Public Relations: The GWIM Way to Solve Problems

So here was the Anchorage Daily News headline Thursday:

Wanted:  PR firm to help state fight species listings

The Legislative Council is asking public relations firms to bid between now and Jan. 4 on the effort, which lawmakers appropriated $1.5 million to fund. The PR pros are to assemble a panel for an "Alaska Conference on Climate Change," after suggesting how the panel debate should be framed. They'll launch a public relations campaign "based on the conclusions reached by the conference panel," according to the Legislature's request for proposals.

The goal of the project is figuring out how to reverse what the Legislature calls negative economic effects from listings based on climate change, like the designation of the polar bear as a threatened species.

So bear with me as I try to come up with an explanation that's plausible.  Note, one way of understanding the world is to come up with hypotheses to explain things that aren't understood and then going out to test those hypotheses.  This is sometimes known as science when done with rigor.   I'm going to brainstorm here a bit. I'm just testing one possible explanation. Then you and I can go out and talk to people who think like this and see if this line of reasoning bears further pursuit.

I don't exactly want to say this is "Republican" thinking though this comes from Republicans and the people who are taking this line seem to be all Republicans.  How about I make up a word - GWIMs - for people who believe that Global Warming Is Marketing.  I do think there is a close alignment with Republicans in any case.  Republicans have billed themselves as the party of business and American business believes completely in the power of advertising, and with good reason.  When Reagan became president, marketing gurus applied sophisticated marketing techniques they had perfected selling automobiles and toothpaste to selling candidates and ideology.  (I can't find the reference I'm looking for, but here's a NY Times article that talks about the creation of Republican think tanks to create conservative research to push conservative ideas.  Some of the people associated with operationalizing aggressive political marketing include Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, and Michael Deaver.)

So, perhaps one way to explain GWIM behavior is to consider the many Republicans who were trained for business - either through their families, through on-the-job-training running their own small businesses with support from their local chambers of commerce, and through MBAs.  They see the world in terms of competition for market share, selling one's product, creating demand for new products, and essentially beating the other guy.  Losing means bankruptcy.  Thus winning is everything, "at any cost."  The most important application of scientific reasoning is in areas of market research.

American business creates reality through their marketing.  They create demand for products that people didn't know they needed.  I look at all the people who can't live without their cell phones, can't imagine life without them, and are willing to pay outrageous rates to have them.      Having lived most of my life without one, I know they aren't essential.  Creating the idea of cell phones as a necessity, not a luxury, is part of marketing genius  - not simply for cell phones, but for our insatiable appetite for the new in general.  (Market philosophy says price goes down if demand dips.  But people seem to be willing to pay any amount for their phones.  If people began to boycott cell phones over price, the rates would drop quickly.  See I do believe in the market too.)

Reality is socially constructed by marketers (and others like science fiction writers and the geeks that turn the SF imagination into products.) Truth is measured in dollars and when this is converted to politics, it's measured in votes.

In the fundamentalist church of the free market, 'socialist' is the current term for heretic.   And in this reality, you don't have to be a socialist to be labeled one.  That's another part of creating reality through marketing.  (Actually, 'socialist' has no substantive meaning in this case other than 'non-believer.')  Free market worshipers believe in the sanctity of business and see anything that they perceive as threatening their short term economic benefits on the level of  a terrorist attack.

One thing I've learned over the years is that most people assume that others think like they do.  So honest people assume everyone they meet is honest, and it takes them much longer to spot someone who is deceiving them.  They expect honest and that expectation looks for  excuses - there must have been an error - when it's challenged.  And liars assume everyone else is lying too, and so they are always suspicious of everyone else, not believing that anyone tells the truth.

And this applies here.  The GWIMs assume that global warming advocates are creating their own reality for their personal gain.  Here's an example from Roaring Republican  which assumes Copenhagen is simply a part of a marketing campaign:

Global Warming is more marketing campaign than science. There are spokespeople, Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio, Sheryl Crow, and there are products and services, books, light bulbs, T-Shirts, and movies. Just as there are industries buit around making accessories for iPods, there are millions of people who profit from the “green” campaign by branding their wares with the messages of the mindless.
Copenhagen seems to be equivalent to a major “Stevenote,” the always anticipated addresses by CEO of Apple Inc., Steve Jobs, who mesmerizes audiences with new products they simply have to have when the presentation is done. The media eats it up.
We found out yesterday that melting ice caps is the new product rollout for 2010. Even though the science of the message was instantly discredited, the media already invested an enormous amount of time to spreading the word. Just like a Stevenote, the press buzzed even after a few skeptical eyes pointed out the product wasn’t that great.
Speaking of that, product placement is key to global warming. Al Gore had an entire week of appearences and the message of going “green” sprawled across every single show on NBC. An Inconvenient Truth and a sewer full of other propaganda has made its way into schools across America. Children sing oaths and take pledges to be greenies. Who needs jingles when you can just indoctrinate the youth?
Now that we have the 2010 rollout, we can expect to hear more about melting ice. Yes, this years line is a little recycled, these are greenies, what do you expect? We’ve been down the ice cap melting road before. The ice seemed to be going away a few years ago, it returned. It seems to have a habit of thinning during warmer months and coming back during colder ones, if you can imagine such a concept. Still, it makes for great headlines and sells more product if the story has horrific consequences and puts humanity on the brink of destruction.

 I suspect this narrative I'm writing here is true in some cases, but not in others.  Perhaps it will be helpful in understanding - and challenging - those who try to market their way out of problems.

But in this case, they want to spend $1.5 million of our state money for their fictional reality.  While they are quoted in the article as not wanting to repeat the fiasco that was the unsuccessful marketing campaigns (also millions of state money) to open ANWR to oil drilling, this is essentially the same flawed thinking that underlay that waste of state money.

So, my basic thought here is maybe GWIMs and others of the Fundamentalist Church of the Free Market truly believe that they can create reality through marketing and so this idea of spending $1.5 million to change the reality of polar bears seems perfectly reasonable and legitimate, because, after all, in their view, global warming itself is simply a PR campaign from their competitors, the Church of Environmentalism. 

As a final note that I don't have time to pursue here -  I've discussed the social construction of reality and other relevant ideas in a previous post at length.