Tuesday March 19, 2024
 

The Highest Kind Of PR

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy conducted the highest form of public relations in his appearances and speech to Congress.  He was rallying support for the war effort.  He was thanking the US for its backing. He was laying down a marker of defiance to Russia.  In all these, he spoke a mixture of Ukrainian and English, but no one could doubt his sincerity or his message.  He won Congress over.  President Biden was already on his side.  By the time, he gave a Ukrainian flag to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the House chamber and accepted an American flag in return, his triumph was complete.  Now, he has returned to the bleak countryside of bombing and artillery and destruction, but he brings with him the visible backing of America, an essential force to win the war.  

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Value And Perception

This baseball card just sold for $12.6 million.  One wonders why. It is a piece of cardboard covered in ink on one side, and it was originally sold in a package of bubble gum.  Apparently the buyer values rarity and is willing to pay for it.  It will be interesting when the buyer sells the card in the future if he will get anything near what he paid.  This event is a text book example of value and perception.  If one is willing to pay large sums for an item, it is because he perceives it as worth the cost.  It makes no difference what others might think.  Even if the card is rare and perhaps, one of a kind, the perception of value is hard to understand.  But there is no telling what people think things are worth.  

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Coat tails

Republican senate candidate J.D. Vance has won the primary vote in Ohio with former president Trump’s endorsement.  Trump, it seems, still has coat tails in the party and that should worry Democratic voters.  As much as the public might like to see Trump disappear, he isn’t going away and his messages of rage must be answered.  Trump understands voter anger and plays to it.  His version of unity is division.  There won’t be peace in the country until his voice is muted and that of his hangers-on.  The United States faces turmoil for years to come and loss of a progressive agenda.  

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Flaunting It.

While one might be cautious about flaunting a rocket launch that has yet to take place, there are no second thoughts on medicines that have been shown to work.  Thus, Pfizer broadly published final data on a new pill to alleviate COVID symptoms.  It has been shown to be 89% effective in double-blind testing.  Pfizer has now shared its data with the FDA and is looking forward to full approval for its use.  It is a significant breakthrough in combating the pandemic.  Pfizer deserves the honor and reputation it will reap.  It is the best PR and puts the pharma on another level among its peers.  The company can rightly claim the prowess of its R&D and its science.  That will boost its stock price and embed its name with consumers the world over.  Kudos.

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Pointless

This scientist wrote that the universe has no meaning beyond itself.  It is pointless and there is no deity behind its creation.  You can imagine what believers think.  They have argued with him from the moment he penned the statement.  Yet, how do you communicate the existence of a God in a world where everything emanated from a Big Bang and continues according to natural laws that need no divinity?  It is not easy, especially since science has become a secular endeavor.  Belief is personal and stems from a need for justice in a world where there is little.  The rich get richer and the poor die young.  The innocent are accused and self-interest is the rule.  It’s too harsh of a world for believers to accept, so, according to scientists, they invent a deity who makes things right before and after death.  The scientist’s view is bleak and without hope.  Religion refuses to accept it.  The two sides talk past one another and leave people confused.  

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Making It Real

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol started off with testimony from four police officers who were assaulted by the mob that day.  Testimony was harrowing and brought the ugly incident to life. This was intentional by the Congressional investigators.  They want to communicate to American citizens not to forget what happened and crimes committed.  The panel will soon descend into dry analyses of documents, readiness and fixing the blame for the uprising.  It will get political because it has to.  Instigators of the event were the President himself and Congressional leaders who supported him with fiery speeches at a rally that morning.  The question remains whether their goal was to incite the crowd to overturn the election certification in Congress that day or to inveigh against an “unfair” result.  Either way, the people responded.  Trump will not get off lightly. His supporters in Congress will continue to dub the panel as a political hack job, but the testimony of the four officers is a reminder that a mob went out of control.   

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By Force

Governments and medical associations are calling for a mandate to force unvaccinated health care workers to get the jab.  The move is occurring from New York to California and is an acknowledgement that persuasion has failed.  All the coaxing, prompting, jawboning, inviting has come to naught for tens of thousands of nurses, doctors, aids and others who resolutely stood their ground and refused.  Authorities are not taking the mandate lightly. There is a worry that some healthcare workers will quit rather than be vaccinated.  And that has been the case but the numbers who have left so far are vanishingly small.  One wonders why this hadn’t happened sooner and an answer is politics.  Republicans were waiting to pounce on any move to force compliance, calling such orders an abridgement of personal freedom.  With the variant of COVID growing madly, governors and mayors are no longer willing to wait.  They have issued do-it-or-else orders.  Communicators take note. There are times when persuasion must yield to the rod.  

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Bipartisanship?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is vowing to move ahead with a Jan.6 riot investigation even if Republicans boycott the process.  The two sides are increasingly nasty to each other.  The GOP is moving to boycott the probe after Pelosi denied two Republican congressmen seats on the committee.  Pelosi has vowed to move ahead with or without the elephants.  The perception is that of quarreling children.  “I’m taking my ball and going home.”  “Yah, we’ll play without you.”  President Biden is seeking bipartisanship in the two houses, but his quest seems fruitless for the time being.  The two sides have taken positions welded in iron and are talking past one another without listening.  They aren’t communicating.  They are posturing, and it is a bad example for the American public.  Communications requires a measure of civility when there is a balance of power.  That is sadly missing in Congress.  

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Bipartisanship?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is vowing to move ahead with a Jan.6 riot investigation even if Republicans boycott the process.  The two sides are increasingly nasty to each other.  The GOP is moving to boycott the probe after Pelosi denied two Republican congressmen seats on the committee.  Pelosi has vowed to move ahead with or without the elephants.  The perception is that of quarreling children.  “I’m taking my ball and going home.”  “Yah, we’ll play without you.”  President Biden is seeking bipartisanship in the two houses, but his quest seems fruitless for the time being.  The two sides have taken positions welded in iron and are talking past one another without listening.  They aren’t communicating.  They are posturing, and it is a bad example for the American public.  Communications requires a measure of civility when there is a balance of power.  That is sadly missing in Congress.  

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Standards

In the tech world, developing a standard that everyone subscribes too, and more importantly honors in development, is hard.  There is always an urge to fiddle, to adapt it to one’s own devices although that makes them incompatible with others’ equipment.  That’s why it is cautiously heartening to see Amazon signing on for an open-source standard for home speakers.   Amazon might not have invented the field but it made it popular and a highly useful device that takes the place of a number of household tools from alarm clocks to weather stations to information resources to music and more.  Amazon’s move is not just good business but smart PR.  It knows what customers need and is willing to give it to them rather than sitting on its technology and refusing to accommodate. 

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