Today you are no one if you are not propped up by PR. And Mark Penn is as big as they come. He counts Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Bill Gates among his clients. Weekend cornered him for a chat when he was in Dubai recently.

HIS AVUNCULAR demeanor belies a sharp intellect. Perhaps, it’s a camouflage. His mild-mannered self-effaciveness is the key to his phenomenal success. For Mark Penn, his image is irrelevant. The focus is the image of his illustrious clients. 

“Dubbed The King of Polls” He has nudged 25 leaders to their victory stands in the United States, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

His ego wall has grateful messages — “You were brilliant” from Tony Blair after his famous third landslide victory; “Thanks” from Bill Clinton after his infamous impeachment acquittal.

He worked a miracle with Microsoft and affected a complete corporate turnaround — from anti-trust scandal to the Most Trusted Company, according to Wall Street Journal.

It’s not for nothing that the London Times called him an “incandescent intellect”. It’s an intellect that has been honed by the proxy political and corporate battles he has fought as a consultant for his clients.

As the CEO Worldwide, Burson-Marsteller (he oversees a global network of 94 offices) and President of Penn, Schoen and Berland, his influence from the White House to prestigious business boardrooms is far-reaching. But what he brings to the table is not a gift of the gab, but a research-based communications strategy that helps his clients win elections, turn the tide of bad Press and overcome crisis situations. His technique? Micro-targeting.

Here he answers questions on the power of public relations and the power of spin-doctors. The way he adroitly sidesteps sticky questions speaks for itself.

This is the age of spin-doctors. PR is all about creating perceptions. And perception often becomes reality, doesn’t it?

I think the term “spin doctors” is a very negative term. What we really try to do in PR is to help people and companies tell their stories. It’s not easy, particularly when there are controversies, to get their story out and explain it through so many different media outlets. That’s the kind of help people and companies increasingly need and value.

It can often be a very contentious environment.

Coming to perceptions, it’s not necessarily spin-doctors who always create a perception. There are also often people on the other side distorting facts and trying to create a different picture of reality. And most of our clients are trying to get out there and correct their record.

I think you have seen questions about journalistic standards — what gets printed and what doesn’t get printed. You have seen editions of so many online media that don’t adhere to high standards. I think the most important thing is that people need to get their own true story or the real picture out there. And I think you are also seeing the rising influence of what they hear on TV and other media.

We all expected that as people got more educated, media would become more fact-based and detail-oriented. But it’s quite the opposite.

People are very busy today and the cable TV is on in the background and people pick up their facts and information from there and assume it’s true. But they may not be true. So perceptions and reality can vary greatly. But it’s important to remember that in many ways, perception is reality.

What about perception and reality vis-à-vis the economy?   

Yes, it has a great influence on the economy. If everyone believes that there’s bad economy, and sure enough, there will be bad economy. Perception becomes reality.

How does one cut through the media noise to get to the truth?

I don’t think there is any single formula for doing that. But today I think there’s a wider array of tools. It’s important for us to do research that is evidence-based. Before you can figure out how to cut through the noise, we need to understand what attitudes are in the first place. And once you understand what the true landscape is, then you can plan out your programme and pick your target.

I think today there’s a very powerful interrelationship between traditional media of television and print and the online media. But things don’t exist solely online or solely in the traditional media. I think they work together in a network so that what you put out or talk about can then be found online — amplified online — and then people can start taking action online. I think it dramatically extends the depth of people’s ability to get information and act on it.

PR can pull off anything. It even helped sell a war, as it happened with Tony Blair and his spin guru, Alastair Campbell. So what’s your take on the PR-media nexus and the PR-politician nexus?

I worked for Tony Blair. So regarding the example you cite — Blair’s perspective was quite the opposite then. He strongly believed that there was a very important need to take the action that he was taking and he felt that a lot of people were not seeing things the way he saw them. And throughout his administration I think, 70 per cent opposed the war policies. So this is actually an example of a political figure doing what he thought was right despite the opposition. So I think that the example is the opposite. He set out to lay down policies and executed them and tried to achieve greater levels of public support.

That’s what I’m saying. PR can sell anything, including a war!

Well, look, I always say that in many ways, great people, great candidates and great companies can use advice well. And poor candidates and poor companies can get all the advice in the world, but they don’t really use it well.

So someone like Blair is very good at listening to a wide range of advice from the policy desk, public opinion desk, the expert desk and assimilating it and going out and talking about it.

But then, it’s only someone as brilliant as Blair or people like Bill Clinton — you give them some additional insight — but finally it’s the force of their personality and leadership that drives things and there is not much room for anything else after a point. And remember, he won a third-term election.

I understand that you had a hand in Tony Blair’s third term election?

