You’ve gotta be a little nuts attempting to shape opinion. But I’m still at it. Can’t seem to break the habit.
That’s me, still at it.
You can spend your entire adult life and career working at shaping opinion, without really knowing, for sure, if you’re succeeding.
Gauging success — even with metrics, and all — can be daunting. But because shaping opinion — the psychology of it — is so fascinating, soldiering on is what you keep on doing.
I might have had some wins when I was in corporate PR. We didn’t have fancy metrics, early on, and even when we did, later on, like many new things, metrics had to percolate a bit. I recall them being rather primitive when they were initially rolled out. And since public opinion shifts constantly, even victories can be fleeting. But you get hooked, anyway, getting people to think things over, if you can.
I had bankers squeezing inside a VW Beetle, years ago, attempting to shape opinion of a big corporation, by getting a little outrageous, cramming buttoned-down, pinstriped bankers inside a compact car. College students and others had done that, back in the 1950s, setting records for squeezing the most people inside tiny cars and phone booths. The media showed up to see what the bankers could do.
Did we shape opinion that day, in the early 1990s? Maybe some. Did we break a record? Not quite.
That was a one-off PR event, because how many times can you squeeze bankers inside tight spaces? And you need to find ways to somehow reinforce messaging and impressions, so the general public will have a favorable opinion of something — in this case, a business firm — more than only once.
That’s some of the psychology behind shaping opinion — reinforcing impressions and messaging — if my recollection of psychology from a couple of psych courses I had, when I was in school, is correct.
Anyhow, that new cuss word I had in mind, recently… the political word ‘caucus,’ with an adjective, like ‘flaming,’ preceding it… ‘flaming caucus’… I so wanted to use that expletive, more than once, here in the Daily Post, to reinforce impressions of a proposed, new caucus for the House of Representatives, geared to “Anglo-Saxon traditions”. Such a caucus was headline news when Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, apparently, were about to bring it to the fore, a few days ago.
And then, when there was much consternation, the two reps tried pulling back, but the Anglo-Saxon caucus was too far out of the bag, so to speak, and so, I inserted ‘flaming Anglo-Saxon caucus’ in a second column, here in the Daily Post. And maybe with this next column in what may be a series, the third time will be the charm that keeps on influencing impressions of the caucus.
As well as impressions of the politicians associated with it?