From the President: Tom Lucia
Defending Your Life(’s Work)
Did you happen to catch the recent commercials for the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team? In them, the squad is billed as the “best team no one has heard of,” and they feature the players being run through drills to help them become better known. These “exercises” are organized by a high-energy, tie-wearing huckster who seems to have been taken right off the set of “The Office.” In one, he makes the women wear masks on the back of their heads for “maximum exposure” and in the other, he shows the team’s goalie how to make saves “with style” by striking supermodel-like poses while diving about the turf. Soon, the players become disgusted by this moron, and we all snicker at him. Did I mention that when this buffoon first appears, he is introduced as the team’s “P.R. Guy”?
Have you ever been handed the book Public Relations for Dummies by a co-worker who truly didn’t mean to be offensive? Have you ever been asked the question, “So, how are we going to spin this?” Or has it ever been suggested to you that “an appearance on Oprah to talk about our upcoming fundraising event would be great for us!”?
If you have been at P.R. for any length of time, you’ve probably run into one of these scenarios. And, thus, you’ve come to terms with the fact that our profession can be profoundly misunderstood.
Want to test this theory for yourself? Ask your parents, a family member, or a close neighbor to explain back to you what you do for a living. A colleague of mine recently suggested this to me, and, for giggles, I posed the question to my mom. Head-scratching and babbling ensued, and the point was made. My own mother could not describe in any kind of detail what the “apple of her eye” does between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. each day.
If you are one of the lucky ones who works at a place (or for a boss) that “gets it,” then congratulations. Every year at the Excalibur Awards dinner, we sit and listen to an executive who extols the virtues of public relations and the positive impact the important management tool has had on his/her organization. At about that time, I usually sit and wonder how many people in the audience are thinking “Gosh, I wish my boss were like him or her.” My guess is that there are many.
If, however, you are one of the unlucky ones, what can you do (besides cry at your desk, using pages of your AP Style Guide as tissues)?
Educate yourself. Luckily, much research on the matter has been done and can be just a click away. Work done by Ketchum’s David Rockland, the Institute for Public Relations, and Central New York-based EMA pro Greg Loh makes for interesting reading. At this point, I’d like to shamelessly plug our Nov. 7 teleseminar titled “Building Management Support of PR.” All can offer insights into determining P.R.’s return-on-investment, a powerful tool to present to “non-believers.”
Educate others. Once you are armed with knowledge, share it with others. Schedule time with your co-workers, boss, or board of directors to talk about P.R.’s role, its abilities, and limitations. Odds are, information (delivered appropriately of course) will be well-received and may actually come as a relief to some.
Defend your life’s work. At its best, the public-relations function is one of an organization’s most important. Our profession can be strategic, creative, cut-and-dried, honest, cost-effective, spontaneous, illuminating, sobering, intelligent, joyous, supportive, or emotional. It is what we do. It is special. It is worth defending.
