The art of a good PR story is knowing how to spin it with Disney moments
Snow White & The 7 Dwarfs Before the Disney PR Spin! Ho White.
What Would Snow White Look Like Without Her Disney Moments? She was a single girl, living with 6 miners and a Doctor! I’m just saying, without a song and a tap dance the story loses its PG rating and turns into bad Skinamax late night TV. And, no, I am not proud to have had to tart up a fairy tale to teach public relations strategy. Not proud at all…
Bill Gates was a college drop out that started a world-class multi-billion-dollar company. Jewel lived in a van down by a river and hung out with street gangs before she made it big yodeling. Kurt Cobain camped under a bridge for a while before fronting the most famous grunge band ever. Mrs. Fields was a desperate housewife before she baked a batch of cookies that changed the world and set the stage for more housewives like Martha Stewart to turn baking into a billion dollar business. And one of the greatest single mother stories of all time, JK Rowling was living in poverty on government assistance until she wrote Harry Potter! Great stories, right? Makes you feel like you too can spin hay into gold. But here’s the kicker, each and every one of these stories is PR spin – a Disneyfied version of the truth.
Let’s take Disney out of the details:
- Bill Gates’ parents were wealthy and sent him to private schools, the school he dropped out of was Harvard and the business he started was initially funded by his money bags parents.
- Jewel CHOSE to live in her van because her parents were hippies that CHOSE to live off the land in Alaska and she actually graduated from the $25K/year Interlochen Arts Academy in 1992 so somewhere along the line, her family wasn’t exactly as impoverished as she claims! (It’s more an Into the Wild story than a “I’m poor” story when you hear the details). Besides, don’t all rock stars have to live in a car or van to call themselves rock stars? Seriously, there’s even a site dedicated to this phenomenon BetterThanTheVan.com.
- Mrs. Fields’ husband was millionaire investment banker, Randy Fields, who bankrolled her and got all his millionaire friends to help market the company. (FYI- this chick might be crazy, she claims to have invented the cookie.)
- JK Rowling actually planned to quit her teaching job and go on welfare so she could write her book. Hell, she basically made welfare part of her business plan.
Now, I’m not saying these people didn’t work hard to get where they are, I’m just saying that the spin on their stories is world class and we can all learn something from each of them. If you want to be a legend, get your PR story right! Strategize it, stick to the formula and start telling it.
What Separates Your PR “Story” from Your Marketing and Advertising?
Just so you don’t get confused, Public Relations is NOT marketing and NOT about messaging. It is about the story and third party credibility. Public Relations is the art of managing the communication between an organization or public figure and it’s public or fans. What separates it from marketing and advertising is that it typically uses third party outlets and media sources to get the message to the market and give third party legitimacy to the story. Think about it, if my mom or I say “I’m great” you expect that and take it with a grain of salt, if the New York Times extols my virtues or I am a guest on a news or radio show, you give my greatness some credibility. Why am I talking about PR right now? Because PR is where the “spin” begins, where the legend of a celebrity, company or brand’s greatness starts and how that reputation is managed throughout the years and even during a crisis. PR works hand in hand with marketing but is NOT marketing. PR has a fluid audience of specific reach where marketing tends to target it’s audience based on demographics and psychographics in a more general way. The first step in PR is creating the story.
The Art of Creating The Story
If you are the “little guy” right now and want to make your business or personality blow up, you must start with “the story” – “your story.” Here’s where many people go wrong. From a PR perspective, we don’t want your company or band’s elevator pitch with revenue models and product descriptions. We want what the public will want to make the story viral. And the public wants that sexy, underdog, interesting, made it out of the ghetto or jail to Madison Avenue story. Every good personality or brand has a “story” and not just any story, the RIGHT story. That underdog, near mythical, elevator pitch that just makes people want to weep, smile or laugh, but in the end just makes them feel good about your success. You need a story that shows you as an everyday normal guy or gal that somehow overcame the odds through hard work and sheer determination to live the dream. Now, here’s what most people don’t tell you. That story is just spin. It’s usually grounded somewhere in truth but with a few added Disney moments and/or character arcs. A good story is about 1-2 sentences and completely formulaic!
Ask Yourself The Right Questions to Get The Right Story
The spin is pretty formulaic and does not require a high priced Publicist. You start by simply asking yourself the right questions. One of the very first I do with any celebrity, executive, brand or musician I work with is find out what really makes them tick. I strip out the success part, the music, the talent, the product, the company and I ask very specific and personal questions like:
- Where were you born? How did you grow up? What was your family like? What were your friends like? What was your favorite thing about school?
