The last two weeks have brought two great examples of the practice of ‘muckraking’ (digging up dirt on competitors) and ‘muck slinging’ (conveying it to the world by any all means possible to make your opponent look bad) going bad. Whether in business or politics, these ongoing 'mud fights' are salient examples of why muckslinging never a good idea for winning any kind of communications battle.
The two separate examples of which I speak are of course the final verbal battle between McCain and Obama and the ongoing and hugely damaging Osborne donation request saga.
In both instances the offending parties, McCain and Osborne, have attempted to gain the upper hand by making Obama and Mandleson respectively, look rather dodgy. The trouble is that both instances have backfired and for highly obvious reasons – politicians at this level really should know better.
McCain, to start with, ended up looking silly using precious opportunities, in what was their final presidential campaign debate, to focus on Obama’s supposed relationship to a ‘terrorist’. This tenuous and pretty shaky story comes unravelled pretty quickly, and actually only served to Obama’s advantage.
The Osborne ‘scandal’ on the other hand, still yet to truly shake out, is having even worse implications for the ‘muckslinger’ than the ‘mucksling-eee’, and it’s only going to go worse. By telling the world the Peter Mandleson supposedly ‘dripped poison’ about Gordon Brown while they were out in Corfu, has created all sorts of trouble that could easily see heads roll.
The main comeuppance to be felt by those digging up dirt on competitors is threefold:
1. Competitors dig up worse dirt on the muckslinger (as may have happened in the Osborne affair)
2. Competitors make the muckslinger look silly and unfocused (as happened in the Obama/McCain debate)
3. Constituents, customers etc, all think the muckslinger is underhanded and petty and are likely to side with the competitor (as is likely to happen on Nov 4 – wait and see!)
The verdict? It’s always best to keep things aboveboard and not stoop to the level of muck slinging – it’s simply not worth it. Avoiding this dangerous practice is a much safer route and infinitely less damaging for one's reputation.
