I had the privilege of spending some time interviewing one of my idols in the PR world—Richard Laermer. Laermer is an expert on media and trending. He is the author of several books—"Full Frontal PR," "Punk Marketing" and "2011." He is a former magazine and newspaper journalist, and is now the CEO of acclaimed PR agency, RLM. He also co-hosts Unspun Radio on iTunes and stations throughout the U.S.
This man is truly a mastermind of staying on top of budding PR trends. During the interview I asked him to weigh in on the newest movements and how the older movements are dying off.
So without further adieu…Richard Laermer.
Why don't you start off and tell us a little bit about yourself and how long you have been in the public relations industry?
I've been in the industry for a little over a 1,000 years, I started in the Renaissance. We used to dance around and sing and put grapes in our hair. You know, it was really fun. That was PR back then.
Let's see now, what year is this? I started in PR about 20 years ago after being a reporter for nine or 10 years. I worked for the NY Times as a stringer, before that I was a regular reporter for USA Today, and before that I worked for the Daily News. What happened to me was what happens to a lot of people, I saw journalism as kind of a dead end.
I got a job as the Public Affairs Director for the Columbia Business School and I became their PR director. One of the reasons I went into PR, quite honestly, is because in the late 80s and early 90s when I was a journalist, I noticed how few really good PR people actually do what I did for a living, even though I was so blatant. It was so obvious what I was into. I wrote for a lot of magazines and newspapers, but all you had to do was a cursory look at me, and you could say "Oh my God, I know what he's like." So I used to get a lot of crappy press releases in the mail. We didn't have email then. They would immediately just go into the circular bin and I'd think "Wow, where are the good PR people?" Then when I went to Columbia, I realized that there weren't any. There were just a lot of monolith type agencies who sent out lots and lots of press releases and didn't really target.
The beautiful thing about the early 90s was, very much like today, there wasn't a lot of money out there because there was a recession going on. Everyone became an entrepreneur like me. When I quit Columbia and started an agency, the same one I have today, our goal was to work with entrepreneurial companies or entrepreneurial types of people, or entrepreneurial divisions of big companies who really felt like they could form a niche that was so good and so powerful that no one else was really doing it. So for me, it was really exciting and of course the early 90s was all about technology and bulletin board services and the pre-internet movement. I was such a geek back then. I was very lucky because I used to write a series of guide books to New York called "Natives Guide to New York." It was all about New York for New Yorkers.
In the early 90s, CompuServe which was the number one information service, they were like AOL but bigger at the time, hired me to do their forum for New York because of my book. I was totally into the whole bulletin board technology so I had a really good platform. Of course, the other agencies that I was competing with, who were much bigger than me, had thought this whole Internet thing with Mosaic and these new technologies, that it was all a gimmick. They were like, "Ah, Bill Gates will own that one day, we shouldn't get involved." So I had an open field, it was really kind of cool. I took on so many clients in those first couple of years, companies that went on to become very rich and very famous. They started with us because we were scrappy and fun and we liked to get our hands dirty, but also because there was no one else who wanted to talk to them. It was kind of fun. So in the early 90s, we worked with CompuServe and Sonic.net and CDNOW and scotch.com and all of these great companies. It was fun, and we had such a good time. For me, the last 18 or 19 years have been about always looking for new niches that haven't been creatively assailed by PR people. To be perfectly blunt with you, that's been really easy.
Have you noticed any unique qualities within the industry that have set apart one agency from another or one client from another?
Here's the bottom line about PR. You're either in it to do something to help another company or client make their business something super unbelievable (and I don't just mean successful, but rather a "stake in the ground" type thing) or you're just a Starbucks barista who just happens to work in PR, like a people person. As far as I'm concerned, one of the reasons I started the Bad Pitch Blog with Kevin Dugan is because the two of us were sitting around thinking, "Why are there so many bad PR people and how can we help get rid of them?", which is fun. The idea is, "What can we do to make sure that people are kept in check?" It's not like everything we do is so great, but at least we're not lazy. At least there’s something to be said for us trying new things. I really do think that new things are what is missing from PR.
