PR’s Top Pros Talk – Embracing Authenticity and Collaboration in the Public Relations Industry

Ben Finzel, President of RENEWPR and Founding Principal of The Change Agencies, shares some common misconceptions about the role of public relations. Ben shares the story of how The Change Agencies started and its impact on clients. Ben also explains the challenges the communications industry still has to work on, including diversity, equity and inclusion in recruitment, retention and promotion.

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TRANSCRIPT:

DOUG: Ben, you talk about restoring common sense to communications. Can you explain what that means?

BEN: Sure. It’s funny, I spent about six months coming up with that tagline, and I’m sure all the branding and marketing experts that are watching this are going to cringe when I say this, but I actually had the tagline before I had the firm name. I think I did that backwards. But to me, it really spoke to how I think about communications, how I think about what makes sense to clients and what’s important. So, we often hear from clients that they think PR professionals have some sort of magic wand, or we know where the silver bullets are, right? And they’ll say, well, you just work your magic. Which makes me just, you know, nuts. PR isn’t magic. There are no silver bullets. PR is work and relationships and clarity and relevance. And what we do is common sense. So, reminding clients of that and really thinking, for example, with media relations, thinking about what your best instincts are and what your gut instincts are, are often right. Just sort of reinforcing that being smart, being clear, being simple is often best, and just letting folks know that’s okay, that what you think of as common sense actually is, and it’s actually going to be appropriate in a given situation. It’s sometimes deceptively simple. And one of the things that we can do with clients that really help them understand how best to communicate about what they’re doing or what they’re trying to get across.

DOUG: Where do you think people may be sort of going off track, maybe overcomplicating things to make it more challenging?

BEN: Sometimes with assuming, again, that there is some magic potion that PR professionals have that that clients don’t know, and if they just hire us, we will either use that magic potion ourselves, or we’ll show them what the secret is, and then they’ll be able to, you know, magically communicate better. And so first it’s about saying, no, there isn’t one. And then secondly, it’s about how do you make what is challenging and complex, simple and easier to understand. So, how do you make an issue or topic clear for others? So, for us, it’s about being truthful. It’s about being clear. It’s about being engaging. It’s about being collaborative. Those are really kind of four principles that we look at. The first thought you have is the best, but then you think you have to overcomplicate it by writing 19 drafts of an op-ed, for example. Sometimes the first thought is the best, and sometimes what seems to you to make the most sense. But you, you figure, oh, that couldn’t possibly be the case. Sometimes that is the best answer. So just giving folks the confidence of knowing that you understand your business, you understand how best to communicate about it. Let’s go there.

DOUG: Based on this, I think I’m changing our tagline to our secret sauce is common sense. Because don’t we all need a secret sauce? Now you’re able to incorporate that in your clients who work in the energy, environment, and equity communications. What does that look like from a practical manner? So maybe others can start approaching things the same way.

BEN: So much of my experience is in energy, environment, and policy, given my work on Capitol Hill, in the Clinton administration, in the Department of Energy, and in five PR agencies before I started RenewPR, I have to say that and I think, wow, was it really five? And it really was, because I guess I’m old. So, when I started the firm, I focused on what I know best and what others know me for. And frankly, that’s energy, environment communications. So practically speaking, that means helping clients figure out how to communicate about climate, about sustainability, about energy policy, environmental policy, public lands protection, clean air and water and clean transportation. And over time, we’ve seen the energy, environment, communities and industries and organizations really start to focus on the role of equity in terms of pollution, right? Where is pollution the worst and what communities are most affected? Where are we citing facilities? What staff are we hiring? Who are the people that we’re putting out front in terms of talking to communities, engaging with communities? So, it just made sense for me as a gay man with years of experience in engaging diverse communities and working with others and collaborating with others to engage diverse communities, to add equity as the third stool kind of, you know, third leg of the stool, I should say to our focus. So, really those two, those three things really go together in terms of the issues and challenges clients are facing as they try to communicate about one or more of these topics.

DOUG: Kudos to you for doing more than putting lip service into these equity issues, which is a natural segue to, you’re one of the founding members of The Change Agencies. Can you talk about that and what’s involved in what’s coming out from that project, if you will?

BEN: One of the things I did, as an outgrowth of some of the work I’ve done on LGBTQ engagement and communications is collaborate with a partner who I met through, PRSA Counselor’s Academy. Shout out to that. Her name is LaTricia Woods, and she is the president of Mahogany Xan Communications in Phoenix. And we were talking about collaborating and doing some African American and LGBT engagement. And I thought, well gee, why are we just limiting ourselves to that? Why don’t we go join one of these national networks and get broader expertise and be able to work with Hispanic agency owners and Native American and Asian American and other gay and black firms as well? That would be great. And I couldn’t find a network. So, I thought, why don’t we just make our own? So, I called her up one day and pitched the idea, and I’m not sure she let me finish the sentence. I think she was sort of all in right away. So, what we are is the national network of multicultural and LGBTQ-owned and operated PR agencies. We’re all independent, boutique and small agencies, and we’re in almost a dozen markets across the country from coast to coast. So, what we do is provide an authentic alternative to communicating across cultures. And when I say alternative, what I mean is we are members of the communities that we engage, and we have experience in actually engaging those communities so we can help clients to determine how best to address the issues and the opportunities that really affect those communities.

