I would say that it is important to establish your credibility in ne press, because you are competing in your area. Say I want to get something in the newspapers. I am competing with people who are very lose geographically to the media outlets, and it's very easy for them to p to the media and get a similar type of story. I have to find something exceptional when I call with a story. First of all, I have to have a good reputation for giving them good stories as well as accurate information. One of the ways we do this, oddly enough, is by playing ball on bad news. If somebody has done something wrong, we don't cover it up, we don't stall, we don't stonewall, we cooperate. We get the information to them. If someone is not answering the questions, we call up and say, 'Hey! Cooperate-this is extremely important!" It's how we handle the >ad news that establishes our reputation and makes them accept the good news.
Here, and as is the case in most art organizations, we are incredibly understaffed. There are some advantages to this, but what you do in most arts organizations is to run a sort of "mini ad agency." There are two people here who do everything that's done in a full-service advertising agency-write and place advertising, develop concepts for promotional campaigns, and do national and international publicity and advertising. In our case we develop all the collateral materials from the standpoint of design and layout, with the use of paid artists, of course. We do all the concept and copy, and in the end we publish a large number of brochures to be used for recruiting and for general promotion. In addition, we do the day-to-day public relations activities that you would expect. This ii eludes press releases, media relations, and all that sort of thing. So people without an advertising agency background would have some difficulty in an arts organization, unless the organization has a bigger staff than most. We really do more than a full-service advertising agency, because small, full-service advertising agencies that handle public relations really don't do it very well and really don't do much c it. There are some major exceptions among the large agencies in New York that have regular segments of their agency devoted to PR, bi elsewhere, if you employ an advertising agency for everything, you generally get slipshod PR.
You must be able to take your institution and look at the audience and say, "This is what the institution has to project to reach that audience, and this is what we want to project to that audience. This i: what we've done, and this is what we need." I don't know how you describe that. There's a bit of marketing there, isn't there? So we really have four areas of responsibility or functions: writing, interviewing, per forming, and marketing or strategic planning. It all starts with the marketing task-my statement of goals and objectives that have to be matched to our master plan. My goals and objectives shift with our needs.
I have various areas of responsibility. One is internal communications, which includes two bimonthly employee magazines. I overset various employee discount programs and various things to make the employees a little bit happier. That's the internal communications end o it. Then there are the external areas. One is annual reports, another is i tour book that we publish as a public service and as a gift to customers There are news relations and media relations such as writing news releases and dealing day to day with the news media. Then there's public affairs-the community relations side of it-which is involved with various civic task forces and committees, chambers of commerce, community boards, and that sort of thing.
Q - How do you actually spend your time?
A - I spend the vast majority of my time writing, probably 60 percent. I spend 25 percent of my time interviewing and 10 percent answering the press's questions and being a public spokesperson. Coffee breaks take up the rest.
I work about 120 hours per week. Well, I really work all the time. This weekend I'm going to two parties, and they're both work parties. It's stuff that looks glamorous, but I'm working. When I go, I never just go, I always seek out the media people. If it's a company function, I spend the entire time at the shoulder of the PR people, unless they make it clear that they just have to get away from me. That's the way I get the follow-up coverage. That's the way I get the good pictures n the paper. That's the way I get the people I want in the paper, as supposed to the people they would normally write about. That's the way the president of the board mentioned. That's the way I get the women's committee president photographed. I do a lot of running around. I'm on the street a lot.
In an agency your time is split in many different ways handling the various clients' accounts. Assignments and the length of time allotted for their completion depend upon the clients' budget.
