By Fraser P. Seitel
To its organizers, its supporters, and the media that follow it, “Occupy Wall Street,” the nearly two-month-old grassroots protest movement, occupying major cities in this country and around the world, has been a great success.
For one thing, the movement has attracted copious press coverage from a grateful media – “grateful” that there’s something else to cover beyond Rick Perry’s butchering of the English language and squandering of $17 million in campaign donations from furious fat cats. For another, the movement has drawn praise from sympathetic commentators, most on the Bill Maher side of the aisle.
But for my money – and, admittedly, I am not particularly a fan of the stalwart citizens camping out downtown – “Occupy Wall Street” has been a dismal flop. Why? It hasn’t achieved a blessed thing, beyond attracting questionable publicity and alienating the residents and business owners around whom they’ve pitched their tents.
From a public relations perspective, the Occupy movements have come up wanting in several key areas that determine an effective and impactful organizing campaign.
And as the snows arrive and the heretofore hearty protestors begin to seek warmer climes, they might pause to consider the fateful public relations flaws that have doomed their rag tag operation from the get-go and have rendered it impotent.
Every effective movement requires a clear and simple purpose – a rallying cry to which common thinkers might attach themselves and work toward achieving.
By contrast, the rallying cries and operative themes of “Occupy Wall Street” – seem to change with each passing news cycle.
Today we’ll protest the banks. Tomorrow we’ll go after the hedge funds. Then we’ll hit those real estate moguls and perhaps the politicians. Meanwhile, any coherent purpose or goal remains elusive and, therefore, non-existent in the mind of the public.
Of course, the wealth distribution in the nation has become too much of a divide. Clearly, foreclosure processes must be revamped to help homeowners in a time of stress. Obviously, students sinking in debt need some salvation in terms of student loans.
But without clear goals, there can be no clear solutions.
And so “Occupy Wall Street” is rendered a movement of little more than big, fat, whiners (Well, maybe not “fat.”).
Participatory management is a great concept in theory but lousy in practice.
Effective organizations require strong leaders – preferably, one good one; a Steve Jobs who sets the rules and runs the show, so that all below him understand where we’re going and how we plan to get there.
Organizations that lack strong leaders – no matter how large or powerful or committed they may be – are doomed. See RIMM, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo! and the Miami Dolphins.
“Occupy Wall Street” has nobody in charge.
Participatory democracy rules the day. As one of the geniuses who organized the protest put it in defense of the leaderlessness that Occupy calls, horizontalism, “The intention is to have everyone be able to speak and be heard. But every day, there are probably hundreds of decisions being made in the dozens of working groups. What we’re trying to do is create the most participatory space possible. Then the conversation from demands can only come out of a truly democratic space.”
(And people wonder why I drink!)
The occupiers’ gibberish notwithstanding, without a leader there is little focus, and without focus, there can be little achievement.
The role of public relations spokesperson has become a pivotal one in 21st century society. The spokesman has become the go-to source for communicating the goals of an organization’s leadership.
But if the organization neither has goals nor a leader, it can’t very well have effective spokespeople.
And “Occupy Wall Street” doesn’t. In recent weeks, the protesters have tried to develop communication working groups with public relations representatives. But it hasn’t worked.
In the laizez faire encampment, every citizen is a willing spokesman, so the media can pick and choose among unemployed students, out-of-work union types, anti-one worlders, flaming anti-Semites, you name it.
The net effect of so many different spokespeople railing about so many diverse causes renders the entire exercise fruitless.
Which leads to one final public relations flaw ...
- Publicity for publicity’s sake.
In a media-saturated society, any movement worth its salt craves publicity, ink, Internet buzz, TV time.
And “Occupy Wall Street” has achieved enormous publicity. But to what end?
It started out as a movement in search of a mission. Then random representatives arose to voice concern about random issues. Lately, as the weather has turned and public attention has dissipated and although its media defenders have resisted the notion , the publicity has taken a nastier tone – arrests, internal skirmishes, law-breaking among the tents, and similar examples of anti-social behavior.
Occupy’s sole raison d’être appears to be to stay visible, perhaps until somebody somewhere figures out what the purpose of the whole sorry exercise is supposed to be.
But as publicity-seeking missiles from Kato Kaelin and Kanye West to Donald Trump and Snooki have learned – even the media eventually get tired of covering the same old, same old.
And so it will be with “Occupy Wall Street.” As the weather now turns cold and reporters have second thoughts about trodding all the way downtown for questionable purpose, the publicity bloom will soon be off the Occupy rose.
And while Occupy’s true believers will lament its passing, for those of us dumbfounded by the dumb founders of this pointless nuisance movement, we say, “Bring on the snow.” |