"Pressing the Flesh"

Do not look now but we are now knee-deep into a political season - a heavy-duty one, I might add. As of this writing, approximately nine months from now the United States will vote on who it wants to be its president for the next four years. Exciting times. (Also, depressing, depending upon one's perspective.) That aside, we are now witnessing and, in some cases, experiencing a lot of campaigning. Candidates are giving tons of speeches and doing as much as they can to interact directly with prospective voters. The voting public has come to expect these kind of activities from those seeking the highest office in the land, never mind how effective either one might be.

In this day and age of high technology, including television, going out and shaking hands and/or chatting face-to-face with prospective voters may not quite generate the wide-spread exposure a candidate strives for each day. Still, we voters like seeing this kind of personal effort as it represents that the candidate genuinely cares what is on the mind of "the people" and gives voters a tiny bit more appreciation of what the candidate is like as a person. Consequently, candidates do it and citizens, generally, are the happier for it. At the same time, you can bet each candidate and their team are continuing to devise ways to get them as much media exposure as possible.

In media relations work, the primary way of connecting with reporters used to be face to face interaction. This included visiting reporters at their offices, arranging meetings and calling then on the phone. These activities are still done, of course, but not nearly as much as they used to be. Nowadays, thanks for our technological advances, media relations workers do not need to "press the flesh" with reporters as much as they used to. Now, they can post their own stories or announcements as well as directly communicate with potential supporters or customers. In both politics and promotion, "pressing the flesh" is not what it used to be.