For those who haven't been following the news, Bill C-30 gives police the powers to snoop on Canadians Internet activities.
As the National Post puts it:
It has been met with fierce opposition from Internet privacy and civil rights groups, who say the bill would build a state surveillance system into Canada’s Internet.
The Bill is termed the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.
The group Anonymous 'attacked' Vic Toews, Public Safety Minister, over it.
From a PR perspective the bill has been meet with mostly outrage by Canadians.
The reason is a simple one. After all, 99.9999 per cent of Canadians are fiercely against child predators (the .00001% who aren't are the predators themselves) and would be willing to put up with almost anything to catch such criminals, so why the outrage?
In my opinion, it's because the public is no longer fooled by the naming conventions associated with government actions.
In the US they called it the Patriot Act (which passed), when in reality it had nothing to do with patriotism, rather it was the removal of people's privacy rights and surveillance creep by the government in to the lives of US citizens.
The National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed, had nothing to do with defence but rather imparted to the government the ability to arrest (through the army) any US citizen and hold them without a trial or access to a lawyer.
The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which failed, had very little to do with stopping online piracy but rather gave the US government power to regulate what could or could not be on the Internet. Providing them with the power to shut down any site they wanted without getting a warrant first (hence the encroachment to free speech).
Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, from what I can tell, has little to do with protecting children. After all, if the government suspects someone of such behaviours they can easily get a warrant and track their every movement, online and offline. The act appears instead to be more of a Big Brother initiative, giving the police the ability to 'snoop' on everyone at any time without justification for that snooping.
From a PR perspective, what you've got happening here is blow-back from a strategy that has grown long in the tooth wherein the name given to these 'Acts' deceives the public. This is what has caused tremendous mistrust of the government by the public.
The people naming these bills though keep hoping that the public will simply see the name and back the bill without really understanding what it's about. That is what happened with the Patriot Act after all.
This brings us to one of the big problems with slight-of-hand deception and why it's such a bad PR strategy.
The deception preys on the public's trust. They TRUST that when you present a bill about stopping online predators that this is what the bill is really about and nothing more. Then when they find out that the powers granted to stop online predators also can be used to snoop on all Canadians for any reason what-so-ever with no requirement to justify said snooping, they realize they've been duped.
You can only prey on the public's trust so often before they simply stop trusting you.
This is where the US government is right now I'd argue. It doesn't matter what they name their bills any more, people assume that the 'title' has one purpose only and that is to deceive you from what the bill is actually about.
Canada should be weary about following the US example on this front.
If you want to pass a Big Brother is Watching bill, then call it the BBW bill. Now, obviously I'm being tongue-in-cheek as no politician would ever pass a Big Brother is Watching bill.
But in all seriousness, they could have named the bill 'Enhanced Internet Surveillance Bill', because that is what bill C-30 is.
The public may not like the bill, they may still fight against the bill, but they wouldn't be mad because at least there were no shinnanigans taking place, no one was trying to slip one by them by preying on their trust and naming the bill something that upon first impressions they emotionally connect with.
This is definitely a bad practice that is common in PR. The logic is quite simple really, PR folks are tasked with 'communicating' an organization's position and generating positive views on that position. So it's only logical that aligning your position with something your publics feel strongly about - everyone is against child predators for instance - is a quick way to generate immediate support.
The problem though is that you really should stop and ask yourself whether you've gone to far, if your enthusiasm for generating public support has lead you to use phrasing that in the long run will actually hurt your support.
The reason we see more of this in government than in the business sector is that the government doesn't manage its brand the way a private sector business does. In the private sector businesses have to weigh the cost to their business when they lose the trust of their customers. It means their customers stop buying their goods and their competitors end up with all the business (and ultimately their business crashes and burns).
Yet in the government, there is no brand to protect really. The 'brand' is often times whatever the brand of the ruling party is. Without a brand that all Canadians judge the entire government by (not just the ruling party), members of the government don't concern themselves with the long-term impacts of trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. What are the customers (ie. the citizens) going to do? They can't do business with another government after all.
This strategy though, despite working at times, merely makes the entire system more dysfunctional than it has to be. Because when you lose the public's trust, then even good bills that make sense suddenly have a hard time passing because the public starts to think that everything you are selling is a lie of sorts.
While PR is a tough job and a lot of effort goes in to developing clear communications, writing materials, and engaging in two-way communications with publics, at its core the driving ideology of PR is quite simple, that is to ensure that people understand what you are saying or doing.
It's really that simple at its core. It's hard work when you are carrying it out because as any PR person will tell you it's quite difficult ensuring that publics truly understand what you are doing - take RIM for instance, people are still scratching their heads over RIM because they have no clue what the heck the company is doing or what they were thinking as they fell apart over the past three years.
But if you remember that at its core PR is about that simple task of simply getting people to understanding what you are saying then it becomes a no-brainer that the last thing you want to do is every try to 'pull one over' on them because all that does is make it exponentially harder for you to communicate with them in the future.
Whether you are for or against Bill C-30, the only thing I'd say is that the naming of the bill sucks and I believe it is what has generated this uproar.
Six words - Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act - lead to a horrible outcome in public opinion in this case.
Goes to show you how powerful and / or damaging six words can be. Choose six different words, as in name the bill something else, and public reaction may have been different.
