Best in Show: Insights from Silver Anvil Judges

August 23, 2010

Senior-level practitioners from across the country gathered in New York on March 19 to judge more than 800 entries in contention for the prestigious Silver Anvil Awards.

As the entries covered such a broad range of topics, the 137 judges — chosen for their accomplishments in the PR profession — represented all practice areas and hailed from agencies, corporations, associations, educational institutions and a variety of demographics.

Here are excerpts from six of the judges who shared their insights on the profession with Amy Jacques, the news editor of The Strategist.

Anthony D’Angelo, APR, Fellow PRSA
Director of Operations
St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center Foundation, Syracuse, N.Y.

What are some themes you’ve seen while judging this year’s campaigns?

In terms of the Silver Anvil programs, I’m seeing an emphasis on the fundamentals of research, planning, execution and evaluation — that hasn’t changed much. But it’s obvious that social media has come in to take a central role, not a corollary role to the programs that are there. And what I see in terms of the applicants is that people are saying the best sort of communications is face-to-face. But we’re now grappling with the question: What if that other face is virtual? What does that mean? How do we relate to that face? And how do we measure it?

What’s top of mind in the PR profession right now, and what trends are you seeing?

The most important long-term trend for the PR profession is for it to assume its status as a leadership function. You cannot have an excellent organization without excellent public relations, but that is not the general perception. First, the organization has to come to grips with the fact that we are a profession that contributes in essential ways to the health of organizations and helps lead them. If you take all the things that public relations does for an organization — it involves people, it engages them, it motivates them, it allows organizations and ideas and people to adjust to one another — those are essential elements of leadership. If you were to offer the CEO of any corporation the chance to get better at those functions, they would leap at the opportunity. I don’t think that’s what they think of when they [think of] a PR opportunity. And our profession is maturing along that line and needs to mature more so we can bring in the heads of organizations and recognize public relations for what it really is: a leadership function.

Why does public relations matter now more than ever?

Because organizational life is more complex than ever, and environments are more turbulent than ever. Part of that is due to technology, which speeds the pace of everyday life, part of it is globalization — we live in a 24/7 world, and responses are required faster than ever before. The challenges [require] a professional who can cope with a changing environment and who can span all of the boundaries in these complex environments to interpret ideas for an organization. It’s a really big challenge, and I don’t expect to ever get tired of it.

Rich Jernstedt
EVP and Senior Partner
Fleishman-Hillard, Chicago

What is the value of volunteering your time as a professional?

Being a judge of the Anvils is a great professional experience. It’s also personally enjoyable and a great opportunity to see a lot of people who are committed to the business. So you feel the energy of the networking process, but it’s a great learning experience as well to see what’s happening in different parts of the country in industry categories and the different applications of PR thinking as well as PR execution.

Why does public relations matter now more than ever?

Communications is more important now than it’s ever been. With people overwhelmed with information, [it’s] being able to rely on somebody or some technique that makes the communications process a little easier, which may mean that I go to a source, because that source is providing me with information that is relevant to me and to my career or to my lifestyle or to my family. A person who can help identify the message and understand the audience, and then figure out the best way to take that message and reach that audience, is more valuable than ever before. I believe that’s only going to continue to grow in its overall importance.

How can professionals demonstrate the value of public relations to their employees and clients?

One word: deliver. It’s simple — figure out what is expected of you and deliver against it. You don’t want to find yourself in a position where you can’t deliver against an expectation. It’s making sure that everyone understands what we can do and then doing it.

Patrice Tanaka
Co-Chair, Chief Creative Officer
CRT/tanaka, New York

What is top of mind in the PR profession right now?

Social media is something that everybody’s trying to get ahead of. At our agency, everybody wants to explore LBS — location-based services — and how we can incorporate them into the social media work that we’re currently doing. That’s the newest bright, shiny object. And it’s very exciting. 

Increasingly, we’re thinking about third-screen and mobile in everything that we do. Even though at times we struggle with [the question of] if our target is boomers, should we have as much of a focus on mobile or LBS or social media as we do? But it’s inevitable that greater evolution of social media is going to involve greater adoption by everyone, including technology-resistant boomers.

How has the growth of multicultural communications in recent years changed the PR landscape?

Being a woman of color, you would think that I’d be even more sensitized to the issue of diversity and multiculturalism, but the biggest divide — at least in our world of communications — is the technological divide. When I’m thinking about making sure that all points of view and all needs are represented, I want to make sure it’s not just millennials in the room, or Gen X or boomers. When I think of diversity, a lot of times I am thinking of that kind of diversity.

What is the value of public relations?

Although certainly the economy has been less than cooperative in the past couple of years, one of the things that it has done for our industry is made public relations — and the practice of it — much more important in the whole scheme of communicating efficiently and effectively. It [calls] upon the skills of PR practitioners in communicating messages.

