ROBERT CLAY : Age of Non-Communication : Advertising/P.R. Expert Finds Society at a Loss for Words
Robert Clay is a bit of an iconoclast. He is a marketing communications specialist who has shrunk his business at a time when the formation of big agencies seems to be the rule. He is a public relations and advertising man who in the early 1970s attempted to launch a nationwide boycott of retailers who advertised Christmas sales before the Thanksgiving season had ended. And he is a communicator who criticizes his industry, potential clients and the public at large for bringing about what he calls an era of non-communication.
We are in an age, Clay says, marked by an aversion to reading, talking or thinking about substantive issues and by intentional and unintentional misuse of the English language.
At 61, Clay is celebrating his 20th year as an independent advertising and public relations agency owner. He has taught his craft at Cal State Fullerton, is a former national director of the Public Relations Society of America and has a wall adorned with advertising and public relations awards.
In his spare time, Clay speaks to industry and civic groups and is an avid amateur bicyclist. He has begun penning a book about marketing communications and is deep into the polishing of a book about cycling for fitness.
He started his own agency in Tustin with $200 in borrowed money after stints as a radio news writer and a public relations executive for a life insurance company in his native Milwaukee, and as a trade publications editor, aerospace P.R. executive and independent magazine publisher in Southern California.
He began his company with one employee and expanded it to 15. Today, operating as Clay Communications Group in Lake Forest, he is assisted by only four other people. He said the shrinking of the firm, which specializes in work for developers, was caused by the Southern California real estate slump of 1981-83. When the downturn ended, he decided to stay small.
In an interview with Times staff writer John O’Dell, Clay shared his views on how “non-communication” is affecting business and society, how his profession has contributed to the problem--and what it can do about it.
Q. You recently gave a speech in which you said we are in an era in which no one listens and no one communicates. That’s pretty radical for an advertising and P.R. guy. What was the genesis?
A. Well, I run into many frustrating problems in this business. It’s not that no one communicates, but a good percentage of the people really are not that interested in communication. I constantly run into people who say: ‘We don’t want all that copy; people don’t want to read so much.’ It is an attitude I hear from very astute business people, over and over.
I always hark back to the Mercedes Benz ads, which had a lot of copy. Because you have to have a lot of information to sell a big expensive piece of goods or a big ideA. I still believe that today. You have to present your case just as an attorney would present his case before a jury--in a logical, step-by-step fashion--to really do the job of communicating.
Q. Am I reading more into what you were saying than I should? Or do you see a serious problem? Are people cutting themselves off from information that they should be getting?
A. I think they’re starving themselves and they’re being starved. I talked about non-thinkers who would do anything to avoid being left alone to think. I’m amazed by so many examples of people who really don’t want to think. They want to be entertained. This is the entertainment erA. Rather than being left alone to read a book, they would rather turn on the TV set.
I am amazed to see families that don’t see each other all year ‘round get together for Christmas, open their Christmas presents, have dinner and then sit down to watch television together. These people must have so much to say to each other, but they don’t want to think.
We have TV commercials these days that rely on music and images of cool chicks and cool dudes who are living the good life, and you don’t know whether they’re selling cheese or beer or cars until you get to the logo at the end. I think that is symptomatic of our non-thinking age. I think a good percentage of the people want more and aren’t getting it. It is a communications problem not only for business, but for society as a whole.
Q. Does the problem for business go beyond not being able to deliver advertising messages?
A. This refusal to think really causes a problem for American business because people don’t want to think on the job. They won’t absorb what they hear, what you tell them. They don’t anticipate situations.
Q. And what about the people you call non-talkers?
A. They aren’t silent, but they don’t say anything. All you have to do is listen to the incredibly trivial talk while you’re standing in line at a supermarket or in any other crowded situation. I think people just don’t want to be bothered to think and express themselves. They talk in cliches and hollow phrases like ‘have a nice day’--which was a very pleasant sentiment until they beat it to death.
From a communications standpoint, this means that you probably won’t get a meaningful response from non-talkers. It’s hard to get feedback because people have a hard time being really articulate.
Q. Is it that or is it a desire to have some privacy by not discussing ideas or things of any substance?
A. That may be giving the people more credit than they merit.
Q. You’ve described non-thinkers and non-talkers. What else is left?
A. Well, we’ve got a lot of non-listeners. Some are people who are so intent upon making it big in the business world that they’re usually trying to do two or three things at once. And in today’s greed-driven society, some are just people so wrapped up in themselves, so egocentric, that they simply won’t listen because they’re preoccupied with what they’re doing.
We’ve also got non-readers. Intelligent, seemingly successful people who read as little as possible. They get their news from television, look at magazines for the pictures and never touch a book. Non-readers want brochures and ads with all pictures and few words.
And this makes it difficult, because in order to sell an idea or a concept, you have to create awareness and understanding before you can create acceptance. The ultimate thing for the non-reader is a video brochure, which doesn’t say as much, but does it in dramatic fashion.
Q. Are we looking at the symptoms of something else or are we looking at the final stages of an illness in society?
A. Well, I hope it’s not the final stages. I think it’s symptomatic of the fact that we are in this era of instant gratification and many people are terribly impatient about most everything. All you have to do is get in the fast lane of the freeway and hold up traffic by doing 10 miles over the speed limit. You’ll find out quickly how impatient people are.
