Women in PR

The pandemic has brought communicators a variety of challenges, greater pressure and visibility and a renewed sense of value. It also required reorganization and rethinking of both delivery and process. Just think of all in person meetings that had to move online, from team events to press conferences and autoshows. For this final episode, we're coming home, to Germany, to chat with Katja Bott. She's learning the Global Communications team of Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans since October 2018 having worked with the company for more than 17 years in Germany and the US.

Is there something that unites PR practice globally? And more importantly, is there something that the PR practice as a whole can identify as its ideal professional self? Anne Gregory will help us find some answers to these questions. She is currently Chair of Corporate Communication at the University of Huddersfield and has formerly chaired the Global Alliance of Public Relations and Communication Management. It is during her tenure there that she directed the seven continent team in developing the Global Capability Framework for the profession, a framework that we want to talk about today. Among many things she's written (more than 80 publications) is the CIPRs AI in PR Ethics Guide.

I met with Marian Salzman, Senior Vice President, Communications at Philip Morris International, for a fireside chat at the Global Communication Summit in 2020. At PMI, her work is focused on designing a smoke-free future as the company embarks on its journey of transformation. She's also a trendspotter, a professional hobby as she calls it, and a much awarded public relations executive being listed in PRWeek's Global Power Book and as a PR News Top Woman in PR. Her most recent trends report is called Zoomsday Predictions

There's often talk about international public relations yet it doesn't seem to be very clear what exactly do we mean by it: PR work done by the same organization in multiple countries, PR work done together with an international team. What's more, international PR and cross-cultural communication are often conflated, implying that communication practitioners are by default cultural translators and intermediaries too. But are they? Can they be? We'll talk about all that and more with today's guest, Jo Osborn who has both an international career and has worked with multinational organizations, both in house and as a consultant, in government and for blue-chip businesses. A graduate in Film, Media and Cultural Studies, she started her career in her hometown Hong Kong, before moving to Italy and then onto London. Jo is currently the Head of Communications and Corporate Brand for Reckitt.

How can teams perform better and how can team members work better together. In this week's episode we talk about alignment as a process, the science behind it and the applications in practice.

Today we'll focus on public relations for social justice, on the times when activism is public relations. To do so, we'll also consider whether public relations practitioners themselves should be change agents. And we'll be introducing a new view on theorizing public relations: queer theorizing. This is all part of Dr Erica Ciszek's research and it is with them that we'll be chatting today. They are an Assistant Professor with the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations at the University of Texas with their work published in many of PR's most valued academic journals including Public Relations Review, Journal of Communication and Public Relations Inquiry to name a few.

Diversity and inclusion have become such a big thing recently… especially after the #blacklivesmatter protests in the USA in 2020, companies around the world (or perhaps their communication teams) felt that it was about time they spoke about the topic. But you see, PR is not diverse. We spoke about this in previous episodes and covered this more extensively in the Women in PR book as well. So, generally-speaking, there are very non-diverse PR and communications teams and they are supposed to help organizations navigate internally and externally a world of acceptance and mutual support when in some cases they might have no clue whatsoever how others live and feel. I don't mean to lecture. Instead, we'll have a conversation about these topics with Rochelle Ford. She is the Dean of School of Communications at Elon University, a Fulbright specialist and awarded educator and researcher. Her life's work has diversity in focus.

From the PR fields of activity, corporate communications is still the most visible and praised, as is media relations. But it is really non-profit organizations that have been innovating in the field and they have been making an impact, in the world and on the profession. The reasons for NGO communications success are multiple: from the way their values resonate with those of the people joining them, from their generally assumed lack of resources or from the expectation that they do different and that they do better. For a communicator, the move from corporate to non-profit is still unusual. Doing it out of passion is almost unheard of. Which is why we're heading to Estonia today (virtually, as usual) to meet with Anneli Ohvril, the CEO of Let's Do it World, an NGO focused on engaging leaders and organizations around the world on environmental issues. World Cleanup Day is their biggest event, one day, uniting millions of people around the world with the mission to clean places around them – parks, walkways, lakes… in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, 11 million people joined the day - some outdoors, some online, some alone and some socially distanced. So today we'll speak about purpose and values and passion for a cleaner future and cleaner PR.

