Fine Line Between Spin & Sin
April 2012
There is no question that a balanced approach to media training — in which spokespeople are taught the skills of pausing, answering the question in clear, concise terms and stopping as their primary skill — makes it easier for spokespeople to understand the fine line that exists between deception, lies and spin.
In her book LYING: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, contemporary philosopher Sissela Bok expresses her belief that lying is a subset of deception. She defines deception as that which occurs when “we communicate messages meant to mislead … meant to make them believe what we ourselves do not believe.” She defines a lie as “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.” To lie, you must make some form of statement; you cannot lie by simply omitting facts. If you omit facts to create a false impression, you are practicing a form of deception.
While we believe that the vast majority of media trainers and public relations practitioners never counsel clients to lie or intentionally deceive when they face reporters (with the possible rare exception of extreme cases of foreign policy or national security), it is useful to examine the lines between deception, lies and spin as a means of fine-tuning the advice we provide to spokespeople.
In a presentation to the American Political Association, John J. Mearsheimer provides a definition of spin that clearly delineates it from both lying and deception. Spin occurs when someone links together facts in a way that attempts to portray an individual or organization in the best possible light.
Chances are, if you’ve ever sent out a résumé, you have practiced a form of spin. Spin involves downplaying or ignoring certain facts that could create a negative perception. The emphasis is on making yourself look as good as possible by focusing attention on information that creates a positive impression.
The thin line between spin and sin lies somewhere between the creation of a true impression and a false impression, resulting from which decisions or facts are included, which facts are omitted, and how the facts are structured. In other words, if the facts are true and the impression left by those facts is true, you're on the safe side of spin. However, if the facts are true but the impression left by how the facts are selected or structured is false or misleading, the precise location of the ethical line needs to be discussed or reviewed by all those involved. If the facts are untrue, and people in the organization know them to be untrue, the organization is lying.
Spin is not necessarily a form of deception, provided that the story created by the facts is not intended to mislead and the facts underlying the story are true. But the line between spin and lying is definitely crossed when accuracy and/or truthfulness are compromised.
In her book LYING: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, contemporary philosopher Sissela Bok expresses her belief that lying is a subset of deception. She defines deception as that which occurs when “we communicate messages meant to mislead … meant to make them believe what we ourselves do not believe.” She defines a lie as “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.” To lie, you must make some form of statement; you cannot lie by simply omitting facts. If you omit facts to create a false impression, you are practicing a form of deception.
While we believe that the vast majority of media trainers and public relations practitioners never counsel clients to lie or intentionally deceive when they face reporters (with the possible rare exception of extreme cases of foreign policy or national security), it is useful to examine the lines between deception, lies and spin as a means of fine-tuning the advice we provide to spokespeople.
In a presentation to the American Political Association, John J. Mearsheimer provides a definition of spin that clearly delineates it from both lying and deception. Spin occurs when someone links together facts in a way that attempts to portray an individual or organization in the best possible light.
Chances are, if you’ve ever sent out a résumé, you have practiced a form of spin. Spin involves downplaying or ignoring certain facts that could create a negative perception. The emphasis is on making yourself look as good as possible by focusing attention on information that creates a positive impression.
The thin line between spin and sin lies somewhere between the creation of a true impression and a false impression, resulting from which decisions or facts are included, which facts are omitted, and how the facts are structured. In other words, if the facts are true and the impression left by those facts is true, you're on the safe side of spin. However, if the facts are true but the impression left by how the facts are selected or structured is false or misleading, the precise location of the ethical line needs to be discussed or reviewed by all those involved. If the facts are untrue, and people in the organization know them to be untrue, the organization is lying.
Spin is not necessarily a form of deception, provided that the story created by the facts is not intended to mislead and the facts underlying the story are true. But the line between spin and lying is definitely crossed when accuracy and/or truthfulness are compromised.
Why Outcomes Trump Messages
April 2012
by Eric Bergman
In any communication process, you can improve your success by focusing on outcomes, not inputs, which is why I believe outcomes trump messages every time, and why I’m a less-than-enthusiastic fan of the term “key messages.”
The best way I’ve found to explain this is to ask people how many times they have asked their children to turn off the light in their room. If you’re like most of us, the answer is: “Too many to count.”
However, turning the light off is an excellent key message. It’s based in economic reality and environmental sensitivity. Today’s children are exposed to information about the environment that should make it easy for them to connect turning off the light in their room to saving the planet. But repeating the key message simply does not work.
