Transcript
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Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others.
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Now here is your host, peter Woolfolk.
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Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world.
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With the presidential campaign underway, I began to think about how my hands-on experience in a campaign of this magnitude prepared me for advancing to senior levels in the public relations world.
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That in turn sparked the idea to identify other professionals that have had a similar experience, and then we could discuss what were some of those major learning experiences and how they prepared us to advance in the public relations industry.
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So joining me today are two people who have had that experience, and I will also join in.
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Starting us off will be Adrian Glymes.
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She is currently the South Carolina Research Authority's new director of marketing and communications, and she joins us today from Somerville, south Carolina.
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Prior to that, she headed the external staff and marketing communications for the South Carolina's telehealth alliance and the Medical University of South Carolina Center for telehealth.
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She also serves on the board of directors for Carolina's Telehealth Alliance and the Medical University of South Carolina's Center for Telehealth.
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She also serves on the Board of Directors for Carolina's Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society and on the Business and Financial Subcommittee of the American Telemedicine Association.
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However, for purposes of this broadcast today, she managed all of the South Carolina communications for the former US Representative Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign.
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Next up is Norris Clark.
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He is the managing partner of Princeton Strategic Communications and joins us today from Trenton, new Jersey.
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Prior to that, he owned Bayshore Communications and he was also deputy mayor of the Town of Lourdes, which is Cape May's largest municipality.
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Add to that, he was the Deputy of the Family and Communications Relations Office in New Jersey's Department of Education, and he also was a Vice President with Magnet Communications.
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However, it was while he was with Perot Systems in Plano, texas, that he was recruited by Ross Perot to manage the introduction of some of their new offerings.
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As a result, norris was tapped to serve as the state director and spokesperson for Ross Perot's presidential campaign.
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Now, for part of my background and I'll be very quick about this and I'll just pick it up as the fact that I've also became after having some TV and radio experience, I became a communications manager at the National Education Association in Washington DC, which is which is my hometown.
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Later I became the press secretary for the chairman of the US Congress Committee on Education and Labor and later worked for two other senior members of Congress.
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So that went into the Clinton and Gould second campaign where I was the Delaware press secretary.
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After that I went into the Clinton and Gould's second campaign where I was the Delaware press secretary.
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After that ended, I came back to DC to be one of the press secretaries for the Presidential and Liberal Committee and then into the Clinton Administration of Special Assistance for Communications for Assistant Secretary of Education.
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With all that said, let me welcome Adrian and Norris to the podcast.
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Thank you, peter, thank you, thank you.
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Okay.
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Well, adrian, why don't you let's say ladies first, why don't you let us hear from you about some of the experiences that you had in Newt Gingrich's campaign and how that benefited you?
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Okay, sure, that was an exciting time.
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Okay, sure, that was an exciting time.
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I was self-employed doing marketing communications for a number of political candidates, which is how I ended up'd be great for this.
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I said I'm not sure, though that I agree with everything he says and does, and he said it doesn't matter.
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I remember and he's still in Washington his line to me was red state, blue state, green money, and so with that I jumped in.
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It was a wonderful experience.
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I will never regret it.
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I learned a lot.
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What I did remember I started off in television news and you know how hectic a newsroom is.
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But after leaving TV news I kind of gotten away from the franticness of writing.
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But certainly, working with this presidential campaign, all of that came back.
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The franticness of writing.
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I call it writing on the fly, when you're preparing statements and the candidate is out giving interviews.
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I remembered how to write on the fly and pivot pretty quickly.
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Speaker Gingrich was all over South Carolina.
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He was in hospitals, he was in workplaces, he was talking to the media, his wife was with over South Carolina.
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He was in hospitals, he was in workplaces, he was talking to the media, his wife was with him a lot, and so you know we had the prep calls every morning but as the day went along you were constantly writing and changing what you said and resubmitting things to the campaign director and sometimes he was accepting and sometimes he was saying no campaign director, and sometimes he was accepting and sometimes he was saying no.
