Charlotte Giver

Who is your favourite character in Sex and the City? Many would say Carrie Bradshaw but recently I have heard a lot of people referring to Samantha Jones. Chocker? Yes!

You might remember her as the blonde publicist with a no-nonsense attitude who likes designer bags as much as she likes dating (yes, let’s just call it that). SATC Samantha is not the only character that today’s pop culture has created to portray public relations.

So, when you are trying to explain to your family, friends and boyfriend/girlfriend what you do, don’t blame them if they are thinking about Samantha Jones or the bitchy Kelly Cutrone in the reality show The City. Needless to say, media portrayals have succeeded in stereotyping women in fashion PR into one category, alas: bitchy, ignorant, intimidating women who like designer brands and to plan and attend glamorous events.

But wait, that is not you. You are not ignorant and ice-cold. You like to work hard, write press materials, meet people from different countries and cultures, create events and social media. Immediately you start to defend yourself and the PR industry, am I right?

Being a PR student, I know that a degree in public relations is like a marketing and journalism degree combined. In other words, you will graduate to be a smart kid, interested in so much more than shoes and the latest designers.

However, people like to talk. It is as simple as that and just as DKNY PR girl wrote on her tumblr ‘people love to group other people in buckets.’

But for someone who is not in PR, they simply don’t know any better than believing in the outdated cliché that they have followed on TV shows such as The Hills, The Spin Crowd and Entourage.

Grown-up mean girls

Meredith Lepore recently published an article on the subject in The Grindstone, where she simply asked ‘are PR girls just grown up mean girls?’ The article immediately got a lot of attention in the PR world and many commentators where quick to point out that it is unfair that hard working men are being called go-getters while hard working women are called ‘bitches’.

The false impression of fashion PR and what it takes to be successful in the industry is dangerous. From own experience, working in fashion PR, you will be working with
fun, outgoing, positive and smart people. I would say that if you don’t have a warm and positive attitude, you will be less likely to get the job.

If you step into the industry acting like a ‘bitch’, people will get annoyed. I can assure you of that. After all, Public Relations is all about relationships, whether it is financial or fashion PR. Although a client wants a PR firm tough enough to handle their account, having a tough approach does not mean having a bad attitude (no one wants a relationship with a Debbie Downer). Nor do you need a bad or nonchalant attitude to stay ahead of competition.

I’d say: just don’t let anyone take advantage of you (don’t leak any information about your client to competitors), stay ahead of the game, get press, work hard, stay on top of social media, smile and make your clients happy.

So before you are applying for a job in Fashion PR, stop believing in the outdated cliché you see on TV because no one wants to be that movie.

You can follow Charlotte on: http://yourcoffeebreak.tumblr.com/

In fact, I have a number of friends that are extremely jealous of me knowing how much time I get to spend with this many girls. I’ll say for the record though it has nothing to do with my dashing good looks. But why are there so few men studying in the final year of BA (Hons) Public Relations at Leeds Metropolitan, and what is life like studying on a course with such a drastic imbalance of men to women?

PR man and his colleagues

I am always amazed by the startling fact that there are only five male students remaining on my course. Over the last four years a few male friends have left the course for various reasons. Some losing their love for PR as early as the end of the first year of study, one was even offered a full time position after a successful year’s placement.

For whatever reason they chose, I can remember three close male friends leaving the course before graduation. Thinking of it, I am the only male member of my original tutor group who remains on the course.

The number of females on my course has never been something that bothered me too much. I’ve managed to find love amongst my course at Leeds Metropolitan so for me to complain would be an outrage.  But on a serious note, I personally do not feel threatened by the amount of women on the course. In most cases I find it a great opportunity to understand more about the female perspective on PR.

Surely the idea of feeling threatened by the number of women on the course is ludicrous; after all it takes two to tango. Imagine trying to develop PR campaigns for women, after spending four years on a 100% male course. You might end up marketing products fronted by Andy Gray and Richard Keys.

As I continue to ponder the male to female imbalance, I find it hard to create any real negatives. If anything I can only think of more positives and also about the job market when applying for positions after university.

If the Leeds Metropolitan PR course has such a significant male to female split, would this make my CV stand out from the rest based on gender alone? Working on the ratio at Leeds Metropolitan, for every 20 CVs or applications handed in for any given position, only one of those would be from a male applicant.

To get a better perspective I asked James Hall – one of few male PR students in the final year – his views on the seemingly female-dominated course.

