Work Life

Veteran PR professional and former journalist Arthur Solomon is back with his annual series pulled from the headlines. His contention is that a daily perusal of the news can provide PR pros with a tuition-free education, often covering areas that college and graduate programs miss. Part I of this series concentrates on career advice.

As a public service for PR pros and those who care about them, we provide a quick guide to gifts every communicator could use as we head into the new year. The good news is that communicators aren’t necessarily interested in big-ticket items. Gifts that save time and make life a bit more comfortable top the PR pro’s wish list at holiday time.

In our regular Lessons Earned feature, former Cargill and State Farm CCO Mike Fernandez recalls three examples when it was advantageous to be fearless. This attitude led a 23-year-old Fernandez to confront a senior member of the Senate. It also prompted him as a new CCO at two well-known companies to whack at sacred cows.

Many business leaders believe they know how to relate to their millennial staff. They share a lot of material via social media and during town halls. While millennials will acknowledge the sharing, they’ll also say the messages shared seem inauthentic. To counter this, veteran PR pro Deirdre Breakenridge crafted her 12-part FEEL plan that helps build genuine communication between leaders and millennial staff. She discussed it during PRNEWS’s Top Places to Work & Agency Elite Awards in NYC earlier this week.

The 2019 Top Places to Work & Agency Elite Awards highlighted the best agencies, communicators and campaigns in the business, honoring those that set a high watermark with inclusive workplace culture and future-focused campaigns. PRNEWS hosted the luncheon Nov. 21 at New York City’s storied Yale Club, in the heart of Manhattan. 

At PRNEWS, we thought about how to utilize Slack to connect our readership and community. How could we leverage the relationships we’ve built with amazing contacts to benefit those outside of our circle, and bolster an entire community? And with that, we created the PR and Communications Pros Slack group.

Few PR professionals can say they have a dream job. Catherine Mathis was one of them. She led corporate communications at The New York Times Company. She also had a great team and plenty of job satisfaction. Sometimes dreams change, however. Her difficult decision to leave the Times led Mathis to several lessons about life and work that she uses to this day.

“If you want loyalty while working at a PR agency, bring your dog to the office.” That’s the advice of veteran PR pro Arthur Solomon. In addition to his words of wisdom about loyalty in PR, or the lack thereof, he offers advice about what to say and things to avoid when you’re in job-hunting mode. And you should be job hunting pretty much all the time, he says. Hey, that dog could really come in handy.

“Be yourself.” PR pros offer that advice often. At the moment, the language espousing it has morphed to “Be authentic.” In this continuing series with IPR about learning from early failure, veteran communicator Brian Lott describes a moment in his youth that drove home the lesson of authenticity. He adheres to its tenets to this day.

In this age of disinformation, PR pros are more important than ever, says the 2021 PRSA chair Michelle Olson. “If we do nothing except hold up the candle of ethics in business and in our organizations, we will have done our jobs,” she tells us in a wide-ranging interview.