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Spinning

To what extent PR adds value to a business? Probably to the extent that is is believed to do so. As we live in a digital age where information - true or false -reaches critical mass as fast as light travels through space, for any business or anybody who cares about impression and response, perception is to be managed, indeed, no less important than the substance on which it is formed - and it may be formed with no relevance to any substance whatsoever.

Indeed impressions, stories and propaganda can be readily spun out of a PR outfit, as the whole trade of paparazzi worth billions of dollars can be spun out of mere gossips. The sensible question to ask - to which no definitive answer can be readily found - is about where does it start and where should it end?

For the paparazzi, as long as the appetite for gossips is sated and people are buying, resources for spinning can be readily justified in an economic sense, though not so much for the corporate communications machine. But every serious business has to entertain a myriad of stakeholders nowadays that most senior business executives in general, not only those engaged in corporate communications in particular, have to be concerned about what they should or should not say to who and how or how not to do so. In fact, everybody in the game evolves, in one way or another, into a parrot reciting well-versed sound-bites and holding lines, with ones higher form of judgment only coming in to ensuring one saying the right things to the right persons at the right time.

Sadly, that occupies a large part of the contemporary management time. It takes true leadership and courage to draw the line to where spinning should stop.

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