Archive for December, 2007

I have always been a fan of magic. Not to the degree that I have ever paid money to attend a show of one of the mega-magicians like David Copperfield or Penn & Teller, but anytime I have seen a magician on television or even at a kids’ birthday party, I’m riveted. Especially David Blaine. He’s terrific.

Recently, I had occasion to sit in on a presentation by a magician who will be emceeing one of our client’s upcoming events. To demonstrate that he was the right guy for the job, he did a few tricks for the marketing group. The first one involved him changing the time on someone’s watch without touching it. And amazingly, it worked. The second one was a card trick, and it also worked perfectly. The third one, and it doesn’t matter what it was, didn’t work.

And what happened at that point was incredible. You could look around the room and see that everyone lost all confidence in this magician. The guy had changed the time on someone’s watch not even five minutes earlier, and now we all thought he was a fraud.

Not really fair, right?

But then again, a magician is meant to do magic, so if he can’t do it, he’s not a magician.

On the other hand, you have the juggler. The juggler doesn’t have such a high standard. If a juggler is able to juggle 17 knives for three minutes, he’s a great juggler. And if his next juggling act involves juggling two watermelons, four pineapples and a grape, and after one and a half minutes he drops a pineapple, everyone will still consider him a very good juggler. Because he’s proven that he has the proper skills, and perhaps he just blinked at the wrong time or hiccupped, causing that pineapple to fall.

That’s the difference between a magician and a juggler. A magician does tricks, which means it’s all or nothing. A juggler demonstrates a skill for keeping a bunch of things moving at the same time, which means he can be a pretty good juggler without the requirement of perfection.

I think some companies expect that they will hire a PR firm and the results will be magical. The company will see its reputation skyrocket, just because they are now paying a PR firm to do its "magic."

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. What we at Ruder Finn try to do is increase PR/marketing momentum for our clients. We’re like jugglers. We want a bunch of things to be moving at the same time so our client’s market will respond with a "WOW!" If the company comes out with some news that isn’t great, or maybe a competitor wins a big deal, I see that as the equivalent of the dropped pineapple. Okay, they dropped the pineapple, but they’re still great jugglers!

But the key ingredient to this is time. A company must invest the time necessary to build that momentum. It must first juggle five bowling pins, and then ten knives, and then three chainsaws, and only then will the credibility and momentum be at a high level.

And then the market will recognize the company as the star it deserves to be.

Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, recently demanded that Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) recognize the Jewish nature of the State of Israel. And lest you think I have flipped my wig and decided to provide political commentary in this space that has until now been devoted to communications and marketing, you can rest easy. This IS about communications and it is about PR.

You see, no one in the entire world – even among Israel’s enemies – considers the State of Israel to be anything but the state of the Jews. It was founded as the Jewish state, and it is run that way, in many aspects of our society. The Jewish holidays are also public holidays. And that’s not to say people of other faiths are not free to worship as they please. In fact, they are. But all food on the national airline (El Al) is certified kosher. And Israel’s flag is a combination of the star that our tradition tells us adorned the shield of King David, and the blue stripes and white background of the Jewish prayer shawl. To further prove the point, here’s an example of an Israeli commercial.

Israel is Jewish.

Now, here’s where you will see that I’m not making any political statements.

When our prime minister introduces the concept that maybe Israel is not Jewish, simply by asking Abu Mazen to confirm that Israel is Jewish, that’s a major PR mistake.

You see, in communications, sometimes NOT saying something is more definitive than saying something. And Mr. Olmert made a mistake by raising this topic, because until now, the world simply considered Israel to be the Jewish state. It is only now, when Israel’s prime minister himself raised doubt, that the world may come to ask further questions.