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Inside The Minds Strategies for Success in PR – The Reality Public relations is an art and a craft. I am not sure it is a science. Many public relations people treat it as a scientific field and say they can measure this or that. You can probably do that to a degree, but even medicine – which is a science – cannot claim their methods will work from one patient to the next. So how can we be so scientific if even the scientific sciences admit that they are not? You have to treat the field as an art and a craft. The ability to write well means you can think well, and we often do not see good writers anymore, just tacticians. Many agencies have developed useful ways of measuring things, and we use them, as well. It helps make the client feel they are getting their money’s worth. But when you get to the true point of it, if the client’s product is not selling, the service is not selling, or the position is not being communicated, why bother with any other measurement? Ten or 15 years ago the Public Relations Society of America, with which I have been very much involved, came out with a study giving the definition of public relations. About 15 or 20 people wrote the page-and-a-halflong piece, and a couple of lawyers anointed it. The piece was vague and complicated, and it annoyed me to no end: How could we as an industry come up with such a complex and unclear definition? Our field gets itself into trouble because it thinks in terms that are not sharp and clear. We 110 The Art of Public Relations should be the bastions of clarity and simplicity. I once heard somebody say you should make your presentation “like Sesame Street.” Make your presentation simple and get offstage as quickly as you can. When setting up a campaign, the most important thing is for the campaign to be different from other campaigns. It should not be a rip-off of a campaign somebody else did. When you identify the company’s product or position, you carefully assess the audiences and the constituencies, and you ask: “What do the audiences want? What are they interested in? Are they going to be interested in this product if we convey the information about the product properly?” The customer is still king. Public relations people often forget that. If you give the customer what the customer needs or wants through a campaign, the campaign will be successful. It is that simple. One of the important goals of a campaign is for the client to feel they got their money’s worth. But the main goal is always to successfully help a company build and grow its business. You do all you can to make them successful. It is also important in any campaign that your client feels you have become partners with them in business – not in public relations – in business! They should feel they cannot perform without you, that you are so important the CEO can’t do without you. 111 Inside The Minds Always be accessible with and for the client and always tell the truth. If you have integrity, you might not get in a story the first or second time, but you become so accessible and so important as a source of help to a journalist that you shortly become someone they rely on. Later, you will see yourself being written up a lot because you are a company that talks. When you have a problem, you admit you have a problem, and you don’t let the lawyers run all over everything and direct what’s being communicated. If a client’s budget is tight, segmented work to one medium – one newspaper, magazine, radio outlet, or TV network – is often the best approach. That way that medium knows that little piece is theirs alone. However, anybody who writes a lot of news releases ought to be shot, because they are not read, even if they are written well. They are usually dropped. A quick memo or phone call can be very effective. Sometimes people use e-mail as a means of avoidance because they are afraid to talk to the media. You need to become the media person’s friend. When I was dealing with the media a lot, I would first work on building a great relationship and becoming a good source. With this approach you get a lot of exposure. We would be in the news one way or another every other week because we became good sources. We would work with the media people one-on-one, as opposed to taking a shotgun approach. These days people often send releases out all 112 The Art of Public Relations over the landscape, only to find later there is precious little return for that kind of work. I have not seen a client with a very large public relations budget in a long time. At the high end you can, of course, do a lot more, but you still have to be specific about what you are trying to do. Ask the client: What can we help you do? It should not all be publicity. If a client has a lot of money, do a great media mix. That is not abdicating the role of advertising; good public relations people should recognize what advertising can do. In advertising you can keep control. For example, if I hang my shingle on a stadium, I know it is going to look exactly the way I want it, because I paid for it to be that way. But when you go into the ether of some of the aspects of public relations such as publicity, you never quite know what is going to happen. So if a client came to me with a large budget, I would have many elements in the campaign, but they would all strategically mesh together. Too many public relations people think publicity is the only way to go. It is just one element of what we do, and it is the element we have the least control over; but it can have a great impact if it works. Measuring return on investment is simpler than most people realize. When you work in marketing, you are trying to sell a company’s products. If a company introduces a new product line, and the PR techniques have helped that 113 Inside The Minds product launch and made the product name a household word, then we have done our job. If the product fails, it could be that the product is not good enough, but it could also be that the campaign was no good, and there was not enough energy or money behind the campaign. The tactical public relations people will tell you the only way to measure the value of a campaign is the number of clippings, or the number of television and radio appearances, and I think that’s all grand. But if that is your approach, then you fail to be a business partner with your client. You are trying to move his products, which increases revenue, which helps the profit line, which helps the shareholders. It is so simple. But a lot of people in PR do not want to even think that way. Success cannot always be measured by lineage in newspapers; one article in one place may do a lot more than a bushel basket of clippings. The real purpose of what we do is to help a client sell something: a product, a service, or the client’s position on an important issue. Often public relations people get mired in areas that seem standard and tactical – not strategic. If you can become a strategic partner with your client, you will have a long-term client and a long-term friend. Think as a business person more than a public relations person. Think as your clients need to think and absorb everything you possibly can about your client’s business. 