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But it was really a lot of writing on the fly that I honed really well with that campaign.
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And then also working with events.
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You know we've all done events, but presidential campaign events are a whole other level because you're working with advanced teams, security, the media, all at the same time.
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So working with a lot of logistics, and I had never worked with advanced teams who wanted to know a day ahead you know what you were going to say and how were you going to say it and where was he going to stand when you said it because of security.
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So that was fascinating.
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And then, lastly, I will say I learned how to really participate in social media listening.
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We all respond to social media and manage social media, but the social media listening is a whole different animal, because you're literally listening to what people are saying online, how they're saying it, and then trying to craft your message to respond to those things.
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Well, that's great.
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All right, how about you?
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Well, peter, I need to tell you the story of how a school teacher ended up on Ross Perot's campaign.
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And here's what happened.
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I was sitting on my sofa at home minding my own business, and my wife was watching Larry King Live.
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And my wife was watching Larry King live and I was.
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I was running a school and teaching at the community college level and I was teaching American government.
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It's one of the things I was teaching.
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But my wife saw Ross Perot and Larry King live and she literally jumped off the sofa.
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She ran over to the phone, she dialed some number in Dallas and then she handed me the phone and she said Norris, do something about the national debt.
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And I gave my name.
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The next thing I knew there was a line of people outside my door.
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We organized our community together.
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This, of course, was the most unorthodox political campaign in the history of America, I suspect, and so you know Ross dropped out, got back in.
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I mean, it was really a lot of drama going on with this campaign, but he ended up with nearly 20 percent of the vote.
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After the election in 92, he formed an organization called United we stand America and this was really about.
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You know, he had newt gingrich calling him, he had President Clinton calling him and everybody was interested, you know, about getting the parole voters back in their camps, right, and so he set up United we stand America.
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Over two million people sent in $20 and as this was organizing, I was elected to represent New Jersey to the national organization.
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And then when I get there they said out of the 50 state directors, we're going to elect five of you to be on the board of directors.
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So the next thing I knew I didn't campaign for the job, but I guess that made me attractive and I ended up sitting next to Ross Pro on a, you know, over 40 million dollar citizen action group.
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And after we incorporated he gave us and this is no lie he said, norris, come with me.
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And I had about minutes' notice before we were placed on a dais in front of the entire National Press Corps, every network, all the C-SPAN, all there.
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And he got up and he said, much to my surprise, you know, hi, my name is Ross Perot.
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I'm just the white albino monkey that came here to draw a crowd.
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This is not about me, I'm just incidental to this organization.
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So I'm going to turn this press conference over to these folks here who fought and died to build the organization from the ground up, and that's what he said.
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And he walked off the stage and sat on the front row.
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Now I was standing there and my wife tuning in on television.
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She's realizing that her husband has really gotten into the thick of it.
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And one of the first people to stand up and ask a question was Dan Balsz of the Washington Post, the political reporter, and the question was what are you going to do about the national debt?
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What's your agenda now?
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I stress to you that this whole press conference and the fact that I was going to have to say anything was a surprise, with about three minutes.
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But I had learned in my teaching days that you never know when people are going to ask you a question and you always should be prepared to to have an answer.
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And it helps if you have three points.
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And so you know in the shower that that that morning, before coming to the board meeting, I just said well, you know, what are we going to do about the net?
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What's the plan?
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And I won the three points.
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So I think I started to organize some thoughts in my head and so I don't remember what I said, but I had three points and that opened the door to representing Ross Perot and his, his, his movement across America.
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And I ended up on CNN and debating governor Jerry Brown in California and being interviewed by.
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Newsweek and having my name taken in vain by Rush Limbaugh on his national radio program.
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So that's the first lesson, and I've got several more I can share with you, if you want, in terms of what I learned after that first incident, as I got to know reporters, I was just dumb enough not to look at reporters as enemies, not to look at them as adversaries, and what I did was give them total respect for the job that they had.
