As PR director for the last fifteen years at Bell Labs at Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, N.J.) Rich Teplitsky's career has been a solid success. Yet he's back at school,
taking classes part time and doing homework on the weekends for a Master's in Business Administration degree he plans to finish in December.
Why? To give some added sails to his career. "It's becoming essential for good PR practitioners to have a broad understanding of the business world," he says. "That means
finance, earnings, marketing, human resources - not just traditional PR areas."
While anecdotal evidence suggests the MBA is becoming an increasingly popular option in PR, it is worth noting that this is not an inexpensive career move. It's possible to
earn a degree for under $10,000 at some schools, but in the mid-tier and top universities it may cost around $100,000 to obtain an MBA, taking into account tuition, fees and,
especially for full-time students, the cost of going to "school" instead of "work."
Whether it's worth the expense depends on your ambitions. Corporate clients are the ones most likely to appreciate the business savvy possessed by an MBA graduate, so PR
professionals who expect to interface with corporate execs stand to benefit the most. Take, for instance, Jan Prosek, a principal with Cubitt Jacobs & Prosek
Communications in Connecticut. Six years ago she earned her MBA from Columbia Business School.
"My ambitions were larger than the company at the time. I wanted to establish a first class corporate communications and financial communications practice, and I was trying to
figure out how to do that," she recalls.
In retrospect, the degree has made a big difference. Prosek remembers her initial meeting with a regional bank that now is a major client.
"The first time I made a sales presentation to the executives, they knew I could speak their language. They understood that this was a different animal, and that this was
someone they wanted to hire," she says.
One cannot obtain an MBA in PR, per se. Rather, PR pros angling for a business degree typically will take the main track of MBA classes with electives in marketing and, in some
schools, PR as well.
Some practitioners therefore suggest that while the MBA may be of value, a more career-specific degree or certification might be the better choice.
"I toyed with the idea of an MBA for a long time," says Jody Aud, a principal with The Trio Group in Baltimore. "I chose to get a Masters in PR instead. As an
undergraduate, I had had only one class in PR in my senior year, and I really wanted to understand the theory and the strategies behind public relations before doing anything
else."
Lurking in the shadows of the MBA is the long-esteemed APR, or Accredited in Public Relations, designation. Conferred through a rigorous skills-demonstration process, the APR
epitomizes for many the sign of professional achievement in the PR world.
But that doesn't mean you can read a balance sheet.
Aud holds the APR in addition to her academic degree. She says comparing the APR and the MBA is apples-to-oranges. "Just because someone gets a graduate degree, I don't
necessarily know what his or her experience was," she says. "It tells me that they understand the workings of a business, but do they understand PR?"
Others, however, are not looking for PR validation. Blake Williams, an account supervisor at Articulate Communications in New York City, briefly considered the APR, "but
for the leadership role that I want to take, I felt that an MBA gave me the best overall look into management."
He bet heavily on that horse, taking two years off from work to attend Emory University full time. He says the $30,000 cost of the degree was money well spent. "As I was
coming up through the ranks and taking on more management responsibilities, I felt my lack of formal business training was holding me back," he says. "A lot of my clients had
MBAs, had business training, and there was a certain disconnect there."
It's well known by now. For too long the C-level has griped that PR reps know how to drive media, write press releases and do other things roughly lumped together as "tactics."
But PR could not sit at the big table: PR just did not think like the rest of the management team. While everyone else was perusing the annual report, PR was fussing over
fonts.
We now know better, of course, but that's how C-level execs still see it. Now along comes the MBA, and with it a chance to change that fundamental equation.
Samuella R. Becker earned an MBA from Pace University in 1987. As founder and CEO of TigressPR in New York City, she says the degree has had a direct impact on
her clients, helping them to see her not just as a tactician, but a meaningful business partner.
"Before obtaining an MBA, I would be asked during interview situations if I knew even how to read an annual report. After obtaining my advanced degree, it was 'assumed' that
not only could I read an annual report but could write one, too.
"Another MBA advantage is that it has made me much more 'quantitative,' " she adds. "I read a firm's business plan before devising a PR/marketing plan to make sure that my PR
plan is on target with the firm's goals. Sometimes a placement in a trade journal can bring more new business to a client than a feature in the New York Times."
At Hill and Knowlton's corporate and financial practice, Senior Vice President Kal Goldberg tells a similar story. He earned his MBA from New York University's Stern
School of Business in May 2003, and the experience has helped him shine in the office. Take the recent case of a Japan-based client.
"The Japanese company had no communications person here in the United States, so the CFO of this company was effectively our client," he says. "In a case like that it is very
helpful to have a finance background, in order to translate what is happening in the deal in terms of strategy and how you want to position this thing."
Beyond this kind of strategic business savvy, others say the major value of an MBA lies not in what you know, but in whom you know. People who have pursued the degree say their
classroom contacts have been among the biggest rewards. Prosek says: "If you are going to visit an insurance company and can call a senior insurance executive and ask him what's
on his mind before you walk in the door, well, that's just huge."
Although she's an MBA advocate Prosek warns that the degree is not for everyone.
"If you want to be a senior partner in a PR firm, someone who confers with CEOs and CFOS - do it, absolutely," she says. "But if you just want a job in PR, if you are not
looking for those larger things, the MBA is a lot of time and a lot of money. I mean, my MBA cost me $80,000. So it really depends what you want out of your career."
CONTACTS: Jody Aud, 410.549.7600, [email protected]; Samuella R. Becker, 212.734.0767, [email protected]; Kal Goldberg, 212.885.0365, [email protected]; Jen Prosek, 203.378.1152, [email protected]; Rich Teplitsky,
908.582.5700, [email protected]; Blake Williams 212.255.0080, [email protected]
Demanding more than an MBA
According to recent surveys by the Graduate Management Admission Council, obtaining an MBA is just a starting point, with 70% of corporate recruiters looking for related work
experience as the main criteria for hiring. The surveys also found:
- 66% of recruiters want to see a history of increased job responsibility
- 61% tie their hiring practices to an MBA's concentration of study
- 58% of new MBAs rate the value of degree as excellent; 30% rate it as good
- 54% of new MBAs say they will use degree as a means of changing career tracks