Scare Tactics : Why Don Draper Had It Right

Scare Tactics 

 ‘Fear’ as a Successful Communications Tool

The value of emotion in selling products, and papers, is more or less indubitable.

Christmas: every advert pulls on the heartstrings. Headlines about fairness and altruism pepper the pages of our newspapers.

February: roses are red, violets are blue and romance is in the air for every marketing campaign and headline that can possible squeeze in an iota of an excuse for doing so.

Yet this is not just a gimmick of once-a-year holidays. It is a strategic part of brand narratives from McDonalds to Nike, Virgin to Jack Wills.

And one of the most effective emotions is fear.

Take as an example the full-sized polar bear released in London this past January. It disrupted tube-commuters’ usual routine of ‘studiously minding own business and ensuring zero eye contact with anyone’ with a potential panic attack.

“Is it real?!” People begged the cameras recording their mixed reactions of fear and curiosity.

Twitter went crazy. Videos and photos spread across the Internet.

I love the part were the girl says "is it real??" : Polar Bear Roams London [Sky Atlantic, Fortitude]: http://t.co/mn05nnCdca via @YouTube
— TheAnswer (@AtTheAnswer) February 2, 2015

 As a stunt it grabbed headlines – partly because a giant white bear on the Jubilee line makes a great photo – but it also embodied the new television show it was publicising, Fortitude, by using a bear that is something of a sinister motif for danger in the show to create a similar threatened feeling in the British pubic.  Moreover, considering Sky’s current adverts saying ‘not all television is created equal’, which suggests their programmes are somewhat more challenging, more intriguing, this stunt certainly seemed to capture hearts and minds with a comparable emotive thread.

An ‘Emotion Factor’ constitutes a central part of helping a consumer to bond with a brand, a business, a product, a person.

Hardly a new concept, Dale Carnegie identified emotions as key for business people who want to appeal to their customers back in 1936 and it has been linchpin in communications of all kinds ever since. There are books dedicated to it, and academic studies.

Those who have never watched Mad Men might be forgiven for wondering then why I’m talking about fear. Almost everyone has been told sex sells as demonstrated by Davidoff cologne or Virgin Atlantic adverts. Many will have experienced how feeling empowered makes that totally unaffordable car sound like a good idea, or how humour makes one website seem simpler and friendlier than the other.

But to quote Don Draper: “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? … It’s freedom from fear.”

The same applies in building a narrative in public relations.

Telling a story for a business is an integral part of PR because it’s all about looking for the story that will bring a brand’s message to life. A story can build or bulldoze a reputation, manage or frustrate consumers. So whether it’s through a message, a logo, a CEO or even a product, telling a superficial tale is not going to win over a busy journalist or capture the attention of a digital audience. Only a quality, sophisticated story can do that. Preferably one that’s succinct and can fit into the required column inches.

"What you call ‘love’ was invented by guys like me to sell nylons." – Don Happy Valentine's Day, #MadMen fans. pic.twitter.com/RQX1IwMAD5
— Mad Men (@MadMen_AMC) February 14, 2015

This is where fear comes in. Good stories need an element of fear.  Something for a hero to overcome. That hero might be the consumer or the product or the business as a whole. But if all is happiness, simplicity, friendliness, and humour, what’s the point in being a hero, of wanting more than this? How can you feel powerful driving that car, or sexy travelling on that flight, or clever because you chose this brand, if there’s nothing to fear?

Nike do this well, painting the consumer as both hero and villain. Their base, lazy self doesn’t want to wake up, to run, to push up that hill. Can their strong, inner hero win out? Yes they can. Likewise, the anti-bank narrative taken up by new financial technology (fintech) companies often paint themselves as ‘Jack’ characters going up against fearsome ‘Giants’. A traditional story becomes a strategy rooted in the potential to conquer fear.

By identifying what seems scary, the opportunity to expose ways to overcome the monster emerges. This encourages people to believe in the story, to come to their own conclusions and hopefully align their opinions with that of the brand. Since they value this self-made deduction more than those shoved down their throats, the business’ story then becomes their story. Loyalty is created. A reputation with consumers established.

Crucially different from the fear inspired by some political propaganda or scaremongering, it’s important to note that this kind of fear is also distinct from manipulation. Using fear is not a way of coercing consumers into falling for a web of lies.  It is, however, a means of a businesses connecting on a human level with the people it needs to connect with and a way of cohering a brand with both left-brain ideas and right-brain emotions.

So whether it’s by tapping into the fear of missing out, the reality of heart disease, the creepiness of unseen germs, or just the Very Dangerous World – businesses need to really start thinking about what people fear and what story they want to tell in the age of anxiety.

