Category: Culture & Society

Too much conversation?!

PR practitioners talk of engagement and conversation. PR academics talk of relationship management and dialogue. Everybody agrees that this is what PR should be doing: building relationships with publics by engaging them in conversations.

So we see organizations eager to engage with publics, and a lot of PR-motivated conversations out there. Some conversations happen between faceless organizations and publics, and others, in Cluetrain Manifesto fashion, between people who work for organizations and publics.

But, can we have too much conversation?! Is it possible that these PR engagement and relationship building efforts are flooding society with too much conversation?

PR-motivated conversations and the resulting relationships, however beautiful and friendly and useful the might be, do not come from the heart. They are not relationships motivated by care and affection. As much as we hate to admit it, they are relationships motivated by ROI.

So what happens to a society flooded with corporate, or PR conversations?

The worst case scenario, from the PR perspective, is that those conversations are discarded as spam and unwanted noise. We already have plenty of that.

The best case scenario, from the PR perspective, is that those conversations become seamlessly weaved in the fabric of everyday conversations and relationships (the kind motivated by care and affection).

But what does this best case scenario mean for society?

I’m afraid it might lead to a society that blurs the lines between personal and commercial in ways that privilege consumerism to a dangerous degree. (You’ll tell me that in these economic times there’s nothing wrong with consumerism. I’ll tell you that as much as consumerism runs this country, there’s more to life and to human beings.)

I’m afraid it might lead to a society where trust in people and relationships is eroded. I can imagine becoming “real” friends with @Person_from_corporation, and feeling affection and care. But are my affectionate interactions with this person measured at the end of the month, do they become data points in ROI reports?

So what I’m asking is, is it possible that the PR drive for engagement and relationships will lead to too much conversation?

Should we be engaging in conversation with publics all of the time, in all contexts?

When should we just keep quiet, stay out, and encourage the ongoing conversation by NOT joining it?

On Time

You are invited to the  …. Holiday party …

Wednesday, December xx, 7-9 pm

In Romanian culture, mentioning the end time of a party on an invitation is appalling. I mean, if you’re not ready to go all night long, don’t even bother. Mentioning the end time is like kicking people out of your house. Inconceivable. Rude.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about people’s relationship to time, cultural differences, and the impact they have on relationship building.

I recently reconnected with an Indian friend I hadn’t seen in 10 years. We met for dinner. It lasted 6 hours. We parted ways when we were too tired to keep our eyes open and the restaurant, then the coffee shop, closed, and we had to leave.

I met a Romanian friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years for dinner the following evening. We hung out for another 6 hours or so. Lots of catching up to do. Lots of on-the-spot decisions: walk in the park? dinner? walk me to my hotel? glass of wine in hotel lobby?

Whenever I meet American friends for dinner, after about 90 minutes they get fidgety, don’t pick up on conversation topics, glance at their watches and then out around the room, their eyes projecting their urge to get going.

When we met for lunch or coffee, the same nonverbal behaviors occur like clockwork, after about 50 minutes.

It seems to me Americans have an internal clock that times their lunch, coffee, and dinner interactions, and when a situation occurs that might mess with that clock, they spell the time limits on the invitation. It’s part of this culture, nothing to blame on anyone. But it doesn’t work for me.

I guess I don’t know how to build relationships under these severe time limits. When I relate to someone, when we have fun talking, I don’t see the reason to stop, I don’t have the same internal timer. I can’t help but be slightly hurt by others’ internal timers, though I know they don’t mean to offend me.

When my husband and I first met, we spent the entire night talking.

It takes time and talk to build relationships.

So how do you build relationships?

How do you build relationships under strict time limits?

Does your relationship with time affect your relationships with people?

And what happens when you interact with other cultures, either in interpersonal or public relations settings?

Cause honestly, my feeling is, if this culture’s relationship with time were a bit more relaxed, I’d have more friends.

Poverty – we need systemic changes

Before you read this, check out Digital Photography School’s collection of images of poverty. And you might also want to see my previous post on the Question of the OTHER.

Because when it comes to poverty, I think many of us (for one, we have Internet access, so that says something about our economic status) – many of us think that povery is not our problem, is the problem of the OTHER.

Who are the poor people? How many really poor people, people who worry about the next meal, have you met? What do you know about them, their beliefs, their feelings, their world?

I know barely anything. To me, they are the OTHER.

Even worse, we often blame people for their poverty: “Oh, if they only worked. If they only worked harder.”

One person I met who was relatively poor was my neighbor Nancy, in Lafayette, Indiana. She wanted to work, but if she did, she’d earn not enough money, but enough to disquaify her from Medicare. The system didn’t allow her to break out of poverty.

We don’t know or understand the poor, but we sometimes feel guilty and throw pennies at them. Throwing money at the poverty problem definitely has to solve it, it’s all about money, isn’t it?

But is throwing money at the problem giving people fish or teaching them how to fish?

More often than not, he have this “better-than-thou” attitude – we’re a rich society, we know better, let us teach you how not to be poor anymore. But how about the poor in the U.S.?

We can talk about it all we want, and we can throw money at the problem. But solving poverty ultimately takes systemic changes. We need, in the U.S. and globablly, a caring, humane social system that takes care of people. A system that supports, educates, and empowers.

Which presidential candidate is more likely to help create such a system in the U.S. and have a caring, non-patronizing attitude towards global poverty? See this side-by-side comparison.