When Big Tech Comes to Town

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Amazon has a problem. It needs to build a lot more data centers, and a growing number of people do not want them anywhere near their homes.

These enormous buildings are becoming part of the infrastructure behind the AI economy. But in communities where companies want to build them, concerns about water, energy and local impact are getting harder to ignore.

Amazon Web Services has now decided to make its case much more publicly. Its chief executive, Matt Garman, is challenging what the company calls myths about data centers, promising more investment in the communities that host them and making a much bigger argument: America needs this infrastructure if it is going to compete in the global race for AI. Amazon’s answers may well stand up. The problem is that the argument is now taking place against a backdrop of public suspicion.

This week on When It Hits the Fan, David Yelland and I looked at how Amazon is trying to change the argument around data centers. We also discussed what an 88-foot mock medieval tapestry tells us about the art of flattery in PR, and how one reference to a black Labrador became far more memorable than the political argument it was supposed to illustrate.

Amazon Learns to Speak to Its Neighbors

Earlier this month, AWS chief executive Matt Garman published a lengthy statement under the headline The race our nation can’t afford to lose. His argument is that America needs more data centers to compete in artificial intelligence, just as previous generations needed railways and highways to support economic growth.

Amazon is making that case after years in which the industry often preferred to keep a low profile. Secrecy around some developments, including the use of non-disclosure agreements with public authorities, helped breed suspicion. Amazon now says it will stop using them and is confronting arguments about water, electricity, pollution and local impact much more openly. 

Amazon is now trying to answer those arguments directly. It says the average AWS data center in the United States uses less than 13,000 gallons of water a day, equivalent to 42 American households, and that US golf courses use around 200 times more water than all of Amazon’s data centers combined.

The comparisons are striking, but they also show the limits of myth-busting. If somebody is worried about a data center being built nearby, telling them how much water golf courses use elsewhere does not necessarily answer their concern. They want to know what this development means for their water, their electricity supply and their community.

Amazon’s response goes beyond statistics. Its Built Together programme promises more than $1 billion in additional investment over five years in US communities hosting its data centers, alongside more direct engagement with residents.

I am working on a project at the moment where we have spent time looking at the loudest critics and understanding precisely what they are saying. There is rarely one “public.” The person worried about transparency is not necessarily the same person worried about water or asking what their community gets in return. You cannot answer all of them with the same message.

Garman begins with the infrastructure America built after the Second World War and places data centers within the global race for AI. Instead of simply asking whether you want a vast data center near your home, you are invited to consider whether you want your country to fall behind.

There is a legitimate argument about the infrastructure countries will need to compete in AI. But national ambition does not cancel out local concerns. People can accept the economic case for more data centers and still want convincing about the consequences of having one next door.

AWS is accustomed to talking to governments, engineers and corporate customers. Now it also has to persuade the people who will live alongside the infrastructure it wants to build. Planning permission may allow you to build a data center. It does not make the people living beside it want one.

The Fine Art of Flattery

At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, an 88-foot spoof of the Bayeux Tapestry became one of the talking points. The Birmingham Tapestry retold recent British political history in medieval style, complete with politicians, scandals and assorted Westminster dramas.

The original tapestry is currently drawing enormous crowds at the British Museum, so the cultural reference was already familiar.

One detail was particularly clever. Political journalists appeared in the artwork too. Some photographed it, talked about it and shared it with their audiences. The people who might ordinarily have been reporting on the stunt had become characters within it.

It is an obvious example of something PR people practice much more subtly every day: making people feel seen.

Good media relations should never amount to showering journalists with compliments in the hope of favorable coverage. Journalists know when they are being worked. The more effective version is usually much subtler. It might be remembering something a journalist wrote, referring back to a conversation months later or knowing which subjects genuinely interest them.

Sometimes it is simply giving them proper access or helping with a story when there is nothing immediately in it for your client.

I have seen media relations become too transactional, with every conversation treated as though it should eventually pay out in coverage. Real relationships do not work like that.

The tapestry worked because the journalists portrayed in it were in on the joke. For a few minutes, the people covering the political theatre found themselves inside it, and some of them duly shared it. The Conservative press team had found a rather elaborate way of making its audience feel noticed.

Beware the Labrador

“It’ll be that warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist, and with symbolism of fox hunting all around them. It’ll be a very far-right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [that] never really existed.” – Jenny Riddell-Carpenter MP.

At the Labour Party conference, nature minister Jenny Riddell-Carpenter warned that the far right could claim a nostalgic vision of rural Britain for itself. Her example included warm ale, a black Labrador at your feet in a pub and the symbolism of fox hunting. It did not take long for a more arresting version to take hold: Labour thinks black Labradors are far right.

That was not her argument, but by then the Labrador was doing far more work in the story than the point she had been trying to make.

I should declare an interest. I have a cockapoo called Dante who is the center of my world, so I am probably not the most neutral observer when politicians start dragging dogs into ideological arguments.

Metaphors are supposed to help people understand an argument. Sometimes the metaphor is so vivid that people remember it and forget the argument altogether.

“Far right” is politically charged. A black Labrador is familiar, affectionate and, to millions of people, entirely innocent of ideological intent. Put the two together and you have created an image far more shareable than a discussion about the future of rural communities.

Once words leave the room, the speaker loses control over which ones travel furthest. In this case, the Labrador ran away with the story.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.