We have often spoken about what practitioners and academics perceive to be the role and mission of public relations and communications. And while discussing strategy, measurement and evaluation and thus research, two issues in particular keep popping up: the balancing of multiple stakeholder interests and demands - and VUCA, the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous context of the current practice. Today’s conversation with Irma Meyer will give us all a new way of looking at things and, I think, a way out of exactly this conundrum. Irma too started as a journalist and was then head-hunted into banking PR. She is currently running her own consultancy in Johannesburg and when time allows it she is a competitive Ballroom and Latin dancer. Well, she also has a poodle, loves chocolate and plays the piano… today however we’re focusing on her doctoral work and her theoretical proposal. A metamodern stakeholder relationship management model for non-profit organizations, is what we’ll be focusing on today.

It was 2019 when the Oxford Dictionary added the term “fake news” to its list of definitions. It turns out that the term has been around since the 1890s – something to do with a story about a mine in Milwaukee! Anyways, for communicators, fake news means trouble, for there is a lot more nuance there which encompasses accuracy of information, intent and effect. Our guest this episode: Carmen Romero, NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy since October 2016. She’s a former journalist and foreign affairs correspondent (awarded too) who has covered events such as the revolution in Romania, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the war in Chechnya, the crisis in Kosovo, and the NATO campaign in former Yugoslavia.

Today we’re travelling back in time to the Kommunikations Kongress, one of Germany’s biggest events for communication specialists. Last year it was among the first ones to go hydrid featuring everything from face-to-face socially distanced sessions, online only sessions and live streamed sessions. The interview you are going to hear was recorded there, in the bright lights of the big stage of the Congress Center in Berlin. The guest: Monika Schaller, Executive Vice President for Corporate Communications & Responsibility at Deutsche Post DHL Group. A former financial journalist for Bloomberg, Monika has led communications and CSR teams in the banking sector such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs before moving to Deutsche Post DHL group. She’s also a member of the German chapter of Global Women in PR and a member of the German Board of Trustees of the International Journalists´ Program. We chatted about yoga and finding balance at work and life, about leading global teams and about inspiring and supporting younger colleagues.

Season 2 of Women in PR: an exceptional series, recorded in exceptional circumstances with exceptional people: guests, producers and supporters alike. Like with the previous edition we’ll swing between research and practice and travel from Germany, to Estonia, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States and South Africa.

There’s so much discussion nowadays about leadership and management styles and so much questioning of whether gender makes any difference. There’s equally as much talk about PR’s ability to talk and do business. So, for this episode we’re turning to a powerful duo that fit all requirements: they are leaders, managers, business owners and women. Alina Damaschin and Eliza Rogalski co-own, according to the 2019 Holmes Report’ Global Creative Index, Romania’s most creative independent PR agency (that means that are the 5th most creative in the EMEA region and 9th in the world… quite an achievement!). That means that they take on daring projects, some of them activist in nature, getting involved in solving what they perceive to be social problems in Romania together with their clients. Alina has an advertising background (just between us, she also studied here at Quadriga University in Berlin) while Eliza’s background is in journalism. What’s more, they often refer to each other as sisters rather than business partners and when it comes to business, they often speak more about values and purpose than anything else.

Are you still using AVEs, advertising value equivalent, to report your PR success? That’s bad, really bad. There are ways in which public relations contribution to the organizational success can be assessed and that requires long term measurement and evaluation. AI and machine learning can help here with the day to day numbers, but the overall picture and the responsibility of tracking and reporting that stays with PR. Which is why critical thinking and solid research skills are the solutions. So, here it is, measurement and evaluation: our topic this week. Our guest: Johna Burke, the Global Managing Director of AMEC, the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication. An American that carries always a book in her bag, Johna choose PR because it was fun. Now, more than 25 years later, she’s often traveling to remind practitioners that fun and measurement and evaluation go together.