There was an article this weekend in The New York Times talking about all the great new things that are happening with PR. All it said was that it's all about relationships. And in the end that's true, but it isn't about sidling up to the person who happens to be influential this minute. It's about understanding the business that you're representing to the fullest, it's about getting involved in what they do, and it's about being as well-informed as you can possibly be so that you can take the essence of your client's story (or your story if you happen to be working for that client or company) and put it in front of the trends that haven't actually turned into real trends yet so that you can lead that story as opposed to just plopping yourself into it. That's really what fantastic PR is about. That's really hard work. But the good news is, when you do it once, you can actually find ways for your client or your company to be seen as much bigger because they get to be seen as the leader of a movement. I think that's exciting. It's fantastic and it's so rare.
What are some creative ways that you've seen people taking advantage of PR in the down economy?
Have a story to tell that can help people. For instance, we have a client who's the head of a publicly-traded company. He does a lot of talking to reporters to help their readers understand how to navigate rough waters during an economy like this. It hasn't been an economy like this in a really long time. I think that if you're working for somebody who you can trust, they can be in and around the boundaries of the field in which they work. That person can say the things that people need to hear right now—not want to hear, but need to hear. It's a great way to get really good PR for companies.
Just announcing something these days doesn't really mean anything anymore. Even if it were a good economy, it wouldn't mean anything. Those are just deals or partnerships or launches. In my business I have a saying, "There's no such thing as a free launch." Just because you've launched something, who cares?
The other thing is that we like to do something here that we call source filing. We take a client's number one person—the person that's the most important spokesperson—and we introduce them to a lot of different types of media and a lot of bloggers and podcasters and radio people and TV, etc. at the beginning of our relationship. Not to pitch them, but so they can get to know the things that the client knows that they're really going to want to know. In other words, things that will make them better at their jobs. We find that doing that (which is a lot of work at the beginning) makes it so much easier later when we call them and say, "We've got something for you." They go, "I love that guy. He took five minutes of my time. I'm excited by the fact that you didn't bother me with an hour's worth of nonsense. You just gave me five minutes, and that was so painless I can't wait to do it again." People need to remember that helping journalists and people who supply information for a living with great sources is really important. They don't have to say a million things to them. They just have to say one or two that will make that other person go, "That's great. Thank you for saying that and thank you for hanging up." Because then when you call them back later they're like, "That was really great. I really want to do it again." It's a give and take situation.
It's so different now than it was in the 90s. In the 90s there were so many journalists. There were thousands of people writing for thousands of newspapers and magazines. You could spend an hour and a half regaling reporters with stories. It was interesting. I don't know if it actually got us anywhere, but it was definitely interesting. It was a little easier. Today, knowing how valuable everybody's time is, my own included, to be able to take a client for five minutes and introduce them to somebody, and have them say something so the other person goes, "Wow, that was great," that takes a lot of prep. I'm not sure that prep is the thing that most PR firms are into. I think they're more into what we call "sleight of hand," the great shiny object, and saying, "Look over here! Look over here! Here's a demo!" It's all of that crazy stuff, and I hope that other people will learn quickly that this is not the time for that. This is the time for quality. Just quality, not quantity.
Do you think they will continue to work once the economy recovers?
I don't think that it could ever go back to the way it was. First of all, there will never be as many journalists as there were before because journalism is now a citizen-based media. What will happen is that we, as PR people, will more and more become the source. We will be the ones talking to customers and creating stories. There will be less of a middle man. That's happening now with social networks, but I think in the future, the minute that people realize it's so much easier to go to a website. In my book, "2011: Trendspotting", I talk about this idea of the future being about you choosing who you want to associate with, and that's the way everything's going to be. Once we realize how little we've been helped by email and personalized news sources that give you what you think you need to know and not a little bit of everything, I think people are starting to realize, "I'm not getting anywhere with this. Maybe I should go do what I do with Facebook and just accept people and only talk to those people I really want to talk to." That's what journalism's going to be too. Everything's going to be about who we trust. If we go to ______.com and we think that guy's funny and interesting (which we should because he's really fun) that's the guy we're going to listen to when a story comes out. As opposed to Katie Couric, who might have a blog but we think, "She's just a woman who can't decide what to do with her career." So it'll never go back. When the economy does come back, which will be in a couple of years, it's going to be more choices for us, but more aggregated. People will go to a certain place because they know that whatever corporation runs that is choosing the correct personalities. Because they know that everything's driven by personality right now.
Why do so many companies/brands cut their PR budgets in tough times, when they need it the most?
I don't know if they are. They were in the first quarter, but now I think they’re cutting their ad budgets and their direct marketing. But I've see a lot more PR in the second quarter, I saw more people hiring PR people and PR firms than ever, mostly because they wanted to make sure that people were able to tell the story of what happened to the company during the bad times. They realized they had no one to tell that story. I had very few big business meetings in the first quarter, and more in the second quarter than any time last year. I'm not saying we signed that many clients, but we definitely had that many.
