I'm Your Puppet
Do you think Donald trump texts his own tweets? You know, grabs a spare five minute of his time whilst he’s doodling at the desk in The Oval Office, whips out his iPhone and with his –famously- big hands types in an approximation of the thought that’s buzzing round in his head like an angry wasp in that particular moment – North Korea Going to be in Big trouble with new nukes test, or FBI Guy had even worse dyed hair than me! … Of course he doesn’t, you can be sure of that. For one thing, there would be more typo’s and mistakes, and a whole daily raft of retractions. Besides, he’s just given us all definitive proof that he is nowhere near them, of which more later.
Trump has his account, sure, and theoretical ownership and authorship of all his social media. Except at his level it’s all done for him, for it is the gig of his Comms people to hang out and snatch enough back-of-the-taxi moments with him to gather the raw input of his musings, collate these into something approaching a coherent philosophy, and then get them out to feed the channels – briefings, conferences, photo opps, social media, whatever.
The Channels. Forgive me for showing my age but there was once a near mystical, pre-industrial revolution age when there was but one channel, and it was called the Press Release. Your Comms/P.R. career depended on your ability to knock one out that was provocative enough to get noticed and the media to run with, but grounded enough to not lead to you or client being sued. Draft releases would circulate around Corporate H.Q.’s for amendment until late into the night in the struggle between that particular yin and yang, Hari-kari was commonplace if the office junior faxed out the wrong version by mistake. The Channel ; my fist day as a bright young thing at Scotland’s then largest PR agency; queuing at the fax machine behind someone cranking out the release proclaiming National Independent Fishmonger’s Day. Hey, sometimes yang won hands down.
So, to today’s channels. I was speaking at the weekend to a small businessman – I say small, but he too had big hands, so know problems there either – who tells me he’s had consultants in who have berated him for not keeping up with the channels. So, he’s only just opened his business’s twitter and Facebook accounts and launched these with a burst of frenetic activity. Great, I say, What’s the Message?
And I have another friend who runs a newly mutualised social enterprise in London. Does great things for social inclusion for youth in the community. And spends thousands for someone to tweet about it. The message, and how you measure if it’s getting across and helping your business? Hey Chris, you are comms, don’t you get it? Well, no. I don’t understand how two otherwise intelligent, sentient and admirable people have been lead to think that belting out a stream of random missives is a business obligation that must be fulfilled, like filing a tax return or health and safety. You shouldn’t go near it until you have worked out the narrative you are trying to build, and worked out how that will help your business. Would you stop strangers in the street, I ask, interrupt them and say, ‘I’ve got to speak to you’ if you actually had nothing to say? Of course not, but this is social media, you’ve got to be active to keep your profile up or search optimisations optimised or whatever. Sure, I concede. Why not tweet about National Independent Fishmonger’s Day, it will be just as effective. Without narrative, it’s noise. How does noise help anyone except those who don’t want to be heard?
Which brings me back to the President of the United States of America. Seemingly, right now, he’s hacked off with his comms team and its leader, Sean Spicer. They don’t do a good enough job of corralling his thoughts and deeds and presenting them as a coherent narrative, so there are some sackings on the way. And how do we know this? An off-the-record briefing to senior journalists.
Curious, isn’t it, that he didn’t just tweet it ?