Tateru Nino has an article up on Marketing and PR: Whatever happened to marketing and PR? If you have been around awhile or study marketing, you know things have changed.

I’ll suggest a couple of significant changes have come to our culture that have forced change in both Marketing and PR. First people coming out of our public education systems are much more poorly educated. Our education system is being politicized and whole fields of study are being nerfed. A year or so ago the ruckus was about educators wanting to omit teaching American history prior to Lincoln. Citizenship classes were a thing in my parents day. I now talk to many US born people that have no idea how the government is supposed to work or why. 

Science, that is far too hard to learn. US science scores for public school students has been falling for years. Math, what do you need that for? There is a calculator in your phone. Math scores are falling. (Reference)

I will skip the reasons why I think these things are happening, that is far too controversial for a short post. But, it is happening. The majority of Americans and especially the children of low income families are getting less and less education while we spend more and more.

Morality is the second issue. People are not taught ethics or morality or even why those concepts are important. Bias, prejudice, and intolerance are the ideals of the new age. Diversity is abhorrent. All these things are given great lip service, but few understand what they mean or even what they look like in practice. Think otherwise? Try and discuss free market ideals or the Federalist Papers in any poly-sci class.

So, if you are a PR or marketing person and someone from the media calls, what do you say to them? Are they looking for the truth? Are they going to honestly quote you in context? Or are they looking for a sound bite they can use for their preconceived agenda? (Reference – Reference = Right & Left)

I can point to hundreds of clips used in the media to make and agenda point. Finding the full video on YouTube often reveals how twisted a station’s presentation was.  There is no doubt the media is MAKING news stories that fit their script/agenda designed to promote ratings and the idealism of the editor/production manager. So, if you are a marketing/PR person and you don’t know what a caller’s script is today, what is the safest course of action? No comment.

Marketing and PR people only talk to those that they know and trust. Otherwise, they just may be feeding their enemy. So, I don’t see it as the marketing and PR people abandoning their arts, I see them as restrained by a devolving culture.