Men from UGLE appoint PR agency

The men from UGLE have employed a PR company to portray their secret organisation in a positive light.  I can picture the scene, as a group of men sit around the table within their secret lair in a hollowed out mountain …Or so the media may spin the story in PR Week that the English Freemasons have appointed Bondy consulting to help promote the Craft.

Grand secretary of the United Grand Lodge Nigel Brown said: ‘Freemasonry is now run as a modern business and it is important our communication reflects this. Freemasonry plays a unique role in society today and it is vital we encourage people to talk openly about it and dispel the many unfounded myths

associated with it.’

What a fascinating PR brief.

I think one of the issues for a PR consultancy is that the silence around Freemasonry is so ingrained.  Freemasonry in the UK is still not something that is discussed in public.

Members do not talk about their membership. And the organisation does not seek to openly go out to recruit individuals. It is not well known that those wishing to join must seek out existing members and ask about joining.  The Freemasons will not tap people on the shoulder to join.

In the US, membership is a more public affair and they promote the message 2B1 ASK1 in campaigns in the media and online.

But this is not a matter of "awareness".  Nearly everyone will have heard of the Freemasons.  If only through the Freemasons, a dance band from Brighton.  So awareness is high, but perception is distorted.

The news that Dan Brown was to turn his attention to Freemasonry worried many Masons that had seen how Mr Brown had portrayed the Roman Catholic Church.  However, the Lost Symbol turned out to be positive, if slightly bizarre, description of Freemasonry.  This probably provided a surprising PR boost to the Freemasons.

So the text book approach would be to describe the "true picture", possibly providing a human voice and face rather than some of those great symbols - such as the square and compass.  It will be interesting to see who will come forward as an example of freemasonry.   I guess we will see a mix of different case studies (middle class and working class, black and white).  We need the usual surprising member to entice he media.

I would also expect to see some quantifiable figure for the funds raised by Freemasons and passed on to charity.  I am sure there will be particular interest in how much money goes to non-Masonic charities, and that might go some way to proving that Freemasons are bound to treat both Mason and non-Masons evenly.

But I am not sure they have started off on the right note. Jessica Bondy of Bondy consulting says “There are no secrets in freemasonry”. Well that is not how the membership would see it. Freemasonry is not a secret society, but it would certainly suggest that it has a number of secrets.  It is often said that it is not a secret society but a society of secrets.

She also says there are no secret handshakes - but I know that we all receive a masonic handshake every so often.  (edit - well probably only the male readers)

So I look forward to following the PR campaign.  In some ways I am jealous of the brief. 

But I wonder about how difficult it will be to describe and promote a society that is three hundred years old but is scared of publicity, is deeply spiritual but not religious, and is non-political but linked to so many political conspiracy theories. 

Best of luck with that.