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The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

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Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#2

Post by dimitar »

I blame the over-reliance of the journalism profession on PR to get stories. Few bother to do their research nowadays and access to celebrities, company spokespeople and officials are prised more than actually useful information. You can see it in also in politics, science reporting.

RPS actually looks pretty good with this - maybe the web can provide a solution to this question? PR and paid publications are ultimately boring, even with the best efforts put in by professionals. If opinion and reporting find a better way of getting monetised on the Internet we may see solution for the boring, corrupt and uninformative media we have today.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#3

Post by JacobAldridge »

I facilitated a workshop recently where one of the speakers specialised in, among other things, crisis PR. She said that the two best ways to approach most brand attacks were 1) Silence, and this wasn't appreciated enough by brands wanting to respond; and 2) to 'burn' the story by giving access to mid-level news organisations or softer journalists - once they run with the story, it's often 'burnt' for larger / hard-hitting outlets because it's been covered.

Definitely won't work for all crises, but was eye-opening to me, and a good lesson to those of us with businesses.

Bonus tip: the best / worst time to make a social media complaint is on a Friday night - most businesses don't pay someone to monitor social media on the weekend, and conversely most people interact when they're not at work, so complaints are more likely to go viral without a response for many days.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#4

Post by finallyposting »

"That the claims weren't true does not provide room to conclude that [Maxis studio head Lucy] Bradshaw was 'lying' [...] such accusations don't help this discussion."

What!? Perhaps part of the reasons evil triumphs in media situations like this is that "good" white knights like the author carry water for people who, like Bradshaw, objectively make the world a worse place.

Hanlon's razor is irrelevant here. Regardless of whether Lucy is so stupid/irresponsible that she really didn't know such an essential detail of her studio's feature product or is simply a manipulative sociopath, decency dictates she be replaced.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#7

Post by hkmurakami »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #3

I facilitated a workshop recently where one of the speakers specialised in, among other things, crisis PR. She said that the two best ways to approach most brand attacks were 1) Silence, and this wasn't appreciated enough by brands wanting to respond; and 2) to 'burn' the story by giving access to mid-level news organisations or softer journalists - once they run with the story, it's often 'burnt' for larger / hard-h…

I immediately thought of the more serious/alarming crisis PR botch-jobs of late: the Toyota brake-sticking crisis and the Sony Entertainment account info hack.

I don't think silence would work in either of these cases, but perhaps 'burning' would?

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#8

Post by mrmaddog »

If neither silence nor the truth are options, the third best approach is to wait until there is a larger story in the industry that you can hide behind. Perhaps that was what EA was attempting, but unfortunately no larger scandals have occurred.

Being able to ride (and manipulate) news cycles is an incredibly powerful skill.

Re: The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away

#10

Post by mtgx »

dimitar wrote: post #2

I blame the over-reliance of the journalism profession on PR to get stories. Few bother to do their research nowadays and access to celebrities, company spokespeople and officials are prised more than actually useful information. You can see it in also in politics, science reporting. RPS actually looks pretty good with this - maybe the web can provide a solution to this question? PR and paid publications are ultimate…

Yeah, I dislike the websites' reliance on PR, too. Some of the stories are so obviously copy pasted from the press release. For example when Intel launches a PR with a headline like "Intel Launches Amazing New Chip", 90% of the tech sites out there are like "Intel Launches Awesome New Chip" or something along those lines, and then proceed to basically rewrite's Intel press release. No critical thinking involved. They do this with many other stories, too, especially the ones they don't understand that much. They basically become a distribution service for their press releases.
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