Having focused my career in public relations, perception is a significant part of what I do professionally. How are my clients perceived by their audiences and how can I help shape that audiences’ perception of my client?

In a nutshell, you can have a solid company and make a great product with true benefits to the customer, but if your target audience doesn’t perceive your product the right way, you won’t sell it. That’s where PR can have quite an impact on perception, which directly impacts a company’s bottom line.

Last week I listened to Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital speak about the economy – a talk he called “this mess… and getting out” - at a gathering in New York. And what I took from his comments was that the economic recovery will also largely be about perception.

Marks, who is well-known for his musings via “memos” to clients, feels we should be confident that the cycle will invariably turn and the root of the recovery might by any of the items listed below. Note the majority of those items are perception-based:
• Appearance of bargains (perception)
• Emergence of optimism (perception)
• Some nugget of good news (perception)
• Inadequate return on cash (somewhat perception)
• Capital in the hands of possible buyers

Thus, economic recovery may be catalyzed by perception. And, in close, one of my favorite lines from the talk: “sooner or later the fear of losing comes to be balanced by the fear of missing out.”

As a sidenote, amidst all this talk about “perception” something a bit more tangible related to economic recovery has been released.  LIBOR dropped the most it has in 2 months, and while still historically high, in simple terms: banks/financial institutions are more confident and thus more likely to lend.  Check out the Bloomberg report:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aS_wbJukwWI4&refer=uk