Mystique - Killed by the Web

"The Kennedy Mystique Still Failing to Sway New Yorkers," reads the headline in NEW YORK Magazine.  Other headlines, of course, disagree.  They claim that Sweet Caroline is turning to a sweeter strategy than barnstorming the state and doing lunches for photo-ops. 

This battle of the headlines, though, ignores the digital reality that mystique is now hard to acquire, retain, and regain once lost.  The web moves too quickly for the ingredients of what go into mystique to solidify.  And if a mystique did exist, as it did with Princess Caroline, it can falls apart in a digital minute.  There's simply too much information, commentary, deconstruction, praise, criticism and satire for a mystique to hold up.  And regain a mystique?  Impossible.

Look at Sarah Palin.  The aura which could have become mystique quickly faded as digitals vetted her.  Look at Barack Obama.  Once perceived as exotic, under the digital glare he quickly morphed into another politician.  And his wife wasn't perfect either.  He got elected because his handlers had the web down cold.  Look at John McCain.  The hero mystique turned old given the standard over-exposure of the web. 

In his upcoming book on how digital technology impacts public relations, media expert Bob Dilenschneider recommends strategies for how leaders can even endure - forget aura and mystique - in cyberspace. 

To do this they, for example, will have to learn to see the world of communications as flat.  Instead of addressing constituencies top down, they will at eye level.  The tone will mirror the dynamics of a conversations vs. those of 1970s corporatese.  Even statesmanlike and formal are out.  The challenge? For leaders to find their online voice.

Total control over the message is totally 20th century.  Conversations are open.  They invite diverse opinion.  Had Johnson & Johnson understood how to have a conversation with the three Tweeters objecting to the Motrin commercial, that ad might not have been pulled.  J&J might not have made a mea culpa.  And the drug company would have had new space to message.  

Dilenschneider's book, published by the American Management Association, will be out in March.  His previous books are here.