Political PR -- when a political candidate are off message

You are the PR director for a political candidate who has decided to autonomously Tweet and post to Facebook. Some of his/her Tweets/posts are off message and controversial and are receiving criticism. What is your response and why?

Firstly, whatever a politician says, he/she will receive criticism. When it comes to misunderstanding or ambiguity of messages sent on Twitter and Facebook, he/she needs to articulate his/her stance, in order to let people understand what he/she is really talking about. It's also necessary to explain the previous posts and make them on message. If he/she does not explain anything, other people are very likely to exaggerate and distort the information, and make it even more misunderstood.


In reality, politicians may delete posts. But sometimes it may not be a good idea to do so. Because information distributes really fast through the Internet and it is impossible to solve problems simply by deleting posts -- some people must have already copy and paste the posts. Quite likely, people may think the politician is escaping from what he/she have done if the posts were deleted. Clarifying misunderstanding is probably the best way in this situation.


Then, I will strongly suggest the candidate reviewing his/her tweets and posts on Facebook very carefully before publishing them. He/she should make sure everything post online is clear and on message. If it possible, asking assistants or counselor to view posts first. Just like when you are doing mathematics exercise, it will be more difficult for you to discover mistakes than it for other people. 


Apologize if necessary, especially when some posts have misled the public.


Deleting posts may be considered if the posts will jeopardize the party he/she represents, or the candidate cannot explain well on previous posts. But even posts are deleted, the candidate still need to clarify what he/she really wanted to say, which must be on message this time. Also, he/she needs to make statement on reasons of deleting previous posts. Then people may view deleting posts as a gesture of admitting mistakes and willing to make it right.

Benefits or pitfalls? When donating time and resources in PR.

I’ve heard someone talking about public relations (PR) when I decided to apply a graduate school. Some companies spent a lot of money in PR in order to get them more attention from the public, obtain good images (although we may think obtaining a good image really depends on sound products or service that a company can provide), and build good relationships with the public.

By sending pitch letters to reporters, conducting campaigns, redesigning logos and slogans and applying all the other strategies and tactics, PR practitioners have spent a great deal of time and used all kinds of resources to do their work.

What are the public relations benefits of donating time and resources?

In my point of view, the benefits will be the results that you are trying to achieve—get more publicity, manage a crises, receive donations and many other different goals.

These are all very ideal situations and PR practitioners are hired to reach these goals. To take an example of getting more publicity, all kinds of tactics are used nowadays. Every time when I watch a video, there will be a advertisement before the video starts. I have to wait till it finishes. And just through these a few seconds, a brand, a new movie or a new product have entered into my brain.

However, the benefits are not necessarily proportional to time and resources donated.

Think about our non-profit client for the research class, Hiscock Legal Aid Society. It has a nice and well organized website, blogs and media pitch for every event they organized. However, they have undergone lack of donors for a long time.

Invisibility is one of the results even PR is operated. What makes things worse is PR  may also jeopardize the image of an organization or a person.

Recently, one of my friends is complaining about how some companies misuse social networking websites to promote their products. When a Internet user click one of the “new events” on their homepage, the page is actually not how it appears on the “new events”. Instead, it goes to the social website of a company or a product. It looks like a computer virus because as soon as you enter that webpage, you automatically add it as your “friend”. And it is very hard to remove this “friend” from your friend list.

These companies probably want to get their products being noticed by more net users. However, this is absolutely a bad and unethical way to do this, and people are only going to get mad on these companies and their products.

Benefits or pitfalls? It really depends on how you donate time and resources rather than how many you donate them.

Finally, there is a video for you. Maybe you can get some ideas from it.

Have a nice weekend.