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I know it was their job to get the story and to get it right.
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To get the story and to get it right.
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And I just made a lot of good relationships with major reporters because I really wanted to serve them as they were trying to get the story.
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And there's one time where they misquoted national publication.
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I won't mention it, but they they had me saying, they asked, you know they asked.
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The question are do you think that the, the movement is, need someone to transcend Ross or does the movement transcend Ross Perot?
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Was the question.
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And I said, of course it's bigger than one man, but it got came out into the national press and it was came out like this Norris Clark says that the movement needs someone who can transcend Ross Perot.
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So you know it's a little bit different twist, but the point of that is I called up that reporter and I said you know, that's not exactly what I said.
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And he went back and looked at his notes and said you're right, and and retracted it and rewrote it and that that taught me that that I think we've lost in political discourse with.
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We've now made it okay to denigrate the media as a class, and I think that's a terrible mistake.
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I think it's wrong.
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I don't think it's the civil thing to do and that most reporters want to get it right, and if you respect them in their jobs, you've got a lot better chance of getting your story out there accurately.
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Well, you know, I've listened to both of you and we've all shared similar experiences.
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I'm looking here at some of my notes and we talked about managing major events, because part of I did have a little bit of an advance, I guess, in terms of having worked with some members of Congress not necessarily the same thing, but some of the things that I got out of that was Congress passes a lot of bills and legislation and there's a lot of information.
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Reporters want that information, but I found out from my point of view that I only need to know the high points of that legislation or the policy that they're talking about.
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If I, if they, need to go into the weeds about it, then I've got some people you know the legislative focus that can go and get that done, but also respecting reporters, giving them everything they need to get the story.
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That was one of the things I learned quick on Capitol Hill.
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Here's the congressman, here's the data, what time you want to talk to them or meet with them.
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Here's the information, all the information you need.
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So, absolutely right.
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But in terms of the election, when I was in Delaware, I had not dealt with large numbers of reporters because the vice president came up and the first lady came up, not at the same time but similar.
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And now you're right, you're working with the advance team because they want to know everything, and you're also working with security, all at one time.
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So, if you can recall, particularly security, they ask very detailed questions.
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I mean they want to know what routes are coming and what door they're going to go, maybe how many steps, who's going to be on the stage with the person, what are they going to say, all of those kinds of things.
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So from my point of view, it taught me to think, forced me to think in more detail about stuff Pool reporters.
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I've never dealt with a pool reporter pools before, because most of the time as PR people we spend our time going after reporters to get something in the media.
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Politics is right there on you, asking you questions.
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So part of what I saw was learning to understand the intricacies if you will not all the details of the policies that are being discussed, the legislation that's being discussed, so that we could at least have some conversations with those reporters and event planning.
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Details are important.
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I've never heard of anybody when, as I say, the deus or the riser for the media were going up and somebody said something about the throw.
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What's the throw for this?
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And I'm saying, what the hell are you talking about?
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And basically, the throw is what's the distance between the riser and the microphone?
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You know, so they can determine how long a cable they need to run.
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So you know all of those kinds of things.
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So that's some of the stuff I learned, not only how to manage those events and dealing with people, but thinking in terms of details.
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That I, you know, carried over to working with other clients.
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Yeah, you're correct talking about things that these terms what's a throw?
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Mine was.
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What do you mean?
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by wheels down, wheels up.
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They're flying from state to state.
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You know, sometimes in a day and like you know, adrian, I need to know when when's wheels up and I'm like, well, his flight leave, no, no, when.
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When he wheels down, you know.
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So which is different from when does his flight land is when does he wheels down?
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Because everybody on the plane can flick off of airplane mode and so now they have connectivity and that's wheels down, switch airplane.
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You know, you have connectivity on the plane, so there are things that you can do before they deboard the plane, and those are terms I'd literally never heard of, and this is 2012,.