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Je Suis Charlie : Journalism and Free Speech

Je Suis Charlie : 

Journalism and the Freedom of Silence and Speech

Sony was always going to release The Interview.

The story of a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the film is a bowl of provocations that is full of silliness spiced up with a splash of the satirical.

It watches like the less-hilarious cousin of the cult classic Team America, where Kim Jong Il, Un’s father, turned out to be a creepy slug-like alien dressed in a meat suit. Not seeing the funny side, North Korea responded by calling The Interview a ‘blatant act of terrorism’. This was followed by a series of cyber-attacks on Sony, which revealed important secrets like ‘not everyone loves Angelina Jolie’. Therefore, with increasing concerns about the safety of those involved, they briefly delayed the film’s release.

It could not be better publicity for a film than the potential for not being seen. Not to mention that the subject of the film was the thing trying ban it.

But they were always going to release it. More than the fact that appearing to give in to the threats of violence looked uncannily like a PR stunt, it is the right of James Franco and Seth Rogan to write, direct and make such a film.

The First Amendment protects them: the right to complete Free Speech.

Even when it offends.

It is also the same right that enshrines the rabble-rousing journalism of Charlie Hebdo, as laid down in theDeclarations of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the European Convention of Human Rights. Not quite as liberal as the First Amendment, it still prevents censorship of any written publication. This is why, although the French government may not have always appreciated the cartoons or writings of Charlie Hebdo, they still defended their Voltaire-inspired, Enlightenment right to freedom of expression.

People worldwide are breaking out their pens to pay tribute to #CharlieHebdo shooting victims: http://t.co/wDdqaVkYev pic.twitter.com/TtlxaVvUF8
— CNN (@CNN) January 8, 2015

This by @davpope #JeSuisCharlie pic.twitter.com/CbszTgf1EZ
— kristyan benedict (@KreaseChan) January 7, 2015

With the murders of two policemen and ten of Charlie Hebdo’s staff, including the political satirist Charbonnier, the threats against writers and their right to create art came into full relief.

Perceived as a deliberate attack on freedom, within hours Salman Rushdie had released an online statement. The world was reminded of the ten years he spent in hiding, and the three translators that were killed, because of a death fatwa placed upon him after The Satanic Verses offended Iranian clergy.

Not long after, Neil Gaiman reposted a defence of free speech even when it’s ‘icky’, recalling how his own comic on based on the biblical Book of Judges nearly sent his publisher to prison, translating the attack in Paris as one aimed at making the world narrower, duller.

It reminded me of The House of Journalists.  A debut from Tim Finch, Director of Communications at IPPR, which tells the story of refugee writers finding sanctuary in an increasingly sinister House in the UK whilst the brutal backgrounds of his characters come frighteningly close to those of the Charlie Hebdo offices.

Interestingly, the narrative voice in The House of Journalists is the third person plural – ‘we’.

I’ve written a lot about this ‘we’ that now epitomises today’s socially extended sense of self and culture. I believe this ‘we’ will help Paris, and artists, and all defenders of liberalism and free speech because it is the socially-created, digitally-enabled PR response to these terrible events.

Across the world ‘Je Suis Charlie’ has trended. As hashtags, on signs, in cartoons and in articles: there is the same culture of ‘we’ witnessed when when millions of strangers poured ice water over their heads, or when ‘I Will Ride With You’ was the reaction to the siege in Australia in December.

An expression of collectivity, ‘we’ focalises social solidarity. A single message.

Some will say that social outpourings of this kind are far from useful. Remember when ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ was ridiculed for being little more than public self-aggrandisement? And not everyone liked the Ice Bucket Challenge. However, when the first reaction of artists of all kinds, people of all religions, voices of all opinions, is to create a mantra reminding the world we are in this together, there is only one way to interpret it.

As Orwell supposedly said, ‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.’

Whilst the cartoons of Charb, Wolinski and Cabu were undeniably incendiary, they were also the epitome of those human rights that we so often take for granted.

It was journalism.

It was their job, as journalists, to write. Even when each word might contain a tiny revolution, or when printing might upset us as much as it might inspire us.

“Nous sommes tous Charlie.” After all, the world without freedom of speech would be a much duller place, even if it would be less offensive.

Politically Correct Drawing never published by Charlie Hebdo

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Zoella : Who Wrote Girl Online?

Who Wrote Girl Online?

A Blog Entirely Free of Ghosts (but which I previously published here)

Ghost writers aren’t uncommon, there are very few stigmas attached to the authors that use them or the writers that eventually come forward to claim a little responsibility.