“Being one of the very few guys on the PR course has never really bothered me that much. I personally think in PR, men and women seem to have similar or even the same ideas and opinions, gender doesn’t really seem to change anything.

“In an industry that is apparently dominated by men at senior levels, it’s strange that our course is dominated by women. When I was applying for internships for my placement year, one of the agencies where I had an interview was run by women, and only had female staff. One of the questions they asked in the interview was ‘how do you feel working with just a bunch of females?’ They were really shocked when I told them that there are only five guys on my course and we rarely get the opportunity to work together.

“During my placement at The Walt Disney Company my VP and the senior management in the Disney Channel Press Office were female. However, the Corporate Communications senior team were predominantly male, mirroring what you read about in industry magazines about males dominating senior roles. I personally think in ten years it will be women who will be dominating these senior roles, judging by how many females are studying PR compared to males.”

I can’t argue against James’s comments. If the Leeds Metropolitan PR course is anything to go by then, without doubt, women will soon dominate the PR profession. The best thing is; I couldn’t care less.

I chose to study public relations because of the work it involves, a course which allows me to develop my passion for writing and creative thinking. I feel there are many men and women out there who share my passion, but due to the large number of women on the course many males see it as ‘a bit of a girly thing to do’.

If more males knew exactly what it entails – that PR is not simply wining and dining clients – I believe the split would be more like 50/50. I can’t see it changing, but that’s fine with me.

The issue of diversity in public relations has plagued the business and has been the subject of several academic studies. It’s also a subject that’s close to home for me, especially after I blogged about regional accents and their place in the world of PR.

I decided to delve deeper into the subject and find out the views of those in the field on regional accents and the other controversial diversity issues such as sexism and ethnicity.

PR is known to be dominated by white, middle class females – but with the top positions being held my white, middle class men.

Lack of diversity

The lack of diversity has not gone unnoticed, with much research going into the subject. I’ve had my own experience with the issue when I began doing work experience at PR firms. I noted how some colleagues would put on southern accents when dealing with clients and I asked why they used this phone voice. The reason given was that clients preferred this to listening to our Yorkshire accents, which they found hard to understand. While I agree some accents are harder to comprehend then others, I’d never found the Leeds accent particularly perplexing.

I’ll never forget the first time I spoke to a client on the phone in an office of particularly well spoken individuals. I felt all heads turn towards me and felt incredibly embarrassed at not sounding as articulate as my colleagues.

Clare Siobhan Callery

But soon putting on a ‘phone voice’ became the norm, although it was evident I would need more practice to perfect the southern-friendly northern accent.

My experiences made me read more into the issue and I found some news articles that revealed the discrimination against some regional accents. A Guardian newspaper article stated that 46% of company directors believe a strong regional accent will be a disadvantage to those seeking success in business – not good news for those of us going into PR, where public speaking and presenting go with the territory.

The article featured a lawyer from Yorkshire (my home turf) who felt she needed to take speech classes to change her accent in order to be taken seriously and that her decision has already helped her career. She is quoted as saying: “Every accent has a stigma attached to it. I don’t want people to think about my accent. I want them to focus on what I am actually saying.”

A social psychologist, Albert Mehrabian, is quoted in the article saying “38% of a first impression is based on the way we sound, compared to just 7% on what we say” – another scary fact for the regional PR practitioner. Surely, if so much focus goes on how we speak we should improve our accents to make sure our message doesn’t get lost in the “yeas and ‘nays” of a regional twang.

Going native

To further my research I contacted Anne Gregory, currently a Pro-Vice Chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University and Director of The Centre for Public Relations Studies.

Anne Gregory

I was expecting Anne’s Yorkshire accent to be incredibly thick, so I was a little surprised when the voice on the other end of the phone was no broader then my own. I learned that Anne originally came from Huddersfield and studied at Leeds University. Before becoming an academic, she had a range of PR related jobs from the BBC to Bradford and Bingley. She explained that there is little stigma attached to accents in the academic world, but it was sometimes an issue during her PR career.

Anne was a director at Weber Shandwick. The PR firm has a Leeds office but the headquarters were in London. She said that people expected the London workers to be better PR practitioners, but from her experience those in the north were just as competent.

Anne thought it sad that the majority of PR jobs are still London-based, when regional cities like Leeds have developed such vibrant PR scenes. She believes that at some stage people may have to move to London to further their career as that’s were the best jobs, biggest consultancies and biggest clients  are situated, but that places like Leeds are beginning to catch up. However, certain sectors like political and financial PR still have very little presence outside the capital.