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So I'm not new in my career because I'm, you know, I'm older, but you know, I just had never heard those things.
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So, you're right, there are things that are very specific to political campaigns and political communications, but I learned very quickly to understand wheels up, wheels down and how that was different from what time the flight left and what time he flight left and he was due in a particular city, so very detailed, as you said, you know.
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Peter, the probably the most important thing I learned throughout all the process of a campaign was the importance of telling a story, and I got the first tip on this from actually, for it was from James Carville.
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I heard him talk about the three things that were most important to him as he led the campaign for President Clinton.
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He told President Clinton three things.
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Number one you have to be relevant, and that of course is the economy is stupid Number two is that less is more.
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So he spent a lot of time taking things off of President Clinton's verbal plate and just made sure that what he said was precisely what needed to be said, but then it needed to be communicated in the form of a story, and I always remembered that.
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And then, years later, I started studying the whole idea of what makes a good story.
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And I always remembered that.
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And then, years later, I started studying the whole idea of what makes a good story.
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And you know, all stories are the same, you know, as you've got a character or set of characters whose lives get thrown out of balance by something that happens.
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Some crisis comes into their life and then they're trying to put things right again, their lives back into into balance, and they're on this quest and journey to overcome all the obstacles that are out there as they put things right.
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And you know, it's the basic format of a story and we we like to hear stories, because stories help us to understand why things are happening.
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You know, if you want to, explain to somebody why they should do something.
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You need to tell a story.
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You, really I.
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There's only four ways that a presidential candidate can persuade people to go along with that, the only four options.
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They can try to coerce them by scaring them.
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They can try to seduce them by telling them that they'll be winners if they vote you know, vote for for me.
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They can try to reason with them.
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You know, studies have shown that I'm the best candidate.
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Or they can tell a story in terms of people who that they can relate to and identify with, and see themselves in their shoes, and then say, yeah, if I were in your shoes, I'd be doing the same thing.
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And then you sit back and watch Okay, let's see how this candidate is really going to get us to where we need to be.
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Reagan was a great communicator because he told a story that explained why we should cooperate together in order to make a better America.
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And even though not everyone agreed with his policy and they recognize that, he was sincere about wanting to get America to be that city shining on a hill where all of us could be living together equally and in harmony.
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So telling a story turns out to be the most important way to communicate.
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And it's far better than the all the other options out there.
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And the last thing I want to say is is that it's the beginning of every story is a crisis, and so communicators really have to embrace crisis, especially in a campaign.
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I mean, every day is a crisis, usually in a campaign, and people aren't going to judge you by being in a crisis, but they are going to judge you by how you respond to the crisis, and you need to.
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You need to come before people and you need to.
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You need to come before people and you need.
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You can never win true spin.
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You know spinning doesn't work, bs doesn't work.
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Pretty soon, people are going to cut through the BS or they're going to cut through the spin, as we've seen today with our elected officials, and call them on account for not being straight with us.
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So you know, the importance of being authentic in telling your story is probably the most important lesson to be learned, but that includes embracing crisis.
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Don't run away from it.
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Every reporter wants is going to.
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You know, if it bleeds, it leads right.
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So you have to embrace the crisis communications of a campaign and, you know, not pretend like there's nothing to see here and appreciate the fact that reporters are going to be looking.
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They're not going to believe everything we say, they're not going to just automatically trust us, and so you have to be prepared to prove what it is that you're saying and back it up.
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Well, you know, that's interesting because when I hear that, I think about the fact that I was actually in the administration when the Monica Lewinsky thing broke and, you know, the secretary called all the senior staff over there and said, okay, fine, just do what we do because it's out of our hands and, you know, we'll just see what happens.
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So he finally you know, he, being the president finally had to fess up.
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I think more damage was done when he tried to cover it up than when he finally, you know, said okay, fine, I made a mistake, let's move on.
