The three levels of the PR pro pyramid

The PR Pro Pyramid

One of the beauties of social media is that it gives everyone a voice. We can all learn from perspectives and POV shared by people at all levels. I firmly believe that. But that same beauty can be a detriment because of how easy it is for someone to sound like an expert when they haven’t actually done the work about which they are pontificating.

One of the biggest problems I see in our industry is that those who understand the value of networking and sharing stories don’t have the experiences to be sharing. They get the value of joining the conversation and most times do it well, but don’t have many, if any, firsthand case studies to share. And those who bend over backward to serve their clients aren’t sharing their learnings. Blame it on lack of time, too much work. Whatever the case, they aren’t joining the conversation, yet have SO much to add.

I’ve been talking about this phenomenon with my colleagues at #FHKC over the past couple of weeks and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are three types of PR pros – philosophers, doers and client relationship managers (CRMs). Frequently, we see overlap across two of the three levels. But rarely do PR pros encompass all three specialties, although that type of hybrid generalist is best positioned to serve his clients, his company and himself.

Philosopher

Case in point – blogger outreach. Talk about the evolution of blogger outreach online and you will get tons of different perspectives. But what has been frustrating to me in conversations on this topic is when people make the following absolute statements:

• Brands have to reach out to bloggers because influencer outreach is important.
• I would never, ever pay a blogger or give a blogger any product to do a review.

I have seen both statements and variations several times on Twitter, blogs, etc. And while I wholeheartedly agree with the first, I would argue that most who make the latter statement are not doing blogger outreach…or at least not doing it successfully. As blogger relations have evolved, providing bloggers product to review and giveaway to their communities has become a common practice and way to acquire coverage for your clients and sampling within the bloggers target community. At the same time many bloggers are continuing to work toward monetizing their efforts, and not just by running ads. I’m not an advocate of paying for posts, but paid integrations with bloggers and online communities are something we’re doing and seeing more of at Fleishman. All with full relationship disclosure, mind you.

So when a PR pro says: “Nope, I’d never pay or provide product,” it makes me wonder how much blogger relations outreach and research they are actually doing. It’s very easy to sit there from your Twitter account and be philosophical. It’s quite another to actually do the work and speak from experience.

Doer

I can’t count how many times I have gone to a conference, seen a big-name speaker and heard feedback from those who attended that was something like this: “Great presentation, but too high-level. Nothing tactical I can take back and apply to my business.” Well, first of all, that’s often a keynote speaker’s job…to be philosophical. He or she has hopefully invested a lot of time doing the work and earned the right to speak from a 30,000-foot view.

That said, doers should see this as a thought leadership opportunity. PR pros are looking for tactical examples and something they can implement – e.g. the work doers do on a daily basis. But too many doers spend all their time “keeping their head down” and doing. Their agencies and clients often love the work they produce. But both parties, along with the doer, are missing out on the full potential of the work that’s being performed.

Imagine if a college basketball coach like Michigan St.’s Tom Izzo was just a doer. He teaches great fundamentals, is a bear on the recruiting trail so he gets the best players, but he never tries to schedule high-profile opponents or advocates for his team publicly. He wouldn’t be doing his whole job. Or a better way to say it is that he’d be doing his job, but very few people would know about it.

Now the Izzo example only partially works because college basketball is so high-profile that the ESPNs of the world are going to cover it on TV, online , etc. So Izzo and team will get that notoriety if they play well enough. But the doer dilemma for agency and corporate PR pros is much more realistic. PR and marketing aren’t college basketball, and if doers don’t practice what they preach and get out there and tell their stories, very often no one is going to do it for them.

CRMs

One of the things I learned right away when I got to Fleishman is that I was much more of a philosopher and doer in my previous jobs. And I still had/have a ton to learn from a client relationship manager perspective. My colleague Nicole explained it perfectly one day a few months back: “It is a skill to be able to sit down across from your client, hold a conversation about their business and respond on the spot to the questions and issue they raise.”

I paraphrased, but that was the crux of her sentiment, and she is right on. It is a skill, one that might be the most important for a PR pro to master. If you can’t handle the F2F and learn from those experiences every day, then what you offer your clients, an agency, a company is limited. It really is that simple. PR is a people and relationship business.

But what CRMs often do besides the F2F piece is that they execute the hard tasks that philosophers only talk about. For example, it is very easy for me to say that all corporations should be practicing integrated marketing communications (IMC). It is quite another to partner with a PR client who is working to change a culture of 25-plus years where marketing and PR have always operated in silos.

The former takes five seconds to tweet. The latter is 30,000 times harder and takes much more patience to see through. Those CRMs who help execute a transition like that, who battle in the trenches to make an idea like IMC a reality, have so much knowledge and value to share. When you get down to it, it’s a small number of PR pros that have done it firsthand, but such a significant skill in our industry that we could all learn more about no matter how much experience we have.

CRMs have the same problem as doers. They get too busy doing to share their experiences. But at least they are building relationships, even if they’re doing it more often in an offline forum. CRMs are still practicing and exhibiting the overall behavior – engagement and relationship building – that is the crux of our industry.

The ideal PR pro

So what’s the ideal PR pro look like? Well, my initial thought was a hybrid of all three levels – a generalist. And I still think that, but after sitting on it for a while, I think it also depends more on the situation. Just like it’s easy to say “companies should be doing IMC,” it’s easy to say a PR pro should be practicing all three pyramid levels. But getting the opportunity to perform at all three levels takes time and may not happen right away in your career.

So I’d say the ideal PR pro is someone who’s always looking for new experiences and to evolve his/her skill set. Eventually, PR pros should strive to be a generalist. The more you can do, the more value you provide to your employer, especially when times get tough and the subject of layoffs comes up. But I think someone who sits solely in one of the three pyramid levels but is willing and eager to learn how to get the other two and how to balance all three as his/her career evolves is someone who would stand out to me.  However, if I had a toy gun to my head and had to prioritize the levels, I’d say CRM is most important. Agencies and companies are looking for PR pros who gets the value of relationships and who have built them before.

One final point – I think specialist is starting to become a dirty word. Because doesn’t being a specialist also mean that the person is in a box and unwilling to step outside of it? If that’s the case, such a PR pro could wind up sitting on one level of the pyramid for most of a career. And that lack of movement will eventually become career limiting, IMO.

• So which one are you? A philosopher, doer or CRM?
• Do you crossover between levels of the pyramid?
• Do you agree that the ideal PR pro does all three?

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