从慢食运动到“慢速”公关

    对麦当劳（McDonald's）来说，卖出第100万个汉堡一定是个自豪的时刻，因为它印证了理查德•麦当劳和莫里斯•麦当劳的快餐定制系统的成功，而奶昔机销售商雷•克洛克认识到了这一点并把它发扬光大。

    当然，好事过头也可能变味。到1984年，麦当劳已经烤制了500亿个汉堡，喜剧演员杰瑞•宋飞都纳闷为什么麦当劳还在计数。仅仅两年之后，麦当劳在罗马著名的西班牙广场（Piazza di Spagna）开店，由此引发的抗议成就了慢食运动（slow food movement），乃至以后的全面慢速运动。

    第一本记者电话目录Bacon's Publicity Checker出版于1952年，如果我们把此后全球公关部门发送的推广信息数量制成图表，同样也把麦当劳自1940年开张以来所售出的汉堡数目绘制成图表，两者会相当类似。

    麦当劳的金色拱门出现在西班牙广场时，著名美食家卡尔洛•佩特里尼发起了慢食运动，而现在记者和博客作者也开始大声疾呼，抗议伴随着邮件而来的海量推广信息，而这一切都是拜技术进步所赐。

    慢速运动的维基百科页面引用了挪威哲学家古特温•弗洛伊斯塔德教授的总结：

    唯一不变的就是万物都在变化。改变在加速。如果你想跟上，你也得加速。这就是现状。但是我想提醒众人，我们的基本需求从未改变。需要被人关注，被人欣赏！需要归属感。需要亲近和关怀，甚至还有一点点爱！这些需求只有通过人际关系中的慢才能得到满足。我们必须重新找回慢、沉思和相聚。只有在那里我们才能找到真正的新生。

    技术已经对注意力的集中构成了巨大挑战，特别对记者而言更是如此。公关高手们只需轻点几下鼠标，就可以向数以千计的记者群发同样的信息。而随着公共关系和营销部门越来越关注博客作者和“有影响力的人物”（可以松散地理解为任何有数名Twitter粉丝的人），目前的记者们所经受的信息轰炸未来将在更多普通人的收件箱中再现。就像在任何军备竞赛中，总的趋势就是如何以更快的速度轰炸更多的人。

    然而我们还有希望，它来自于社交媒体。人人都在Twitter, Facebook和其它平台上畅所欲言，这样一来，大家就有机会去深入了解记者的专题报道和影响力人物的兴趣所在，这种现象前所未有。与那些行业电话簿和传真机依然昂贵的年代不同，今天任何人都可以利用科技实现真正的人际互动，从而建立有意义的人际关系。当然，急吼吼地应用技术手段并没有什么好处。

    我们可以改一下古特温•弗洛伊斯塔德教授的话，也许公关部门需要表现显出“亲近和关怀，甚至还有一点点爱”，这些“只有通过公共关系中的慢才能实现。”

    格里高利•加兰特是面向记者和新闻行业的社交网络Muck Rack的首席执行官。他也是短文奖（Shorty Awards）的共同创始人，该奖项颁发给社交媒体的最佳作者。加兰特为数家创业公司提供过咨询服务，并在TechStars创业加速器担任导师。

    It must have been a proud moment for McDonald's when they sold their millionth hamburger -- proving the success of Richard and Maurice McDonald's system of making meals quickly that milkshake machine salesman Ray Kroc recognized and ultimately scaled.

    Of course, a good thing can go too far. By 1984, McDonald's (MCD) cooked its 50 billionth hamburger, prompting Jerry Seinfeld to wonder why McDonalds is still counting. Just two years later McDonalds open a restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome, which caused protests that sparked the slow food movement, and more generally the slow everything movement.

    If we charted the number of pitches sent out by the world's PR people since Bacon's Publicity Checker -- the first directory of journalists -- in 1952, it might resemble the chart of the number of burgers sold by McDonalds since its founding in 1940.

    Just as Carlo Petrini spearheaded the slow movement as the Golden Arches went up over Piazza di Spagna, journalists and bloggers are starting to speak up about the relentless volume of mail-merged pitches they're receiving that's been made possible by technology.

    The slow movement's Wikipedia page quotes professor Guttorm Fløistad's summary of the philosophy:

    The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today. It could however be useful to remind everyone that our basic needs never change. The need to be seen and appreciated! It is the need to belong. The need for nearness and care, and for a little love! This is given only through slowness in human relations. In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal.

    Technology has posed a huge challenge to everyone's attention span, especially journalists. PR pros can now blast thousands of journalists with the same message with just a few clicks of a mouse. As PR and marketing departments set their sights increasingly on bloggers and "influencers" (a loosely defined industry term for any person with more than a couple Twitter followers), many more civilians' inboxes will face the assault journalists are suffering right now. Just like any arms race, the trend has been about figuring how to blast more people more quickly.

    However, social media offers hope. As everyone opens up on Twitter, Facebook (FB) and other platforms, there's an opportunity to spend time understanding a journalist's beats and an influencer's interests like never before. Unlike the days of expensive industry phone books and fax machines, anyone today can build meaningful relationships through real human interactions globally using technology. If they use technology the slow way.

    To adapt the professor's quote, perhaps there's a need in PR for "nearness and care, and for a little love", which "is given only through slowness in [public] relations."

    Gregory Galant's the CEO of Muck Rack, the social network for journalists and companies in the news. He's also the cocreator of the Shorty Awards which honors the best of social media. Galant advises several startups and is a mentor in the TechStars startup accelerator.