Our ability to communicate and engage in a dialogue with different audiences — and to respond quickly — is a skill that is valued. And some of our brethren in other disciplines, like advertising, are much less adept and much less equipped to engage in the kind of two-way communication that we’re called upon to do with the increasing influence of social media. Our clients see the value that we bring as we are able to employ social media in a very effective way for them.

MaryLee Sachs
Chairman, U.S., Worldwide
Hill & Knowlton, Inc., New York

What are PR professionals talking about right now, and what’s top of mind?

The economy still reigns supreme. But in terms of the actual business of public relations, social media is certainly at the top of the agenda. In terms of social media, because it’s such a big subject, it’s about how PR professionals can best further the advancement of what is going on in social media, how they can measure the effect of social media and understanding what other agencies are doing in their digital space. It’s probably the biggest blur that we’ve ever seen in the communications business, and so everybody — every discipline — wants to own social media. It’s going to be very important for the PR profession to really take ownership of [the social media] space.

What is the value of public relations?

The value is in being able to establish relationships with influencers and with target audiences in a different way [than] any other type of communication discipline. It’s much more two-way than any other communication discipline. That’s probably the biggest advantage public relations has in the space.

How can professionals demonstrate the value of public relations to their employees and clients?

We have to speak to metrics. We have to think more about what the effect our campaign has on a particular target audience versus the output that we create. It’s not just about the media coverage that we get — it has to be about what the media coverage achieved. If that media coverage is a means to increasing awareness, we need to measure the increasing awareness. We need to measure whether that puts a brand into consideration set for purchase. We need to measure sales in some cases. And we need to be able to dissect the effect that public relations has versus some of the other communications and marketing disciplines in order to do that. We have to be increasingly metrics- and measurement-focused, and that’s not always easy given the type of budgets that we’re talking about in public relations versus some of the larger budgets, for example, in advertising. But that’s absolutely critical if we want to be seen as contributing.

Lewis Pryor, APR
Assistant Director of Public Affairs
State Farm Insurance, Bloomington, Ill.

What is top of mind in the PR profession right now?

PR professionals are trying to find out what’s happening in the world of technology and digital media. How can they integrate those surging types of media into PR campaigns and activities? There are so many things coming at people and so many different ways [to understand] how Facebook, how Twitter, how all of these forms of social media fit into a campaign.

At the same time — because these are such general consumer products and forms of media — everyone believes he is the expert. As PR professionals, we are uniquely positioned to understand how to use these tools, but at the same time, we [need to help] the people we provide services to understand that these are only tools. If they are not used properly, then they are not going to get you any closer to your objectives.

To bring relevance  to the world of Twitter, you’ve got to have something that’s relevant — you’ve got to have something that’s interesting to people to make them want to follow you.

How has the growth of multicultural communications in recent years changed the PR landscape?

The multicultural environments that exist in our country are so rapidly changing that you have to realize it’s not one size fits all. You cannot take a cookie cutter approach. You have to understand audiences. It’s the foundation of what I learned as an undergraduate student studying public relations.

At the end of the day, it’s not about the message or the messenger — it’s about the audience and fitting the right message and messenger to that audience.

Understand that Hispanics in Arizona are vastly different from Hispanics in Texas or Florida. What makes them uniquely different? What are the things that drive behavioral changes in those audiences?

Understand that African Americans in the South are different from African Americans in the Northeast region of the country. The explosion of this multicultural environment means you have to do intense research, so that you can plan to ensure [that] your message reaches your audience.

How can professionals demonstrate the value of public relations to their employees and clients?

I spend my days and evenings worrying about the brand and reputation of the organizations and building ambassadors for the future. When I focus on internal communications, I’m trying to build ambassadors who are willing and able to go and talk to family, friends and neighbors. I’m trying to help the organization drive increased employee engagement. The nature of the information we’re providing, how we’re providing it, how we’re listening to their feedback and how we’re imitating two-way dialogue with them also has the innate benefit of helping us manage the brand and reputation.

Tom Gable, APR, Fellow PRSA
CEO
Gable PR, Del Mar, Calif.

As a former journalist, what do you see as some of the continued challenges of smaller news holes and unfiltered public access?

Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is there’s a great opportunity for public relations, for the PR profession — especially if the people have a little bit of news background. What happens is the bloggers and those using social media and others are lower on the credibility scale, so we still have to work with traditional media, major media and daily newspapers. The challenge is: How do you break through the clutter? One of the things that we have to do as PR professionals is make sure that we operate under a no-hype program. We’re strategic consultants. We’re trying to work with the C-suite to elevate the whole image of public relations and build our image for the long term.

Why does public relations matter now more than ever?

It matters more than ever because there are so many different target audiences that companies, organizations, institutions [and] nonprofits have to reach. So if you look at the bigger picture of reputation management, how do you reach them all with consistent messages? Public relations takes a look at all the messages that are out there. What are the conflicts? How do you differentiate? How do you position yourself? And how do you come up with something that resonates, that talks about the essence of a company, what a company stands for and talks about its core values?

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