You Can’t Always Be In Control
I stumbled across this item last week in the Los Angeles Times: “Leaders of the campaign against Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, raised nearly $40 million and ran a careful, disciplined campaign with messages tested by focus groups and with only a few people authorized to speak to the media. They lost.”
The failure of the “professional” campaign has led more vocal opponents of the gay-marriage to take up the battle on their own with rowdier, noisier and more emotional efforts that include street demonstrations and other tactics reminiscent of the civil rights and antiwar campaigns of the 1960s and1970s.
Whether you think that’s a good idea or not will depend at least in part how you feel about Proposition 8 and other proposals like it.
Regardless of how you feel about this specific issue, it’s a good reminder for PR professionals that doing things by the book isn’t always enough to win – or enough to maintain a united front when you have supporters who feel strongly about your issue.
President-elect Obama will face a similar challenge when he takes office. Some Democrats in Congress already are talking about pushing their own proposals for things like health care without waiting to take their lead from the White House.
It’s a frequent problem for PR professionals. We work in a profession where the shortest distance between two points isn’t always a straight line.
I’m a strong proponent of having a clear message and sticking to it. But it’s important to give your supporters a chance to be involved — even if they aren’t on exactly the same page as you.
If you can’t keep everyone on the same page, control what you can. But be willing to let go of the need to control every message and every action by every supporter. There are many paths to building support for an idea or cause. The important thing is getting the result you want, not controlling the path people use to get there.
That’s my two cents’ worth. What’s yours?
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Tags: media minute, media relations, Messages, monday morning media minute