I am a huge fan of both Richard Laermer and his RLMpr.  He’s something that not enough people in PR are: bombastic.  He really should have been in Advertising because he “that guy” — he’s the Donny Deutsch of PR — and he’s a lot more shameless and aggressive and bold than most of the PR nerds I know.  Well, I don’t know how a man like Richard can be so generative but he recently has been able to distill what has made him what he is into a new product called How To Fame:  The Pragmatic Notoriety Project — check it out!

Get the 10 Tips To Faming. When you’re done reading just make sure you remember to enter your name and email address in the box to the right and click submit otherwise you’ll miss out on the 10 Tips – and we don’t want that now do we.

What does hard work get you in 2010? Bupkas. Putting in extra hours means nothing-though I’m sure my grandmother would smack me for saying it – and the latest recession taught us we are no longer entitled to any American Dream just ‘cause we toiled for it. Those getting ahead in the society of new rules are not those working hard (we all do) but those who stand out from the ever-lengthening crowd.

So with that you are about to receive, by signing up here, the 10 Tips To Faming – being sent one per week starting March 1. Also, you will be sent the How To Fame Report followed by The Consistency Measure-Upper.

Life is a contest. If you don’t believe that, you need to rethink the way you live it. So, now that we’ve settled that, let me tell you How To Fame.

How To Fame isn’t about celebrity. No one really cares about celebrities any more, except when it’s time to make fun of them. To wit: “Tiger always gives 110 percent. That is why he gave 100 percent to his wife and still had 10 percent left over for his alleged mistress” [Colbert]

Today, fame is about the way people view you. People are always watching. Faming is about creating and maintaining a consistent image (through actions and communications) that reinforces credibility and professionalism, and that builds confidence in others about your ability to get the job – any damn job – done.

Are you sick of the Dr. Phils of the world helping themselves by pretending to help you? Tired of others making decision for you based on their misperceptions of you? Fed up watching people who aren’t as smart or as thoughtful of you get ahead? Are you frustrated by the fact that no matter what you seem to do, you’re stuck in neutral? Me too.

How To Fame is not a fix-all. It won’t keep you from getting laid-off if your company goes under. It won’t get your girlfriend to take you back and it won’t stop the ozone from eroding. (We think not.) What it will give you is a systematic way of taking the challenges you face each day and turning them into opportunities by making sure that your daily activities are purposefully moving toward the goal.

Each day that you are faming, you will be increasing the personal equity in your career and your personal life.

How To Fame means gaining pragmatic notoriety! It is being known for all the right reasons and becoming a true go-to person. Or: “This is how I’m different and this is why you should know me.”

We’re not talking about personal branding – the hip, ill-defined term of the day.  Branding itself is a vague, meaningless word.  The only solution, therefore, is gaining pragmatic notoriety – those who are known on a small scale for being an authority in their field, whatever that might be.

The biggest difference between personal branding and faming is that personal branding exists solely for capitalistic purposes like getting into a good school, getting the right internship, getting a better job, getting customers. Basically it purports to help you get more cash.  Faming helps you live a fuller and more consistent life, from which things like the internship and the job come into being. Faming doesn’t turn itself off when the workday ends. This helps you get more life, and the money may follow, if you so choose.

Fame acknowledges that the world’s changed. Fame doesn’t mean “self-promotion.” You need to alert people that there is a ton of substance between your ears, and that you aren’t one of the drones carrying coffee just because everyone else carries coffee.

Choosing to stand out can make the difference between having everything you’ve ever wanted and wallowing in the fifth circle of mediocrity. To paraphrase the Beatles:  Fame is the one thing that money can’t buy.

Truth: Perception is reality. We all judge – and are instantly judged – the first time we encounter another human. Unfortunately, many muddle through life without realizing that negative – or worse, indifferent – views on how we conduct ourselves holds us back from faming. It isn’t that we don’t care, but we don’t realize how important our external representations are every single minute of every single day.

