No such thing as bad publicity

     The line "there's no such thing as bad publicity," is credited to PT Barnum of Barnum & Bailey fame.  He was a self-publicist and a publicist's publicist. Is his saying true?  Movie stars and politicians seem to believe it.  Barnum's show, touted as The Greatest Show on Earth, and its precedessors ran from 1871 to 2017! What do you think? 

     It is really difficult to stop someone like Barnum. Case in point: Donald Trump.  Whether it is a picture and an old statement about his daughter that leads one to wonder about incest or factual evidence of encouraging violence, they all provide name and face recognition.  

     We can't stop the tweets, posts and behavior, but we can reduce the publicity impact by following a few guidelines.  

(1)  Don't use derogatory nicknames. It immediately turns off everyone you'd like to have read what you write.   

(2)  Don't show pictures of Trump even if you're talking about something horrible he did. Pictures create face recognition. Post pictures of what he did; e.g. a picture of polluted water on a native American reservation. People remember the face and forget why they know it.  

(3) Don't read and react to every Tweet he posts.  The man puts out about 1 Tweet every 15 minutes for 8 hours a day. To acknowledge and argue each of them gives him name recognition. People recognize a name and forget why they heard it. You also give his faithful something about which to argue.     

      Another factor. Twitter will tell you of the millions who follow Trump's tweets. That doesn't mean that all of those agree with him. Those vast numbers who disagree and debate his tweets are counted among "followers".  That builds his ego, which already surpasses Genghis Khan,  Julius Caesar and Adolph Hitler all rolled into one. I think we would be best to totally ignore him on social media and focus on his actual behavior. That gives anyone plenty about which to write.