In my role at WordWrite, I see authentic public relations and marketing communication as the cornerstone of 
successful 21st century marketing and business strategy. But as a consultant, manager and research pro with just enough grey to remember Captain Kangaroo in the morning and Red Skelton at night, I also know that organizational authenticity — or the ability to accurately self-appraise your enterprise and its place in the world — is just as important.
I’ve been pondering this while watching the fiscal meltdown of many municipalities and government jurisdictions out here in the great Southwest. In a place where everything — the land’s grandeur, home sizes and even economic downturns — are bigger, many communities are desperately struggling to deal with a 2010 that looks nothing like seen before.
This is partially the case because whatever was seen as “real” BM (that is before the current economic meltdown) in these parts was shaded more than usual by the universal human jostle to live under hopeful and “idealized” ambitions. The American West is of course famous for courting this. Now, as in the dusty “Old West,” a sort of unreal, ill-aimed frame on “reality” has emerged. This version of reality is mostly harmless when fueling debates on who got shafted at the Golden Globes. But when local government leaders and their operating lieutenants live in this same narcotic fog, inaccurate self-appraisal looms lethal in solving real 21st century problems.
This psychological shell game hampers the task of recognizing and then fixing the current fiscal and inflated expectations mess that dogs so many communities (and their citizenry) in my new state. Yes, the atmospheric idealism of the West has partially created this but an even more profound nemesis has also been hard at work.
Many of the municipalities that lie tight on my radar screen have crawled into this hole because they’ve failed to authentically self-appraise their situation. As the world around them has changed, their revenue sources, organizational structure and reason d’être have not changed at all. In turn, these municipalities are now a walking example of a feckless, community draining bureaucracy — first concerned about their own preservation before pondering how to provide better value to the customers/citizens for whom they work.
This parable is common — especially in public service and administration — but just as much in all sectors of public relations and marketing practice (across the entire range of Old and New media)! No communications story, strategy, segmentation or tactic can be fully effective if the “real” situation it is meant to address has not been fully and objectively appraised. And this can’t happen without a robust fact-finding, rock-turning, candid collaboration with clients, colleagues and market targets about what indeed is real.
In real time I am watching a bevy of towns ignore this daily (and worse doing it while projecting a sense of bloated self-importance). Here’s urging that as PR, marketing and business service professionals we will be wise enough to avoid this same fate, instead of shying from a long stare in the mirror of self-appraisal and using our brains and problem-solving skills to generate real value.
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John Durante is senior marketing associate for WordWrite Communications.
