Patience and Perpective- Words with the Boss

I began this 10-week journey of an internship to earn credit with the University of South Florida towards my bachelor’s degree. Part of the requirements was to write essays on public relations lessons I was leaning and such. Since I appreciate the social media aspect of PR, I created this blog to share my essays and eventually develop discussions. Now that my internship-for-credit program is over, I will still continue writing in this space. The only change might be a greater variation in topics.

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Adam Goodman is the President of The Victory Group, the company I completed my internship with. He is the creative mastermind who has stretched my mind to new levels of thinking and imagining. For my last day of my internship-for-credit, I decided an interview with Adam would balance well with my thoughts of this internship.

After making the final disclaimer changes to a 30-second commercial, Adam and I sat down to discuss the value of internships and what it really takes to survive in this field.

I am going to put this one out in straight Q & A style because his words are so powerful by themselves.

Ashley: Have you ever completed an internship?

Adam: Yes. I worked for a summer with a D.C.-based film crew traveling the nation. I did everything from getting lunch to equipment to planning for the next shoot. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.

Ashley: Would you recommend an internship to someone? Why?

Adam: Yes. One of the best teachers is hands-on experience to learn what you can do, what you like to do and to learn about yourself. It allows you to test your limits, overcome obstacles, feel success and failure and have to deal with it all. You will use those lessons down the road and they will count for more.

Ashley: How closely do education and personality correlate with success? Does one prove superior to the other?

Adam: That is the big question of life. You need elements of both to succeed. You can be learned but not wise. You can be capable but not able to communicate it. If you have a terrific personality but can’t follow through, you can’t make it. There is some convergence between education and personality that leads to success.

Ashley: What qualities do you look for when bringing someone into your company?

Adam: Interest because without interest it just becomes work. Determination because without determination you won’t get 100 percent. Discipline in terms of measuring up to responsibilities and expectations.

Ashley: What lesson or trait have you found most valuable in your career?

Adam: Patience and perspective. Patience to wait and allow opportunities to come to you. Perseverance to make sure you don’t quit before that pot of gold. Too often people quit, maybe it’s because they’re comfortable. Especially when you’re young, it’s hard to understand just how high the sky really is. You just have to reach for it.

Tips Learned as an Intern

I remember the first day of my internship. I had accepted responsibility for many tasks I wasn’t sure that I could handle. I walked off the comfort of my university campus and into a fully-operating company with real clients and real public relations work. I was terrified!

With each day I learned more. Challenges were solves and new problems no longer seemed that intimidating. Once I conquered one issue, I could use that to tackles the rest.

Below I present a few tips I learned as an intern:

-         Bring paper and a pen to take notes anywhere you go. This will show you are ready for action and it will make sure you don’t forget anything.

-         Be willing to do anything, even sweep the floor.

-         Be a sponge. Treat every moment as a learning opportunity.

-         Don’t ask questions you can answer yourself.

-         Think outside the box. With everything you encounter, there will always be one thing that can make it better. Don’t limit yourself.

-         Sleep well the night before work. You need to operate at the top of your game.

-         Speak up and be honest. Your immediate reactions or ideas are often more valuable than you would think.

-         Have something to offer. When asked your opinion, never just say, “It looks good.” Companies need someone who contributes, not just someone who compliments.

-         Ask questions when necessary. Questions can clarify directions or solve a problem. You will never know everything, so don’t be afraid to ask.

-         Research everything. Your goal is to be an equal contributor. To do this, always come to the table over-prepared. As Professor Batchelor says, “Always be the smartest person in the room.”

-         Loosen up. Your boss is still a human. He or she has hobbies, goals and skills just like you. Often, your boss can relate to your position and remember back to the time he or she was just starting out.

“Parenting” in Social Media

In public relations, we often stand on the side lines, unnoticed. Of course we may serve as the face of a company when speaking to the media, but I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of our work keeps us hidden: speech writing, employee newsletter composition, media coaching, advising, research, etc. It is our client or company who should shine. If we as public relations practitioners are getting more glory than our clients or respective companies, we risk our clients asking, “Why aren’t you getting me that good publicity?”

The goal of my company is to promote our clients, who are often political candidates. As a Republican firm, we are working to play catch up with the Democrats as well as keep one step ahead of the Republicans when it comes to integrating social media tools with a political campaign.