Can public relations practitioners be activists in their own organizations and oppose, stand up, speak against practices or decisions they think unethical or unjust? Should they risk their jobs? And if they do, how can they avoid deepening existing divisions or creating new ones? Dr Derina Holtzhausen is the authors of Public Relations as Activism: Postmodern Approaches to Theory and Practice, a book awarded with the PRIDE Book Award from the National Communication Association for outstanding contribution to public relations theory. Originally from South Africa and with an extensive corporate experience as well, Derina is currently the dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication at Lamar University in Texas, United States.

Who takes care of the PR practitioners and their mental health? With an always-on type of work culture prevailing, how do we take care of colleagues and who do we ensure that we, personally, can do both deep work or that we can disconnect to recharge. We’ll be tackling mental health in PR this week with Rachel Royall. She’s the Communication Director of IBM’s UK Healthcare & Life Sciences. Prior to joining IBM her career covers mostly public sector. She is also a very active member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and a fellow of the Institute for Internal Communication, and a lot of her work, public engagement and teaching speaks about PR’s power and duty to do good. And speaking of good, we’ll also talk ethics, not codes of ethics but rather what to do when unethical behavior are seen and how to expel those practitioners and practices.

PR girls. PR bunnies. PR mause. What comes to mind when you hear such descriptions of communication professionals? How are they dressed? Dr Kristin Demetrious is our guest this week. She’s the co-editor of the book “Gender and public relations: Critical perspectives on voice, image and identity,” where she has a chapter dealing specifically with the politics of gender and how these play out in two cases of sexual harassment involving Australian PR practitioners.

The workforce in PR and communication agencies in particular is primarily female. Female staff in German PR agencies represent about 69%, in the US is at over 70 percent and in Romania above 95 percent. This is what we call feminization of the workforce: when a profession is dominated by and associated with women. Now this has a variety of implications: on perceptions of the profession and its professionalism and contribution to society, on pay and on career progression. If a job is perceived as feminine, salaries tend to be lower and its contribution to community/society is diminished as less innovative, less ground-breaking. For PR in particular, the general assumption is that because women are naturally more social, more collaborative, they are made for PR, for building relationships and maintaining them. Is it so or is that a social expectation that we are fulfilling? And while PR job market continues to grow and salaries tend to be higher than in other industries (at least at entry level), with some exceptions, leadership positions in PR still continue to be dominated by men. How do they get there? Dr Liz Yeomans has recently retired but remains rather active, continuing to supervise doctoral works and reviewing for public relations and communication management journals. She’s been working with Leeds Business School at Leeds Beckett University since 1994, having had an extensive career in government and local government communications prior to that. Check out Dr Yeomans' book - Public Relations as Emotional Labor - here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315687162

What do you think of when someone mentions “public relations”? What images come to mind: is it someone behind the scenes organizing an event, is it someone speaking with the press on behalf of an organization, is it someone deeply absorbed into research following complex dashboards and reports. No really, what comes to your mind? There is research out there that explores the portrayals of PR in movies and series or in the media. There is also research that investigates the perceptions that journalists and politicians hold of PR practitioners. There is also research inquiring what are the perceptions that practitioners themselves have about their profession…fair enough, the latter one is mine (is a paper I presented in 2018 at BledCom, a practitioner and academic conference hosted in Slovenia, based on a game with PR memes we play in my Applied Communications course at Quadriga). Anyways, there are some pretty persistent negative perceptions as well as a lot of hope and enthusiasm for the profession. But one of the images that sticks shows PR in a tactical position, reacting to whatever others do or say, trying to protect an employer or client no matter what… not a strategist, not a consultant, not a trusted advisor with access and part of the decision-making process. So instead of asking where do these images come from, I think the better questions to ask would be why do they still linger on and are they the same everywhere? With this episode we travel to Russia and quiz our quest about how PR is understood and done over there. Irina Gushchina started her career as a journalist of a business weekly magazine, and then has worked for several years in prominent Russian and international PR agencies including Edelman Russia. In 2007 she moved into the in-house world, first joining Pfizer Russia and then Abott and Uber. After almost 20 years in media and PR, Irina is running KFC’s communications and is responsible for Russia, Commonwealth of Independent States (or CIS), Central & Eastern Europe. She is also an alumna of Quadriga University.