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It took him a little while to get over that, but he remains perhaps one of the most popular presidents around.
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The other thing that I think about, particularly when I deal with political figures, is they don't like surprises.
00:22:52.025 --> 00:23:20.157
So that's why you need to come to them when you are involved in some project or event for them, with all the information in place, all the details who, how, what, where and when so that when they ask these questions, you've got an answer for them, because I think, particularly in members of Congress or other public meetings, that they don't want somebody sticking their hand up and saying, well, fine, I tried to reach you X number of times and nobody answered the phone or nobody got back to me.
00:23:20.157 --> 00:23:37.196
So you need to plug all those holes in terms of how precise you are in your planning and attention to details, because when I came here to Nashville, I was surprised at how cavalier people were about events.
00:23:37.196 --> 00:23:43.153
They just assumed that everybody knew who was going to do what and when it was going to be done, and that's not the way I function.
00:23:43.153 --> 00:23:49.637
So details and information are very, very important to me.
00:23:49.637 --> 00:23:53.452
That's one of the key takeaways that I have from my experience.
00:23:53.994 --> 00:23:55.577
Yeah, and you're right.
00:23:55.577 --> 00:24:02.558
As communicators, when both of you were speaking, protection kept coming to my mind.
00:24:02.558 --> 00:24:04.648
You know, as their communicator, you're really.
00:24:04.648 --> 00:24:05.934
You're also protecting them.
00:24:06.175 --> 00:24:20.878
So it's not talking about, you know, filling the gaps and plugging the holes, and they don't like surprises and so, as you're writing for them, you are literally trying to anticipate, like you said, any question, anything that might come out of left field.
00:24:20.878 --> 00:24:26.313
Oh, you know, newt Gingrich was known for the Contract of America.
00:24:26.313 --> 00:24:26.955
That was back in the 90s.
00:24:26.955 --> 00:24:28.221
Now it's 2012.
00:24:28.221 --> 00:24:34.352
And you know he's trying to broaden his base and people are like, oh, what about that contract with America?
00:24:34.352 --> 00:24:48.594
You know, and so you're trying to, you know, write about him today and you're trying to write for the day, but you're also having to remember you know, his record from before and trying to incorporate all those things.
00:24:49.546 --> 00:24:55.232
And in a primary you're really just speaking to your base, so it's a little bit easier.
00:24:55.232 --> 00:24:58.174
And then, you know, as you move from a primary to a general election, you're not so much speaking to the base, so it's a little bit easier.
00:24:58.174 --> 00:25:02.719
And then you know, as you move from a primary to a general election, you're not so much speaking to the base, you're trying to broaden.
00:25:02.719 --> 00:25:20.460
So it requires a lot more work to broaden those communications from you know, tell the history and what he's known for and which of those things he wants to still be known for and which of those things he wants to appear that he's moved away from a little bit.
00:25:20.460 --> 00:25:31.057
So it is some intricate communications to sort of manage all of those things and protect the candidates so that they, you know, aren't caught off guard.
00:25:31.057 --> 00:25:33.702
You're just almost playing devil's advocate.
00:25:33.702 --> 00:25:35.509
You know what could I get him with?
00:25:35.509 --> 00:25:42.414
And trying to anticipate those things and to cover your tracks and I also wanted to speak a little bit more on the media relations.
00:25:42.484 --> 00:26:02.275
You're right, so much of PR is running after the media, but they do come after you and they want to get to know you because they know you're working with this or that candidate, so you know, they want the story, they want to know where they're going to be every day, what they're going to be every day, what they're going to be doing, what they're doing, what they get there, and so I have been fortunate.
00:26:02.275 --> 00:26:05.980
That's another way this has prepared or helped my career.
00:26:05.980 --> 00:26:12.228
My media relations are pretty cool.
00:26:12.228 --> 00:26:23.375
You know, local, state, national because there are people in my LinkedIn that I worked with in 2012 when I was doing this, and so I could still tap into some of those national networks.
