Ep 224 Trump's View on All Press is Good Press August 11, 2016

Is all publicity, good publicity.

Speaking the show about effective, speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

If you're listening to a show like this, you have no doubt heard the old cliche, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Various celebrities are said to have mouthed that in times of crisis and other times, most people in the PR world don't believe this. Most people in the media world don't really believe this. It's one of these old cliches and it just isn't true. Now, it is true, of course, that you're far better off getting lots and lots and lots of publicity all the time. And if 10% or 20% of it is negative and the vast majority is positive, you'll probably be much more well known, have a bigger brand, a much better reputation than someone who has 100% positive news coverage but only does an interview every two years because there's just lack of awareness of that competitor. So it's not that all of your media interviews have to be perfect and glowing, that all coverage of your organization has to be great all the time. It's of course okay to have a mix. Certainly if the good is far way and ahead proportionally greater than the negative coverage, you're likely to have a good reputation. But there are some anomalies to this. One of the most interesting tweets ever put out by Donald Trump, I believe, and a few other observers have waited on this as well. This happened during the 2016 Republican convention, July of 2016, there was all the controversy surrounding Melania Trump's plagiarism of certain sections of Michelle Obama's speech, something that 36 hours later was officially recognized and apologized for. But here's what Donald Trump put out in the middle of this controversy. This is on Twitter Donald Trump's account. The real Donald Trump good news is Melania's speech got more publicity than any in the history of politics, especially if you believe that all press is good press. Now, I wasn't the first observer to point this out, that Donald Trump genuinely does seem to be someone who believes that there's no such thing as bad press. He absolutely loves the media. He's been known for calling up some reporters who just trashed him, but his face got on the COVID of the magazine and say, hey, great job, fantastic article. When can we do another one? Shocking and surprising the reporter. Now, the other observation that some pundits have made is that Donald Trump doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between various types of Good publicity. And again, in his view, it's almost a measure of the clips to have a pre digital analogy, it's just about the total amount of coverage and the actual content doesn't matter at all. This is an extreme view. Now I'm recording this before November election. If Donald Trump becomes president, then he can have the last laugh and he can say his strategy was the right attitude to have towards the media. It also depends on the industry you're in. If you are a chewing gum upstart new company and you get 99% of the people to hate you, but 1% will switch to your brand, your messaging may be fine. Bad publicity could work if you are a talk radio host, let's say Rush LIMBAUGH, for example, 20 million listeners in a week in a country of 300 million. So. And some of those are repeats. So. So he has at best 7% of the country, maybe 5% of the country listening to him. In the talk radio world, if you have lots and lots of publicity and most of it's negative and 95% of the world hates you, but 5% love you, then you can make the case that almost any publicity is good publicity. Just getting known because. Because if you have 5% of the world listening to your talk radio show, guess what? You can make about $50 million a year or more. Politics is a little bit different in that on election Day, you have to appeal to, with very rare exceptions, like in 2000, you have to appeal to 50% of the voters plus one more vote, otherwise you're out of business. So I do think you have to worry a little more about wildly negative publicity. And the Melania Trump thing, it was negative because it was okay, here's someone we don't know much about and she's caught stealing, number one. Number two, she said she wrote it all herself and it now appears to be a lie. So you're caught stealing, you're caught lying. Next, you're stealing from Moshell Obama. The Democrat, the current president's wife was of a different party, ostensibly a completely different ideology. So it begs the question, do you secretly admire the very people you say your husband says are the enemy and are horrible people and have horrible philosophies? So it was so negative at so many different levels. Are people really going to vote against Donald Trump for it? No, I don't think so. But political conventions are rare, rare things. They're rare opportunities for a political party to rebrand itself, to communicate core messages. That's why traditionally Republican parties and Democratic Party conventions have had themes for a particular night and they've had their highest profile political office holders give speeches that are all a little different, but all hit the same theme. If they have celebrities, they're typically people who are the most respected in their field, such as Clint Eastwood back in 2012 give speeches. Donald Trump didn't do that. Time will tell if that's an effective strategy or not. But to have Melania Trump's story dominate the first two days of a convention and not themes of what Trump wants to do when he's president, not more critiques of why he doesn't like Democratic administrations. And Hillary Clinton has to be defined as a failure more in just a moment.

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Most people in my experience in public life and the corporate world, if you're looking at this from a spectrum and it's at zero, is the position that all publicity is good publicity. And 100 is the position that says don't do any interview whatsoever unless you're guaranteed it's 100% fantastic. Positive coverage from a news outlet that's friendly, from a reporter we know, love and trust. If that's the continuum, Donald Trump is basically a 1 or 0. And in my experience, most organizations are more in the 50, 60, 70 range. They are much closer to the side of being so fearful of negative coverage that they turn down a lot of media interviews. To me, that is a problem too. It's definitely a problem if you think all publicity is good publicity. Because if everybody has a low opinion of you and no one will be your customer or vote for you or contribute to you, then, well, look at Charles Manson. Charles Manson's had a lot of publicity. It doesn't make him rich. It does make him famous or infamous. But here he is in prison 50, 45 years later. So it by definition can't be good that all publicity, or can't be true that all publicity is good. Otherwise Charles Manson would be our PR role model. On the other hand, there are lots of professionals out there who have world class expertise. Nobody's ever heard of them because they have turned down every media opportunity in their life for fear that it wouldn't be perfect, wouldn't be 100% great. The biggest problem I believe for most individuals, consultants, small businesses, is not negative publicity, not a negative story. The biggest problem by far is obscurity. Nobody knowing you. So please keep in mind this balance. Yes, it's certainly possible, as Trump's tweet points out, to go too far in the extreme of all publicity is good publicity. But make sure you don't overcorrect too far. The other direction of saying no to media just because you're fearful of it not being 100% perfect. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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