To get the outcomes you’re seeking, it may be important to change the input. This is what I learned with our son.
Every May, when he comes home from university and leaves the light on in his room, I call out to him and ask him to please come upstairs and turn it off. “But dad, you’re right there,” he will say.
“Yes,” I reply, “but I’m not the one who left it on.”
He will then have to unwind his six-foot-seven-inch frame from in front of the television, where he’s watching sports-something, walk up the stairs and turn off the light in his room. It usually only takes once or twice before he modifies his own behavior, and I never have to ask again—at least until the next time he comes home!
Remembering key messages is unimportant in communication. Applying information or taking action counts for everything. If someone applies your information to their decision-making process or takes action on it, key messages are, by definition, remembered. And you shouldn’t need to beat people over the head to achieve that goal.
Next: Applying Outcomes to Media Relations
In any communication process, you can improve your success by focusing on outcomes, not inputs, which is why I believe outcomes trump messages every time, and why I’m a less-than-enthusiastic fan of the term “key messages.”
The best way I’ve found to explain this is to ask people how many times they have asked their children to turn off the light in their room. If you’re like most of us, the answer is: “Too many to count.”
To get the outcomes you’re seeking, it may be important to change the input. This is what I learned with our son.
Every May, when he comes home from university and leaves the light on in his room, I call out to him and ask him to please come upstairs and turn it off. “But dad, you’re right there,” he will say.
“Yes,” I reply, “but I’m not the one who left it on.”
Remembering key messages is unimportant in communication. Applying information or taking action counts for everything. If someone applies your information to their decision-making process or takes action on it, key messages are, by definition, remembered. And you shouldn’t need to beat people over the head to achieve that goal.
Next: Applying Outcomes to Media Relations
My Reservations With "Key Messages"
April 2012
by Eric Bergman
I have wanted to write this for a long time.
My career turns 30 on June 14, 2012 (where did those years go?). I can’t exactly remember when I began hearing and using the term “key message,” but I suspect it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Today, the expression “key messages” is worse than PowerPoint. It’s everywhere! Everyone uses it in virtually every context—but especially in media relations.
And, although our profession coined the term “key message,” it’s a phrase I could just as soon do without.
The reason? It implies that success occurs when someone can remember the key messages, rather than apply the information the messages contain or take action on them.
Emphasizing key messages focuses on communication inputs, rather than seeking appropriate attitudinal or behavioral outcomes. In other words, the mistaken perception most people have (including many in our profession) is that the more you hammer home your key messages, the more effective they become.
Over the next few weeks, my goal is to write a series on why I believe the expression “key messages” should be sparingly used—if it’s ever used at all.
Along the way, I’d be interested in hearing your perspective. You can always send me an e-mail, or comment on the At Ease With the Media group of LinkedIn.
Second article: Why Outcomes Trump Messages
I have wanted to write this for a long time.
My career turns 30 on June 14, 2012 (where did those years go?). I can’t exactly remember when I began hearing and using the term “key message,” but I suspect it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Today, the expression “key messages” is worse than PowerPoint. It’s everywhere! Everyone uses it in virtually every context—but especially in media relations.
And, although our profession coined the term “key message,” it’s a phrase I could just as soon do without.
Emphasizing key messages focuses on communication inputs, rather than seeking appropriate attitudinal or behavioral outcomes. In other words, the mistaken perception most people have (including many in our profession) is that the more you hammer home your key messages, the more effective they become.
Over the next few weeks, my goal is to write a series on why I believe the expression “key messages” should be sparingly used—if it’s ever used at all.
Along the way, I’d be interested in hearing your perspective. You can always send me an e-mail, or comment on the At Ease With the Media group of LinkedIn.
Second article: Why Outcomes Trump Messages
Dispelling the Myth of the Media Relations Multiplier
September 2011
This is the fifth instalment in a series on media relations measurement.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
When I started my media relations career (back in the days when phototypesetting was state-of-the-art), people in our business not only used advertising value equivalencies (AVEs) to measure media relations success, they often applied a multiplier to the AVE to help clients understand that earned media has a greater value than placed advertising.
How times have changed in the past quarter century. Today, says Mark Weiner, president of Delahaye and author of the book Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian's Guide to Marketing and Communication, "if your agency or PR department insists on using multipliers, then you should learn how to divide."