- What about your family influenced you to become a musician or work in computers or start an energy company (etc)?
- What is the best thing that has ever happened in your life – describe that moment.
- What is the worst thing that has ever happened in your life – describe that moment.
- Tell me about your company or band and how you started it and any struggles you went through?
- Did you have a mentor or an inspiration for your work? What about this person inspired you?
Obviously the list goes on, but you get the idea. So, start asking yourself a ton of questions to get at the heart of who you are and why you do what you do and how you came to be who you are. You want people to relate to you so think about the struggles, failures and hardships you had to overcome to get where you are or where you plan to go. People like people who overcome the odds because it gives them hope they, too, can overcome their circumstances.
Find Something About Yourself or Your Company Will Inspire People
If you only ask yourself about your music, movies, company or product, you’ll never find that really compelling story or the character arc that helps your fans and customers relate to you and your success deserved. You need to find those two sentences about yourself or your company that will inspire people. And that is exactly what a good PR story does. It inspires people. It tells them that if they struggle long enough, if they believe in themselves when all others have lost hope, they, too, can make it big. Why do you need to spin your story to inspire people? Because it emotionally engages them in your success, it makes them feel good that you had that success instead of resent you for it and more importantly, it makes them WANT to spread that story and share it with others.
Come on, think about it. Microsoft makes computer software. That is just not a sexy story. But you add a geeky kid, holding his V card all through high school, head down in a computer that dropped out of college to fandangle his way into the upper echelons of IBM to start the most successful and well known computer software companies in the world – you have PR gold. That’s a very sexy, Revenge of the Nerds story that gives geeks everywhere hope!
The Most Common Formulas for Good PR
From rags to riches: boy or girl from humble beginnings, living in poverty rises above his/her obstacles and becomes a somebody or launches a successful company.
Chris Gardener, a struggling and homeless single father by sheer determination becomes a stock broker and multi-millionaire chronicled in the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness.
Through a great loss, drug addiction, jail time or personal struggle comes a life change that inspires a person to become a better person and be a success.
Consider Johnny Cash in Walk The Line. He came from poverty, struggled to get his music heard, lost his family and finally overcame drug addiction to find true love with June Carter.
Nobody believes in them but they struggle against the odds and against all those that told them they would fail to succeed.
Vince Pepalli, the fan that never played college football makes it to the Philadelphia Eagles in an open try-out.
They Never Gave Up, no matter how stacked against them the odds were.
They worked harder than everyone else, they let people call them crazy and they won by sheer force of spirit. This is the Rocky Balboa moment. Or, to draw from real life – Miracle moment. In 1980, the US Hockey team won over the greatest team of all time the Soviets in one of the greatest underdog sports tales of all time.
Examples of Good and Bad PR Stories
Good PR: Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas was a child star, raised in a strong family but fell into drugs in the music scene of the 90s and admitted to being a bona fide meth head while with the band Wild Orchid. But she was able to overcome her drug addiction and rebuild her career to become a happily married and successful recording artist as both a band member and soloist. Her story contains childhood on a silver platter, then hardship, then change, then hard work, then success. Her story is very similar to that of Drew Barrymore who also struggled to overcome the childhood stardom, drug addiction and a bad Hollywood reputation to rebuild her successful acting and producing career through hard work. Hmmm, can you see a formula there?
Bad PR: Paris Hilton. Paris never struggled a day in her life (outside of when she tries to think, sing, act or cries her way out of jail). She’s a rich bitch that dropped out of school to model, party and make a sex tape. She has so much money some retarded A&R guy let her make an album and some other casting yahoo let her “act” in a few movies. Paris can never un-spin this story. Public opinion is we don’t like her, we resent her success and we can’t forgive her for any mistake she will ever make because we cannot relate to her. And honestly, ever since Perez Hilton asked her what she thought of people calling her a “fart in a mitten” I can’t stop finding new ways to work her into my blog posts as an example of failure.
References: 6 Inspiring Rags to Riches Stories (That Are Bullshit) Yes, I used Cracked.com as a reference. I never said this was fool proof journalism.
A real reference from the grand daddy of all PR: King of Spin: Edward Bernays
Special Thanks to @JDStein for indulging me in a very disturbing conversation regarding Snow White, Dwarves, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policies in the Dwarf community and Bambi. It was a great inspiration in for this post, OK, and an excuse to use the Ho White pic. And we finally answered the question why a Doc (an educated medical professional) lives with 6 miners – he’s the only one who can write script for Penicillin. <- seriously, that anomaly in the Dwarf household has nagged at me for years.
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