Brand trust

The word “PR” appeared in Russia, probably in the early 90s. At first, most people did not understand what was hidden behind the strange abbreviation. Knowing that four letters encoded the English phrase public relations (PR), which translates as “public relations,” did not make the term any clearer. What kind of public relations? How are they formed? And, most importantly, why?

Now the meaning of the word “PR” has become a little clearer (or we have simply become accustomed to a term that is used appropriately and inappropriately), but the distrustful and even negative attitude towards the phenomenon itself has remained. If you ask a random person on the street what he understands by PR, then most likely the answer will be that it is a type of advertising. And advertising, which seems to soon displace films and programs from television broadcasts, and articles themselves from the pages of glossy magazines, is perceived by many as an obvious evil.

In fact, there is one significant difference between PR and advertising. Advertising tells potential consumers about the benefits of a new product, and very often in advertising texts it is indirectly compared with similar products (and, of course, turns out to be better). Classic – “correct” – PR should not focus on the specific advantages of the product. Its task is to create a favorable image about it or the company that produces it. That is, a person will buy an advertised product because he likes some of its miraculous properties, but he will buy a promoted product because he trusts the manufacturer.

However, the terminological details here are mentioned solely from literalism. For the topic I want to touch on - PR in the promotion of popular science literature - they are completely unimportant for one simple reason: most scientists do not respect PR in any form and do not recognize the possibility of promoting the books they have written in this way.

The exact reasons for the authors’ hostility to PR are not entirely clear - perhaps this attitude stretches back to the distant Soviet past, when advertising was a kind of stillborn child of a planned economy (how can one seriously talk about advertising, say, stockings from the N textile factory, when all products produced were stockings equally bad in the country?), or from the recent past of the 90s and 2000s, when the number of advertisements everywhere went beyond all imaginable limits.

In addition, genetics can play an important role in shaping the assessment of PR - during a discussion with the author of this text, the famous evolutionist Alexander Markov mentioned that certain sets of psychological characteristics correlate well with certain sets of genetic characteristics. Let me quote Markov: “On the one hand - rigor, seriousness, conservatism, intolerance, fear for one’s reputation. On the other hand, there is frivolity, a desire for novelty, tolerance, and a disregard for “prejudice.” There is an assumption that this is due to the level of activity of the amygdala, which is also called the “fear center.”

Accordingly, a person of the first type will be very distrustful of all kinds of PR campaigns designed to tell readers that a new popular science book has appeared on the shelves, especially if this campaign involves the personal participation of the author with a story about his work. A frequent reaction to an offer to talk about your book on a TV show or on the radio: “Well, why am I going to do special PR so that my books are sold out better, somehow that’s not good.”

It makes no sense to condemn a person for such an approach - this is his point of view, and no one has the right to blame him for this. But it is the readers who suffer first of all from the dislike of scientific authors for PR. Of course, you can go to a bookstore, go to the popular science section, rummage through the books there and choose what seems interesting. But it is unlikely that the majority of readers will do this: the behavior described is, rather, typical of people who are already interested in science and, at the very least, follow updates on the scientific and pop market. And the average reader learns about new educational books from television, newspapers, radio, magazines - in general, from the media. And the more information there is about popular science news, the more people will buy them. But one of the main goals of education is to involve as many people as possible in it.

There is nothing shameful in the fact that the author will receive money for his book - after all, he spent a lot of work on its creation: he conceived it, wrote it, edited it, then edited it to the requirements of the publisher, then edited it again, then finally approved the printed layout , and the book went on sale. This is a fair, mutually beneficial deal - the author receives a fee, and the readers, from whose funds this fee is made up, get the opportunity to expand their understanding of the world. And the more such enlightened readers there are, the better society’s attitude towards science and scientists will be, which means the more parents will risk approving their children’s choice to engage in research.

So, it is in the interests of society to do everything possible to encourage the author to do PR. By way of nonsense, you can propose the idea of ​​forced PR through an attack. The scenario is like this. In some media there are reviewers who have read a book by an author who does not like PR. They express their opinion about the book and do not necessarily only praise the work - if a person finds shortcomings in the book, then he can point them out. It is important that the claims are truly substantive and do not turn into slander and empty attacks. Wanting to protect his creation, the author himself will begin to look for a way to do this. Or at least it will be easier for him to make contact with journalists.

Of course, this measure (if we consider it even a little seriously) is an emergency measure, and it can hardly be used as a panacea. Firstly, the process of criticism and defense will be painful for the authors, and secondly, the feeling of negativity from the conflict may turn some future readers away from these scandalous scientists and their books. But at least people will begin to recognize the researchers by sight and name, and the next time they see a familiar name on the cover, they will be more likely to open the book.

To solve the PR issue systematically, a global restructuring of Russian science is probably necessary. In the West, a scientist is forced to spend his entire life promoting his research in order to receive funding for it. One can argue whether this is good or bad, but such a system, by definition, frees people of science from aversion to PR. Western scientists are very happy to go on television and radio programs where they talk about what they do. They don’t necessarily talk about their books, but, nevertheless, after such public appearances, their books begin to be bought. And all because PR, which creates respect and trust in the brand, really works.