Mark co-authored a paper entitled "Dispelling the Myths of the PR Multiplier and Other Inflationary Measures"with Don Bartholomew to put the multiplier fallacy to bed once and for all. If you ever wanted any any motivation to brush up on your math skills, particularly around the concepts of numerator and denominator, this paper will provide it.
The premise for using multipliers is two-fold. In the case of print media, there's a pass-along rate; each newspaper or magazine gets passed along to people other than the person who originally purchased it. For TV audiences, there are a number of people in the household. While those numbers can be quantified, Mark says they are not the prime reason for the traditional use of multipliers.
"The multipliers are being used across the board as a way to try to represent the added credibility that PR brings to communication," he says. "(Multipliers) try to account for what makes public relations unique within the marketing and communication mix."
Mark says that no single number can be used as a multiplier, because the degree of credibility (as represented by a multiplier) changes from industry to industry, company to company, news medium to news medium, theme to theme, and product to product. Paradoxically, however, he firmly believes that media relations adds value and, over the years, Delahaye has conducted extensive research to put a value to media relations as part of the marketing mix.
Using advanced statistical modelling to uncover the extent to which any marketing element contributes to sales, and citing one analysis conducted for Proctor & Gamble, Delahaye determined that media relations delivered the best return on investment of any element within the marketing mix.
"We found that public relations delivered roughly $2.80 in sales for every dollar invested," Mark explains. "Mass market advertising delivered $1.40. Trade advertising delivered $2.00 and price promotions — which is one of marketing's favorite crutches — loses 25 cents on the dollar."
In all of the studies Delahaye has conducted on the subject, which Mark refers to as market mix modelling, media relations always delivers the best or second-best return on investment, and has achieved a return as high as $9.00 for every dollar spent. "I have to caution by saying that this is advanced statistical analysis," he says. "It can be expensive. It tends to be done by companies within certain categories only — like consumer packaged goods, cars, financial services and retail banking — rather than business-to-business categories.
"But what we find is that PR consistently delivers the highest return and in this way we've seen how budgets are being shifted into public relations because it offers what other marketers envy: It's credible, it's involving, and it's engaging in a way that advertising or price promotions aren't."
Mark says the price of entry for doing this type of statistical analysis is significant amounts of data, which can be expensive to gather, categorize and analyze. But he believes this research validates what every public relations practitioner has always instinctively known — which is that media relations works. "And now we're able to quantify it in a way that not only demonstrates that not only does PR work, but it's uniquely powerful in delivering what marketers want," he says.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
When I started my media relations career (back in the days when phototypesetting was state-of-the-art), people in our business not only used advertising value equivalencies (AVEs) to measure media relations success, they often applied a multiplier to the AVE to help clients understand that earned media has a greater value than placed advertising.
How times have changed in the past quarter century. Today, says Mark Weiner, president of Delahaye and author of the book Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian's Guide to Marketing and Communication, "if your agency or PR department insists on using multipliers, then you should learn how to divide."
Mark co-authored a paper entitled "Dispelling the Myths of the PR Multiplier and Other Inflationary Measures"with Don Bartholomew to put the multiplier fallacy to bed once and for all. If you ever wanted any any motivation to brush up on your math skills, particularly around the concepts of numerator and denominator, this paper will provide it.
The premise for using multipliers is two-fold. In the case of print media, there's a pass-along rate; each newspaper or magazine gets passed along to people other than the person who originally purchased it. For TV audiences, there are a number of people in the household. While those numbers can be quantified, Mark says they are not the prime reason for the traditional use of multipliers.
"The multipliers are being used across the board as a way to try to represent the added credibility that PR brings to communication," he says. "(Multipliers) try to account for what makes public relations unique within the marketing and communication mix."
Mark says that no single number can be used as a multiplier, because the degree of credibility (as represented by a multiplier) changes from industry to industry, company to company, news medium to news medium, theme to theme, and product to product. Paradoxically, however, he firmly believes that media relations adds value and, over the years, Delahaye has conducted extensive research to put a value to media relations as part of the marketing mix.
Using advanced statistical modelling to uncover the extent to which any marketing element contributes to sales, and citing one analysis conducted for Proctor & Gamble, Delahaye determined that media relations delivered the best return on investment of any element within the marketing mix.
"We found that public relations delivered roughly $2.80 in sales for every dollar invested," Mark explains. "Mass market advertising delivered $1.40. Trade advertising delivered $2.00 and price promotions — which is one of marketing's favorite crutches — loses 25 cents on the dollar."
