Tag Archives: arik hanson

Where the boys are (hint: in the business school)

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It’s one of the most prolific and most incorrect stereotypes about PR practitioners – that of the party planner, publicist, product promoter. Perhaps because editing press releases doesn’t make for compelling television, the portrayals of PR pros in the media tend to overemphasize a glamorous lifestyle with characters that are really more like caricatures. More often than not, these portrayals are of women. Arik Hanson recently wondered whether these portrayals were good or bad for the PR industry, and David Mullen had an excellent comment:

I think it has contributed to the decline in young men entering in or interested in public relations. Most men don’t want to plan parties for a living. They want a seat at the big table, so they major in marketing instead.

If I think back to my PR classes, I can count about nine or 10 men in them – combined. If you took a stroll across the street to the business school’s marketing department, you’d find it reversed. At my undergraduate institution, the business school has a 64%/36% male-to-female ratio, while the journalism school is more like 20%/80%.

So how does PR shake the perception that the profession is not just party planning and that practitioners can and do have a seat at the table? How does PR gender-balance the profession to ensure a variety of viewpoints and approaches? Here’s what I think:

1. Stop using “fluffy” topics for writing assignments in PR classes.

Writing is the absolute crux of our profession. In college, I remember writing news releases about Peach festivals, charity fundraisers and student “awareness” groups. All of these assignments helped me learn the structure of a news release and proper AP style, but the reality was that in my first two jobs after college I was working for companies who were almost never going to pitch a light-hearted story to the features editor of a local daily. PR students can benefit from learning to write technical press releases intended for trade publications. If you can discuss the benefits of non-halogenated flame-retardant resins in automotive wiring harness applications, you can handle a Peach Festival. PR professionals who can effectively distill an organization’s or a product’s key attributes will certainly be invited to the big table.

2. Ensure that business financials are a key part of the PR curriculum.

Every PR professional should know how to read a balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. This is the language that our clients and stakeholders communicate in, so we need to be fluent in it, too. Students should have to practice writing quarterly earnings releases and Q&A statements about them. The boys over in the business school may be lured back to PR if they recognize that someone in the organization needs to be responsible for communicating how a merger or divestiture or new product innovation will impact a company’s bottom line, and that someone is typically a PR person.

3. Integrate business and PR students more frequently.

In my undergraduate classes, there was almost no interaction with business majors. Despite a lot of similarities between PR and marketing, there were very few business students as members of PRSSA, and very few activities that brought students from those two schools together. Why not pair up a PR and marketing class for a capstone project? Have them develop a new product, define a target market, research feasibility and time to profitability, create a launch plan, and evaluate and measure success? As many comments on Arik’s post noted, this would help business students get a better understanding for the value of PR, before they’ve even started their careers.

4. Show that event planning isn’t just parties.

Sex and the City’s Samantha and her ilk are publicists, a segment of PR that’s it’s own animal. But there is a lot of event planning that goes on in PR – and it’s not just parties. Trade shows, customer visits, executive retreats, media receptions – all of these events take organization, creativity and a strategic mindset to be successful. Guys may not be intrigued by the idea of choosing table linens or creating invitations for a charity auction, but how about creating an interactive booth display for a trade show and planning aspects like a media interview schedule, product display demos, executive speeches, and investor cocktail reception? These are the kind of events that give a PR pro lots of visibility to those at the big table, and if you can succeed in pulling off events like this, you’ll get a seat there, too.

These are just a few suggestions that might help more males feel that PR is a legitimate profession where they can play with the big boys. What else do you think could tip the scales and lure more male students out of the business school and into PR?

Maybe we’ll eventually get to the point where those negative portrayals of PR professionals on TV include a few men, too.

My Five Squared

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Okay, first of all, I’d like to know why whoever started this increasingly popular meme chose the number 25. That’s a LOT of randomness to come up with! Especially for someone like me who’s not used to sharing. But since Arik Hanson tagged me, here goes:

1. I grew up in a REALLY small town. My high school graduating class was about 90, and we were abnormally large that year. I think my entire school district from K-12 only had about 1,100 kids in it. This is probably the main reason I went to a huge college 1,000 miles away.

2. On Saturdays in the fall, I wake up and start watching ESPN College GameDay at 10 a.m. and pretty much watch football all day long. My husband thinks this is bizarre and can only handle about 90 minutes of football on any given day. A bit of a role-reversal in our marriage.

3. I played Rosie Alvarez, the lead character in “Bye, Bye, Birdie”, in my high school’s musical when I was in 11th grade and I still remember most of my songs and lines.

4. I’m really close with my extended family on my mom’s side. This means not only my first cousins but also my mom’s cousins and their kids. We don’t really distinguish levels of cousin-hood and just refer to everyone as a cousin (which totally threw my husband for a loop when he first met everyone).

Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong

Victoria Harbor

5. I lived in Hong Kong for a summer and worked for a PR firm there as part of a scholarship grant I received. I was the only American in my office and picked up absolutely NO Cantonese the whole summer– not even the dirty words they tried to teach me!

