Drowning Out The Bad News.

Have you tried talking over a firework display? The celebration will often drown you out.

Protecting your organisation’s image is important, so it’s understandable that one would want to defend themselves. But I believe that a good PR should be spending more time on proactive PR than reactive. We should be deciding the terms on which we communicate, not being led by outside factors.

A popular promotional campaign, by Samsung, is to poke fun at Apple. One of the more recent ads saw a Samsung phone user walking past a queue outside an Apple store. Everyone in the queue had the same haircut, they looked like they had a ‘notch’ on their forehead. The advert was championing being different. It was, in a way, clever. Apple product users do tend to have a herd mentality and their products are less customisable than an Android device.

These adverts are funny, and I do find myself watching them when they appear in my Youtube suggestions list. But I’ve never bought a Samsung phone.

Market share for Samsung has stayed steady at around 25-30% for the past 5 years. Apple has remained steady at 44-50%. So are these ‘we’re different’ campaigns actually having an impact?

My instinct is to argue that they are not.

If you are the sort of person who loves iPhones, you likely already know that you are part of a ‘herd’. Similarly, if you are an Android user you probably already value the ability to customise. These adverts seem to only serve to mock and to make Samsung users feel superior.

Apple, on the other hand, take a very different approach to their marketing. They act as if no-one else exists.

Have you noticed that Apple rarely seem to be launching a feature that is new to the market? In some features they can be years behind. But this doesn’t matter to Apple users or to Apple. They live in their own world and it works very well for them.

Ignoring your competitors allows you to cheerlead your own strengths, it allows you to talk about what you want to talk about

This isn’t to say that Apple don’t engage in combatting defamation. Every good PR needs to be able to react to what’s being said about them. But there are many different ways to do this. Similarly, there are other ways to set yourself apart, without referencing the opposition.

A PR mentor of mine once demonstrated tackling bad news with a glass of water and some peppercorns. He crunched some peppercorns into the glass, in the restaurant and asked if the water looked drinkable. Of course, it wasn’t that appealing. He then took a jug of water and kept pouring it into the glass, until the peppercorns either floated out or became insignificant. “What about now?” he asked. The answer was, of course, that it was much better.

The deluge of good news, water, removed the attention from the bad, peppercorns. This is something us communication professionals can learn from.

Yes, we can tackle bad news head on. But by doing so we’ll often add oxygen to the fire and increase people’s awareness of the bad news. Or we can nod at the bad news and then talk louder about the good work we are doing.

Perhaps the construction project you are representing has led to the tearing down of an old tree. Yes, this could be a shame, but do the public know that you have planted hundreds more trees? This doesn’t have to be said in response to the complaint, but if communicated in parallel it makes the complaint look less severe.

Remember, most people complaining just want to be heard. You don’t have to fix every problem or prove everyone wrong. Your organisation will do things wrong from time to time and you will get negative press.

But, you can become known for your good work. If you lead the conversation.