated, meaningless content. The real trust was being put into word of mouth, into what their peer group thought, and into comments found through the new publishing tools afforded to us all with the Web 2.0 movement. It was a collective upheaval of that PR lady in the Apple commercial.
Now, with a lot of people paying attention to social media now, and a few actually getting that it goes beyond just using the tools and really incorporating values like transparency, authenticity, and avoiding meaningless "corporate speak," perhaps... just perhaps... these corporate communicators, publicity firms, and quasi-PR agencies will begin to move towards the values upheld by social media and in such demand by the general public. Maybe public relations will become what it could be. And perhaps we can begin to trust the media and its journalists again.
