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You could divide the many excellent PR firms with foreign accounts — countries, companies or associations — eyeing our coming election into two key groups.
Group A's focus: Get ready now for action later. Let’s make educated guesses about who may be the Administration and Congressional leaders who can mean millions or billions, and let’s compile dossiers on each potential decider.
Group B's focus: Let’s get started on a project now before the elections, so millions of Americans will love us and want us to join us in fighting those who want to kill Americans and kill our families, and helping those who help the safety and incomes of American families and our people.
It’s Passive PR vs. Active PR: use the client’s budget for guesses about who will have the power or use the budget to start a project that turns millions of Americans into fans of the client that may today be little known or understood.
I’ve suggested that one way to create millions of fans — and better minds than mine may suggest better ways — is to fund a health research project against cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s or something else most people care about deeply, so publics worldwide think: “Yes! God bless these people!”
An obvious opportunity — and perhaps a less obvious opportunity might be even better — would be to fund a major anti-cancer project to “eliminate blood cancer,” “eliminate childhood cancer,” or “eliminate prostate cancer” at America’s famed Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which has many anti-cancer research projects in progress or soon underway. Becoming part of a life-saving effort could win a country worldwide media coverage and public gratitude.
The announcement press briefing would show your President and world-famous doctors from Memorial Sloan Kettering announcing how big the problem is today in America and worldwide, how the public can try to avoid or at least make early detection of this cancer, what the doctors hope to accomplish with this project, how many lives the doctors and your client hope to save, and when you hope to have the next press briefing to announce progress.
The client thanks the doctors with feeling for devoting their lives to public health, and the doctors thank the client for helping to make this important research project possible.
If “symptoms to watch for” is part of the announcement press briefing, you could literally get a billion people worldwide to feel their necks or wherever for a lump. Judge whether they’d be grateful as hell to realize that if they find a lump and God forbid it turns out to be cancer, you re sponsoring research at the world’s top cancer center to try getting rid of that cancer.
“Let’s think about this,” Group A PR firms might think about this kind of idea but a Group B PR firm might say, “Let’s DO this!”
We can each of us judge which choice about a project to win massive public gratitude -- thinking about it or doing it -- is more likely to bring a foreign country more enthusiastic success with the incoming Administration and Congress.
Ron Levy is a veteran New York communications pro.
Husch Blackwell Strategies has added FleishmanHillard alum Michael Slatin as a principal in its public affairs group.
Rory Cooper, a veteran Republican operative and policy specialist, has joined Teneo’s Washington office as senior managing director in its strategy & communications practice.
Brian Fallon, who served as national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run, is signing on next month as Vice President’s Kamala Harris’ campaign communications director.
TikTok is nothing more than a Chinese propaganda tool that poses “a grave threat to America’s national security and, in particular, impressionable children and young adults,” say two Congressmen who want the platform registered as a foreign agent.
Public Strategies Washington has added Abbie Sorrendino, a former aide to now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
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