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PR Fuel: Is Personality PR On The Way Out?"A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture." Entrepreneurs often find themselves in a bind. Do you pitch the idea or the person behind the idea? By definition, entrepreneurs and ideas can't be separated. However, when it comes to PR, there must be a separation because without it, you may find yourself in an unworkable situation. "While personality PR can garner coverage and press for the company, it never seems to bring in as much business as product or corporate PR," Jeremy Pepper, a Phoenix-based PR consultant and strategist told me. "Also, another issue with personality PR, particularly in start-ups, is the risk that the personality you are using might not be with the company when the articles come out," Pepper continued. Pepper's last point was illustrated disastrously during the "dot-com boom" when companies generated massive buzz and then disappeared literally overnight. In some cases, flattering articles in monthly magazines would appear just days after a company announced it was going out of business. These companies, like many during economic boom eras, were driven by entrepreneurs whose intelligence was sometimes overshadowed by their flamboyance. Another major issue when dealing with personality-driven PR is ego. The entrepreneur's ego will sometimes determine the direction a company's PR campaign takes, just like it will sometimes determine the overall direction of the company. "If you look at some of the most charismatic serial entrepreneurs in the last decade, they've had a lot of turnover in their management teams," Connie Connors, CEO of New York-based Connors Communication said. Connors, an award-winning entrepreneur herself, says that it's important to build a company's public image around not only the personality of the company's management team, but around the company's product and culture. If you don't do this, you may find yourself in a situation that's destined for failure when trouble hits. "There's a difference between a spokesperson and a brand," Connors said. "Martha Stewart is the brand and look what's happened there." Connors, whose firm worked with companies like Amazon.com and Priceline.com during their start-up phases, cautions that a spokesperson can also do a company considerable damage. "There was a magic moment when William Shatner [Priceline.com's commercial spokesperson] went on television and said, 'I don't use Priceline, I fly first-class.'" And that's the kind of magic no company needs. ___ Jeremy Pepper is a Phoenix, AZ-based public relations strategist and consultant. He can be reached at jspepper@hotmail.com. Connie Connors is the CEO of Connors Communications, a New York-based strategic consumer PR and marketing agency specializing in the consumer technology, entertainment and education markets. Connors can be found online at http://www.connors.com --------------------------------------------------------------- On The Other Hand By Ben Silverman So, is there an inherent danger in personality-driven PR? Of course there is. Take Michael Jackson (away please). His brand is all but destroyed, which is amazing considering the lengths he's gone to protect it in the past. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is another good example. A true entrepreneur, he turned his company, Bloomberg, into a global information services powerhouse. But the mystique around the company was always attached to Bloomberg himself. Since becoming Mayor and leaving the daily operations of Bloomberg to others, the company has suffered through periods of either no PR or simply bad PR. But personality-driven PR does have some good points. "Personality PR is easier to do than corporate or product PR. The mainstream press is always looking for cool stories to do about a person, and despite the death of the dot-com era, people are better stories than companies. It's a combination of the voyeuristic nature of people and the human-interest angle," PR consultant Jeremy Pepper told me. And even if you're apprehensive about doing personality-driven PR, remember who pays the bills. "If the client or company wants personality PR, you do it. You position the person as an expert, you hope they have a good story, and you just pitch," Pepper said. --------------------------------------------------------------- PR News Compiled and commented on by Ben Silverman The Nashville City Paper is all for a plan that would see the Nashville public school system plunk down $125,000 for the first year of a five-year deal with an outside PR agency. The paper's editorial says the firm being considered should take over all the school's PR duties and that the system should disband its internal PR and communications department. Link: http://tinyurl.com/5rkl ___ Robert C. Cowen wonders if the media covering the space sector is too caught up in NASA's PR glow. "In recent years, there have again been scattered warnings about shuttle safety - about aging spacecraft, fragile tiles, curtailed funding. But the science-news focus has been on planetary exploration, Hubble telescope cosmic views, Earth-scanning satellites, and building the space station. Writers caught up in that story generally have little time to dig deeply into issues of shuttle program management," he writes. Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0213/p18s02-stss.html ___ PR blitz by Pittsburgh bar-owners starts with PR! It's always funny to see an article heralding the beginning of a PR blitz. Link: http://tinyurl.com/5rkn ___ Pepsi gets a PR lesson. Link: http://tinyurl.com/5rkq
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