When Anne worked in Bradford, both at Bradford and Bingley and at the University of Bradford, she experienced the same disdain when it came to dealing with southern agencies. Over-confident PR consultancies believed they were dealing with less well trained and less able staff at Bradford University and were often patronising.

She believed there was a negative preconception of Bradford. However, once they had met Anne in person or read any of her papers their attitude soon changed.

Despite this, Anne doesn’t believe that her accent has held her back in here career progression, but admits that she hasn’t really worked outside Yorkshire. She has felt conscious of her accent at times when other people have picked up on it, but adds that she is still proud of being from Yorkshire.

In terms of advice for others, Anne says that it does depend on where you work, and if you do choose to work for a southern firm then you may end up failing victim to the ‘southernising’ tendency of the big London firms. If you are working for a company you represent them which means that your strong regional accent is also representing them and this may not be something the firm wants. If changing your accent is not something you want to do, then you may have to be more selective about where you choose to work.

Diversity and discrimination

Anne pointed out that in terms of a lack of a diversity and discrimination in PR and business, region and accent are not the biggest issue. Other factors do come into play, such as sexism and racism. As a high-flying female, has she experienced any sexism in her long and successful career? As the president of the CIPR in 2004, she felt that on a couple of a occasions she was treated differently and there were some situations where she felt things would have been different if she were a man. She didn’t feel there was prejudice, but felt that as a Yorkshire woman she was a rarity in the male-dominated business world.

One of the biggest issues in PR diversity is actually the background of the practitioner. Anne Gregory believes that coming from a working class background can actually have more of a detrimental affect then any of the usual forms of discrimination.

Many PR practitioners come from affluent backgrounds  and are less accepting of those from lower down the social scale. Coming from Huddersfield, class is an issue that Anne has had more problems with then sexism or her Yorkshire accent. But as a working class Yorkshire woman, she feels comfortable in her own skin. When it comes to issues of prejudice she takes them very seriously, but does not take herself too seriously and feels this is the best way to approach it.

For another perspective on diversity in PR, I decided to get in touch with one of my journalist-come-practitioner contacts, Paul Rayment. Hearing how journalists – the people we in PR will be dealing with most of the time – perceive different accents would give me a greater understanding and help me see the issue from another point of view.

Paul, originally from the south, worked in consumer journalism for six years on the northern lifestyle publication ‘The Leeds Guide’. There he liaised with PR practitioners up and down the country working on various sections of the magazine. He found that whilst dealing with southern practitioners in the entertainment sector, though efficient, they often came over as pushy and not very personable. Though Paul can’t say if this impression was solely from their accent, it is an impression that has stuck.

Most of Paul’s journalism work was in the property sector working with Yorkshire agencies. Here he said the Yorkshire accent was actually advantageous, as Paul felt he had more faith in the practitioners because they sounded local and had local knowledge. Though they were under the same pressure as their southern entertainment counterparts, they were not as forceful and were more pleasant to talk to.

Paul has since moved from journalism to PR, working in both the B2B and B2C sectors.  He says that professionals in the northern agencies do have watered-down accents. Whether this was intentional or just a by-product of working in the PR industry is unclear. However, the southern practitioners also shifted they way they spoke towards Received Pronunciation. Paul said it seems that northerners and southerners both try to upgrade their accents.

PR chameleons

Most PR practitioners will tend to mirror the accent of the person they are dealing with and in PR you will always be most comfortable when in conversation with those with a similar accent. Being  from Essex he felt he had more banter and more trust when talking to people from the same area.

When it comes to sexism, Paul has worked with women in positions of authority who have overcompensated for being female, while he knows of others that have used their sexuality to advance in their career. He also knows that some men, whether clients or journalists, prefer working with pretty, young blondes.

Paul’s words of wisdom were that race, gender and accent do differ from person to person, but from a PR point of view we should be looking at how to make the most of this rather then drawing negatives from it. As PR students we should adopt this way of thinking and we should seek ways in which to make our identity work in PR.

For those of us unwilling to change our accents, this could mean a successful regional career. For female students worried about how sexism could affect them in the workplace, we should try and follow Anne Gregory’s footsteps. We are fortunate to be entering a working environment more diverse then it ever has been.