00:26:23.375 --> 00:26:32.595
Not necessarily what I'm doing now in this field, but those connections are great because they'll say, oh Adrian, I'll get in touch with someone because he's covering that.
00:26:32.595 --> 00:26:39.252
So the longstanding media relations is certainly a plus from having done this type of work.
00:26:41.105 --> 00:26:50.117
Well, peter, I was just going to say that, of all the questions that they ask you, the one that I think is most important to have a ready answer for is why?
00:26:50.117 --> 00:26:51.705
Why are you doing what you're doing?
00:26:52.848 --> 00:27:13.089
And that speaks to your motivation, and people don't care what you know until they know why you care, and so it's so important to start with why I'm doing this, why I'm running, why I believe this policy is important, before you get to the how we're going to do something about it and what it's going to be.
00:27:13.089 --> 00:27:25.131
Most people say you know, I think we should have this policy and here's how we should do it, and they don't get around to really saying why, what's driving this, what's motivating us to be behind this?
00:27:25.131 --> 00:27:31.790
And I believe that's what people are most interested in hearing about when you're talking to them.
00:27:32.952 --> 00:27:33.213
You know.
00:27:33.213 --> 00:27:52.779
The other thing I think about too is when I particularly when I got in Congress and in the campaign was all of a sudden now you're dealing with people at the highest levels Because, depending upon, maybe, what party or where you are I mean when I was in Delaware now all of a sudden I'm having conversations with the governor, the lieutenant governor, the mayor, on a regular basis.
00:27:52.779 --> 00:27:57.438
You know, under normal circumstances in PR you don't get to talk to those folks.
00:27:57.438 --> 00:28:04.750
I mean just no, no reason to you dealing with their pr people, but I'm actually talking to them uh, bank presidents, other heavy hitters there.
00:28:04.750 --> 00:28:21.597
So, learning how to negotiate and manage any minefield that might be attached to that political protocols, those kinds of things because one of the things I've also learned is when a public official shows up somewhere, whether they say it or not, they want to speak, they want to be heard.
00:28:21.597 --> 00:28:22.945
That's what they like to do.
00:28:22.945 --> 00:28:33.730
So understanding how they think and how they work helps you to translate that understanding and behavior to what you do for your clients correct.
00:28:33.830 --> 00:28:34.372
That's true.
00:28:34.372 --> 00:28:35.954
That's true, that's true.
00:28:35.954 --> 00:28:52.953
Definitely a league, a certain league, and so in you searching out to do even this podcast and trying to draw, it's probably not a big group of people who manage, it's not, and I never really thought about it.
00:28:52.953 --> 00:28:55.964
I mean, I always knew it was something, it was an experience I valued.
00:28:55.964 --> 00:28:59.954
Now that I'm thinking about it, a pretty small club mm-hmm.
00:29:00.556 --> 00:29:10.941
Well, even when I was looking at you know I put the first notice first in the PRS, a open line, and I think the first first and all of his father.
00:29:10.941 --> 00:29:30.277
Initially I got love initially from Narcissus office and then, you know, I got something from you at somebody called an office, somebody else, but trying to catch up with those people and you know I just didn't have a lot of time to try to track people down because I mean, we've all had this kind of experience and it's not something that you're going to get in graduate school.
00:29:30.277 --> 00:29:39.971
I mean, when you have to understand policies and explain policies to the media, you know you have to know what you're talking about.
00:29:39.971 --> 00:29:43.034
You also have to understand the pros and cons about that.
00:29:43.034 --> 00:29:55.654
The other thing in a campaign is you also have to understand the pros and cons of the competition's policies and agenda so that you know if there's some issues there you can respond to those as well.
00:30:08.944 --> 00:30:09.586
Opposition research.
00:30:09.586 --> 00:30:11.653
Opposition research know, if there's some issues that you can, you can respond to those as well.
