It is not what you say, it's what people hear

“It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and the author of Words That Work. Dr. Luntz is one of the strategic communications practitioners that I have begun to admire in recent years.

Hillary Clinton has been perceived as a highly advanced new generation robot that functions with a massive network motherboard. Her PR entourage involves big names like Mark Penn, the CEO of Burson-Marsteller that is the biggest PR firm in the world—not to mention her husband whose charm continues to receive mind-blowing attention.

However, despite all this help, the machine behind her knows quite well that we humans don’t vote for robots. In their efforts to re-package Senator Clinton, her aides have been seeking ways to humanize her. One such effort required that rather than using words to convince the public that she has authentic emotions, she should display her feelings at a diner in New Hampshire. This strategic effort helped her gain much support from independents who had lied to pollsters that their votes would go to Barak.

Her demonstration of emotions also helped her receive votes from women who pitied her. Thus, she came on top of Barack and Edwards in the New Hampshire primary. A close friend of mine is a top agent in her campaign so for the sake of our friendship I am going to leave Hillary alone, especially since this is my first blog entry.

Individuals and groups also strategically select silence as a tool of communications when their official and/or unofficial supporters speak on their behalf. It is quiet effective because third party validators amplify your messages by talking about you in the information environment and it is a great way for you to inform your target audience that you have support without saying you have support.

Following the first official Turkish military incursion into Iraq on December 16, 2007 to topple Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorists based in northern Iraq, I began a research to track the PKK messaging. Within the international media landscape, there has been only one statement made by the PKK since the initial Turkish attacks on December 16. Reuters reported that on December 16, PKK official Ferman Garzan stated that the Turkish aerial bombardment had not killed or wounded any guerrillas but had claimed the lives of two villagers. This could very well mean that the PKK’s aim is to have the Iraqi Kurdish officials and locals take on the messaging in order to implicitly symbolize the fact that Kurds in northern Iraq and PKK have the same message and speak with a unified voice. Because, Talabani, Barzani and their cronies were the ones throwing statements at the media.

Then, on January 8, AFP reported that PKK apologized for a deadly car bomb attack in Diyarbakir, Turkey's main Kurdish city on January 03, blaming it on militants acting on their own. That was the fist time PKK apologized in its bloody past since 1984. This is part of PKK’s campaign to win the hearts and minds of the ethnic Kurdish citizens in Turkey by humanizing itself with an apology. The timing of the apology is crucial because it was reported at the same time Turkish President Gul was visiting Bush at the White House.

When listening to Barzani and Talabani carefully enough, one can see that their allegiance is with PKK. The whole world is listening to them now more than ever before so they have to communicate their thoughts more clearly about PKK. They should also know that they are doomed to failure if they continue to support the terrorist group. Perhaps they don’t care any more about governorship, statehood and struggle for the Kurdish cause due to the billions of dollars they’ve generated since 2003.