11/28

The artificiality depresses me.  It is marketing to excess and lousy PR, as far as I am  concerned, to order millions to be happy while they buy, buy, buy.   Manufactured cheer is not cheer at all.  Joy comes from the individual and not from an external source ordering one to dance. 

I would like to think that Christmas hype will one day pass simply because the populace at large decides that it doesn't want to be told what to do.  It's a dream anyway.  In the end, it would be better for merchants who wouldn't have to worry about doing 50% of their business for the year in a month.

I enjoy Christmas, but not the way I am told to enjoy it.  I try to miss all  the treacly Christmas specials on TV, the ceaseless and annoying renditions of carols on radio, over-decorated shops, false cheer and phony excitement.  It's hard to do.  I have to work at it.
 

11/27

Happy Thanksgiving.

11/26

I had a case of QED this week, and it has taken a day to laugh about it.  On Monday, I wrote that business in PR can disappear in a blink.  Sure enough, on Monday about noon, a client called and cancelled an account without the least warning that we were in difficulty.  The client praised our work, but the company is trying something new. 

I understand what the client wants, and we cannot serve her needs.  But still, it came as a surprise. 

That's the PR business.  Another person at the company was unhappy when he found out we had been cancelled.  He promised we would work for the firm again.  I would be glad to serve.  

So it goes.  We are proud because we performed a task for this client that a major PR agency said it could not do.  We figured out how to get it done and how to make it profitable -- a real trick.  We never made lots of money but it was reliable cash flow.  The fun part of the venture was accomplishing a repetitive task with the least amount of labor, which would have made the project prohibitively expensive.

The project was a a tangent from PR but not completely divorced from it.  I hope someday we might do something similar.  It is challenges like these that keep business interesting.
 

11/25

I have been thinking about a topic that has me baffled from a PR  point of view.  That is a tendency for individuals and groups harmed in some way to wallow in grief. 

Now, don't get me wrong. There is sorrow for anyone who has been unfairly harmed or died too young, thereby destroying life and opportunity we believe all should have.  What I am referring to is an inability to move beyond sorrow and to live again.  I am also referring to a demand for compensation because "premature" death or past injury is injustice.  (The problem, of course, is there is no such thing as "mature" death.  Few of us know when we shall perish.  Nor, can we compensate all past injustice without going broke.)

What happens, it seems to me, is a culture of victimhood -- endless remembrances, memorials and lawsuits for compensation.  Victims become a political force unto their own with their own codes and demands that they impose on the rest of society. 

However, there is a point where victimhood is neither good for the memory of the dead and injured nor for the mental health of survivors.  At some point, one moves on and lives, even if sorrow is embedded in all one does.  The difficulty is that members of victimhood would bend society and opinion to their view for the rest of their lives and for generations thereafter.  Society lives under perpetual guilt.

My thoughts have been about how one escapes the iron lock that victimhood shackles on individuals and organizations.  The only answer I came to is that disengagement must come slowly but inexorably.  An organization does not suddenly stop remembering the dead or injured.  It reduces memorials bit by bit until they become appropriate in size and scope.   Members of a victimhood will bewail the change, but the strong-willed leader must move forward and work quietly to get others to move as well.  As for compensation, tort law is out of control and nothing short of the law can rein it in.

It would be public relations suicide to discuss victimhood publicly.  One dare not do that.  On the other hand, it is organizational suicide to become bogged in the past.  This is not to say one forgets the past, but one incorporates its lessons into the organization then marches.  It is a lesson learned and not an excuse for ceasing activity.  For those who say this is cruel and inhumane, my response is that victimhood  also is cruel and inhumane.  Children and children's children should not be bound by sins of fathers and grandfathers. 

There is a balance point we too often fail to reach in the US, and failure to take an objective view creates perceptual challenges that we should not have to encounter.   There are perceptual problems enough to solve.

11/24

Such sour thoughts infected me this past weekend after a client of a colleague was put on notice,  thus ending my colleague's account, even though she has done excellent work.  And another colleague's wife suddenly lost her job in a large PR agency in the last two weeks.  Still another colleague was told this past week that his company is moving, and he will be out of a job in a year or so.  I have not had a great year either.  Two accounts I worked on were merged out of existence. 

But during Thanksgiving Week,  I should be thankful.  And, I am.  I am still going to a place of employment when thousands of PR practitioners are not. 

There is a feeling that the PR business is recovering, albeit slowly.  For most companies, it can't recover fast enough to undo damage to staffs and growth.  "Holding on" has been the operative phrase for all but a few companies, principally in healthcare and biotech.  An entrepreneur, who used to work with me years ago, has seen his business halved.  He called me a few weeks ago, and there was a note of humility in his voice.  He had to do something he dislikes -- fire good employees in order to survive.  It's heartbreaking.  But, when business caves as badly as PR has done, there is often no recourse.  The one positive note was that the entrepreneur feels he is positioned to do well when the industry turns upward because most of his competitors are gone.

It is easy to forget in good times.  That's why the wrenching downturn for the industry was salutary.  It reminds us that we can never stop justifying and merchandising our successes to clients, so they see our value.  The  business is about "what have you done for me lately?"   And, as I learned again this year, doing a good job is no guarantee. 

Sometimes I think large agencies place too much pressure on selling and too little on client service.  But, in their defense, they know well how short the half-life of the business can be.