This is not pushing superficial strengths for selfish gains.  There’s nothing fancy to getting what you want from the world.  Just realize that fame is now an actionable verb – like dancing.  Faming means that for once you will be thinking less about what you wish to be known for and more about what you want to be known as!

After more than 20 years in the business of image and public relations, I’ve found the solution. It’s simple, it’s clear, it’s effective, and best of all it doesn’t require you to change who you are.

How To Fame is a Web-based tutorial (run by me and three guys in LA) that gives you the tools you need to regard yourself objectively and then act

Remember:  Life is a competition, especially in our totally networked world, an all-access-information society created by our need to be connected.  And if you’re not willing to jump into the competition, you’ve already lost. How To Fame brings you a sense of “Faming” that you can use to get to where you want to be, because to be famous now means to be consistent and memorable.

Until the official launch of the site, I’ve developed a club called How To Fame: The Club (catchy, eh?), and the membership is free. Gratis. Sign-up here to get it all. Just put your name and email in the box above and click submit. Yes, it’s really that easy.

Why am I doing this? Why do you think?

Fame.

Now that I have moved to Berlin, I get to hear VOA and NPR Worldwide and the European version of BBC Worldwide and I am pretty excited. I can finally hear US propaganda “outside the border” which is fascinating. As part of NPR Worldwide’s broadcast this AM (104.1 FM), I got to hear a show this morning about the history of Public Diplomacy, which I found amazingly interesting. From 1914, I think they said, the US has had a real desire to educate and engage the world, which ended abruptly once we won the cold war. And then it all went to pot, especially since the responsibility of Public Diplomacy has been rolled into the US Department of State. Well, I am all for Public Diplomacy as a strategy that is much more effective than either PR or a propaganda war. One of the most useful past strategies, which is being gutted because of post 9-11 paranoia, was the global encouragement of students to study in the USA. One lad from Egypt spoke of his experience in Washington State at the University of Washington, saying, “I got to experience that most Americans live the American Dream on two parents working two jobs, which is something I would never have known from my experience of the USA from TV from Cairo.” Amazingly interesting. Here’s some more info on Public Dimplomacy via Wikipedia via Memes.org

In international relations, the term public diplomacy is a term coined in the 1960s to describe aspects of international diplomacy other than the interactions between national governments. It has been closely associated with the United States Information Agency, which used the term to define its mission. It was originally a euphemism for purportedly truthful propaganda.

Standard diplomacy might be described as the ways in which government leaders communicate with each other at the highest levels, the elite diplomacy we are all familiar with. Public diplomacy, by contrast – according to the definition at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy – focuses on the ways in which a country (or multi-lateral organization such as the United Nations) communicates with citizens in other societies. A country may be acting deliberately or inadvertently, and through both official and private individuals and institutions. Effective public diplomacy starts from the premise that dialogue, rather than a sales pitch, is often central to achieving the goals of foreign policy: public diplomacy must be seen as a two-way street.

Film, television, music, sports, video games and other social/cultural activities are seen by public diplomacy advocates as enormously important avenues for otherwise diverse citizens to understand each other and integral to the international cultural understanding, which they state is a key goal of modern public diplomacy strategy. It involves not only shaping the message(s) that a country wishes to present abroad, but also analyzing and understanding the ways that the message is interpreted by diverse societies and developing the tools of listening and conversation as well as the tools of persuasion.

One of the most successful initiatives which embodies the principles of effective public diplomacy is the creation by international treaty in the 1950s of the European Coal and Steel Community which later became the European Union. Its original purpose after World War II was to tie the economies of Europe together so much that war would be impossible. Supporters of European integration see it as having achieved both this goal and the extra benefit of catalysing greater international understanding as European countries did more business together and the ties among member states’ citizens increased. Opponents of European integration are leery of a loss of national sovereignty and greater centralization of power.

Public diplomacy as beyond propaganda

After the dissolution of the USIA in 1999, the term has continued to be used within the US government, especially the US Department of State. It has been used most often as the foreign policy equivalent of the term public relations, but embodies a much broader frame than this.

