Three PR lessons from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

‘On Christmas day you can’t get sore, there’s time to rob them all the more — the other 364!’ It’s not quite the dulcet tones of Dickens, warm and comforting and disturbing all at the same time, but the comic Tom Lehrer’s Christmas Carol has more than a little relevance to the motivation of this article, of which Dickens would have surely approved — to learn a valuable lesson from literature, and specifically A Christmas Carol.

So here goes a festive, edifying account of what A Christmas Carol teaches us about how to do PR. Or rather, skipping Tiny Tim’s heart-warming if mawkish plea to bless each and every one (frankly because it fails to capture the festive spirit of PR), we’re taking a leaf from the three masters of PR in the book.

In just 150 pages the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future persuade no less than the ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner’ Ebenezer Scrooge, to repent his Grinch-ish ways, embrace his spending power, and buy a few Christmas presents and a turkey for his nephew’s family. How exactly do they do it? PR, of course, taking one of three approaches.

1 The Ghost of Christmas Past: you had it so much better then

Think: Throwback Thursdays, Technostalgia, Heydays, Young Once, Grumpy now.

The NSA has nothing on Dickens (although don’t put it past them), whose stalking ghosts help Scrooge spy on his friends and family, and even himself as a child — and eventually the teen boyfriend who is dumped for choosing money over his true love.

In showing Scrooge what could have been, in reminding him of everything he’s lost, the Ghost of Christmas Past at the same time shows Scrooge everything he could have done differently — for the better.

In particular, in revisiting some of Scrooge’s spending decisions — or rather lack of them — the lost opportunity, the regretted purchase — is evoked in all its miserable detail, as any bewildered Christmas shopper arriving home with five 3 for 2s and too many Toblerones will appreciate.

2 The Ghost of Christmas Present: no really, you should buy one

Think: outside the box.

This shadowy figure of PR may seem to illustrate and describe, rather than persuade, but in laying things out and telling it how it is — it’s quite a lot of people channelling their inner Hestons and Nigellas to cook up their Christmas day dinners, incidentally, but in a Victorian way — the Ghost of Christmas Present shows exactly what the problem is — and leaves you determine how to fix it. Hint: present.

One of the families preparing for their meagre Christmas non-feast is Scrooge’s employee, including his young son Tim, aka Tiny.

Tiny Tim is experiencing some kind of fasting-induced euphoria as the Ghost and Scrooge spy on. It’s this realisation — to paraphrase Dickens — that failure to pay a living wage might result in spending implications for employees, that spurs Scrooge into spending action.

3 The Ghost of Christmas Future: how good it can be

Think: happy endings, sad endings, the present was your future

Tiny Tim is happy with nothing. However, he is also shortly to die from malnourishment. So to create a more positive PR feel and provide a moral ending, the Ghost of Christmas Future arrives to show Scrooge the ‘shadows of what may be’. Faced with the death of Tiny Tim and his own neglected tombstone, Scrooge finally stumps up the pennies for a turkey dinner and realises the message of Christmas: to eat, pray, love — and buy.