The millennium has yet to hit, but fortunetellers are out in droves - and they're not limiting their predictions to the upcoming presidential race and Y2K. Weary PR practitioners are asking industry soothsayers to predict the extent to which globalization, 24-hour news cycles and wireless technology will control their destinies and infringe on their waning personal lives.
In an address Saturday night to the latest class of PRSA fellows at PRSA's annual international conference, veteran counselor Chester Burger wagered optimistically that PR workdays might actually be shorter 10 years down the road. "But your hours will not be what we today would call 'regular daytime hours,'" he said. "Globalization and inexpensive communication are driving all the stock exchanges to 24-hour trading, worldwide. [In the future] you may find it necessary to staff your offices on a 24-hour basis to handle your corporate clients around the clock."
Perhaps Burger has surreptitiously hit on a brave new future for global overpopulation and business efficiency: there are enough jobs, roads and houses to go around if we can just learn how to rotate people between shared offices, highways and beds in eight-hour shifts.
Until that happens, however, communicators will continue to struggle to meet the demands of clients, senior managers and other stakeholder groups who seemingly never sleep. Corporate downsizing, mergers and the current labor shortage mean that fewer PR people are managing more responsibilities. Add to that communication across multiple time zones and you've got PR execs logging graveyard shifts on a routine basis.
"The top communications people are finding that their hours are 24 hours a day," Edie Fraser, president of the DC-based Public Affairs Group, told PR NEWS last month (PR NEWS Sept. 27). Fraser cited one colleague at DaimlerChrysler who's been burning the midnight oil ever since Daimler-Benz bought the American carmaker last summer. "She's up at 4 a.m. every morning on the Internet communicating with Germany."
New Hype for Old Gripes
Technology is certainly a popular scapegoat for the disgruntled. After all, the Internet is fueling the 24-hour news cycle, rogue Web sites, the digital rumor mill, and other challenges that keep PR execs awake at night. "More than ever before, this is a 'real-time' environment in which immediacy is of the essence, stakes are high, and good judgment is at a premium," says Jim Wills, president of Wills Consulting Associates, an executive search firm in Greenwich, Conn.
(Of course the same technology that dogs practitioners also helps them operate smarter and more efficiently, Wills adds. But that point ruins the pity party.)
Experts who played the PR field long before the Digital Age contend that sleep deprivation is not a new phenomenon. "People in California for generations have gotten up at 4:00 in the morning for when the market opens on the East Coast," says Bill Adams, associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University. Yes, we now live in a beeper society, but before that there were phones. The technology may be new, but cultural expectations haven't changed. "We have always been 24-hour-a-day people," Adams says. "We live like doctors on call. A crisis doesn't know what hour it is."
Client Drivers, Agency Stop Signs
The truth is, PR types who aren't willing to accept phone calls at home and put in the occasional 14-hour day are in the wrong business, says Mark Schannon, partner/director at Ketchum's DC office. And while agencies have traditionally set records for overtime hours, today's corporate clients are gaining ground in the race for martyrdom.
"It used to be you'd call a client at 5:01 and no one would be there. Now I get calls at 10:00 at night," Schannon says. "Corporate people who previously never left Oshkosh are now spending 25 percent of their time traveling around the world. Working hard has become a badge of honor."
Tech clients are perhaps the most notorious workaholics. "These are young start-up companies and they do seem to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week," says Schannon, whose firm has won more than $2 million in dotcom business in the last two months.
Although digital entrepreneurs set a high standard, Ketchum employees aren't expected to follow suit.
"Here at the agency, no one is going to become a multimillionaire from an IPO and retire at 35. The same carrot isn't there," Schannon says. "We have to keep this in mind [in terms of what we demand from our employees]."
Ketchum isn't the only agency that's just saying no to chronic workloads. Last week, New York-based Patrice Tanaka & Co. turned away three business opportunities in an effort to stay true to its commitment to a sane office environment.
"They were huge clients that we've always wanted to work for, but the timing and request for turnaround we felt was unreasonable," says CEO and creative director Patrice Tanaka. "It was a difficult choice, but we wouldn't do that to our people." Agencies dig their own graves when they agree to jump through hoops and meet unrealistic expectations, she says.
"There are always people willing to drop everything and get it done. But for the most part these are created emergencies, not real ones."
Have time demands really changed? Or dare we suggest that PR practitioners actually enjoy feeling victimized by their chosen professions? After conducting an informal poll of Ketchum employees, Schannon concluded that peer pressure, in fact, carried a bigger stick than senior management expectations.
"When you hire type A people, they thrive when they are buried in tons of work," he says. "One of our account executives told me, 'We are never so happy as when we are complaining about how busy we are.'" (Fraser at Public Affairs Group, 202/463-3766; Wills Consulting, 203/622-4930; Patrice Tanaka & Co., 212/229-0500; Adams at Florida Int'l University, 305-919-5795; Schannon at Ketchum, 202/835-8812.)