DOUG: Clearly, sort of the lived experience is a huge advantage and needs to be part of these decisions by organizations on who to partner with. Is it possible for people who maybe don’t have a specific niche lived experience, to still have sensitivity and be able to provide guidance, even if it crosses from what their individual identity might be? And how can they go about it?

BEN: It’s possible to have sensitivity, sure. And as communicators, we really should. That’s kind of should be part of our DNA, right? Being able to communicate with lots of different people about different things and understand different perspectives. The difference comes in when you really think about the authenticity piece, right? So, I don’t understand what it’s like to be an African American person in this country because I have not lived that experience. So, I can certainly help a client with basic communications around issues and topics. But, if that client’s really interested in speaking to and speaking for the African American community, I’m not the right person to help them. That’s why we really built The Change Agencies. It’s really about having that lived experience from a broad group of folks who can help clients really think through these challenges and because these agencies aren’t just specialists in engagement with the community, they’re also specialists in lots of different PR disciplines. We’re able to really be both things so we can be general and specific PR counselors. We can also help you with engaging specific communities and really thinking about the broader national picture, right? Because the American culture now is all of these cultures. It isn’t one dominant culture anymore. It is all of these cultures. And American culture is African American. It is Asian. It is Native American. We have a Native American member in The Change Agencies. It is LGBT. It is all the other ethnicities and communities and backgrounds as well. So, really being able to help clients understand how to tap into that and how to speak to and engage with those communities is what makes us different.

DOUG: Authenticity is so important, we see it even when we do our TV station surveys. They prefer to speak to someone with an organization rather than a third-party expert, overwhelmingly, and talk about how much more authentic that is. What are some other tips and advice pieces that you might have to help foster that authenticity?

BEN: For us, authenticity looks real because it is. It’s focused on what matters to diverse communities instead of what others think is important, right? So, it’s that understanding of what actually important, and not what folks is might assume. It’s built on substance rather than smoke and mirrors. It’s designed to reflect what different communities need by respecting who they are, projecting how they are a part of the national conversation. And, you know, not as others, but as us, right? And, really thinking about all of these communities as us. And I think sometimes the challenge can be, even for the most well-meaning communicators, to talk about another community as other, as you. And it may come from a place of respect and trying not to speak for folks you can’t speak for. But it can also come across as othering, and it can come across as sort of putting other people in a box and not the dominant culture. So, all of these communities together comprise us, and we are all in this together. And if you approach it from that perspective and then add in that respect piece and that really wanting to engage other people and wanting to have other voices in the conversation, that gets to the point you were just making about all the challenges we still have. There’s a lot of them, and I think we have a challenge as an industry that despite all the jokes about, oh my goodness, there’s so many women in PR, right? Or there’s so many gay people in PR, right? It’s still very much a straight, white, male-dominated industry. For all of the great examples of women and people of color, leading agencies or LGBT people, leading agencies, there’s a lot more where we’re just not there yet. And the industry does not reflect the country the way it really is. And the problem with that is we’ve got to be able to communicate to the whole country. And if we don’t understand and we’re not we don’t represent the whole country, we’re not really accurately doing that. And that’s a real challenge. And that’s something that we have to tackle. PRSA is working on that. And a lot of the different, independent PR groups are working on that. We got to keep going and we can’t let up.

DOUG: Yeah. And I think what’s really great about the approach you’re talking about is it seems to recognize the diversity within different communities and highlight that as a strength, as opposed to putting people in the box, as you said, that, oh, everyone who is this means that they’re automatically that because that’s not true as well. Any final thoughts you’d like to leave the audience with? It’s really been an important discussion that we’ve been having.

BEN: If you’re thinking about these topics and you’re thinking about The Change Agencies and what is it that you actually do? I would say we help clients determine what they need to do internally before going out publicly, and then what they can do legitimately, publicly, that will be appropriate to a situation and not pandering or offensive. So, for us, it’s really about strategies, messaging, outreach, and follow-up. And as with all things in PR, it’s as much about listening as it is about talking.

DOUG: Thank you so much for participating in the show. You gave people a lot of good stuff to listen to and take to heart.

BEN: You’re welcome. Thank you. And I encourage folks to go to renewpr.com (https://www.renewpr.com/) or thechangeagencies.com (https://www.thechangeagencies.com/) to learn more.