For the love of the PR profession
Most people think public relations is about glamour. Wrong!
The job of a PR professional is to profile organisations and individuals, promote their products, ideas or initiatives and defend them from attack.
Good PR pros spend more time promoting the client or organisation and actually forget to promote themselves. If your goal is to appear on the pages of newspapers you might miss the mark. True, visibility is one of the perks of the job — but it comes after putting in the hard work.
So, for the love of the profession, if you are considering a career in public relations here are a few things to note:
Late nights
The 92nd Academy Awards held on Sunday 9 February. Lots of publicists would naturally accompany celebrities to such events but not for fun. Whilst attendees were at the after-parties and others slept, publicists and the media worked to ensure that the world woke up to the stories and the red carpet photos. It was the same experience all the years that I worked on the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA). And it’s the same for pretty much any event. Whether an awards ceremony, a boxing match, a movie premiere or a screening.
Back in 2017, the company I worked for had the exclusive rights to broadcast Anthony Joshua fights in Africa. At the time, Joshua was unknown to most Nigerians. So, we staged a live screening of the Joshua vs. Takam bout in Sagamu. Two things were significant to securing coverage for the event. First of them, was being present in Sagamu as opposed to watching it from the comfort of my home. So, I invited some media with me to Sagamu. The live screening was to hold at the Baba Josh Hall — named after Joshua’s grandfather. But that wasn’t enough news for the media. As such, we went scouting for the stories and ended up at Joshua’s ancestral home.
After the visit to Joshua’s ancestral home, I woke up to stories such as, “Fireworks in Cardiff…Two African brothers battle for WBA, IBF, IBO heavyweight titles.”
Secondly, we had to watch the fight in the midst of an ecstatic crowd and were out till about midnight after the fight ended. It was a sacrifice which yielded results for years to come because it produced several beautiful stories which brought Joshua’s Nigerian heritage to the consciousness of many Nigerians such as “Sagamu silent, awaits Anthony Joshua’s victory over Andy Ruiz.”
Today, Joshua is a household name in Nigeria.
Travelling
This is closely related to the previous point. PR people go everywhere. I have visited over 20 of the 36 states in Nigeria including Borno, Plateau and Benue — which have been affected by terrorist attacks and conflicts. More so, with the Nigerian aviation operation comes unplanned airport layovers or cancelled flights which lead to the rescheduling of events. And with bad weather comes bumpy flights.
Media Relations
As a publicist, the media are one of your greatest treasures. Your relationship with the media is gold. But most in-house public relations practitioners look down on journalists and “outsource” their relationships to PR consultants. Ironic when you think of it that at the core of our profession is relationship management. When you have maintained a relationship with a journalist for 10 years, and they still have your number for that long then you are on course. The media should be your friends and allies.
Eloquence and good writing skills
You would often find this in job advertisements as a requirement. It’s usually stated as ‘good communication skills, written and verbal.’ Everyone knows this so I will not dwell on it, just reiterating.
In PR, there is a saying that ‘the message is the man.’ It simply means that the message is better received if the spokesperson is charismatic, personable and has good oratory skills. Think about Barrack Obama.
On the flip side, Nigerians rejected a certain former first lady for the same reason. Even when she tried to show pain and compassion, her statement was satirised and turned into comedy skits and memes.