P.T. Barnum, Ivy Lee, Arthur Page, Eddie Bernays: the fathers of public relations. American, white, males. And then there’s the history of PR presented often as a linear, constant improvement, englighting…from manipulation and propaganda, to public information, to symmetrical communication, from corporations opposing activists and investigative journalists and calling them names like muckrakers to listening to them, collaborating with them and embedding their demands. What is this PR history teaching us? Are we missing anyone? Out guest today will help us find some answers. Dr Michaela O’Brien used to work in strategic communications and consultancy roles for nonprofits including Amnesty International, the British Library, Business in the Community, Carers UK and the Refugee Council before she joined academia. She is now heading the Westminster School of Media and Communication at the University of Westminster (that is overseeing about 21 undergraduate and post-graduate programmes to you and I), leading their master’s program in Media, Campaigning and Social Change at Westminster and hosting their Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). One of her central research theme is activism and communication.

Why do people get into PR? If you go ask communicators around about their jobs, they’ll tell you it’s frustrating but fun and that it’s the variety and diversity of their daily tasks and environment that keeps them into the profession. More than 70% of European PR practitioners listed that their tasks are “interesting and manifold” as the key to their job satisfaction. And that figure is rather similar around the world: whether Asia-Pacific, Latin America or North America. This is at least what the results of the Communication Monitor series, a cluster of surveys taking the pulse of strategic communication in worldwide indicate. Perhaps this is the key of success for PR and for some the main attraction to the profession. Perhaps while we figure out how to teach and develop PR in a manner that is unifying yet encompassing of national and cultural differences (and by we I mean, Global Alliance and their capabilities framework, us here at Quadriga, other academics and professionals many active in associations like CIPR, PRCA, EACD and AMEC) we should focus on the fact that PR is a fun profession. Ildiko, this episode’s guest, will mention passion for PR a lot but also a dedication, a curiosity to make it better. Half Hungarian and half Romanian with an experience of over 15 years in PR & Comms, Ildiko is managing globally the communication for the 22 tire plants of the Continental and a team of around 25 people. She is also a Quadriga University alumna.

The C-Suite – is that something you strive for or where you are invited in? And more importantly, as a communicator, how do you make yourself listened to once you get there? The management paradigm, of which Grunig and his excellence theory in public relations being its strongest representative, argue that for PR to truly matter, the senior PR council should not only be part of but actively be involved in decision-making. This shifts PR from a purely technical role to a strategic and managerial role. One way to get there, Grunig (and all his supporters argue) is through education, through professionalization. Now this debate started in the 1980 but is as current as ever and that is how do you get into PR and how do you succeed in PR? Are PR practitioners born communicators or they become so after pursuing either a degree, or some other sort of organized form of studying PR or comms. In a sense, studying PR would put someone right at the heart of what the profession requires but also would have them exposed to all the questions about how PR came to be and what the future looks like: what is PR’s role in society, ethical conundrums, loyalties. On the other hand, starting straight into PR and learning on the go as a trainee or apprentice one would be focused on solving problems and therefore be more atuned to ..maybe… how the world ticks. My guest in this episode has done Edna now heads MarComms at Panalpina in Switzerland. She is an American who studied both in the US and Europe. She is a traveler, an explorer, a mother, a writer, a strategist. And she is also the managing Vice-President of EACD, the European Association of Communication Directors. Founded in Brussels in 2006, the EACD is a network for communication professionals from all fields promoting diversity, overcoming cultural barriers and fostering professionalism in communications. And today, I will ask her how she got to where she’s at.

Women in PR is a weekly podcast about inspiring women that have embraced PR and made it shine, changing it for the better every day. It’s about mentors, founders, researchers, role models, leaders. Women in PR is hosted by Prof. Dr. Ana Adi, Professor of PR/Corporate Communications at Quadriga University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and is brought to you by Quadriga University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and professional-podcasts.com.