Get The Net Positive

If it were a country it’d be the third largest. I know this because a certain new film’s strapline has been unmissable as its launch approaches;

Whilst reviews have been encouragingly favourable, most pre-release journalism centred on whether it portrays Facebook’s face as a sociopath, the real founder even, and modern-day Bond villain? One differing piece that struck a sales chord with me examined the PR tussle surrounding the movie’s potential bogeyman.

According to London’s Independent newspaper’s analysis, there’s a terrific solution selling insight.

In short, is the film fact or fiction?

Column inches abound over whether any of this conjecture sullies the reputation of one of the biggest brands around. Where the Indy’s piece is so interesting, is in how it shows up the conventional wisdom of anyone subject to such lambaste hiring the most expensive PR team in town who’s fees make lawyers look like philanthropists.

They quote Allan Mayer, a publicity strategist at 42 West.

“Quite often, people will put together these legal-style briefs saying what’s real and what’s wrong.
Facebook didn’t do that.
They were smart enough to know that that didn’t matter.
They just said the story in the movie isn’t the real story.
When you’re in one of those battles for perception, all that matters is the net positive.”

The solution selling parallel is obvious. In any pursuit where you get two prospective vendors slugging it out, innocent misinformation right the way through to outright slander can cloud much buyer-seller discussion.

When the victim of such injustice, it is so often the recourse of the undermined to produce just this aforementioned style of detailed claim/denial ‘brief’.

To take a leaf out of Zuckerberg’s (evidently successful) book would be to concentrate on the Net Positive.

Where this is happening to your potential disadvantage, how can you rise from the possibly irrelevant minutiae and get your key overall message across?