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Lipstick on a Pig: Winning In the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game | 
 enlarge | Author: Torie Clarke
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy New: $11.89
You Save: $7.06 (37%)
New (13) Used (5) from $10.89
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 395529
Media: Paperback
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0743271173
Dewey Decimal Number: 659
EAN: 9780743271172
ASIN: 0743271173
Publication Date: July 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
Torie Clarke, renowned and respected in political and business circles as one of the nation's most gifted communicators, offers a complete guide to the new age of transparency. Clarke's message is refreshing and straightforward: No more spin. Always a dubious proposition, spin has become increasingly vulnerable as information sources have proliferated; spin is simply no longer viable. Or put another way, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Distilling her twenty-five years of experience and wisdom into eight concise rules, Clarke counsels that politicians and executives need to tell the truth early, often, and in plain language.Clarke's experience is incomparable: She was the Pentagon's communications chief during the early years of George W. Bush's presidency and, prior to that, a high-ranking adviser to the first President Bush and to Senator John McCain. She illustrates her lessons with riveting behind-the-scenes accounts of some of our country's crucial moments over the last two decades -- for instance, as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, she was at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and she recounts her experience that day as Rumsfeld's office strove to inform, instruct, and reassure the public. Clarke shows that a policy of transparency not only protects you, but that you even stand to gain from it -- because once you figure out that you can't put lipstick on a pig, you've actually learned something far more powerful: not to create a pig in the first place. Her lessons for getting your message out include: - Tell your own story -- especially if it's bad news -- on your own terms, before someone else tells it on theirs. It will allow you to survive controversy and will also enhance your reputation.
- It's about one thing. Be ready and able to explain yourself to the proverbial man on the street in a clear, simple sentence or two.
- Admit your mistakes, because the truth will out.
Entertaining, approachable, and full of crucial insight and practical guidance, Lipstick on a Pig will be indispensable for business leaders, public figures, and anyone working in media relations. With humor and savvy, Clarke's vision offers truly new opportunities for communications in the Information Age.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 What the world needs LESS of September 13, 2008
Coco (Chesapeake Bay)
So much for the Straight Talk Express. It's all spin and all explained in this book. How telling that McCain's own advisor wrote a book with this name, and then he had the audacity to acuse Obama of using it against Gov. Palin. Sounds like he read this book pretty well. But America needs unity, not more smear, not more blurring of the truth, not winning at all cost.
Spinner talking about "No Spin" May 28, 2008
Pusthaka Vimarsakudu (Rohnert Park, CA United States)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I closely followed her news conferences during early Iraq Invasion. It's so sad that "integrity" has no place now a days. She is no where on the substance starting from the title.
Be wary of this author, Clarke spun the Pentagon Propaganda! May 4, 2008
Memetician (Cambridge, MA USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
She's the mastermind behind the Pentagon's hiring of retired generals and colonels and paying them to back up the Bush administration's Iraq invasion on major news outlets. The New York Times broke this shocker in a piece called MESSAGE MACHINE; Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand, written by David Barstow, published April 20, 2008. SourceWatch reports that the Pentagon military analyst program was launched in early 2002 by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke. The idea was to recruit "key influentials" to help sell a wary public on "a possible Iraq invasion." Former NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard called the effort "psyops [psychological operations]on steroids." This is scary stuff that the media is afraid of talking about (so far, anyway). It's like 1971, when the NYT broke another Pentagon-gone-bad story, but that one wasn't buried by the media. Back then, I guess reporters didn't bury their heads in the sand. How things have changed.
Book Is All Over The Trough! April 18, 2007
Ink & Penner (Illinois)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Is this a "how to" book on corporate communications? Is it a tell-all book on government PR strategies and heartless spin? When halfway through, I still couldn't figure out what Clarke was getting at. From pages and pages of lite references to Starbucks and Saving Private Ryan...from bin Laden to the Bishops' Conference...from the Pentagon to Prime Cable, she's all over the board in a listless (almost boring) effort about media, government, corporate people and corporate places, all of which she apparently had some kind of hand in image-shaping.
-But it's less a step-by-step primer on "spinless" ways to embrace the public's good graces than a strangely woven tour of her own career successes. If the reader wants an extended resume about how one former government media-meister "made it," this cute (but surface) read's an excellent work. If, instead, the goal is finding riveting insight on slippery PR, tough opinion on the media, out-spoken analysis of crooked business and of failing government...plus solutions to the accompanying problems (something other than the continuous drone about her own vague public relations strategy of "transparency." "transparency," "transparency."), forget about it. I certainly tried to "get into" the beat of the book; but I could not, constantly expecting to find the book's real substance as the pages turned. One star, but that's generous. -For effort.
 At last, someone who knows what works! March 13, 2006
James T. Currie (Alexandria, VA, United States)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I read the other reviews of this book, and I must admit to being confused by the negativity in some of them. This is a really terrific book: honest, helpful, insightful. Torie Clarke has worked in some of the most difficult public affairs positions in this country--cable industry, Sen. John McCain, Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon--and she has learned her lessons well. What she says may not be totally original thoughts on how to represent your organization, but she has presented her observations lucidly and in entertaining style. Her advice to confront the bad news immediately is not often done here in Washington. We see every day politicians of every stripe who think it will just go away if they ignore it. Senator Trent Lott and his pronouncements on Strom Thurmond come immediately to mind, but there are many others. I was struck by Ms. Clarke's many tales of those who had owned up to their faux pas and the many others who did not. As a former public affairs officer myself, I can only echo Ms. Clarke's advice to get the principals out front and let them be the face of the organization. No one much wants to hear a flack speak for a group in a time of crisis. CEOs and generals and secretaries of cabinet agencies who hide behind their public affairs officers are never going to be as effective as those who don't, and Ms. Clarke has given plenty of reason for those high-ranking individuals to step forward and take the heat--just as they take the salary and prestige that goes with their position. This book is not big on theory; it is a very useful summary and guide for the practitioner.
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