Being nice, the cheapest and most effective PR tool.

It's a well-known fact that press and media can destroy you, build you, or create you in an image that they want.

A famous example that comes to me is that of the rise in popularity of Rev. Billy Graham.

Rev. Graham was near the start of his Evangelistic career when he visited LA in 1949. He had been in the area preaching and holding Crusades for 3 weeks and little had been printed about him in the local press.

That all changed when William Randolph Hearst, a prominent Publisher encountered Graham.

"Puff Graham", two words that perhaps changed the perception of Rev. Graham for hundreds of thousands. After Hearst pushed that order out, Graham reached celebrity status. Front pages of Hearst's own papers were quickly matched across the US and the media descended on LA to hear what this enthusiastic young Preacher had to say.

The rest is history.

Yes, Rev. Graham was delivering the best news anyone could hear, the Love of God, but he was also a very likeable man. This coupling of a great message and excellent PR saw him reach millions. In fact, Rev Graham has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame for his use of modern media.

So the question I ask is what comes first? Being likeable or good PR?

Good PR can make nasty people likeable. The number of stories you hear about how Steve Jobs was a bully are numerous. Elon Musk is famously abrasive, yet loved.

Bad PR can also see good people demonised. We see this in politics every day, with good politicians made out to be the demonic hordes themselves. But being a nice, likeable person, can win you influential friends in the PR world.

Last week we saw mass media mock President Trump for his meeting with the Pope. A photograph from the meeting saw Trump grinning like a child, whilst the Pope stood there steely faced.

Go over the video of their meet and you'll see the Pope crack a smile, as well as a joke about Trump eating too much. You usually have to have a good relationship with someone before you call them fat to their face... unless the Pope is a bully.

Then this morning we awake to pictures of Canadian PM Trudeau meeting with His Holiness. The same steely face is on the Pontiff's face. But this time it's different.

It's the same lack of smile, the same location, the same man, except that it's next to Mr Likeable himself, Trudeau.

Huffington Post, the hugely influential online news site (famously left-wing), titles their article 'Trudeau Is Latest World Leader To Feel The Burn Of Pope's 'Meh' Face'. All of a sudden, we're not mocking the World Leader with The Pope. We're instead mocking The Pope for being disinterested.

The article then goes on to show lots of other examples of the, now famous, 'Meh Face'.

This shows all we need to know about being a nice guy.

Yes, Musk and Jobs have managed to be 'bullies' or 'abrasive' and win good PR - but they'd changed they way people do things on a day to day level. They became 'known' as people AS they entered their 'world changing' phase.

But President Trump was known before he was President. He had already cultivated an image of a hard-lined businessman, happy to upset people. He wasn't changing the world back then. Now he is President of the US, the most powerful man on this planet (perhaps after The Pope), it's too late to change people's perception of him.

And so for the next four years, we will see negative article after negative article, almost regardless of what President Trump does.

We live in a world where people are known before they do anything. People blog, they post on social media, they self-promote. So they have an image before they 'make it'.

So my advice to anyone seeking to generate some PR about themselves, to anyone trying to become more 'famous' and who isn't truly changing the world like Musk or Jobs... be nice! It costs nothing and may be just about the best PR tool you could have.