114 The Art of Public Relations Stop fiddling with tactical issues. Tactics are important, but we should start not thinking just as communicators, and start thinking primarily as business people. You may never know more than the client knows about his or her own business, but you should try to know almost as much. Straight Talk About Individual Success Curiosity and deep sensitivity are very important in public relations. It is all too easy to be callous and say to yourself, “We’ll just do it and take the money.” There is greater importance to what we do in public relations. Practiced at its highest level, public relations can be the best business in the world. Practiced at its lowest level, it is the worst business in the world. A good public relations professional has to have high energy and think positively. When you get up in the morning, no matter what you are enshrouded with, you have to look at it from a positive point of view. When you are with a client who is demoralized about what is going on around them – perhaps their sales are down, or their reputation has been branded in a negative way – you have to stay steady. Never get too high or too low. I believe nothing good has ever come out of negative thinking. If the public relations person starts grousing with the client, then all you have are two people who are unhappy. 115 Inside The Minds A PR person also needs to have a sense of humor to keep them going. Public relations these days can be all too serious. PR people take themselves too seriously and do not see that there is humor everywhere they look. With humor, you can lighten up the client and lighten up yourself. You can be an outstanding public relations person without any true formal education, if you read a lot. When I first joined the field of public relations, virtually no one who was my senior had graduated from college, but they were brilliant writers and voracious readers. People in our field are not reading anymore, as far as I can tell. I ask people “What do you read?” They say “I read Newsweek.” But they have not read Proust; they have not read Voltaire; they have not read about history. Public relations people could learn a lot by reading the sayings and methods of Harry Truman, for example, or the brilliance of Churchill. These days you go to a resort, and everybody is reading the same John Grisham book. That is agonizing for me – I want to be totally different from the pack. Never lie to a client. If the agency makes a mistake, tell the client. It is better for him to find out right away, not two months later. You may sometimes feel that the client is doing the wrong thing: They may not be imbuing their audiences with the right messages, or they may be manipulating the truth. You have to tell the client they cannot do it that way, because their integrity and their reputation stand on it. There may be times when you have 116 The Art of Public Relations serious arguments with clients, when you really feel you have to tell the truth and give your opinion. That is what a counselor does. A counselor is not a yes man. A counselor is a thinker who helps a leader and sometimes says, “No, that’s not the right thing to do.” Truthfulness is one of the most important qualities a great public relations person can have. Do not be afraid to tell the truth, and do not be afraid to employ your thoughts. We sometimes don’t realize we have the right to speak our minds and work with the clients. You don’t always have to argue; just tell the client what you think is the proper way to go. That is first and foremost in any relationship. Most importantly, don’t ever lie to the media. Never! If you do, it will come back to haunt you. Someone will find out, and it will create havoc for you and your client. Don’t get too far down, and don’t get too far up; leadership means you stay steady in bad times and good times. Go out and meet other business people, not just public relations people. Read about your industry. Read all the major business journals, and at least read the front page of The Wall Street Journal, so you know what’s ticking, so you think as a businessperson. Above all, read anything you can get your hands on. Read the stuff that has stood and will stand the test of time – Hemingway, Faulkner, or some of the English writers – because it can make you a better thinker and a better writer. One becomes a good writer from good 117 Inside The Minds reading, though at the same time, writing is a talent, like being able to play the piano. If you are not a good writer, you should go into some other business, such as commercial insurance, and you may earn a lot more money. I have always said that the smart man makes the most amount of money in the least amount of time. I know people who think they should work 16 hours a day. If you are making only $100,000 working sixteen hours a day, you are being foolish. Moreover, it is very important to have a part of your life that is not just about the work process. If work is all you do, you are not seeing what is going on out there in America or the rest of the world. In some ways we get too much information; in other ways we do not know how to relax and spend time with our friends and family, our dogs and cats. Take up hobbies, read, get a boat. Do something that is not what you normally do – it opens the mind to other ideas. So above all, tell the truth, be energetic, and be very curious. Telling the truth to anybody you deal with in our business is important because it shows you have integrity and wins you respect. That is very important. Having a lot of energy means you don’t get depressed about things that are going badly. The more energy you use, the more energy you will obtain. There are energetic people and people who drain energy. Stay away from people who drain energy. Finally, be very curious. Be nosy. Think as a reporter does, 118 The Art of Public Relations always wanting to know everything about everything. That will make you a much better counselor. Elevating Perceptions for a Better Future For years on my tax form, I would write my occupation as “salesman” instead of my company title. Even though their salaries may be low, salesman make the most money in the world. In the future, I would like to see public relations salaries lowered, but with some kind of commission system based on the ability of the person to be effective for their company or client. I am not suggesting that if you get placement in Forbes magazine, you or your agency should get extra money. I am saying we should base our work on intensifying the corporation’s revenue. When Ross Perot worked for IBM as a salesman, he would sell out his block of work by the end of January, and every year he made more money than the CEO. Public relations people are not paid enough, and I think they could get paid a lot more if their salaries were based on what they actually contribute to a company’s business. We need to be more entrepreneurial in public relations. We think too much as service providers, not thinkers. We are the concierges of business. That is very unfortunate. Edward Bernaise is a good example of the right way to practice PR. In 1960 the hat business went down the drain 119