In PR news today, legendary image guru Michael Deaver has died. He was one of Ronald Reagan’s top advisers and a master at orchestrating the photo op.
I saw a clip in school about him that was supposed to be a “negative” story about how he would place Reagan in front of the camera drinking beer with the people and passing jars of jelly beans around the table in cabinet meetings. His reply was something about how that story only perpetuated his strategy. People saw him drinking beer with the people and sharing his jelly beans with his cabinet members, so it didn’t matter if the news story criticized it as PR spin.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Literally. There’s now an entire industry dedicated to “the image” in politics . . . they’re called advances or an advance. Every presidential candidate who has a team with any concept of image strategy has a team of people that follows the candidate’s exact schedule in “advance” of their appearances. Their job is to set the stage, to create the atmosphere and to make sure that the pictures and images people end up seeing in print or on television are in line with the image they want to surround the politician. Everything from hunting trips to factory visits has a purpose.
Journalists have caught on (see photo of Barack Obama and see photo of Mitt Romney). You normally don’t see photos that are taken this far out from the crowd because they’re not as interesting, but in most cases this is exactly what the campaign crowds are like . . . they’re not crowds at all. In the past you’d see close-up shots (and still do) that make it “feel” like a crowd.