Democrats have mastered social media tools (see Senator Barack Obama’s Twitter) during the time they spent as the political minority. Many democratic candidates turned to social media to reach out new publics. As a result, they received a whole new following. Young people began to take notice to these candidates who were reaching to them at their level, whether through social networking, blogs or online videos.

Now my company is anxious to get our own clients involved in this sweeping wave. As many of the candidates are only comfortable with traditional media, we have begun promoting our own company through social media outlets to illustrate how it is done. As a firm yielding videos, we automatically jumped onboard with YouTube. Next we considered joining Facebook and creating a blog, but at some point we stopped to consider if this was in the best interest of the company and our clients. After all, not all publicity is good publicity, even when it is free and initiated by the user.

Social media can catch like wildfire and bring us to the top of the charts in no time at all. Even terrible videos garner hundreds of YouTube views over time. But will our popularity convince our clients that we are able to practice what we preach, or will it send a loud message that we want the spotlight?

Social media has few rules or guidelines. This is new for all of us, so we have to make up our answers as we go. So do me one favor: if one day you do see my company on Facebook, please make sure you say something nice.

From the Mouth of an Intern

This afternoon I sat down with Tommy Evans, a student who began his internship with my company three weeks ago, to do a short interview. Tommy aspires to be a director or producer in longer format films. Whereas I am with this company for the public relations side of it, he appreciates the value of the directing and producing we do.

I asked Tommy what his motivation was when he decided to seek a summer internship. “I wanted firsthand experience in the field,” Tommy said. He also mentioned the appeal an internship will add to his resume. “I want to get into a really good film school, and I know they will look at that [the internship].”

So far Tommy has participated in four film shoots with the company. He works five days each week with most days clocking in at six hours. On film shoots he can be on set for fifteen hours at a time.

When asked, “In your internship, what has been your most valuable lesson?” Tommy replied, “My most valuable lesson has definitely been learning how to work with other people and contribute to help the team out.” Tommy has worked with directors, candidates, cinematographers, sound engineers, editors and many other individuals who fill important roles in getting a piece from start to finish.

Internships, which are often unpaid, require a lot of time, dedication and hard work from the intern. I wanted to know if Tommy felt his contributions were worth it. I asked if he now feels better prepared to enter his field now that he has accumulated such experiences with this company. His response? “Definitely.”

Enter Social Media

Completing my internship with a firm that specializes in political media communications has taught me a lot about how to get a message out. For years firms like my own have turned to television and radio with their 15 and 30 second messages. The internet was simply a placeholder to store regurgitated information such as brochures or the main message of a television commercial. Then social media was born.

The outbreak of blogging, video sharing, podcasting and social networking challenged the industry’s best. Free video sharing sites such as YouTube allow opinionated high school students to serve as director. With a free blogging account, stay-at-home mothers turn into journalists. Now anyone can speak out and be heard. Social media has changed the way firms disperse their message and listen to their audience.

As a result, my firm must catch up. In the past few years we have begun producing spots specifically for the web. The pieces are in a conversational tone and can be posted throughout a candidate’s website.

Now, we must take it even further. Our client’s opponents are gaining popularity through MySpace, YouTube and Flickr—and our clients look to us to help them catch up.

As a result we are doing our research and testing the water. Although it looks easy and inviting, we still need to be careful. Immersing a candidate in social media is releasing them unprotected. The opponents, bloggers and journalists have greater access to a broader field of information that is often out of our control.

To stay in the game, we must test these waters. Social media is just no longer an option for anyone trying to get there message heard.

Education is More Than Academics

With my anticipated graduation around the corner, one could easily assume I know everything necessary to successfully enter the field of public relations. This is not the case.

What I have discovered is the success of a public relations practitioner stems from the makeup of a person just as much as traditional knowledge.

To survive in the public relations field, one must be sharp and hard working. The individual should be open to any challenge and have the determination to conquer it. Sometimes solving a challenge involves remembering what you learned in that class from junior year. Sometimes it involves working your way around Google.

Education is valuable; however, I propose that 50 percent of the value comes from academics and the other 50 percent from lessons of due dates, missed classes and teamwork.

