Binders full of soundbites?
First the Big Bird incident. And then the binders full of women incident.
US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has certainly not been short of innovative soundbites during the much-vaunted pre-election debates.
But with some observers, including the Daily Mail no less, describing the comments as “unintentional soundbites”, there’s surely a question here over whether unintentional soundbites are ever a good public relations ploy.
Binders full of women rapidly became an internet meme overnight (for ‘meme’ read ‘weird thing on the internet that gets people strangely worked up’) so has certainly attracted a lot of attention. Whether or not the meme is a good thing for Mr Romney is not my point here though.
What’s in question for me is whether using words unintentionally and then seeing them cause such a stir can ever be a sensible thing to do. Every media training course or interview coaching session I’ve ever run has covered why spokespeople – across all forms of new and old media – need to be comfortable with what they’re saying and have thought about or rehearsed it beforehand. Not to the extent that it’s unnatural, but to the extent that the juicy soundbites and analogies – the things that we hope will make the headline – are not off the cuff, but fit to a plan that’s part of an overarching communications strategy or brand story.
Quirky or emotional stuff that’s “unintentional” sends a shiver down the spine of most PR folk.
Of course, the Presidential debates are about as testing a media environment as could be envisaged for a spokesperson trying to hold true to pre-planned content. But if the binders reference – and let’s face it, it was pretty unorthodox – really wasn’t intentional then I imagine someone somewhere will have had words during the debriefing.
If it was intended all along, and the intention of doing so was to make it look unintentional, then that’s pretty clever.
And an example of soundbite use that I shall cut out, and keep in a binder.
Originally posted in PR Week.