Self-Promotion Purpose - Alberto Gonzales & Ollie North

Being a “confident self-promoter” isn’t just feeling confident promoting yourself. It’s also being confident that you understand your customer/client better than they understand themselves.

That is, you know them so well you can predict with a high degree of certainty what they want and how best to give it to them. You have confidence in your knowledge and it is the core of all you do in your promotion. The person who knows them best is the person who can ethically massage them to get their belief, trust, and business.

However, not all “confident self-promotion” is alike … or even acceptable. Being a “confident self-promoter” isn’t necessarily the same as being one with an honest and ethical purpose. One has only to look at Alberto Gonzales in 2007 or Ollie North during the Iran-Contra Congressional Hearings in 1987 to see where the difference lies.

Both Gonzales and North were confident and promoted themselves well toward their respective goals – goals benefiting themselves, not their audience. But of the two it was Oliver North who created a theatrically spectacular self-promotion campaign that provides us with a useful model. Let’s take at look at what he did and the results he got.

It was July 7, 1987, when then-Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver L. North stood in front of a packed Senate hearing room, before him two tiers of 26 elected officials, sitting behind stacks of three-ring binders of documents and testimony. Before and below that investigatory panel sat this lone, decorated military figure, the object of every gaze and the subject of every question.

This was the aloof, enigmatic National Security Council Aide who had stonewalled the Iran-Contra Congressional Hearing for seven months by refusing to testify, give depositions, or cooperate in any way about lying, selling guns, and illegally shredding documents. He had been tagged a “dangerous loose cannon.” As a result, his public favorability rating was barely 6 percent!

However, North was an experienced and effective fundraiser for the Republican National Committee. He was well-known for his powers of persuasion. He used his speaking and promotion skills to create the image that would best get his message across.

First he used his physical appearance to set the tone. He was clad in a perfectly-fitted Marine dress uniform, resplendent with six rows of ribbons and one row of medals. (not his normal business suit). His military attire shouted “this is someone who served his country and did so proudly – think God, Country, family, loyalty, and sacrifice.”

He used nonverbal behavior to look forthright and honest – a poster boy for apple pie, motherhood, and the flag. He made himself the “scapegoat,” underdog, and victim at the hearings, taking the blame for everything. With his jaw firmly set, he extended lower lip and furrowed brow, looking like a feisty David before the Goliath-like committee.

He used folksy words, such as, “golly, gee,” “neat idea, “I pray to God,” and let his voice crack like Jimmy Stewart’s when he was angry. He never did anything to break his focus with specific senators or the mood he was creating. Everything was expressed in throat-catching appeals to patriotism, sentiment, nobility, and justice.

He used illustrations, from a blowup of a newspaper article on Abu Nidal, whose group brutally murdered an 11-year-old girl, to stories, analogies, characterizations, speeches, and props to underscore every point he made. It was a masterpiece of choreography.

But the most spectacular aspect of North’s testimony was his control. He controlled his image – from macho and gung-ho to contrite then humble, boyish, and homespun. He controlled what he said, how he said it, and his emotions for maximum impact. He controlled his audience’s understanding of the intent of his message and their response to it.

His real audience was not the Senate Committee. It was the 55 million television viewers nationwide. He tailored the form and content of his presentation to the medium and his knowledge of his audience. He played to the intimate, emotional intensity of television to grab and hold them, leaving them to hang on his every word.

How effective was "confident self-promoter" Oliver North in creating the visibility and credibility he wanted? Only one day after his testimony, his public favorability rating shot from barely 6 percent to 43 percent!

Furthermore, 60 percent of polled TV viewers now expressed sympathy for him, 67 percent believed him a” true patriot,” and 84 percent thought him “truthful.” Posters, buttons, T-shirts, and billboards sprang up, proclaiming, “Real Americans Love Ollie” and “Ollie North for President.”

Using brilliant “confident self-promotion techniques,” Oliver North literally overnight transformed his public image from that of “lying, swaggering, messianic crook” to that of “selfless, flag-wrapped Guardian of the Western Hemisphere.” This he parlayed into becoming the darling of the lecture circuit, at $25K per gig, and a nationally syndicated talk show host with a popular Internet site.

No matter how you felt about Ollie North, he was a past-master of “confident self-promotion.” But don’t let his dishonest use of these strategies cause you to reject their honest use. The strategies themselves are legitimate, professional, and highly effective.

Everything depends upon your purpose in using them. When it’s honest, ethical, and geared toward benefiting your audience, you can use them to create the image you want and to get your audience to know, like, and trust you. When they feel that rapport, they'll do business with you. All of which further increases your confident self-promotion.