My greatest moments in my internship did not involve theory or how Tylenol handled their 1982 public relations scare but rather my ability to think “on my toes” and use common sense.

Education is not just academics and a job is not just a title. Just as important as that A is in Writing for Public Relations is the lesson learned from preparing for an interview. Public relations is real life communications and strategic planning. To be successful in this field, some experience must be had outside of the classroom.

“Making” Commercials

The company I am completing my internship with specializes in political communications, mostly media. Against common misconceptions, this does not mean that we simply “make” commercials. Our publics are being slammed with overwhelming amounts of advertisements each day making sure that it is our clients message that stands out is a lengthy process.

As with any good process, ours begins with research. We talk to the client and to his or her staff. We see what media has to say. We look for something different. The entire district might know that Senator XYZ served on this committee for 3 years and has a background in corporate finance, but we look for something more. We have to get to the inside of the client.

Once we understand the client on a deeper level, we dig into the direct purpose of the messaging. We learn what language, issues and terms are most popular with our target audience. The client might have a passion for conserving energy, but if the district’s people care most about national security, we need to work that in.

In a perfect world we would gather this knowledge, write and produce a script and the world would be swell. But there is one little problem: the opposition. Other candidates have sweet words, too. Sometimes they even have bitter words about our client. In these cases, we arm the offensive and defensive positions. We strategize to combat the opponent while convincing the audience of the truth in our client.

All of this strategic planning doesn’t even include the script-writing, coaching, filming, editing, broadcasting and post-public management. Depending on conditions the whole process can take a few weeks or a few months.

Once a spot is sent to station and broadcasted we monitor the public’s response. With polls, we discover who saw it, who likes it and who will give their support. From the responses we go back to the drawing board to evaluate and plan the next step. Communications never goes to sleep. And it never ends.

This process is why we don’t “make” commercials.

You Better Watch Out!

At its best, public relations is a management function. We manage the flow of information between our organization and all of its publics. We manage our image. We manage inside and out in order to effectively convince our publics.

To effectively manage, we as public relations practitioners are required to know everything possibly related to the company we represent.

When it comes to public relations in politics, the practitioner is responsible for not only the candidate and campaign, but the candidate’s family, news in the district and the party they associate with.

In large corporations, practitioners must be aware of the market, competitors, vendors and more. Take Mattel and their lead scare with China as an example- what went wrong in China threatened to destroy the company’s market around the globe in the United States.

This week I worked on a proposal for a candidate with the media communications firm I work for. We research the candidate, his competition, his past history, the district, the opinion of the media, the issues and what might happen in the future to affect this campaign. We basically build a comprehensive book. We aim to walk in and not only know the details but be able to connect the dots- all before even receiving the job.

The hard part is that even after dedicating up to one week of work and preparing and presenting, we might not get the job.

Public relations isn’t only about press releases and spinning scandals. We know (and do) a lot more than most people think!

A Lesson in Networking

A vital part of any career, especially public relations, is networking. Through networking an individual establishes business contacts, future prospects and supportive peers.

Tonight I attended a fund raising function for one of our clients. This was not simply an event where people gather and network; rather, this was a very small gathering centered on money.

I quickly learned that networking is not an easy task. Especially as a beginner, the acts of approaching and conversing with highly-skilled individuals are rather daunting. Without a security blanket, I stood in a room full of politicians, lawyers and doctors. Opportunity was all over, but it was frightening!

With the rise of email and social networking tools, LinkedIn, Facebook and corporate websites have replaced much face-to-face contact. With the internet we are able to take the time to process and compose ideas, saving ourselves from awkward silent moments or stuttering.

As a public relations practitioner, I must know how to communicate on many levels. I need to communicate a business plan to the inner city, assure a concerned public that their safety is out top priority and converse with potential business partners. Email, visual, auditory, face-to-face—I need to be proficient in all of them to be capable of effective communication.

Walking into the main room, I reminded myself that these are individuals just like me. Their skills and preferences might be different, but they showered naked just like I did.

It turns out we all had something to offer at that function. I was not young, but rather a world of knowledge for social media. The lawyer was not boring, but rather a graduate who endures long hours in the office for the few passionate hours in the courtroom.

Public relations is an art of communication. To effectively communicate, we need to let down our own assumptions and embrace the moment.