Politicians and PR of the Past

Nowadays, everyone wants to tell the world about themselves but the world simply cannot hear everyone.

Once upon a time, PR was an exotic toy in Ukraine. Only few companies, parties, and politicians did something systematic in this field. It was a time of traditional mass media without the expansion of social media – journalists chased newsmakers, not the other way around and a decent press release was rare.

And then it broke! The ratio of the supply of information drives and the demand for them has changed dramatically. Nowadays, everyone wants to tell the world about themselves but the world simply cannot hear everyone. However, it was always unable to, but it became incomparably more difficult to reach the target audiences in the era of catastrophic concentration of the waste of human thought in the noosphere. And the subjects of the information space split down into an intelligent minority and primitive majority.

Let’s start with the majority, since it is they who make intellectual garbage in commercial quantities. Its signs are simple and recognizable, because they are a visual illustration of the saying, “send a fool to the market and a fool he will return again.”

First of all, all of them (both professional PR specialists and clients who intervene in the work of the PR team) firmly believe that the image is the main thing.

A vivid image that will remain in the consciousness and subconscious of the audience. Moreover, regardless of the context, reputational history of the subject, and the text-meaning component of the information message. First of all, this is already a PR technic from the past, which has been dragged out to the point of exhaustion. When Yuliia (TN. Yuliia Tymoshenko – Ukrainian politician) plaited a braid, the cosmic capital mayor (TN. Leonid Chernovetskyi – Ukrainian politician, Kiyv city mayor in 2006-2012) ran around the stadium, dived into an ice hole and hit the slot machines with a sledgehammer, it was interesting to watch since these were masterful performances of the very few.

It became boring when a crowd of talentless plagiarists in politics and business began to do the same. Only particular masters of disaster manage to break through the white and black noise. In the end, the effect can be quite the opposite as it was with the wreckage of the Volnovakha bus, the demonstration of which did not make the speech of the guarantor more convincing but it caused some Western experts to ask questions that were not there before.

Secondly, endlessly loud and fussy guys who trifle with informative messages; their media manifestations flow over each other and do not reach the addressees.

Thus, a systematic approach to PR activity assumes the development of all potentially interesting newsworthy information for the audience. In the absence of natural informational reasons, it is customary to create conditional ones. Surfing on trends and other people’s newsworthy information is quite useful. However, you should not scream hysterically, commenting on events you have no relation to, and criticizing people whose work is a too foggy notion for you.

Thirdly, the work process is replaced by PR, and the desire to look in the style of “all in white” reaches absurdity.

Do not chalk up journalists and experts as idiots. Deceptive purposes of business structures are clear; do not pretend that the essence of their business is volunteering and social responsibility. Even a beginner-news tribe does not give in to straightforward corporate shamanistic rituals and attempts to canonize the CEOs. 

Even a young, advanced activist can understand the legal framework that regulates the work and responsibilities of public servants, as well as the specifics of the budget process and anti-corruption legislation. This is evidenced by the example of Shkiriak-Katmandunskyi’s fresh epic fuck up, which the media and expert community had a field day with. Attempts to argue that black is white, and the most important task of the ministry in a warring country was a tour to Nepal, will not help.

So, when you observe the activities of the primitive majority, you get the feeling that a village idiot is trying to retell the writings of Thomas Aquinas in his own words. “They don’t wear it in Paris anymore,” the fashionistas of the Czarist-era would say, “They are losers if they do.”

It is not so much communication that is valued in the world but reputation which is built up by day-to-day patient labour, the general purpose of which is to ensure the visible correspondence of deeds to words, to prove to the audience the conscientiousness and persuasiveness of a social subject. That is, to gain trust.

It is based on these principles that a smart minority, who understands that the world has changed, does PR – we all live on the other side of the glass now. And you can easily rub the samovar of your image-reputation to the holes just from stupid schoolboy thoroughness, as did the hero of the famous cartoon Peredil.

Novoe Vremya 2015