6. Before college, I had never been on an airplane. My first flight was home to see my parents at Thanksgiving during my freshman year. I’ve made up for it since then!

7. I don’t eat seafood of any sort. If it lived in water, it doesn’t go in my mouth. I got sick from bad seafood when I was a kid and have never been able to work up the gumption to try it again.

Tonks and Figg

8. I have two kittens named after characters from Harry Potter (Tonks and Mrs. Figg).

9. I went to college with Ryan Seacrest’s sister. I didn’t really know her and didn’t have any classes with her, but he came to our journalism school graduation ceremony and I had my picture taken with him. It was the first or second season of American Idol so he wasn’t insanely famous yet, but he’s pretty much the only famous person I’ve ever met.

10. I hate cooking, and as a result I have a pretty poor diet. My husband and I are constantly saying we need to eat better and get into cooking, but then always end up nuking rice or making pasta.

11. I got my MBA from Drexel University, but did it through their distance learning program, so I never actually set foot on Drexel’s campus until the graduation banquet at the end of the program. It was a great (and hard!) program and all the classes were taught by full-time faculty from Drexel’s business school – but I still find myself trying to defend to people the fact that I did it online. I think some online institutions rightfully get a bad rap, but I was really pleased with Drexel’s program. Go Dragons!

12. I had to move every six months with my first job. I lived in three different places:  Albany/Capital Region of NY, where I ended up; Fort Worth, which is my favorite city I’ve ever lived in; and Orlando, which is my least favorite. It’s weird living in a place where everyone is on vacation.

13. Big Mark Knopfler fan. Saw him in Philly last summer and it was the best concert I’ve ever attended.

Rockin the Spandex at Montreal Bike Tour

14. My husband got me into cycling about four years ago and I’m obsessed now. Before that, I hadn’t really ridden a bike other than as a kid. This summer I rode about 1,600 miles, commuted 18 miles to work on my bike most days, and rode my first metric century (62 mile ride). I have no desire to competitively race, but I love riding for fitness and enjoyment (my ride of choice is currently a Jamis Coda Sport).

15. My husband and I both drive old cars. I have a 2000 Nissan Altima and he drives a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser Wagon. We have no desire to have car payments and that big white station wagon comes in VERY handy for hauling around skis, bikes, etc. Plus I don’t have to worry about him picking up chicks because of his car.

16. I was on the Homecoming Court at UGA, so I got to have my dad escort me out onto the field at halftime of one of the football games and wave to everyone on the JumboTron. Then we had our picture taken with Uga VI. My dad also went to UGA, so being out on the field was heaven for him and I’ll never forget that moment!

17. I played the saxophone in elementary and junior high band. Poorly.

18. My wedding reception was in a car museum while a SuperCars exhibit was going on. So we cut the cake next to a Mercedes McLaren and had our first dance beside a Ferrari Enzo. I have brownie points for life with my husband and his pals.

19. My Myers-Briggs type is ISTJ, so apparently I should have been an engineer. I scored very, very strongly on the I. I’m not necessarily shy, but it does take me a while to open up to people and I’d rather have a smaller group of close friends than a whole lotta casual ones.

20. I have never been in the hospital, broken a bone, needed stitches, etc. As a result, I think I have an irrational fear of and intolerance for pain. I always think everything is going to hurt worse than it does!

Eww.

21. I’m a Gator Hater. Gators wear jean shorts. ‘Nuff said.

22. I was at the Georgia-Tennessee (hobnail boot!) game in 2000 when we came from behind in the last :25 seconds to beat Tennessee… but I was already walking to the parking lot when the final touchdown drive occurred because I thought we’d lost and didn’t want to get heckled to death by the Tennessee fans. Sometimes I omit that part when I tell people I was there.

23. We don’t have cable. We have the $9 “network plus” package that gives us the main networks plus (randomly) ESPN, NatGeo, Style Network, and Oxygen. I don’t think Time Warner knows that those last four channels come through. There are definitely shows that I miss, but my husband and I already feel like we watch way too much TV and having another 100 channels would make it all the worse.

24. Like Lauren, I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I’m not even sure if I’ve ever held one. I barely remember when smoking was even allowed anywhere. It’s just never held any appeal to me whatsoever.

25. Oh gosh, I’m really running out of randomness. Glad this is the last one. I’ve been out of college six years but have already worked at three different companies. I’ve had a good reason for leaving each time – I left my first job for a promotional opportunity and to move back near my husband, and I left my second job because I wanted to branch out from employee communications to a marcomm role. I want to be sure that I’m always growing and learning in my career. I’m always looking for new challenges!

So, there you have me. I’m struggling to think of anyone to tag who hasn’t already done this. I know KarenRussell (@KarenRussell) is avoiding it like the plague. I guess I’ll see if my good friend Christine Hartter (@CHComm) wants to give it a shot!