Short form. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
Long form. Our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity. We think AA ought to avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures as AA members ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed. Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion. There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.
Application within AA
- Public relations: public = anyone outside AA (individual level up to the mass level)
- Definitions
- Attraction
- 'If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.' (Page 58, Alcoholics Anonymous)
- Promotion
- Lots of definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary. However:
- 'To publicise or advertise (a product, organization, venture, etc.) so as to increase sales or public awareness.'
- Publicise:
- 'Make (something) widely known.'
- 'Give out information about (a product, person, or company) for advertising or promotional purposes.'
- Press, radio, and films ... + TV, Internet, etc.
- This appears to suggest we do not write press releases, advertise, or otherwise place material about AA in the public domain, which would now include having a website
- This is resolved by the long form
- We do have personal relations: we're not a mysterious closed tower
- However, we 'avoid sensational advertising'
- If all advertising were meant, sensational would be redundant
- Example: ' We never need to praise ourselves'
- Principles from the 12 x 12
- Examples of what we don't do, per the 12 x 12. We do not mimic:
- Political parties advertising the virtues of its leaders
- Charities showing the names of distinguished persons on their letterheads
- Other organisations with 'publicised leadership'
- Being in the public eye is bad for us individually
- This approach is also more effective in producing a good public reputation
- We let other organisations praise us
- E.g. Cochrane reviews, The Lancet
- '... a society which said it wished to publicise its principles and its work, but not its individual members.'
- Personal ambition has no place in AA
- What Language of the Heart says
- Basic principles
- 'Good public relations are AA lifelines reaching out to the alcoholic who still does not know us. For years to come, our growth is sure to depend upon the strength and number of these'
- '... the principle of attraction rather than promotion. Shot-in-the-arm methods are not for us—no press agents, no promotional devices, no big names.'
- Public anonymity
- 'As a movement, we have been, before now, tempted to exploit the names of our well-known public characters'
- '... no member ought to describe himself in full view of the general public as an AA, even for the most worthy purpose, lest a perilous precedent be set which would tempt others to do likewise for purposes not so worthy.'
- '... breaking anonymity ... could easily transfer the name of Alcoholics Anonymous over onto any enterprise or into the midst of any controversy ...'
- See page 319 on curbing the temptation to turn oneself into a public figure
- How Tradition XI is practised in reality
- We are 'Alcoholics Anonymous' not 'Alcoholics Invisible'
- We tell people (a) we exist (b) what we do (c) what we don't do
- OK to provide written information on request
- OK to have a website
- OK to publish pamphlets
- OK to undertake public information work
- Responding to incoming requests
- Outreach to professional organisations with an interest in alcoholism, treatment of alcoholism, and AA
- OK to do public talks
- OK to have stands at conventions
- OK to participate in public events
- Tone
- Be factual
- Don't praise AA
- Don't be sensational or extravagant in terms of claims
- Don't be lurid
- Don't talk about other organisations or approaches
- Stories anonymised
- Public anonymity
- Don't link full name & picture + AA membership
- Full name & picture + alcoholism / recovery: OK
- 'I got help through friends and some steps'
- Molly
- A famous public figures in the 1970s and 1980s got sober
- She was asked on a daytime TV programme, 'What do you do now you don't drink?'
- She said, 'Everything'
- She carried the message without needing to say she was in AA
- AA membership without full name & picture: OK
- Dangers of public breaches of anonymity
- Self-aggrandisement
- Misusing AA for personal purposes
- Attaching AA's reputation to one's own
- Being discredited, involvement in controversy, scandal
- Pressure on individual maintain sobriety & image other than for its own sake
Dr Bob & Anonymity
(Dr Bob And The Good Oldtimers: Pages 264 & 265)
“As far as anonymity was concerned we knew who we were. It wasn’t only AA, but our social life. All of our lives seemed to be spent together. We took people home with us to dry out. The Cleveland group had the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all the members,” said Warren. “In fact, I remember Dr Bob saying, ..... ‘If I got up and gave my name as Dr Bob S., people who needed help would have a hard time getting in touch with me.’”
Warren recalled,
“He [Dr Bob] said there were two ways to break the Anonymity Tradition: (1) by giving your name at the public level of press or radio; (2) by being so anonymous that you can’t be reached by other drunks.”
In an article in the February 1969 Grapevine: “Dr Bob on Tradition Eleven,” Volume 25, Issue 9, D. S. Of San Mateo, California, wrote that Dr Bob commented on the Eleventh Tradition, “We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films,” as follows:
“Since our tradition of anonymity designates the exact level where the line should be held, it must be obvious to everyone who can read and understand the English language that to maintain anonymity at any other level is definitely a violation of this tradition. The AA who hides his identity from his fellow AAs by using only a given name violates the tradition just as much as the AA who permits his name to appear in the press in connection with matter pertaining to AA. The former is maintaining his anonymity ABOVE the level of press, radio and films, and the latter is maintaining his anonymity BELOW the level of press, radio and films—whereas the tradition states that we should maintain our anonymity ‘AT’ the level of press, radio and films.”
Ernie G. of Toledo, commenting on what he saw to be an increase of anonymity within AA today as compared with the old days, said:
“I made a lead [a trip to carry the message] over to Jackson [Michigan] one night, and everybody’s coming up to me and saying, ‘I’m Joe; ‘I’m Pete.’ Then one of the guys said, ‘Safe journey home. If you get into any trouble, give me a buzz.’ Later, I said to the fellow who was with me, ‘You now, suppose we did get into trouble on the way home. How would we tell anyone in AA? We don’t know anyone’s last name.’ They get so doggone carried away with this anonymity that it gets to be a joke.”
Application in life
- Sponsorship
- Taking actions I don't believe in because the people who were taking them were doing better than me
- I was attracted to what they had
- 'If he is to find God, the desire must come from within.' (Working With Others)
- If it's not there, you can't put it there
- 'Don't pick unripe apples': waste of time & spoils a later opportunity
- Don't pressurise
- 'If he does not want to see you, never force yourself upon him. Neither should the family hysterically plead with him to do anything, ... But urge them not to be over-anxious ...'
- When someone displays the 4 Rs (react, resist, reject, reproach): stop
- Offer & explain, do not attempt to convince or persuade
- Page 96
- 'Do not be discouraged if your prospect does not respond at once. Search out another alcoholic and try again. You are sure to find someone desperate enough to accept with eagerness what you offer. We find it a waste of time to keep chasing a man who cannot or will not work with you. If you leave such a person alone, he may soon become convinced that he cannot recover by himself. To spend too much time on any one situation is to deny some other alcoholic an opportunity to live and be happy. One of our Fellowship failed entirely with his first half dozen prospects. He often says that if he had continued to work on them, he might have deprived many others, who have since recovered, of their chance.'
- Don't promote good: attract it
- How do you attract it?
- Work
- 'Your mission in life lies at the intersection between what you have to offer and what the world needs.'
- Serve God by serving others
- Thy will be done
- Helping the rest of God's kids get their heart's desire
- Don't judge the worth, as long as it does not harm anyone
- Romance
- Be the person you want to date
- Need nothing
- Want nothing
- Place yourself in the appropriate environments
- Let it happen
- Don't take credit for anything
- God is responsible for the results
- God is responsible for the direction and strength
- God is responsible for the motivation (He placed it within me!)
- I do have will: to seek God or fall back to the programme
- That is the only decision I ever have: to pray
- 'Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, “Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.” Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction.' (C. S. Lewis)