The Decline and Fall of the Spin Doctors: Why Transparency Wins in Today’s PR

When Alistair Campbell asked, “Why did PR get such a bad reputation?” in a 2013 Huffington Post op-ed, I’m sure the irony didn’t escape him. [i]

For those unfamiliar with the jocular co-host of The Rest is Politics, for many years, Alistair Campbell served as Tony Blair’s Press Secretary, Official Spokesperson, and Director of Communications and Strategy, having spent the 1980s as Political Editor of the Daily Mirror.

Of course, Campbell's question was rhetorical. He believes PR is met with scepticism because of the industry's own failures, journalists pushing the narrative that PR equals lies and deception, and a new media landscape plagued by blurry lines between news and opinion.

Regardless of what you think about Alistair Campbell and his legacy, he was just the youngest scion of a long, proud line of ‘Spin Doctors’ that began with Edward Bernays coining a ‘press release’ to tell journalists all about his new railroad.

Decline and fall of the Spin Doctors

Edward Bernays, the ‘father of public relations’, coined a campaign in 1929 called ‘Torches of Freedom’, which branded smoking cigarettes as an act of feminist rebellion—and that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about him. However, he’s had many disciples throughout the years.

In 2005, BP created the term “carbon footprint,” in partnership with world-famous ad firm Ogilvy & Mather, to shift anxieties about environmental impact onto individual consumers. Did I leave the heating on for too long last night? Should I start a compost heap on my windowsill? Wait, is that an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

During the Kosovo War, Alistair Campbell was sent on secondment to work with Jamie Shea, NATO’s press secretary, to manage public perception of the conflict—Spin Doctor-ing against Slobodan Milosevic’s own press corps. Campbell was notoriously satirised in BBC TV series The Thick of It as aggressive, foul-mouthed media manager Malcom Tucker. This, in part, helped to shape the image of modern PR as a gladiatorial sport—without the tridents.

Not every PR campaign over the last century has been directed by a Spin Doctor, aiming to obfuscate and hide the truth, but the damage has been done. Because of these Spin Doctors, audiences today have been trained to question each statement put in front of them (which is no bad thing).

However, it does mean that each new company announcement faces an increasingly sceptical audience. Because of this, marketing leaders can find it difficult to connect with an audience whose default reaction is—especially in crisis situations—to distrust.

Addressing the critics

People’s media consumption habits are more fragmented than ever, with a healthy dose of cynicism thrown in for good measure. Relying on outdated PR playbooks risk alienating your target audience and coming across as insincere, callous, or deceptive (think how many celebrity Notes app apologies you’ve seen—and their corporate equivalents). So, what’s the best way to fight that perception?

A good first step is using messaging frameworks designed for transparency and clarity. This means being upfront about both successes and failures, which in turn builds trust. A consistent, honest message is the only way to avoid the valid scepticism cultivated by decades of spin.

Audiences will give more rope to a brand that engages openly than one that tries to hide the truth. A well-developed Brand Messaging Framework aligns every communication with the core values of your organisation—keeping them consistent and clear. This is key to maintaining a strong and trustworthy identity, particularly in times of crisis.

Staying in touch

Another challenge is maintaining authenticity. For many Heads of Marketing, their worst fear is being seen as out of touch. A good way to systematically analyse your industry and the people who work in it is to use the 4Cs framework (Clarity, Credibility, Consistency, Competitiveness), which ensures that all communications resonate with your readers, hit on their experiences, and are aligned with the business’s competitive goals.

Also, many (if not most) brands use the PAS framework (Problem, Agitate, Solve) to directly address audience pain points—it’s a method about as old as Mesopotamia. However, there’s a level of nuance required here that can sometimes go missing in the rush to ship a new campaign.

Customers know when they’re being manipulated, and they can tell when a brand is whipping up fear, uncertainty, and doubt for the sake of selling its products or services. This is particularly relevant in fields like cybersecurity, where the threat of faceless ‘attackers’ coming for your data is often wielded like a bludgeon to drive sign-ups to a company’s latest webinar.

Standing out 

Being transparent is great—vital, even—for brands that want their customers to trust them. But by itself, it doesn’t mean anything. Another word for transparent, after all, is invisible.

So, to stand out and eclipse your competitors, while coming across as human and trustworthy, remains one of the greatest challenges that marketing leads must face.

Tackling this means selling yourself not just by what you offer, but by how you communicate it. The "Why Change, Why Now, Why You" framework provides a structured way to highlight your unique selling points. It drives home why this company is the best choice, and why that choice needs to be made right now (especially given how long it takes to get a B2B contract signed).

How far we’ve come

We’re a long way from conference rooms full of tobacco executives, wreathed in smoke, who dictate their next PR campaign with a cigar in one hand and a vial of thalidomide in the other. In another sense, though, that kind of thing has never gone away (see ‘How tobacco giants are bankrolling secret pro-vaping campaign’ by Billy Kenber at The Times [ii]).

Businesses make decisions about vendors and partners over a long time, based on dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny interactions—each one building up an argument about why that company can be trusted with their money. One communication a brand sends might make little enough impact on its own, but in aggregate, a consistent, transparent message is a powerful thing.

If you’re ready to transform your PR strategy and build meaningful connections through authentic messaging, explore our guide to messaging frameworks for B2B tech comms.

Alternatively, if you’d like to see how we can help your business establish a solid, consistent voice, please get in touch.

[i] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/alastair-campbell/pr-world-is-changing_b_3511449.html

[ii] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/tobacco-industry-pro-vaping-campaign-investigation-m82dtl93s