In all of the studies Delahaye has conducted on the subject, which Mark refers to as market mix modelling, media relations always delivers the best or second-best return on investment, and has achieved a return as high as $9.00 for every dollar spent. "I have to caution by saying that this is advanced statistical analysis," he says. "It can be expensive. It tends to be done by companies within certain categories only — like consumer packaged goods, cars, financial services and retail banking — rather than business-to-business categories.
"But what we find is that PR consistently delivers the highest return and in this way we've seen how budgets are being shifted into public relations because it offers what other marketers envy: It's credible, it's involving, and it's engaging in a way that advertising or price promotions aren't."
Mark says the price of entry for doing this type of statistical analysis is significant amounts of data, which can be expensive to gather, categorize and analyze. But he believes this research validates what every public relations practitioner has always instinctively known — which is that media relations works. "And now we're able to quantify it in a way that not only demonstrates that not only does PR work, but it's uniquely powerful in delivering what marketers want," he says.
A Case Study in Media Relations Success
September 2011
This is the fourth instalment in a series on media relations measurement.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
In the this part of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, author of Media Relations: A Practical Guide for Communicators, she provided an example of a media relations initiative that demonstrates the importance to linking behavioral outcomes to media relations inputs.
A staff writer at Arizona State University received an assignment from the archaeology department to write a news release to promote an upcoming lecture: a local attorney, as an amateur Egyptologist, was only the second person to go into an Egyptian tomb.
Wilma told me this writer often takes what many would consider to be an unusual approach to media relations. "She knows her media, so she never does follow up calls to the reporters she sends material to," Wilma explained. "She knows whether they're the right ones to get the release."
The communicator got two hits from her release. One was in a calendar listing in the local newspaper. The other was to a reporter who likes to write human interest stories.
"Without any prompting, the reporter turned this story into a front page of the Sunday leisure section, including two color photographs over three-fourths of a page," Wilma says. "A lecture that would normally bring in 25 brought in almost 200 people."
There is no AVE for this program. And the circulation numbers would be small by most media relations measurement standards, because there was only one newspaper's circulation to include.
However, in many ways, this example represents the tried and true in media relations, and the importance of measurement over evaluation. To be successful, it's important to understand the needs of reporters and only target those journalists or media outlets who would have an interest in your program, your product, your service or your candidate.
After going through that process, if your media list ends up being only five outlets — but they're the right five outlets — you can achieve success with what would be considered to be an extremely low AVE, if any AVE at all.
Wilma pointed out that the Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research defines impressions as "the number of people who might have had the opportunity to be exposed to a story that has appeared in the media."
"It's taken almost as a fact that if you have a million impressions there's an assumption that a million people saw it and read it," Wilma said. "You can make numbers do anything you want. But the real bottom line test is: Did your audience do what you intended them to do?
"You can have all the impressions in the world, but if nobody showed up for that dinner to raise money — and your job was to help improve attendance at that dinner — then you're just not doing your job."
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
In the this part of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, author of Media Relations: A Practical Guide for Communicators, she provided an example of a media relations initiative that demonstrates the importance to linking behavioral outcomes to media relations inputs.
A staff writer at Arizona State University received an assignment from the archaeology department to write a news release to promote an upcoming lecture: a local attorney, as an amateur Egyptologist, was only the second person to go into an Egyptian tomb.
Wilma told me this writer often takes what many would consider to be an unusual approach to media relations. "She knows her media, so she never does follow up calls to the reporters she sends material to," Wilma explained. "She knows whether they're the right ones to get the release."
The communicator got two hits from her release. One was in a calendar listing in the local newspaper. The other was to a reporter who likes to write human interest stories.
"Without any prompting, the reporter turned this story into a front page of the Sunday leisure section, including two color photographs over three-fourths of a page," Wilma says. "A lecture that would normally bring in 25 brought in almost 200 people."
There is no AVE for this program. And the circulation numbers would be small by most media relations measurement standards, because there was only one newspaper's circulation to include.
However, in many ways, this example represents the tried and true in media relations, and the importance of measurement over evaluation. To be successful, it's important to understand the needs of reporters and only target those journalists or media outlets who would have an interest in your program, your product, your service or your candidate.
After going through that process, if your media list ends up being only five outlets — but they're the right five outlets — you can achieve success with what would be considered to be an extremely low AVE, if any AVE at all.
Wilma pointed out that the Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research defines impressions as "the number of people who might have had the opportunity to be exposed to a story that has appeared in the media."
