Offense and Defense

Unlike in football, in which a player is assigned to play offense or defense, in the profession of public relations and strategic communications, typically part of your work is offense and part of it is defense. You may be intensely focused on one or the other for extended periods of time, or you may be in a situation where you need to be doing both simultaneously.

Sometimes you are focused on helping your client generate sales (for instance, if you work for Ford Motor Company or Apple Computers), build friends and supporters (if you work for The Penn State Alumni Association or United Way). Everything may be going well. You are part of a bigger team. You are selling a reliable product that people want to buy, or promoting a good cause many people support.

Other times you may need to interpret complex information (such as a new, experimental treatment for cancer) or announce controversial information (such as a celebrity’s decision to raze an historic building that blocks the view of the ocean from his new multimillion-dollar home).

Sometimes you are focused on damage control — perhaps hired in the middle of the night to help a movie actor say and do the right things in the wake of a 3 a.m. drunk driving accident and arrest.

Many of the same qualities will make you valuable in all of the above scenarios. In a crisis, a good writer who can turn out a statement or story in minutes, not hours, is important. Someone with strong communications skills either in front of a reporter or group of reporters is helpful. Being well connected to the news and social media who may cover a story is very valuable. A journalist you work with on an ongoing basis is more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt when you are working with them on a difficult story angle.

You need to be viewed by the press, and by extension the public, as someone who is honest, reliable and available when needed.

A strategic communicator does much more than write or act as public spokesperson. Your service to the celebrity planning to wreck a 150-year-old building might not be some good quotes but rather some good advice. Your best approach may be to convince the celebrity not to rip down the building. Advise him to work with a local historical group to have it moved to another location where it can be open to everyone, not hidden and decaying on private property. Public relations is much more than writing and speaking. It involves looking at things differently than everyone else involved in a project. Good public relations involves understanding everyone’s position before taking  action.