Top 10 Ways to Know You Work in Public Relations
I first delivered this top 10 list a couple years ago as a guest speaker at the Florida Public Relations Association — Tampa Chapter meeting. I’m revising it here for your consideration. Feel free to add more and share…
Top 10 Ways to Know You Work in PR
10. You divide your weekends into 15 minute billable chunks
9. You cringe when you hear jargon like “going forward,” “actionable,” “learnings,” and “incentivize”
8. Whenever someone writes you a letter, gives you a card, etc., you immediately begin editing it
7. Every four years, around presidential election time, you throw things at your TV when you hear “spin” for the millionth time
6. You have permanent scars on your tongue from biting it over and over again…whenever a lawyer has “edits” to your copy, an exec wants you to add some “verbiage” to a speech. The list goes on and on
5. At some point in your career you’ve wondered what class it was as undergrads that journalists got their halos and/or capes
4. Your resume is a “living document”
3. You’ve started drinking in the morning, explaining to your PR buddies, “Well, it’s got to be 5 pm somewhere in the world”
2. With a numb ear, you wearily hang up after a conference call and immediately say “What an *&((&&^!” (Insert expletive here)
1. You’ve been working in this profession for 10 years and your Mom still doesn’t know what you do
February 12th, 2008 at 17:49
Great list, Bob. Your number one reason reminds me of a cartoon that used to hang on the notice board of an integrated marketing agency with which I used to work. The caption read, “Please don’t tell my mother I work in advertising. She thinks I’m the piano player in a whorehouse.”
February 12th, 2008 at 23:20
Thanks for the kind words Francis! Your contribution is hilarious! I hope more people post. I guess the funny aspect of this is that so many people have lists like this. The not so funny part is that many of my thoughts relate directly to communicators either not being taken seriously or addressing the general inferiority complex of the industry. But, I don’t want to think about that right now…it’s been a long day.
Thanks again,
Bob
February 18th, 2008 at 14:25
Those are good.
Number Eight is funny to me because of the questions you had me look at last week
April 11th, 2008 at 15:49
Right, its a good list. I’ve saved the list on a wordpad for future uses :D.