Do you think that's because of the crisis communications outlook right now?
It's more than crisis though. It's also telling a story. When a company changes and nobody knows the story—it's like the old saying, "If you don't tell the story, someone else will." In the first quarter people started to see that happen and they were like, "What did we do? We just fired all of our PR people. We need an agency." That's been great for us. It's bad for a lot of people out of work. What's the saying? "It's not so bad when you don't have a job because work sucks"? I kind of live by that. In other words, there's a way to see anything.
Do you think Social Media is here to stay? What do you think will happen to traditional outlets?
It is, but it's not going to be like this. It's not going to be a free-for-all like it is today. The funny thing about Facebook is that it's really big right now, but it's another one of those social things that almost everybody I know looks at it and goes, "I have no idea why I'm doing this." Then again we go to Twitter or to places where we actually get things done and we're saying, "Let's work." What I think is going to work are social networks where people don't just babble but they actually share information, the truths that other people believe in. I think that's really cool. I know it sounds a little bit cliché to say it just like that but the truth is—we see something, whether it's on a website or tweeted or tossed to us through some kind of SMS or whether we see it in person somewhere and follow the link and we think, "Wow, I'm really glad I read that. What else does this woman do?" To me, that's where it's going. In terms of people putting press releases on social network, I think that anybody who tries to do that is going to find themselves shut out. People are starting to realize that they can get information without having to hear the statement.
One of the reasons why I think a lot of companies need PR firms right now is that they spent so much in the first quarter putting out these ridiculous statements that everybody rolled their eyes and realized that, "Oh my gosh, we're not actually saying anything." So second quarter came to be about saying things, and it was really kind of fun. It was fun to have something to say and actually use companies to actually say it. I have this one client who had never used social media before because they didn’t think they had to. When I pointed out case studies of ours, they said, "Okay, let's try it." We did it, and now they're like, "Let's not do any of the mainstream stuff anymore."
I'll tell you a great story that happened last quarter that changed my life. We had a client who was on Wall Street Journal Online. Normally when they're on Wall Street Journal Online and not in the paper, people complain. But this client is an online company and they were thrilled. About a week later the paper, which has only 800,000 readers as opposed to the 8.5 million, put a little excerpt of it the paper and I called my client to tell him and he goes, "So what? That's not going to help me." And it just warmed my heart. It was a moment in time after 18 or 19 years when I just thought, "We've done it!" Sixty percent of my job as the CEO of this thing is to educate clients (and of course educate people here too) to make them see that the old way is bad, it just doesn't work.
What do you think will happen to the traditional outlets now? Do you think they will go away or morph, or how do you think that will work out?
I think it's kind of sad because the Washington Post and so many great newspapers are making so many mistakes. There's a part of me that thinks that a paper like that won't be around because its readers are smarter than its editors. They ran a terrible letter that said, "We're making lots of mistakes but the good news is that we're still here, and we’ll continue to make mistakes." And I'm thinking, "You've got to be kidding." And then there's The New York Times which has all of these crazy rules like, "We can't say what was really said." Well, why not? Aren't we adults? If she said, "It's f***ing hell," why can't you say "It's f***ing hell"? The craziness of these old newspapers—even The New York Post, which is like dessert for me, yet it's so much less funny than it used to be—it's so much more serious. I think to myself, "Don't you know your readers? Your readers want to have a good time."
TMZ is doing it right. It entertains, and it informs, and it makes fun of itself, and it makes fun of us. That's what this is. It's a big free-for-all. I do see The New York Times having a big problem. I think it's going to struggle to stay alive. Obviously, it will become something online, like a combination of Variety and The New York Times, a lot of entertainment news. I feel badly because a really good magazine like The New Republic is going to have so much trouble staying afloat because it—like so many magazines—tries to be so many things to so many people instead of just staying true to its roots. That's the problem.
The New York Times doesn't need to stay true to its roots, because its roots were based in the 1800s. But magazines do. One of the reasons I read Wired every day is that it never changes. It always tells me something about technology. It's always the same thing—it's fun and inventive. When I read the Times now, I see stories I already know about, and they write them like Linda Ronstadt does classic songs—like she's the first person to do them. In a sense I feel like the next couple of years are going to be a big fall out for everybody.
