PR Firms Recruit Outside the Field
Back when he was a professor of classical literature, translating texts by Plato, Avi Sharon knew this much about the public relations business: It was all Greek to him.
“I knew there was something like an industry out there,” Sharon said. “I would watch TV, but when the ads came on, I didn’t think too hard. I was totally and utterly ignorant about the business.”
He’s better educated on the subject these days. The former professor is a spin doctor--an account supervisor with Golin/Harris International, one of the nation’s 10 largest public relations firms.
He’s also part of a growing trend: PR firms recruiting employees with backgrounds outside the normal public relations curve.
The trend dovetails with an explosion in the business: PR revenues have doubled since 1997, with massive growth last year in technology and health care.
The nation’s largest PR firms boast of diversity in their hiring: high school English teacher and prosecutor, aerobics instructor and biomedical researcher, drill sergeant and disc jockey. Not a communications degree or a gray flannel suit in the bunch.
“The image of public relations was the old-time huckster,” acknowledged PR man Jack Bergen. “Right now those kind of folks don’t survive in our business.”
Bergen should know. A West Point graduate, he served as a strategic planner at the Pentagon and as chief speech writer for former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger before switching careers.
Today he heads the Council of Public Relations Firms, a 3-year-old group that does PR for the PR business. It has hired its own PR guy to publicize the industry’s changing faces.
Of the 128 firms in Bergen’s group, 80% say nontraditionals have significant roles.
“This is a field of opportunity,” he said. “If you can demonstrate you’ve got an expert view on something, based on your life experience, there’s a place for you.”
Take the stereotypical PR man--if you can find him. Seventy percent of all PR people these days are women, a reversal of 30 years ago. And of the 100 largest U.S. firms, 37 are headed by women.
Mistie Thompson, a senior account executive at St. Louis-based Standing Partnership, is typical of the new breed. She earned a history degree at the University of Arkansas before going into . . . cheerleading.
Sis. Boom. PR?
Under Thompson’s tutelage, the Parkway South High School cheerleaders in suburban St. Louis captured back-to-back National Dance Team Championships. Those days, she said, were perfect preparation for a PR job.
“If you can face a screaming cheerleader mom and stay calm, you can handle all other crises,” said Thompson.
It’s not just the women who are nontraditional--plenty of PR men fall into the category as well.
Years before he entered the business, Don DeFore was already spinning . . . records. DeFore worked as “the Flying Deejay” at a Los Angeles club and provided the tunes on a Caribbean cruise ship.
In 1996, he co-founded what’s now a high-powered Washington, D.C., public relations firm. On his wall hangs a framed display of 16 business cards--all of them his from previous jobs.
“I once listed my deejay experience on my resume as ‘music coordinator,’ ” said DeFore. “I’m confident enough now to admit that.”
