by Jon Rappoport

October 30, 2015

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“Most PR tries to program people’s beliefs. True PR wakes people up to the truth.” (Notes for The Matrix Revealed, Jon Rappoport)

When I handle public relations for a client, the first thing I decide is whether I agree with his objectives. If so, I proceed. If not, I bow out.

This initial vetting is the most important thing I do. Granted, it’s not the normal approach PR agencies take, but it is mine.

PR is the art of persuasion. When it uses true facts alongside goals whose fulfillment would benefit people, help lift them up, and make them more self-sufficient, you are deploying a potentially powerful force.

Three basic questions are:

What does the client want to accomplish? Toward what audience is the PR being directed? Who is opposed to the client’s goal?

Once these issues are understood and clarified, a PR campaign can be designed.

The campaign follows two paths. The first is the obvious route: releasing information that promotes the client’s goals; obtaining press exposure (alternative and mainstream); drumming up support for the client by reaching individuals and groups who can wield influence; and sometimes, going after opponents who would try to block success.

Another path is less traveled. It is asymmetrical. Assessing the overall situation reveals opportunities an active imagination can take advantage of:

For example, suppose we have a situation where a local population is under the gun, as a result of constant corporate toxic-pesticide spraying.

There are other such populations, in distant places, who are facing the same dire problem.

Bring half-a-dozen representatives of these other populations to the town or island of the original client. Hold press conferences highlighting the widespread global crisis. Stream live video to alt. news websites all over the world. Put on the pressure. Name the criminal corporation.

At the same time, have individuals from these populations file lawsuits against the corporation, and publicize them.

If corrupt judges dismiss the lawsuits as frivolous, or illegal, that simply adds grist for the mill. Publicize that. Make that the occasion for more PR.

At the same time, produce and release videos that relentlessly expose the corporation in every possible truthful way: its pesticides are toxic; the science on which these chemicals are based is flawed, false, and corrupt; the corporation colludes with government agencies to curry favor. Etc., etc.

At the same time, find people who have been injured by the corporation and release their on-camera testimonies.

Coordinate all these actions. Time them to work in concert with each other.

This is how a real PR campaign begins. It’s just the opening salvo.

Don’t play defense. Go on a sustained offensive thrust, from a number of different directions.

Note: Never, ever rely on just one strategy, such as a ballot initiative or a class-action lawsuit. If you do, you’re playing on the opponent’s turf, where he is the expert and can control outcomes. He knows you’re coming. He knows how to turn you away. But if you’re showing up from half-a-dozen directions at once, you’re a different kind of asymmetrical creature. Unpredictable, powerful, agile.

Or…suppose the client wants to build a private educational center where students can learn trades, like carpentry, plumbing, electrical repair.

You can predict a certain amount of opposition from the town council, because politicians and bureaucrats always find ways to gum up the works and stall proposals, licenses, and permits.

In this case, one strategy is to assemble and release a huge amount of positive PR extolling the project. Overwhelm some of the objections before they can get off the ground.

In PR releases, nail down all the specific positive benefits of the educational center.

At the same time, secure the endorsement of as many community leaders, groups, and visible figures as you can.

At the same time, hold public events at which speakers explain the project and its rewards for the community.

Don’t stop there. Expand your vision:

As an inventive wrinkle, indicate that this center can become a model/example for the rest of the country. When it’s up and running, you will invite leaders from many towns and cities to show up and study the center and its operations, first-hand, so they can implement them back home and create jobs. Local businesses will benefit as these visitors spend money.

Consider even wider implications. Suppose a handful of local successful businesses join the operation, offering to show out-of-town visitors how to operate similar businesses in their own towns and cities.

Local media will jump at the chance to cover this positive project.

Meet with town council members, and paint a picture for them—educate them on how they can cooperate to make the project a smashing success, and rightly enhance their own standing and reputation. “We want you to be the best town council in America.” Why not?

Again—coordinate all these actions, and make them the opening salvo in the PR campaign.

If serious opponents of your plan are there, they’ll soon show up, and you’ll see who they are, and you can take action to neutralize their efforts.

There is much more to PR campaigns than I’m sketching here, but you get the idea.

There is nothing wrong with PR, if it’s done for the right reasons.

Here is a basic underlying principle for you: “not the one, the many.” There are always people who want a good outcome for a project or enterprise or campaign, but they are married to the notion that one big tactic will win the day. That’s how they think.

Your response: let them do what they’re doing. It will have some publicity value.

But you are a proponent of the many. You don’t believe that one answer is the key. This isn’t a high-school math class, in which a word-problem has only a single bottom-line solution.

This is a multi-dimensional world.

Your opponent has a tank the size of the Empire State Building. Are you going to drive your little tank and meet his in the middle of Times Square? Is that a winning plan?

People who believe it might be are laboring under a delusion fostered by the very people who own the giant tank.

But you’re smarter.

You have imagination.

You can operate outside that matrix.

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(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

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Since your principles are righteous and honorable, why not support them with strategies that stand a chance of winning?

Yes, in any campaign there is always the risk of losing, but that doesn’t mean you should adopt the attitude that you’re a heroic loser who “at least tried his best, against titanic odds.”

Adopting that attitude seals your fate from the get-go.

Actually increasing your chances of winning is much, much better.

The game is afoot. The stakes are high.

The game is never over.

The closer you come to winning, the more you realize you’re engaged in more than a game.

Much more.

You’re moving life up to another level.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.