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Last week, I heard it announced on the radio that it was the saddest day of the year. Best to get it over with early I guess. Monday January 6th proclaimed as this year’s Blue Monday, a date calculated by supporters of the concept as offering the best misery the annum can offer. Fair enough, but why is it a good feature in a radio news broadcast? Is it a desire to connect with each other in our bloated and hung-over post-holiday depression? Is it another manifestation of our many cultural rituals of light returning in a time of darkness that we celebrate? Whatever the reason, it’s quite remarkable that we like to embrace such ideas; and it’s not that think we have to, we actually like it.
Now before you accuse me of promoting masochism, I will reassure you that I have a point to make about PR. While it has been clearly demonstrated that the truism that there is no such thing as bad press is false, it does not necessarily mean that embracing and owning the negative is a bad thing. Or rather, being positive about the unfortunate can have its benefits.
“Gloomy Sunday” or “The Hungarian suicide song,” as it became known in English, was written by Rezső Seress and published in 1933, and the English version was most beautifully recorded by Billie Holliday in 1941. It was rumored that merely hearing the song played could inspire one to take one’s own life on the spot, and numerous deaths throughout the 1930s were anecdotally attributed to the song’s compelling influence. Like the backmasked messages of the Beatles’ white album and the alleged demonic instructions of 1980s rock, the mystical power imbued in “Gloomy Sunday” was a PR boon despite its rather dark consequences. As the Romantic writers evidenced, people are as much afraid as they are drawn to darkness, as long as the right stories can be told about what the darkness means.
It seems simplistic to deal with negativity by simply telling positive stories, but when the black dog of depression or the spectre of negative news about a client looms, take a deep breath and remember that the facts don’t speak for themselves. It is up to the storytellers to give them meaning. So get creative, make a new holiday out of the saddest day of the year. In 2014, remember the spirit of all our winter holidays and when darkness looms, tell good stories to bring back the light.
What’s Your Story?