Expert Tips: Public relations is ineffective for winning controversial land use battles
Before we even get to the meat of our Expert Tip, we want to take a moment and say we have nothing against the public relations industry. Public relations professionals are incredibly skilled, talented and valuable people. The tactics employed by PR professionals are valuable and successful when used appropriately. When a client approaches us with a public relations problem, we immediately turn down the work and refer them to a public relations expert. Elements of what we do for clients are public relations tactics. However, based on our experience of doing nothing but winning controversial land use battles, we have found that employing public relations tactics alone is not an effective method for winning the most controversial land use battles.If your land use project is not facing opposition or you simply want to raise the profile of a non-controversial project, PR will work fine for you. But if your project is controversial and has organized opposition then a public relations campaign will fail to win your land use battle. There are 5 primary reasons why a public relations campaign will fail to win your most difficult land use battles:
1. Public relations campaigns rely on trying to build good will for a proposed land use project. These types of campaigns assume that once uninformed or misinformed citizens learn about the features and benefits of a project they will no longer oppose the project. This approach assumes that people actually care about the features and benefits of a land use project – the truth is that no one cares about the features and benefits of your proposal.
2. Public relations campaigns assume that people are self motivated followers – that is, that they will act because they like a project. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Any political professional will tell you it is far more difficult to get supporters of someone or something to act than it is to get opponents to take action. Even if a public relations professional is successful at getting citizens to like your project, that will not induce them to act in a way that encourages decision makers to “VOTE YES” on your project. The key to getting regular citizens to advocate on your behalf is shoe leather – door to door outreach and individual meetings with residents where you build relationships and get buy-in that allows you to directly ask citizens to act.
3. Public relations campaigns often create more opposition and strengthen opposition arguments. Opponents become more emboldened when they see that the developer has hired a big, fancy, expensive PR firm. It helps to deepen your opponents feeling of being in a “David vs. Goliath” or a “People vs. the Powerful” battle – making them work harder and smarter to defeat your project. The public relations professional is a terrible advocate for your project – their statements are not seen as genuine by citizens or decision makers because they are paid to make them. Opponents will use this against your project by pointing out that the main advocate for your land use project is paid by you. In addition, every time your public relations consultant touts a benefit of your project, smart opponents will turn it into a negative: when they tout all of the new jobs, opponents will use it as evidence of new traffic; when they tout new tax revenue, opponents will show how the tax revenue will be soaked up by the need for new services to offset the harms of the project. The best advocates for your land use project are regular citizens, not paid professionals.
4. Public relations campaigns often try to negotiate with opponents by holding large community meetings. If you ignore everything else you read in our Expert Tips, please heed this one piece of advice: never hold large community meetings (click here for our Expert Tips on community meetings)! Community meetings don’t persuade anyone; they act as an organizing rally for your opponents and usually lead to undecided residents opposing your project. If you are facing smart opponents, they will flood any community meeting with opponents, shout down your public relations professional and intimidate what few supporters you turn out to the meeting. Remember the health care town hall meetings over the summer? If you are going to convert opponents into supporters and/or neutralize your opponents it is essential that you conduct one on one or small group meetings over an extended period of time.
5. Public relations campaigns lack the necessary political intelligence to thwart opposition. We have written in the past that political due diligence is key to winning land use battles. Political intelligence goes way beyond knowing how decision makers will vote on your project three months before the public hearings. Months before you even unveil your project, you should know if you will have opposition, where it will come from and why they oppose your project. You will not be able to effectively communicate with your opponents unless you know exactly who your opponents are and why they oppose your project. Some of this information can be gleamed with polling, but the real nitty-gritty issues require covert intelligence gathering and then long term relationships with your opponents. This can only be done with shoe leather. What you think is a persuasive message about your project probably isn’t. It is only after you have accurate and actionable political intelligence that you can tailor persuasive messages.
When you absolutely must win your land use battle, you should hire Land Use Experts. If you are not going to hire us, then hire someone who specializes in land use and treats your land use battle as a political campaign.
Effective public relations are part of a comprehensive land use political campaign, but cannot be the focus of your efforts. To win controversial land use battles you must have – at a minimum – accurate and actionable political intelligence, a community group of regular citizens advocating on your behalf, motivated citizens that communicate their support directly to decision makers throughout the entire land use process and individual relationships that give you the ability to activate those supporters on a moment’s notice.
Comments or questions regarding an Expert Tip? Contact Leigh Mayo, President & CEO of Land Use Experts.
Expert Tips: Understanding the politics of land use
Our current and future clients often express shock that their land use project is facing overwhelming opposition. The client will usually say something like “but, the project is so well planned and it has amazing features and benefits.” It is at this point that we usually cut them off and tell the client that “no one cares.”It doesn’t matter if the project is the most environmentally friendly mixed use development, a wind farm that will provide clean energy to thousands of homes or hospital that will provide low cost and high quality care to the community – those that live closest to a proposed land use project will oppose it because they fear that it will negatively change their lives forever. Fear drives their opposition and pushes them to act politically in an effort to block whatever land use project is being proposed.
These nearby residents, often referred to as NIMBY’s (Not In My Back Yard), will organize their neighbors in opposition to the proposal: building a community opposition group; holding neighborhood meetings; mailing, emailing and phone calling decision makers; writing letters to the editor of the local papers; showing up at public hearings and presenting visible and vocal opposition to approval throughout the land use process.
The voices of these angry constituents, who can vote the decision makers out of office, create enormous political pressure on decision makers to reject even the best proposals. This type of political pressure plays a far greater role in the outcome of land use decisions than the promised or actual benefits of the proposed project. Promising more jobs, tax revenue or some nebulous global benefit is not an effective means of overcoming the objections of even a small group of vocal opponents.
Developers should not expect decision makers to fall on their sword to support a politically unpopular project just because it is a “good” idea. Great land use proposals die every day because they lack popular support from the impacted communities.
No one likes to hear this, but the reality of land use politics is that decision makers do not care that your land use project is a quality proposal with lots of features and benefits – they view your project as a stepping stone to or a hindrance of their reelection. The “right” or “appropriate” land use is irrelevant. Being part of solving a global, or any non-local, issue is irrelevant.
In America, most would agree that it would be a good idea to balance the budget, but it will never happen because the pain that would be inflicted on the elected members of Congress at the polls by their constituents would be unbearable. It is much easier to make bad decisions that you are rewarded for than good decisions that cause you to be punished. Your local community is no different – a proposed wind farm might be great for the community and a good idea, but if there is substantial opposition no smart elected official will vote to approve it. The converse is also true – a proposed shopping center might be a terrible use of land, but if it will raise enough tax revenue so that an elected official can avoid voting for a tax increase later, a smart elected official will vote to approve it.
If you are interested in impacting land use decisions, you should forget about global notions of what is good or right and instead focus on the ways to rally political support for your side of the land use battle. The key to winning approval of a land use project, particularly in the face of vocal opponents, is the involvement of average citizens who display visible and vocal community support throughout the entire land use process. Decision makers need to feel pressure from constituents at key points in the land use process. They need to see widespread support in order to have the necessary political cover to approve a controversial project.
Comments or questions regarding an Expert Tip? Contact Leigh Mayo, President & CEO of Land Use Experts.