Q. So how do we go about curing the problem?
A. The great American tradition is that things have to get awful bad before somebody says: ‘Hey! We gotta do something about it.’ I think, unfortunately, that the quality of our society is going to have to go down even more before people get mad enough. This happened with semiautomatic rifles. Thirty kids getting injured finally caused something to happen.
Americans are born in this great tradition of liberty and democracy, but one reason the Japanese are beating the hell out of us financially these days is because of their tremendous discipline. We are a very undisciplined society.
Q. What should communications advisers like yourself be doing to try and impose on business the kind of discipline that you think is missing?
A. Well, another great American tradition is speaking to the converted. And we in the communications industry are as guilty as everybody else in terms of speaking to believers. If we really want to do something for ourselves, society and business, what we ought to be doing is standing on street corners on soap boxes and talking about communications and talking about public responsibility.
I think people in communications ought to have public-service programs to talk to people about communications. You know, do it for free. Instead of having these associations where we’re always preaching to ourselves, we ought to go out and have free workshops for businesses of various sizes.
Q. And what would you tell these businesses?
A. First, I don’t think all this means that business people and professional people should give up in their communications. They simply have to work harder.
This means four things. Business owners personally have to put a lot of effort into their marketing communications programs. They can’t delegate the job to somebody else in the company. It doesn’t work that way.
They also have to be willing to spend a reasonable amount. A lot of business people ask what the minimum is that they can get by with, and when you give them that figure they want to do it for 10% less. Less than the minimum!
You must have also a well-thought-out program that has a good chance of reaching the people who will make the decisions that affect your future. You have to spoon-feed the people you’re giving the information to, making a supreme effort to be as simple and as understandable as possible so they can’t misconstrue anything.
You must always make sure that your presentation and language are attention-getting, interesting and unmistakeably clear. Most managers today have a very short attention span. They’re only looking till the next quarter. They’re only looking at the bottom line, so what doesn’t produce results for them immediately is something they just tend to ignore. There are some things that bring your customers in right away. But what you really need is a comprehensive marketing communications program that has long-range goals.
Q. Isn’t business just as guilty as the political system of selling flash and image over substance?
A. I think they’re probably equally guilty. I think the politicians learned well from advertising people.
Q. Do you draw a distinction between advertising and public relations? And if so, what is it?
A. The narrow, public concept of advertising is very well understood. Public relations is not well understood. If you need advertising, you go to an ad agency to design something that sells your product. Sophisticated advertisers know that there’s a hell of a lot more to advertising agencies than that. They offer a comprehensive communications service. But most people, especially small business owners, do not know that.
Public relations has never been able to explain itself, and it’s one of my great frustrations. I’ve been involved with the Public Relations Society of America on a national level and I quit twice in frustration because they never did any P.R. for P.R. A lot of sophisticated people in marketing equate a blurb in the paper with P.R. That’s publicity, which is the best-known aspect of public relations.
But public relations is also a do-gooder kind of program. Your client does a good job in the community or a good job producing a product or service, and you tell the people about it to help give the client a good reputation. It’s creating a broad base of understanding as opposed to zeroing in and selling a particular product or service.
Q. A while ago, you got fed up with businesses that were holding Christmas sales even before Thanksgiving, and you sent out bumper stickers and a few other things urging a boycott of ‘Christmas Spoilers.’ It seemed at the time to be a fairly brave thing for a public relations and advertising person to do--sort of biting the hand that feeds you. So why did you do it?
A. Well, I really loved Christmas. It was the greatest time of the year, a time of happiness and joy. I just got frustrated with the premature promotion of Christmas.
I came home from a meeting on Sept. 15., 1972, and I opened up the newspaper and I saw Santa Claus and I got mad. I was able to afford to have a couple of thousand bumper stickers printed and I sent these things to a bunch of people, including the local newspapers. And then I didn’t think any more about it.
They went out on a Thursday. On Monday morning I got a call from a newspaper in New Jersey and found out that a local story had been picked up by the Associated Press. We ended up being in 138 papers across the country. We did a half-hour television debate. I was hoping to ignite some group that really had the time to pursue this thing.
Q. What happened?
A. Roaring apathy. We did an opinion survey at South Coast Plaza to prepare for that television debate and found out that 91% of the people were opposed to early Christmas advertising. And 91% of the people said that they did not buy any more because of the early Christmas advertising. So why start advertising in September? Because of greed. Businesses have extended the season, but if you have steak every day you get awful tired of steak.
In the same survey, we asked if people felt strongly enough about it to do anything. And only about 30% of the people said yes. They didn’t say they’d boycott or anything like that, just that they wouldn’t buy early.
Q. To get back to your side of the business community, to the people who are supposed to be advising business on how to communicate: Is it that the public relations and advertising people aren’t advising properly, or is it that the clients don’t listen?
A. I think the agencies would like to be the leaders, but I think that they are the followers now, in public relations particularly. Only when a company gets into real trouble, like Suzuki with the Samurai, then they go into a crisis management kind of thing and listen to the P.R. adviser.
But I think most other times the client calls the shots too much and either isn’t told or just doesn’t listen and brushes off the recommendations. The clients often are very strong-willed entrepreneurs, and they don’t like people telling them what to do. They think that they are really the experts.
Of course they can’t handle the details, but I’ve known a case of a chairman of board of a publicly held company in Orange County who wrote his own news releases because he thought he was saving money. Now you know that has got to be the biggest waste of time I can think of.
People in the communications business can only be as good as their clients let them be. They have to ask for their freedom, but then the client has to give it to them.
