Romney and PR Pros – Why Don’t You Deliver More Raw Meat?
By John Wilder, Blogger, Marriage Coach
I’m not in the PR industry. That’s why my comments might deserve a second look—because I see it as I believe many in the general public do.
There has been press recently suggesting that PR professionals need to be more aggressive. This week’s piece on O’Dwyer’s titled “UK PR Exec to Lead IABC in U.S.; PR Is Timing in Both” is just the latest example.
Not to jump onto the dog pile here, but my message to PR pros is that if you want to be successful, then you must abandon the namby-pamby, politically correct in all your campaigns and feed the media and public raw meat instead.
Let me give you an example, courtesy of the Romney Campaign. His political operatives are taking the politically correct path and presenting Romney as the white bread guy who is namby-pamby and not threatening. I would counsel his handlers to adopt the Ann Coulter take-no-prisoners style, and it would be a winning strategy.
Now, if you would just set aside your political views for a second and hear me out:
Basically, liberals operate on the basis of “feelings and emotions,” whereas conservatives operate on “facts and logic.” The two don’t mix well together. The key is if you are advising a conservative, you need to be able to translate those facts and logic into feelings statements to win over the liberal and moderate voter. You have to feed the audience raw meat in a message that resonates with it.
If I were to advise Romney, I would tell him to talk to the issues in sound bites. I would tell him not to cede global warming to the liberals. The way I see it, there is a ton of evidence disproving man caused global warming. I have personally written a scientific refutation of it. (The principle thing is that the IPCC has a VERY FLAWED computer model that posits that CO2 will rise into the atmosphere and stay there for 100 years and thus become cumulative. This is so easy to disprove. Check out the specific gravity of CO2—its weight relative to air—on any website and they will tell you that it is 1.52 or in other words 152% heavier than air and sinks to the ground when it is released.)
I would also advise Romney to tell the public directly that the stimulus was a failure, and to highlight the jobs training programs where colleges ripped off the federal government for millions—and no jobs were created.
I would advise Romney to tell the public that Obamacare is worse than no resolution because it will guarantee rationing. The flaw is that Obama added 30 million new people into the system and did nothing to increase the amount of doctors graduating med school. We already have a shortage of doctors. In addition, Obama reduced payments to docs for Medicaid and Medicare patients, which has caused docs to drop a lot of these patients.
I would advise Romney to repeat the message that liberalism does not work. As to taxing the rich, it is always the little guy that gets screwed. I would advise him to tell educate the public about a time only 25 years ago when the libs were in control and they passed a luxury 10% surcharge tax. It killed the American yacht building industry. People who had planned to have a $5m yacht built did not want to pay a half mil in taxes, so they went overseas and found they could get the same yacht built for $3.5 mil and save the half mil in taxes, thus saving them a whopping $2 mil. The yacht building companies went belly up and American workers in the industry lost their jobs and worse. Way to go … and you want more of this kind of leadership?
So what’s the takeaway here? The answer: Stop soft peddling everything. That goes for PR pros and presidential candidate Mitt Romney alike. The only winning strategy in both realms is to give people what they want in ways they can digest … Give them less “filler” and more raw meat.
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Wilder is a marriage, relationship and sexual coach who is also a prize winning public speaker. He is a resident expert on the sites: yahooanswers.com, advice.lovedetour.com and fizzeniche.com. He also writes a blog on these subjects at marriagecoach1.com. He will be publishing a book entitled: SEX EDUCATION FOR ADULTS, SECRETS TO AMAZING SEX AND HAPPILY EVER AFTER TOO on Amazon Kindle in January 2013. Wilder has a BA with a double major in Behavioral Science and Bible. He attended graduate School for Clinical Psychology and attended nursing school, as well.
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Published: August 2, 2012 By:
Does commmpro not do any type of screening before they post/share articles? Generally I like your content. Some pieces are better than others of course. . . .but im not exactly clear on why I just read a right wing conservative rant disguised as pr advice on your site. That was ridiculous.. . .not to mention insulting to your readers in that it was grounded in such broad based generalizations. I mean, really.. . Liberals are al
l emotion and conservatives are fact and logic? Wow. I sure hope the author uses such base preconceptions in his marriage counseling. Point is–this is supposed to be a useful pr resource site/blog/newsletter and articles like this make me want to hit the delete button when I see Commpro pop up in my in box.
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the comment. We do, indeed, conduct screening on all pieces. While our intention is to serve as an open hub of commentary related to/touching upon PR, communications and related disciplines, we do push contributors to ensure that their pieces include helpful takeaways/lessons as opposed to posting mere rants. Please know I will redouble my efforts to maintain those high standards. Finally, might there be a PR lessons/POV or takeaway in response to this particular post that could run as its OWN article or post? If so, I’d be happy to run it, especially if it met the same standards you are properly and patiently holding us to. Let me know and have a great day. ^brianp
I am curious why right wingers rant while left wingers discuss?
I don’t really see a rant in here.
This man is stating his opinion, just like other writers I’ve seen.
Just because you don’t agree with his views doesn’t mean that his tone is especially abrasive.
I’ve seen worse by PR professional bloggers.
Where is the rant?
And incidentally, the whole purpose of a resource is that it exposes us to all views on a subject, not just those in our comfort zone.
How can you plan a campaign if you don’t know what the other side is saying?!
@CathyB–im not sure that i agree that left wingers discuss. I didnt say that or even imply it. A rant is a rant, whether left or right. My point was simply that the article wasnt insightful related to PR. It was simply used as a foil to refute the current president’s politics and support those of Romney. His “opinion” which you claim he is stating, has nothing to do with PR really, does it?
Finally–i wholeheartedly agree with you that a “resource” like CommPro can/should be used to expose multiple angles of a subject–but i dont believe its necessarily the appropriate forum for this type of political discourse. we get plenty of that elsewhere. I just suggest we stick to the purpose which is to educate on PR–an area in which the author clearly states up front he has no experience. It has nothing to do with my comfort zone. Active dialogue is great-when its on target. If i want to debate politics I will find another outlet to do so–not CommPro.