I have been struck over the last couple of years as to how much our emotional reactions to stories have changed what happens in public relations. I have started to think that video is a special category of information, because people respond so much more strongly to video than to other forms of information.
I was first struck by this when I saw TV hosts and political candidates caught on open mikes saying things that they regretted. But video seemed to take it to a new level. Perhaps the Ray Rice incident, where the matter that was seemingly settled and done by the National Football League based on dry police reports became a national firestorm when security video was released showing the actual domestic abuse incident as it happened.
Now, the facts were not in dispute. It’s not clear what new information came out with the security video. It’s just that it grabs us emotionally when we actually see a victim struck and dragged out of an elevator–much more than when we merely read that it happened. There is something visceral about seeing it happen that drives us to outrage and action that mere words cannot do.
I thought this was just something that happens with video, but I was actually at a museum exhibit recently that showed that video is just the latest example of emotionally-charged media. The Museum of the City of New York is showing an exhibition of photos by Jacob Riis, a pioneer in using photography for activism in the late 19th century.
Riis went into slum neighborhoods and took candid photos of poor people as they actually lived at the time. He gave lectures and showed the photos to the gentry of the day, which pricked their collective conscience enough to lead the charge for better housing conditions. Regardless of whether you believe that the reforms that occurred were socialism (as criticized at the time) or a progressive improvement, the fact is that the emotional content of the photos moved people as no mere words ever had before.
Interestingly, Riis made no efforts to preserve the photos. He preserved all of his writing, which is what he thought was important. The photos were accidentally discovered after his death and are what people really consider ground-breaking in his work.
What this means is that we are living in a period where this new media of candid video is reaching emotions that the old media did not arouse. As video becomes pervasive, we might find that people are no longer convinced by testimony of eye witnesses without security video to back it up–just as prosecutors lament that juries now expect DNA evidence for many crimes.
Video might not be the last word here. We might soon be able to capture higher-quality videos from multiple angles to present holograms that let us experience the event in an even more visceral way, close-up. Who knows if the senses of smell and touch could be reproduced someday.
All of this raises the stakes on how people are persuaded. If we fail to recognize how bad behavior is being recorded in more and more emotion-inducing ways, and we continue to do written press releases and staged news conferences to explain it away, we will lose the ability to persuade. PR needs to step up–again.