Yes, that’s right. I worked with Blair in that election.

Do you think the presidential election bid of Barack Obama was a huge, flawless PR exercise?

Well, it was a campaign and not a PR exercise. And like all campaigns, it had a message — a strong message — it also represented a series of values and a series of policies, and a style of leadership. And I think people today are tuning in to politics more and more. It’s a very, very a good sign that politics is now becoming charismatic and is watched as much as sports.

But I don’t consider his campaign a PR exercise at all. I consider it a leadership exercise. And it was an excellent campaign. He got his message across successfully.

What according to you was the strength of Obama’s message?

It’s simplicity. “Change” —  “Change You Need” “Change You can Believe In” It was easy to understand and relate to. And he kept bombarding it and the message found its mark. It translated as “Hope”.

If you were to be John McCain’s campaign consultant, what would you have done which he didn’t do right?

McCain’s biggest problem was that when the economic crisis came, he didn’t answer it strongly. He was running a competitive race until the economic crisis broke. And when the crisis broke, he seemed erratic.

What he should have done was to give a very thorough, clear and detailed speech on what he was going to do on the economy, what his new ideas were and how they were different.

He should have done this the day before he went to the debate with Obama, and let the debate echo what his position was. Instead, people heard that he was stopping his campaign, that he was not showing up for the debate, and later, that he was going to show up…. So the voters didn’t have a clear sense of what he was going to do. That actually proved to be the fundamental error and the turning point in the election. His message was not clear.

Would you term Sarah Palin and the way she was packaged a PR success or a PR disaster?

Sarah Palin in the end was certainly a PR failure because I think that the media ridiculed her performance in some of the interviews. And ultimately she turned off some of the more educated upper-class voters who had previously voted Republican.

She was successful with the Republican base, but was unsuccessful with the more sophisticated voters. She did a powerful job with the speech that she gave at the Republican Convention. But she wasn’t able to carry that through in the weeks after that.

So, in the final analysis, when you look at Obama and Palin, the product has to be good for PR to really work, doesn’t it?  

Yes, I always think that it’s great candidates that make us advisors look good. That’s because, without their greatness, the best advisors and consultants are really useless. So I think the role of advisors is always overstated. People like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton or Tony Blair are very, very unique leaders. And it’s their core strengths are really what get them to places.

So there’s a point beyond which the fluff around a leader doesn’t count?

Exactly!

A PR partnership

IN MAY, global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller, and ASDA’A, a leading public relations company in the Middle East region, created a merged regional network covering all major markets in the Middle East. When asked about the tie-up Mark Penn said: “Primarily this is a long-term partnership in the region. And I think the time is right for it. Public Relations generally grow globally. And we’ve seen communication growing globally. And this region is developing as it has never developed before.”

Brimming with hope

ASDA’A BURSON-MARSTELLER, recently commissioned a major research study into the aspirations, attitudes and lifestyles of Arab youth. Undertaken by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. (PSB) and The Nielsen Company, the groundbreaking six-nation survey was conducted among 18 to 24-year-olds across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt. Considered unprecedented in its breadth and size, it has cross-industry significance, and gives sociological insight into the most important demographic segment in the Arab world.
The key findings were announced on November 11 at a Press conference in Dubai.

A point of interest was that the survey also compared the attitudes of regional youth with those of their peers in North America and Europe.
The results were presented by Mark Penn. The highlight of the survey was that the Western youth are generally pessimistic about the future, while Middle East youth are optimistic. Only 34 per cent of Western youth feel that things in their country are heading in the right direction, while 52 per cent of the Middle East youth believe that their country is heading in the right direction.

Other key findings are:

·         Religion is enormously important to Middle East youth compared to their Western peers.

·         National identity and traditional values are extremely important to Arab youth, but not for their peers in the West.

·         Arab youth generally admire political, religious and business leaders, while Western youth do not.

·         Family and friends are equally important to Middle East and Western youth — 64 per cent of both Arab and Western youth testified to this.

·         Arab youth want to make a difference, while Western youth mostly just want to get ahead.

·         Arab and Western male youth have very different opinions about gender equality in the workplace. 79 per cent of Western male youth believe that men and women should have equal opportunities in the workplace, while only 58 per cent of their male counterparts in the Middle East agreed. In striking contrast to the attitudes of their male peers, 73 per cent of female Arab youth feel that they should have equal opportunities for professional advancement.

·         Consumer and lifestyle habits of Arab and Western youth were found to be strikingly similar. Both use similar technology and constantly worry about their appearance.

·         Global brands have transnational appeal among Middle East and Western youth.

·         Europe is the top desired travel destination for both Arab and Western youth.