Paris Lights
I write this blogpost while sitting on a plane returning from a trip to Paris. I personally have wanted to travel to Paris my whole life. I took years of French instead of the obviously more useful Spanish. I had dreams of traveling atop the Eiffel Tower and walking down cobblestone streets shopping for fabulous shoes. And like most people, I was also told nonstop that my dreams would likely end in disappointment because the French were nasty people that hate Americans and wouldn’t care how hard I tried to say “s’il vous plait,” because they’d still hate that my accent was always off. But, I write this post with the pure intent of letting everyone know that the French have been cheated and misrepresented. I found the French to be some of the most delightful, nice, polite, and helpful group that I ever encountered on my many travels.
From the very start of our journey we were surprised to encounter amazingly helpful people. The flight crew on Continental was of course great (yes, everyone knows I love Continental!) The taxi driver who picked us up at the airport not only was polite, but also appreciated my attempt to direct him to our destination in French and even thanked me for trying. The hotel, Hotel Square which sits in the 16th District at 3 rue de Boulainvilliers and it was amazing. The rooms were spacious and clean – contrary to what every site seemed to say about hotels in Paris. The staff was unbelievable (and spoke English – although I tried to use my french as much as possible) – from running down a street to fetch us taxis, to running 3 blocks to ensure us a table at a crowded brasserie, to the very fact that they personally delivered your messages with a “bon soir” every time you came back to the hotel.
Yes, contrary to everything I had heard, the people of Paris were delightful and friendly. Their calmness resonated through the amazing architecture laden streets. The ease of traveling on the subway and the true interest the café owners seemed to take in us as tourists was impeccable. And don’t get me started on how amazing it is to be in a city where things are beautiful for the sake of being beautiful! Meaning, there are lights and art on buildings that are older than the country we live in, and they are lit up all of the time. You won’t find any tree huggers trying to be green and not light the Eiffel Tower to save the world. Instead, they understand the importance of beauty and how art existing in your life everyday really does make you a happier, more friendly person. Clearly.
So how does a whole country get such bad rap? Do we equate to bad foreign policy? And, on our end our theirs? Is it just what happens when you don’t have a good press agency? Or could be sadly driven like many things are by sheer numbers of journalists that all seem to have the same opinion, whether founded in truth or not? I’m truly curious what perpetuates a negative stigma of a whole country for so long when there’s no reality supporting the theory.
Many clients come to us with community or reputation management issues and we spend hours trying to fix their brand position or repair the sentiment of their actions or stakeholders within a community. We do this through heavy PR and social media practices. We do this with incentives and video and advertising and incentivized endorsements. We do this as well by uncovering the positives that lie within their truth over and over again to help weed out the negatives.
So what is Paris to do? Perhaps it starts with one blog at a time.
Bon Annee!