As the National Post puts it:
It has been met with fierce opposition from Internet privacy and civil rights groups, who say the bill would build a state surveillance system into Canada’s Internet.
The Bill is termed the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.
The group Anonymous 'attacked' Vic Toews, Public Safety Minister, over it.
From a PR perspective the bill has been meet with mostly outrage by Canadians.
The reason is a simple one. After all, 99.9999 per cent of Canadians are fiercely against child predators (the .00001% who aren't are the predators themselves) and would be willing to put up with almost anything to catch such criminals, so why the outrage?
In my opinion, it's because the public is no longer fooled by the naming conventions associated with government actions.
In the US they called it the Patriot Act (which passed), when in reality it had nothing to do with patriotism, rather it was the removal of people's privacy rights and surveillance creep by the government in to the lives of US citizens.
The National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed, had nothing to do with defence but rather imparted to the government the ability to arrest (through the army) any US citizen and hold them without a trial or access to a lawyer.
The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which failed, had very little to do with stopping online piracy but rather gave the US government power to regulate what could or could not be on the Internet. Providing them with the power to shut down any site they wanted without getting a warrant first (hence the encroachment to free speech).
Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, from what I can tell, has little to do with protecting children. After all, if the government suspects someone of such behaviours they can easily get a warrant and track their every movement, online and offline. The act appears instead to be more of a Big Brother initiative, giving the police the ability to 'snoop' on everyone at any time without justification for that snooping.
From a PR perspective, what you've got happening here is blow-back from a strategy that has grown long in the tooth wherein the name given to these 'Acts' deceives the public. This is what has caused tremendous mistrust of the government by the public.
The people naming these bills though keep hoping that the public will simply see the name and back the bill without really understanding what it's about. That is what happened with the Patriot Act after all.
This brings us to one of the big problems with slight-of-hand deception and why it's such a bad PR strategy.
The deception preys on the public's trust. They TRUST that when you present a bill about stopping online predators that this is what the bill is really about and nothing more. Then when they find out that the powers granted to stop online predators also can be used to snoop on all Canadians for any reason what-so-ever with no requirement to justify said snooping, they realize they've been duped.
You can only prey on the public's trust so often before they simply stop trusting you.
This is where the US government is right now I'd argue. It doesn't matter what they name their bills any more, people assume that the 'title' has one purpose only and that is to deceive you from what the bill is actually about.
Canada should be weary about following the US example on this front.
If you want to pass a Big Brother is Watching bill, then call it the BBW bill. Now, obviously I'm being tongue-in-cheek as no politician would ever pass a Big Brother is Watching bill.
But in all seriousness, they could have named the bill 'Enhanced Internet Surveillance Bill', because that is what bill C-30 is.
The public may not like the bill, they may still fight against the bill, but they wouldn't be mad because at least there were no shinnanigans taking place, no one was trying to slip one by them by preying on their trust and naming the bill something that upon first impressions they emotionally connect with.
This is definitely a bad practice that is common in PR. The logic is quite simple really, PR folks are tasked with 'communicating' an organization's position and generating positive views on that position. So it's only logical that aligning your position with something your publics feel strongly about - everyone is against child predators for instance - is a quick way to generate immediate support.
The problem though is that you really should stop and ask yourself whether you've gone to far, if your enthusiasm for generating public support has lead you to use phrasing that in the long run will actually hurt your support.
The reason we see more of this in government than in the business sector is that the government doesn't manage its brand the way a private sector business does. In the private sector businesses have to weigh the cost to their business when they lose the trust of their customers. It means their customers stop buying their goods and their competitors end up with all the business (and ultimately their business crashes and burns).
Yet in the government, there is no brand to protect really. The 'brand' is often times whatever the brand of the ruling party is. Without a brand that all Canadians judge the entire government by (not just the ruling party), members of the government don't concern themselves with the long-term impacts of trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. What are the customers (ie. the citizens) going to do? They can't do business with another government after all.
This strategy though, despite working at times, merely makes the entire system more dysfunctional than it has to be. Because when you lose the public's trust, then even good bills that make sense suddenly have a hard time passing because the public starts to think that everything you are selling is a lie of sorts.
While PR is a tough job and a lot of effort goes in to developing clear communications, writing materials, and engaging in two-way communications with publics, at its core the driving ideology of PR is quite simple, that is to ensure that people understand what you are saying or doing.
It's really that simple at its core. It's hard work when you are carrying it out because as any PR person will tell you it's quite difficult ensuring that publics truly understand what you are doing - take RIM for instance, people are still scratching their heads over RIM because they have no clue what the heck the company is doing or what they were thinking as they fell apart over the past three years.
But if you remember that at its core PR is about that simple task of simply getting people to understanding what you are saying then it becomes a no-brainer that the last thing you want to do is every try to 'pull one over' on them because all that does is make it exponentially harder for you to communicate with them in the future.
Whether you are for or against Bill C-30, the only thing I'd say is that the naming of the bill sucks and I believe it is what has generated this uproar.
Six words - Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act - lead to a horrible outcome in public opinion in this case.
Goes to show you how powerful and / or damaging six words can be. Choose six different words, as in name the bill something else, and public reaction may have been different.
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