This may be the first time anyone has ever tried to link two such disparate practices as jazz and Public Relations, but bear with me a bit and I think you’ll see that the comparison is useful and revealing.

The first principle of jazz is: “mean what you say”. If you cannot commit yourself completely to a musical statement, if you cannot breathe yourself fully into your sound, your solo, your story - then you will fail as a jazz musician. You have to believe in yourself before others can believe in you.

Now this principle runs directly counter to the popular notion of the public relations practitioner as a ’spin doctor’, i.e. as a shill, a sophist whose duplicitousness is a given and whose silvery speech and sly strategies are sold to the highest bidder without ethical consideration.

I’m not going to argue that such spin doctors aren’t real. Obviously they are, and I despise them as much as any citizen should. But I will argue that there is another model, an emerging model, for public relations practice, that is aligned more closely to the core principle of jazz expression: “mean what you say”. I will even go so far as to argue that in the era of instant access to all information, this emerging model should be considered a ‘best practice’ in the PR industry.
The model I’m referring to is one based on the understanding that stories define a business organization. The stories that are told by employees to each other about their company, that are told by customers to each other, told by management to staff, told by marketers to the public, told by executives at conferences, told by the media - a company’s reputation, its business objectives, its brand, its products and services, its recruiting and much much more, are all deeply bound up in this matrix of living stories that are told by and about a company. Someone needs to be thinking about those stories - as coherent meaningful forces and not as shallow fragments to be manipulated - within an organization, or else this vital factor shaping the success or failure of a business burns like a wild fire out of its control.

In other words, every organization needs a Chief Storytelling Officer who considers how stories work their way through an organization’s ecosystem (internal and external, top to bottom) and ensures that their impact is as positive as possible. And in this age of unprecedented transparency and global communication that means ‘not bullshitting’, i.e. not relying on spin, not trying to fool people with phony promises or silly distractions or lame excuses. Because people see through that today. As a professional culture, employees today are too empowered as communicators (with our blogs, emails, TVs, phones, etc.) and too media savvy to be easily taken in by old-style PR. Unless you ‘mean what you say’ your stories will be dismissed as bumpf and your business will suffer on many levels.

People want to be given the straight goods. And they know when they aren’t. And increasingly, they aren’t taking it any more. They are talking back, through the countless channels available to them. And any business that thinks those conversations don’t matter is just plain dumb. And as more and more young workers who have grown up expressing themselves and sharing information without restrictions enter the workforce, expectations of transparency will only increase.

Because the No Logo folks have it wrong. Kids by and large aren’t against branding, against logos for life. They just want to know that the brand is honest, that it is what it claims to be in its marketing. And they won’t give their allegiance to brands that can’t walk the talk. Nor to employers. “You must mean what you say,” is pretty much their motto. And it’s not a bad one either.
So what I’m suggesting is that the emerging role for public relations is that of an individudal or profession charged with managing the stories that shape an organization, and ensuring that they accurately reflect the life and purpose of the business. Which means that to some extent this person becomes, rather than a dishonest spin doctor, an ethical watchdog (to borrow a phrase from my colleague Stephen Heckbert) who actually works to see that the stories that are peddled (i.e. we are a customer-centric innovative and creative company) are not bogus pap but are actually standards to which an organization can and must aspire. And in so doing he (or, of course she) gives those stories legitimacy, the company ‘means what it says’ and as a result wins on numerous fronts. (Hey, we really are customer-centric and innovative now!).

So once again, jazz comes to the rescue, offering a model for progressive and profitable business practices. Once again, The Talking Shop explains how to make meaning, make media and make money. See ya next time!