Clare Siobhan Callery blogs at PR Student

Whitney Port and Olivia Palermo seem able to run the public relations department, work at the fashion shows, network – and still have time to spend time each day shopping and creating drama while wearing 9 inch heels and having perfect hair.

Now, I am not being gullible – this show has some scenes added for dramatic effect but the programme does depict the glamorous side of Public Relations – with none of the stress and hard work that needs to be put in to make a campaign successful.

Doing my work placement in an award winning Public Relations agency, I have seen first hand the tension in the air when working against a deadline and the pressure is on.

Whereas on The City there seems to be no planning or research – just constant events. Aren’t events usually the final tiny part of a carefully put together campaign?

The City is not the only television show that has public relations as a high flying, glamorous career.

Absolutely Fabulous showed Eddy as the owner of a Public Relations firm who seemed to spend her time jetting off on holiday and drinking champagne at 11 o’clock with her plastic surgery obsessed friend. UKTV Gold puts it best- “if you thought PR was all about champers, parties and free lunches – err…you’d be right. Well if Ab Fab is anything to go by”.

The most famous public relations character on TV drama – and the person who first pops into everyone’s head – is Samantha Jones from Sex and the City. This public relations executive manages to bag the client, seal the deal and still be first in line for a new pair of Manolos while and Gucci and Vivienne Westwood seem to be her office uniform.

Obviously The City would not be a hit show if it showed Whitney doing the tedious jobs like creating mailing lists and doing research but why is it that public relations is portrayed as so sexy? Can the public relations industry live up to this glamorous representation?

Laura Silcock from PR and copywriting consultancy Room 53 thinks not. ‘No, I wouldn’t describe my job as glamorous. There are certainly aspects of the job that can be glamorous and there are definitely far less enjoyable ways to earn a living, but on a day to day basis it isn’t glamorous for me.

‘Much of PR is a sales job really – I spend a lot of my time on the phone to journalists (some of whom can be quite rude) pitching story ideas. That may not be true for other PR people who work in different industries or with different clients. I’m sure some PR people lead very glamorous working lives!  But I think TV does tend to glamorise PR, but only in the same way that it glamorises other professions too.

‘Showing someone spending hours on the phone trying to secure coverage for the launch of a new yoghurt wouldn’t make great TV. Showing someone flouncing about at a swanky party wearing a gorgeous dress and looking authoritative with a clipboard makes for more exciting viewing.’

There are very glamorous and rewarding parts to working in public relations but there is no way it is all about champagne receptions and meeting with clients in fancy restaurants. The first name that comes in to the head of the general public when thinking about PR is Max Clifford.

The PR guru seems partly responsible for the connection of PR and celebrity – working with the likes of Kerry Katona and Jade Goody and handling their press, mixing at all the showbiz parties, and with his name mentioned seemingly every week in the glossy magazines.

David Child , account director at Quest PR explains why he thinks PR is shown to be a life of glitz and glamour: ‘The bits of PR that get shown on television are glamorous in the main – partly because most jobs that are on TV appear more glamorous (who wants to watch people doing boring jobs!).

Also, PR is pretty complicated to most people whereas just showing party invites, guest lists at clubs, and celebrity management is closer to most people’s general understanding of how the industry works.

‘[Before I started working in PR] I suppose my perceptions were quite limited to what I’d heard, seen and read so, yes, I think I did see it as more glamorous than it is. It’s still a really interesting – and often exciting – job, but rarely does it become glamorous.’

It may be the fact that it’s such a female-orientated occupation and that is how it is portrayed in real life. Telling someone you are doing a public relations degree (after you have explained exactly what public relations is) usually brings an ‘oooooh’ or an ‘aaaahh’.

People who work in public relations need to be confident, charming, intelligent and quick witted. That’s because this is the nature of the job; if you’re trying to build reputations you can’t be shy and retiring. It is also one of the only areas in business that is dominated by females so it’s perfect for high achievers who want a rewarding and high pressure career but don’t want to lose their femininity.

There is nothing wrong with glamorising the public relations industry but it would seem that making it out to be a fun and carefree job undermines the hard work, tears and tantrums that go into making a successful campaign.

Photo shows Glam on the Rocks party by Kid Paparazzi (via Flickr)

My final year dissertation was a good opportunity for me to explore this further. I eventually decided on the question: ‘Why is public relations an attractive career choice for women?’

There seemed to be a lot of research to show that public relations is dominated by women – but there was little or no interpretation as to why this is. So I decided to find out.