In the end, we'll probably end up getting most of our information from the links that people send us on Google News. The one smart website that says to people, "We're going to give you all of the information you already know but we're going to do it so quickly that it will be like a scroll." Most news websites these days give you the news as though you don’t already know it. And you're like, "Why are you doing this to me? Please stop treating me like a four year-old." So that is really a problem.
What are you doing to pioneer Social Media in the public relations industry?
The thing that we're doing the most is dragging our clients kicking and screaming into this, whether they want to or not, and that's hard. Most of my colleagues in PR would rather have their client tell them what to do, and we're just not going to do that. We've never been a "yes" agency. The second thing is that we don't really have to write much of this stuff for them. We do have to sit down with them and interview them and turn them into bloggers, explain the difference between a blog and a self-promotional article. It's really that education, and basically creating online presences for companies that didn't have them before. A lot of them are big companies who kind of had them.
The really amazing thing to me is that as far as I'm concerned—and I think about this a lot—we meet with companies that claim to have an online presence. For instance, years ago we met with Ford and they were talking about all of the online stuff they did. I said to them, "Well, how come you never respond to the big Detroit-based blog when they make fun of you?" And they were like, "Well we don't have time for that. It's not really big enough for us." And I would say to them, "That's wrong." And they would say, "Don't worry about that—it's not your domain. We have 3,000 PR people handling that. We're not interested." Bottom line, I think in the long run if they had done that, sat down with them and given access to that blogger, their fortunes might be different today. So much of this is about ideology, clients taking a deep breath and saying, "Okay look, we didn't do this right. We're going to do it right now." That's a really big part of it.
Over the past few years and with the rise of Social Media, have you noticed a shift in the usage of traditional PR versus online PR?
The traditional coverage is changing because it obviously has to be faster. Years ago the online and the print divisions of certain newspaper companies were separate, like I remember there was a separate forbes.com, a separate Forbes, I'd say to myself, "What's the point? You guys should be working together."
On January 1st of this year, in The Wall Street Journal I read this really funny article where they were asking famous people for their New Year's resolutions. One of the stories said, "My goal for the year is to try and do something that pleases both my traditional readers and my online readers." And I thought, "Oh my God, they really don't get it." One of the reasons that the mommy bloggers do so well is because they do exactly the opposite of what the women's magazines do. The women's magazines (and I know this because I read all of them) tend to wag their fingers and say, "Do this, do that." The mommy bloggers, or female-oriented bloggers, tend to say, "Let's all work together on figuring this out," which is what people want. Any women's magazine who survives this decade (which is only another 6-8 months, or maybe another year or so) is going to have to completely change.
The funny part is, what I do see in magazines are reader questions to famous people in the pages of the magazine, which is their way of saying, "This is like our blog!" Or even worse—the new Newsweek, which is like faux-hip, has this thing where they show the most popular stories online in the magazine itself and they show the number of page views it got. And I think to myself, "You totally don't get this." It's ridiculous. I hope that magazines and newspapers, the traditionals, will stop spending so much of their time and attention on the personalities of each side of the paper and magazine that we don't really care about. To say that George Wills is writing about so-and-so on the cover, or to make a big deal about Frank Rich in The New York Times—no one really cares anymore. It's not about that. It's about people who are less important to the editors and more important to us. They don't get it. When The New York Times makes a big deal about Maureen Dowd when I happen to know that everybody that I know who reads that paper thinks that she's an idiot and completely negative and tawdry—it's like, "Don't do that anymore." Concentrate on the content. That has to change.
Have you seen an upswing of reputation management with folks jumping head first into Social Media? (i.e. Target/Dell)
The thing about reputation management is that in order to really be managing your reputation you kind of have to be in it. A lot of big-time CEO types, they're not really playing online. They're asking other people to do it for them. It's kind of like sending somebody to the police station when you've been falsely accused. I'm not actually sure that this is working. The new way of defending your reputation is to give access to people who are talking about your falsely. Call them up, or write to them and say, "What's up?" And most people are totally shocked by that. I remember some guy accused me when I put out Punk Marketing of something that was wrong. I wrote to him and said, "That's not really true." We started going back and forth and by the end of it he was like, "Oh my God! You're right, I'm wrong. I've never been wrong before." I wasn't mad at him, I was just like, "You're wrong." I know a lot of my friends were like, "Why are you bothering with this fool?" And I was like, "Because—he's wrong." My dad taught me when I was a kid, if you're right, fight for it. If you're wrong, shut up.