"It's taken almost as a fact that if you have a million impressions there's an assumption that a million people saw it and read it," Wilma said. "You can make numbers do anything you want. But the real bottom line test is: Did your audience do what you intended them to do?
"You can have all the impressions in the world, but if nobody showed up for that dinner to raise money — and your job was to help improve attendance at that dinner — then you're just not doing your job."
Linking Objectives to Outcomes
September 2011
This is the third instalment in a series on media relations measurement.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
In this second part of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, I asked her where we needed to be as an industry when it comes to the strategic use of media relations.
How do we develop objectives for a media relations campaign? How do we evaluate whether we've achieved those objectives? In a perfect world, how should people approach those challenges?
Her advice was simple on the surface, but represents the complexity of media relations specifically, and organizational communication in general.
"People need to approach media relations by understanding what it is that your client needs to get done," she says. "Too often, the client's needs are misinterpreted to what we can do from a media standpoint, whether it has anything to actually do with solving the problem or not."
She says that one of the challenges that many practitioners have with measurement is that they may start with a great objective — such as increasing the number of people who participate in a weekend run for cancer research from 10,000 to 12,000 — but their evaluation focuses only on the media clippings they generate. They forget to go back and count the number of people who actually participated in the run.
This goes back to her belief that there is a clear distinction between evaluation and measurement in media relations. Counting the clippings is a form of evaluation around the process. Determining how many people participated in the run is a measurement of outcomes, and therefore success.
"You cannot claim success if you are not measuring the right thing," she says. "And this slides over into the issue of ethics."
Wilma believes that it is incredibly unethical to tell a client that a campaign was successful because it generated a million impressions when the objective was to get more people to participate in the food drive, vote for a candidate, or other potential outcome.
There are those who may try counter her argument by saying that it was the client who wanted those media relations results — such as being a guest on certain television programs or being above the fold on the front page of the business section. Therefore, according to codes of ethics governing public relations (whether PRSA, IABC, CPRS or CIPR), the media relations practitioner has done his or her job.
"If that media plan is solely about getting the boss above the fold on the front page of the business section and nothing else, then that's ok," she replies. "The objectives may be that (the client) is looking for media support for the product launch, and (the media relations practitioner) will write an objective that says they want to generate 1.5 million impressions.
"You can get impressions. That's the easy part. But those impressions may have no correlation to a bottom line."
And without bottom line measurement, the job is less than half done.
by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR, MC
In this second part of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, I asked her where we needed to be as an industry when it comes to the strategic use of media relations.
How do we develop objectives for a media relations campaign? How do we evaluate whether we've achieved those objectives? In a perfect world, how should people approach those challenges?
Her advice was simple on the surface, but represents the complexity of media relations specifically, and organizational communication in general.
"People need to approach media relations by understanding what it is that your client needs to get done," she says. "Too often, the client's needs are misinterpreted to what we can do from a media standpoint, whether it has anything to actually do with solving the problem or not."
She says that one of the challenges that many practitioners have with measurement is that they may start with a great objective — such as increasing the number of people who participate in a weekend run for cancer research from 10,000 to 12,000 — but their evaluation focuses only on the media clippings they generate. They forget to go back and count the number of people who actually participated in the run.
This goes back to her belief that there is a clear distinction between evaluation and measurement in media relations. Counting the clippings is a form of evaluation around the process. Determining how many people participated in the run is a measurement of outcomes, and therefore success.
"You cannot claim success if you are not measuring the right thing," she says. "And this slides over into the issue of ethics."
Wilma believes that it is incredibly unethical to tell a client that a campaign was successful because it generated a million impressions when the objective was to get more people to participate in the food drive, vote for a candidate, or other potential outcome.
There are those who may try counter her argument by saying that it was the client who wanted those media relations results — such as being a guest on certain television programs or being above the fold on the front page of the business section. Therefore, according to codes of ethics governing public relations (whether PRSA, IABC, CPRS or CIPR), the media relations practitioner has done his or her job.
"If that media plan is solely about getting the boss above the fold on the front page of the business section and nothing else, then that's ok," she replies. "The objectives may be that (the client) is looking for media support for the product launch, and (the media relations practitioner) will write an objective that says they want to generate 1.5 million impressions.
"You can get impressions. That's the easy part. But those impressions may have no correlation to a bottom line."
And without bottom line measurement, the job is less than half done.