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Linda Bennett writes...

People hear the spin more clearly through the noise

Coming into the world of PR from a journalist background, I’ve found myself lapping up every case of issues management that played through the media in 2008. I’ve also found myself dissecting these with friends and family. And that’s been the really interesting part. It’s led me to believe that us media and PR types underestimate the average person out there and the degree of their media and communications nous – to the detriment of what we strive to do – cut through.

The Air New Zealand crash off the coast off France stands as one of the years’ shining examples of a superbly handled crisis. There wouldn’t be many New Zealanders who weren’t moved by Rob Fyfe’s emotionally charged words at the string of media conferences - the first one scheduled promptly after he himself got the news that one of his company’s planes had gone down, and five of his staff were missing, presumed dead, on the other side of the world.

Rob said in a newspaper interview that while the crisis plan was meticulously planned – as you would expect for an international airline – nothing could prepare him for the emotional aspect of that day. And I have little doubt that’s where Air New Zealand’s strength was that day – his concern was genuine, unscripted – and ultimately, believable. We got the message loud and clear – Air New Zealand cares about its staff first and foremost. People I’ve spoken to – most far removed from media circles – talk of Rob Fyfe’s handling of the incident as much as they talk about the tragedy itself. They knew that his response was part of a wider crisis management plan, and that he was just doing his job he is paid well to do, showing there aren’t many people nowadays that don’t understand how PR sits behind the news we hear every day. They also understood that above all that, he couldn’t fake that emotion – and that’s how he connected to people throughout the country, and got those critical messages through.

Then there was one of the tackier news stories to sweep the globe this year - Gordon Ramsay’s alleged infidelity. Dinner table, baby walking and café conversations I was privy too showed that the average person threw his media response into the mix when weighing up his guilt or innocence. The fact he didn’t come out immediately and deny the allegations spelled guilt to many, and the carefully staged photo shoot of Ramsay and his wife on the day the story broke in the UK only served to fuel this fire, rather than quell it as his PR cronies would have hoped.

It seems his advisors – no doubt raking in vast sums for their efforts – took a clichéd, outdated approach in ‘managing’ this crisis for him – vastly underestimating the sensibilities and media nous of the everyday person – to their, and more importantly, Ramsay’s, downfall. There wouldn’t be many people out there who still believe Ramsay is the family man he has portrayed, and marketing himself around, for many years, so the ‘management’ of the issue didn’t result in a belief in his innocence, and in fact, made him seem even more mendacious than before the tawdry story broke.

In constantly bombarding people with marketing messages, we have created a public who is increasingly discerning about reading these messages – they can distinguish the lies from the truth, and the fake from the genuine.

So this doesn’t mean we should look for clever and cunning ways to deceive this new media savvy public, but understand the fact that their constant exposure to messages means they don’t respond to spin, and instead focus our efforts on how to convey the sincerity behind our messages to truly cut through.