Media Whore

Richard III needed a better PR firm

6Feb13

When you’re a small-R republican, there can be little interest piqued when discussing the reputation of a king who died in 1485.  Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but notice the Richard III Society, a group of people who strive to prove that Richard III wasn’t the heartless tyrant that Shakespeare and history portray him to be.  This effort includes the excavation and identification of Richard III’s remains in 2012-2013.

History is important and all, but really?  Even if history was erroneously written by the victors, are we really missing out on anything by misinterpreting the two year reign of a man who came to power by invalidating his late brother’s marriage and banishing his young nephews to the Tower of London?  From where they were never heard from again?  

In a era where In-laws and cousins often had each other executed, Richard’s tactics may be standard operating procedure, but what nuggets of wisdom do we hope to garner by discovering that Richie3’s street rep was unfounded?

Perhaps the lesson to be taken is that if you’re concerned about your reputation, even your legacy, maybe you should take greater effort to make sure you get to write your own story, primarily by keeping your enemies from defeating you.  And burying your desecrated corpse at the site of a future mini-mall parking lot.

Or maybe you should avoid getting enemies in the first place.  Fortunately, most of us weren’t born into the English royal family of the 15th century.

Media Whore

‘Branding’ needs a re-branding

31Jan13

The concept of branding is getting a bad rap.  People toss around the word like it’s an artificial sweetener, used to fool you into enjoying something you wouldn’t otherwise ingest.  But really, branding isn’t that.  Or at least it shouldn’t be.

Branding is about communicating who or what you are.  It’s about having a clear understanding of your own identity and making sure your customers (or potential customers) know what that is.  It doesn’t mean adopting a false or insincere slogan and hoping to fool as many people as possible.  It isn’t about designing an arbitrary symbol to disguise what your business truly is.

Successful branding should be like learning how to walk.  It isn’t necessarily easy at first, but it should make sense, and quickly become second nature.  And when the stumbling infant becomes the running toddler or the sprinting teenager, nobody watching the race should be questioning why they ever got up off their feet in the first place.  

(Cont’d)

Media Whore / Perp Walk

To Not Un-See

6Oct12

The other day Fox News covered an Arizona police chase, live on TV. The chase ended badly, with the fleeing criminal shooting himself in the head. Fox News failed to cut away and the suicide was broadcast to millions of basic cable voyeurs.

I came upon this incident in my regular internet news surfing. Among the coverage was a note that the site BuzzFeed.com had drawn criticism for posting uncensored footage of the on-air suicide. BuzzFeed is a site I have bookmarked. It would take minimal effort to bring the page in question up in my browser.

I should pause here to note that I have little real world experience with violence, either as a victim or witness. And I have exactly zero experience as a perpetrator or as a ‘mutual combatant’. I have, however, come across images of violence, through various sources, in my career as a contemporary consumer of media. I’ve seen Mexican drug cartel decapitations, African civil war dismemberments, and freak impaling accidents. I’ve seen visual evidence of the deaths of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadhafi, and Daniel Pearl.

I say this not to brag, or to reveal some twisted fascination with brutality, but to point out that I’m not one to close myself off from the outside world. I worked in felony courtrooms and handled evidence in murder cases. I’ve seen crime scene photos firsthand and heard victims of violence testify about their experiences.
(Cont’d)

‹ Older Entries