The Art of Spin, Media Doctoring and Marketing

The Economist, May 22nd, 2008, lists a very interesting book review on page 95 of the print edition, which I subscribe at my house but this is also available online on their website, without my login access, which means it is free from copyright regulations.

You can read the article Marketing Maestros. It tells of a very interesting story of Ned Kennan and I'll quote directly from the article so that I don't take away the fun and the zing of reading it-->

IN 1978 the mayor of Boston, Kevin White, was told some uncomfortable truths. The people of Boston did not like him. “They view you as an aloof, arrogant, son-of-a-bitch bastard,” said Ned Kennan, a pollster brought in to help Mr White win re-election. Mr Kennan had been using a tool that was still new in the late 1970s—the focus group. Instead of asking superficial questions of many people, he asked detailed questions of a few. The more he learnt about the nuances of their feelings for his client, the mayor, he figured, the better the odds of persuading Bostonians to vote for him.

Mr Kennan learnt his trade hawking Listerine mouthwash. The company's own polling revealed only obvious facts, such as that people gargled after eating garlic and onions or smoking cigarettes. Mr Kennan's focus groups told him more. He discovered that mouthwash users were play-by-the-rules types who followed the instructions on a product's label. The Listerine label told them to pour the mouthwash into the bottle cap before gargling. Mr Kennan suggested that sales would be boosted if the company made the bottle cap 25% bigger.

Using the same kind of research, Mr Kennan and his colleagues, David Sawyer and Scott Miller, quickly found a way to market Mayor White. They realised they could not stop people from thinking he was an arrogant bully. So they tried to persuade them that this was how he got things done. “Knowing which arms to twist and hands to hold: that's what it takes to be mayor,” went one slogan. In 1979, having trailed by 26 points in the polls, Mr White was re-elected.

Communication Structure and Design for a Course in Corporate Communications

This is a short preview of a Course that I plan to modify and teach.

• Design a corporate communications strategy that strikes a healthy balance between complete centralization and total decentralization.

• Create special mechanisms to encourage the upward transmission of information and opinion, including bad news.

• Create a special advisory or “ombudsperson” role for someone who is free to roam the organization and can “speak truth to power” without fear of retribution.

• Avoid excessive reliance on formal communication channels and messages; make effective use of informal communication—from the design of orientation programs to ongoing work processes.

• Establish double communication linkages between each hierarchical level of the organization and the ones immediately above and below it.

• Cultivate liaisons between departments that are traditionally distant from or in conflict with one another (e.g., marketing and production).

• Ensure that leaders or managers of units have strong relations with superiors at least two levels above them.

• Formulate projects that will require the meaningful coordination of multiple units of the organization. And, develop multiple communication networks throughout the organization.

• Limit the size of work teams, task forces, and working committees to 9 members; the same principle applies to the effective span of control or number supervised.

• To the extent possible, design or redesign workplaces so as to foster group interaction.

• View new communication and computer technologies in a complementary role with respect to other means of communication, rather than seeing technology as complete substitute for non-mediated forms of communication or as a panacea for organizational problems.

• Be attuned to the inevitable phases in the development of a group or organization, so that no structure is seen as necessarily permanent and such that flexibility can be maintained.