Aside from the use of media like the Voice of America, it also includes other kinds of interaction with the public in other countries. Arranging student exchange programs, hosting seminars, and meeting with foreign business and academic leaders are all considered public diplomacy. Indirect public diplomacy includes the everyday activities of citizens internationally, such as everyday cultural activities and products such as films, tourism, theatre, and internet discussion.

The term public diplomacy clearly originated as a euphemism for propaganda. However, this definition is a somewhat dated definition, as more sensitive practitioners embody an intercultural, ‘learning’ approach to public diplomacy, with an emphasis on dialogue rather than propaganda.

A history of the term “public diplomacy”

Nicholas J. Cull of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, wrote in his essay “‘Public Diplomacy’ Before Gullion: The Evolution of a Phrase:

The earliest use of the phrase “public diplomacy” to surface is actually not American at all but in a leader piece from The Times in January 1856. It is used merely as a synonym for civility in a piece criticizing the posturing of President Franklin Pierce.

According to publicdiplomacy.org, a website sponsored by the USIA Alumni Association,

The term public diplomacy was first used in 1965 by Edmund Gullion, a career diplomat, in connection with the foundation of the Edward R. Murrow Center at Tufts University‘s The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The Murrow Center brochure described public diplomacy as:

the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy . . . [including] the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another . . . (and) the transnational flow of information and ideas.

While Gullion and the Murrow Center were the first to use the term public diplomacy, their definition remains contested and controversial. Today, there is no one definition of public diplomacy, there are many definitions (links to other definitions).

The dictionary definition of the word propaganda is “The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.” Notice that the definition says nothing about whether the material is or is not true; the essence of propaganda is that it is distributed with the intention of supporting a cause. The word literally means “that which ought to be propagated” and originated in the Catholic Church to describe the church agency responsible for evangelising. See the article on propaganda for more detail.

In the United States, however, the word “propaganda” carried and carries the connotation of falsehood. The USIA has always maintained that its agencies, such as the Voice of America, are truthful. In a famous remark, Edward R. Murrow, then director of the USIA, said:

Truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.

Nevertheless the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 still prevents the distribution within the United States of official American information which was intended for foreign audiences, for example exempting Voice of America from releasing transcripts in response to FOIA requests.

Broadly speaking, then, until recent times, the term public diplomacy has traditionally been used by those supporting it to mean truthful propaganda. But critics, such as the editors of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, have viewed it in more nefarious terms, as a form of “covert propaganda.” They also report that “the bipartisan report of the Congressional Iran-Contra committees (November 1987, p. 34) found that ‘[i]n fact, “public diplomacy” turned out to mean public relations-lobbying, all at taxpayers’ expense.’”

See also

• Diplomacy Monitor, a tool for tracking Internet-based public diplomacy

References

• Fallows, James (2005) “Success without Victory,” The Atlantic Monthly, 295:1 p. 80 (Evera quotation)

Other relevant articles

• “A Clash of Professional Cultures:The David Kelly Affair” by Biljana Scott (Published in Hannah Slavik (ed.) Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, DiploFoundation, 2004.)Also see conference slideshow presentation

• “Multiculturalism for the masses: social advertising and public diplomacy post 9/11″ by Biljana Scott (Published in Hannah Slavik (ed.) Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy, DiploFoundation, 2004.)

• “Public Diplomacy” by Pamela H. Smith, Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs, U.S. Embassy, London (Published in “Modern Diplomacy”)

• “Multistakeholder Public Diplomacy of Small and Medium-Sized States: Norway and Canada Compared” by Jozef Bátora (Paper presented to the International Conference on Multistakeholder Diplomacy,Malta, February 11-13, 2005)

External links

• How the World Sees America – Amar Bakshi on Washington Post/Newsweek on Public Diplomacy
• Example of term being used by President George W. Bush in relation to the Middle East – January 19, 2005 The Age
• Public Diplomacy Wiki maintained by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy
• Public Diplomacy (USIAAA)
• Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy
• The Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at The Fletcher School
• Public Diplomacy Research Network