Yet Zoella has taken a break from the internet in an uncanny case of literary déjà vu.

In the same way as an online backlash forces protagonist Penny offline in Girl Online, negative responses to the ‘help’ she received from a well-known young adult writer and a high-ranking editor has made Zoe Sugg, author, take a step back from social media (NB. she has NOT quit YouTube).

Previously, I mentioned Zoe Sugg, AKA Zoella, in a blog about thought-leadership. As a leading voice for fashionistas, YouTuber’s and young people the world over; I described Zoella as part one of a group of powerful online personalities that exemplify the ‘power of we’.

The release of Zoe Sugg’s first book emphasised her enviable, much-loved status. Girl Online disappeared off shelves faster than Harry Potter, selling a record-breaking 78,109 copies in the first week.

Yet even in the early days there were a few raised eyebrows. Readers and rivals questioned whether ‘Zoe Sugg’ was merely an ‘authorial manifestation’, a name slapped onto a book that somebody else wrote.

And as the reviews came pouring in, critiquing the story that is tooth-achingly sweet and more than a little predictable, this little chink became a fissure.

I should probably admit here that I spent four hours reading this book cover-to-cover, which is why I was intrigued when Penguin Random House admitted that Zoe Sugg’s first novel was not written entirely by the YouTube sensation.

“To be factually accurate,” claimed a spokesperson, “you would need to say Zoe Sugg did not write the book Girl Online on her own.”

So she had help.

Is this really a problem?

This might answer some of your tweets! X pic.twitter.com/NCuC3VhxiG
— Zoë (@ZozeeBo) December 7, 2014

I have mixed feelings about the news, uncertain about how I feel about ghostwriting in general but also in the way the story has been handled.

Siobhan Curham, a young adult author, allegedly helped create Girl Online. Recognised in the acknowledgements as being ‘with [Zoella] ever step of the way’, it was this brief mention that has given rise to much of the speculation that Curham wrote the book. I sympathise for a ghostwriter whose novel rockets to success under the banner of somebody else’s name, however, what we need to remember is that a ghostwriter signs a contract. They agree to the terms and conditions of ghost-hood.

This means Curham would have known that she was going to sign away her rights to authorship or even co-authorship when she agreed to help Penguin Random House make Zoella’s first novel a reality. It wasn’t stolen from her and ‘thanking’ her supporters on twitter probably wasn’t best practice for a ghostwriter…

On the other hand, why didn’t the publisher think to make this information clear from the start?

Ghostwriting is a relatively common practice. In fact, going beyond the celebrity examples of Katie Price or David Beckham’s ghostwritten literature, plenty of popular novels, especially children and young adult literature, have shadow writers. R.L Stein’s children’s horror stories, Goosebumps, were ghostwritten by various writers; The Man With the Golden Gun was the first Bond novel to be written by someone other than Ian Fleming but it was not the last; and there are even unconfirmed rumours surrounding To Kill A Mockingbird’s potential link to Truman Capote.

Now, unsurprisingly, many have leapt on the opportunity to tear into Zoella for being dishonest.

However, despite the people calling Girl Online an act of fraud, or plagiarism (it is actually, by definition, neither), the sad fact is that Curham would never have received this attention if her name had been beneath the title.

Because Zoella is the name that sells. She is the entrepreneur, the personality, the businesswoman and the brand.

Whether or not she is an author, she is, and will remain, an inspiration for her fans, and a thought-leader who has carved out a niche in a world where multi-channel media reigns. With millions of subscribers who love her, an endorsement from Zoella on her YouTube channel will indubitably still be worth its weight in commercial advertising regardless of the current media scrutiny surrounding her abilities as a writer.

Zoella is taking the fall but really, if there is blame to lay, surely it should be laid upon an institution that perhaps needs a little bit of rethink. It would be nice for a ghostwriter to be recognised for their prose and for success to be shared when it is due…

…But if the story winds its way to its natural HEA, #WeLoveYouGirlOnline will be matched by #WeLoveYouZoella, Zoe Sugg will bounce back to our blue screens with a smile and the déjà vu will come full circle.

And, hopefully, Curham’s sales will skyrocket as well.

Penny discovers Girl Online is still loved by fans, (p.335)

Disclaimer: This blog is free of ghosts. We tested it with the Specter Detecter AND a PKE Meter, just for good measure. Also if you would like to read TEN MORE THINGS about why we shouldn’t be horrible to Zoe Sugg, read the piece on the Guardian by Matt Haig (author of The Humans). It is excellent. 

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