Accomplishing those tasks needs to bear in mind the nature of public relations and act strategically step by step. Any public relations campaign has four stages- defining the problem, planning and programming, taking action and communicating and evaluating the program. Why don't we analyze them one by one and form a brief for public relations campaign in the movie?
Step 1: Defining the Problem
"What exactly is it that you do for the president?" CIA agent asked Conrad Brean, he probably didn't know that the man in front of him had a job most arduous of all. The goal was to help the president to win the upcoming election within 11 days while the president was currently in real trouble. He was facing a sex scandal, the media was swarming in and the public would undoubtedly discard him if no miracle showed up.
Step 2: Planning and Programming
The main strategy adopted by Conrad Brean was to divert the public attention by inventing an inexistent war and erecting a heroic image for the president as a “peace maker”, thus “wagging the dog”.
Step 3: Taking action and Communicating
Conrad Brean successfully persuaded Stanley Motss, a Hollywood film maker, to join his PR team. This can be viewed as his first action toward success. Why him? Because he was in show business and war is show business. Actually not only war, but everything you see is involved in show business, even politics, especially politics.
The tactics they employed were well targeted and quite efficient. First they started the rumors about B-3 bombers during a media hearing about president's visit in China, successfully distracted the media focus from the scandal. Next, Albania became the target of an inexistent war because no one knew it well. With the help of Hollywood technology, they composed a vivid video about an Albanian girl running out of a burning village desperately, crying and with a white cat in arms. Television ran the video in the news without indentifying the source and acted as a third-party endorsement for this pseudo-event. In Conrad's words: We're not gonna have a war, we're gonna have the appearance of a war. Seeing is believing. Consequently, a new atmosphere has been created.People no longer cared about the trivial scandal but were overwhelmed by the upcoming war. So far so good, the first objective has been achieved.
But it's far from satisfaction. After CIA found what Conarad did, they claimed that the Albanian problem was resolved and left Conarad's schemes run aground. It's not a fit time to give up as president's scandal news began to emerge again. Mr. Fix-it moved on to turn the table.
Next step was to build a war hero. They fabricated a brave soldier called Sergeant William Schumann; the name was picked with no accidental. As another tactic, Schumann was depicted as an old shoe dragged behind. He was held by a group of terrorists and in a newly shot picture, he scratched Morse code on his shirt, spelling out “Courage Mom”. The producers made a new song for him and throw old shoes to trees in the night, indicating the popularity of Schumann's cause. Also, the producer made up a speech for the president and moved all the listeners into tears. To enforce the war impact, they offered more footages for the media including a young girl gave the first sheaf to the president during an Albanian harvest festival, showing that the president brought peace and hope to that country. Again, the PR team directed a new trend for the public.By creating symbols and images, they earned tremendous media publicity. News about such staged events and pseudo-events far outweighed the negative reports about President's scandal. The second objective was reached. The president by far was undoubtedly the biggest hero of this inexistent war.
Step 4: Evaluating the program
As a result, the public opinion has been crystallized rapidly and the president won the election with a high supporting rate.
“This is politics at its finest” As Stanly proudly concluded.
Laughed, shocked and pondered, the biggest lesson this movie taught us is “Seeing is not believing”. As a satire to the government public relations with a deep insight, we should realize that this is by no means public relations at its finest because it loses credit to the most important stake holders — public at large. Any profession would die rather than prosper without honesty and ethics in mind. By this token, Wag the Dog is a reminder rather than a textbook for the practitioners to read.
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