Oh my!

PR, that used to be about something else. It was not about advertising, I am sure. It had something to do with with convincing us, the buying public i.e. just about all of us, that corporations are serious, trustworthy, reliable, friendly, you name it. But then, in the days when advertising began to get lost in the shuffle - that must have been the shuffling of slippers rushing to the toilet - the downfall of noble PR began. It came down to be the better form of advertising, oh yes. And for a while, it worked. Or it might have. I wouldn't know, I'm not a controller.

Now, though, the time of PR as an advertising improvement must also be on the line. Of course, this can't have anything to do with the fact that the efforts of corporations in this field were simply superimposed by a major online search engine, no, of course not. It must be the desperate need to improve PR, and therefore advertising, since there is still the power of suggestion, oh yes.

But how? How could it be possible to succeed, after so many decades of advertising, and PR following in its footsteps, not in order to replace it, of course, but to support it on a much higher, nobler level? How could it be done to be just as successful as back in the days when people still had a certain beverage and a smile or even smoked a special brand before they would go berserk? How to get back to the standards when a brand's name became the genuine article like a certain glue or paper tissue?
Well, there seem to be a few additionally skilled PR heads who claim to have an answer to this question. And, yes, in some way you could say, the answer is 42. Because, you see, these sly dogs of publicly related advertising know their way through the tangle of fiction. Yes, Fiction. Stories. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! (In order to quote one.)

I mean, I feel I will have to bring in Aristotle as an expert for fiction, even if the quotation would be fictional but ever so likely. What would he say, the old wise man? Would he rejoice in the idea that story telling is supposed to help PR finally to win us over? Or would he cry?

A story, what is it about? Following Aristotle, it is about katharsis, the cleansing of the soul. And if we were to ask Paul Auster, for example, he would gladly tell us that stories help us to cope with our daily lives full of misery and despair by giving us something to hold on to, to dive into, and return to reality with new powers to face new challenges. And there are lots of experts who would tell you the same, i.e. that we need stories in order to survive.

But we now have to face a completely different challenge, one, I might put into question, might cost us that last resort for our minds. Because if PR will present us with stories from now on, our reality - or should we make it a plural - our realities would clash with the fictional worlds in which we used to withdraw from the suggestions and persuasion to need, or must have, or even buy this or that product. This collision would definitely lead to disaster, I am sure of it. I mean, they banned product placements in films for a reason. But this idea, the combination of PR and fiction, would undoubtedly have a much more devastating effect on us than the debatable chance of possible mimicry of an actor or a character using a certain product.

Oh no folks, we can't let this happen. We must defend all our fictional worlds against these desperate usurpers. We should face them and tell them: If you cannot sell anymore, you will finally have to accept the truth you have been ignoring for so long. We need more money to buy your stuff. And therefore we need work. And again, therefore we need to esacpe from reality now and then, in order to be able to fulfil our duties in the business world. But since corporations deprive us continuously of the little we have, or had, we cannot get work, and we consequentially cannot buy your products. And no ever so clever PR alternative will change that fact.

So leave our stories alone!

© 2016