Public relations has not always been dominated by women and in 1983 Bates explained how some worried about the impact of an increased number of women in the industry. “If women become a majority in public relations, the practice will be typecast as ‘women’s work’”.

The shift in balance towards women has led to much stereotyping. Frohlich and Peters’ study reveals how “the evolution of a ‘PR bunny’ stereotype adds a negative touch to the image as ‘natural born communicators’”. This negative stereotype surrounds women working in the industry and makes it harder for them to prove themselves through their work.

This is having an unfortunate affect on the public relations industry as explained by Doe: “PR babes whose qualifications lie in their looks rather than their brains…they’re costing companies credibility”.

I wanted to find out if those working in public relations (so-called ‘PR bunnies’) recognised the importance of PR as a profession and not just as an excuse to attend glitzy parties and drink copious amounts of champagne. I had my suspicions that the media may have had an impact on this view of the industry through programmes such as ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ and ‘Sex and the City’. A UKTV Gold blurb about ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ says:

“if you thought PR was all about, champers, parties and free lunches – err…you’d be right. Well if Ab Fab is anything to go by”.

To set about answering my research question I decided to undertake some primary and secondary research. The secondary research supported the assumption that there are more women working in public relations than men (CIPR, 2008) and that there are many more females enrolling on public relations degree courses.

The primary research involved questionnaires and interviews and revealed some interesting observations.

So how do you see public relations? Maybe you view it like one female graduate working for a consultancy, as “communicating, socialising, problem solving and glamour”.

Or maybe you have a more realistic view of PR and the way in which it is portrayed, similar to that of one male respondent working in-house: “I think the general perception of PR is that it is more suited to females and their qualities, especially in terms of networking etc. This is not necessarily the way that PR is, but it is often the perceived view.”

I do not think that public relations has totally moved on from its perceived glamorous image and the need for its workers to be ‘good communicators’. In turn these features of the business are highlighted through the media, forcing people to think a certain way about the industry.

Once people have this stereotype in mind is hard to remove, therefore women believe that they have the personality to suit the industry and are attracted by the more glamorous side of it and tend to disregard the mundane, businesslike aspects of the job.

This stereotype has done some damage to the public relations industry, but with good education – through the evolution of public relations degrees – future generations of PR practitioners will have a more realistic image of the industry before they start out and will be able to articulate this to the general public.

If you, as an undergraduate public relations student, take anything away from this article let it be this quotation by Kate Nicholas:

“I’m sure that anyone who recruits is familiar with the eager-beaver letters from Edina Monsoon wannabes, whose sole concept of PR has been forged by watching reruns of Absolutely Fabulous. These letters invariably include the term ‘creativity’ at least three times and wax lyrical about how much the writer likes ‘working with people’ – a phrase that constitutes career death in PR.”

Bearing this in mind will help change the perception of the public relations industry as it appears that the image being portrayed by the media is incorrect and out of date. It’s not quite as glamorous as they make it out to be, but it’s also more important to the world of business.

Photos by Victoria Louise Crampton

References:

Bates, Don (1983) A Concern: Will Women Inherit the Profession? The Public Relations Journal, 39 (7), 6-8

Bernstein, Jack (1986) Is PR Field Being Hurt By Too Many Women? Advertising Age, 57 (7) 66-67

Chartered Institute of Public Relations (2008) Information about the CIPR and the Public Relations Industry. [Internet] Chartered Institute of Public Relations. Available From: www.cipr.co.uk/News/factfile/index.htm [Accessed 4th February 2008]

Doe, Tamasin (2008) Fashion PR: The Unprofessionals. [Internet] The Independent on Sunday. Available From: www.independent.co.uk/news/media/fashion-pr-the-unprofessionals-506520.html [Accessed 13th January 2008]

Frohlich, Romy and Peters, Sonja (2007) PR Bunnies Caught in the Agency Ghetto? Gender Stereotypes, Organisational Factors, and Women’s Careers in PR Agencies. Journal of Public Relations Research. 19 (3) 229

Nicholas, Kate (2005) That People Person May Be Your Next Boss. [Internet] PR Week. Available From: www.prweek.com/uk/search/article/528545 [Accessed 10th October 2007]

UK TV Gold (2007) Absolutely Fabulous. [Internet] UK TV Gold. Available From: www.uktv.co.uk/gold/item/aid/528040 [Accessed 6th January 2008]