Control as defined by Dictionary.com –verb (used with object)
1. to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command.
2. to hold in check; curb: to control a horse; to control one’s emotions.
3. to test or verify (a scientific experiment) by a parallel experiment or other standard of comparison.
4. to eliminate or prevent the flourishing or spread of: to control a forest fire.
I saw a tweet earlier this week from Todd Defren that control was only an illusion. Then I saw this crazy response from The Speakers Bureau justifying moderating comments on the Top Ten Speakers Bureau post to serve their marketing message. And of course, there’s my daily grind, the trudge to get organizations to relinquish control of the message.
It’s amazing to me that years into the social web, this is still a point of contention. Yet, control issues remain the inescapable downfall of many organizations in their social media efforts. Instead of avoiding blogging about it — as I have for many, many months (why sing the same song over and over again) – it’s time to reopen the discussion. Why are organizations struggling so much with control?
In my mind, it transcends social media or communications. Yes, there’s the whole history of command and control PR that’s a by-product of mass communications.
But in reality, it’s about power. People want to try and control people all the time. They want to exert power of one another, whether that’s through the promise of love, through threat of force (hello, Iran!), through economic means, etc., etc. Control and power have gone together hand in hand since Adam and Eve.
Ironically, it’s by surrendering the illusion of control over others that one really gains power in life. When we realize that it’s only our own reactions that we have any kind of control over, we gain great insight into life. I cannot stop other people from doing what they want to do. There is no control of others. I wonder how many people realize that.
In the case of companies, as Todd said, they never really had control. It’s just with the social web the myth of message control has been smashed to smithereens. The emperor has no clothes. And corporate America is horrified and reeling.
The Speakers Bureau Example
It was funny reading The Speakers Bureau Founder Shawn Ellis’s lament about how I should have called them before writing last week’s post on the women’s speaking issue. He dubbed it an attack:
As easy as it would have been to call us or send an email, the leaders of this attack instead chose to mobilize a mass of people against us without fully knowing who we are or exactly what we do.
If I was a journalist that may have been the protocol, but I’m not. I’m a blogger and I have no need to call Shawn. Besides in hindsight, I’m sure my email or call would have been ignored, just like many of the deleted comments on his top ten post. Ironically, if he had left a comment, it would have been welcome here.
The thing that the Shawn Ellises of the world fail to understand is that their customers and other stakeholders are not obliged to believe their messages or spin. We – the customer, the consumer, the partner, the potential speaker, the blogger, the conference goer – are not beholden to them. In fact, when we see such obvious efforts at control, we are repelled by them.
It’s only in surrendering “control” that organizations can win this game. But the battle over this issue will be a long one. Real or perceived power tends to be something people have a hard time relinquishing.
That topic always takes me back to a meeting I had with the senior management team at a fairly large PR firm a few years ago in which I was almost yelled at by suggesting that for a PR firm or brand to put all of their eggs in the “messaging” basket wasn’t a realistic strategy anymore.
It was explained to me that PR is “messaging” and that branding is “messaging” as well. That it all has to be controlled 100% and that the public/customers don’t have a say in any of it and never would.
I smiled, thanked them for their time, and promptly excused myself from the meeting.
Great post, Geoff. Thanks for including some of my tweets.
Great post! I’m not sure I wholly agree that the problem is “the illusion of control,” but rather “the confusion over control.”
Companies think they can make people believe things, which is inane. But they CAN control what the business DOES…actions, in reality, that have objectively-measurable implications…and these can be seen as relevant INPUTS into the social space. Instead of trying to dictate what people say about brands, companies could take more active responsibility for the things they do to prompt those comments.
What do you think?
On the other hand, the fact that people obsess over controlling their reputation via social media does validate the field. If what we write didn’t have an impact, no one would care what we said.