PR Pros: Dr. Jennifer Scott Of NYU School of Professional Studies On The 5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career As A Public Relations Pro

An Interview With Kristen Shea

… Nail the Basics: This means hitting deadlines, writing well and consistently delivering quality work. If you let this slide, your career progress will be slower, and often more difficult. Your colleagues and clients need to know they can rely on you and delivering consistently on the basics assures them of that. That trust is the anchor for everything else and it cannot be replaced.

Have you seen the show Flack? Ever think of pursuing a real-life career in PR? What does it take to succeed in PR? What are the different forms of Public Relations? Do you have to have a college degree in PR? How can you create a highly lucrative career in PR? In this interview series, called “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career As A Public Relations Pro” we are talking to successful publicists and Public Relations pros, who can share stories and insights from their experiences.

As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Prof. Jennifer Scott, clinical assistant professor of PR and corporate communication at NYU.

Dr. Jennifer Scott is clinical assistant professor for PR and corporate communication at NYU’s School of Professional Studies where she guides students in completing their master’s degrees. Prior to joining NYU, Jennifer worked at Ogilvy, serving as Global MD for Strategy and Planning at Ogilvy PR, head of the New York office of Ogilvy PR, and finally MD, Thought Leadership for Ogilvy US. Before joining Ogilvy, Jennifer was President of Edelman Intelligence and also served as Senior Vice President at Applied Research and Consulting.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Having spent my career in the PR agency world, working with clients across all sectors and internationally, I reached a point where I wanted to help advance the theory behind PR, and also to work with the next generation of PR professionals to help them contribute to excellence in our profession, and to have rich, rewarding careers. So, I switched from agency life to being on the full-time faculty at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. At the school, there is a deliberate and very rewarding mix of theory and practice. My students bring fresh energy and ideas, and my colleagues bring years of experience in practicing PR. It’s the best of both worlds!

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?

Without doubt, it was the ways in which NYU had to pivot overnight to accommodate pandemic restrictions while continuing our mission of teaching! The School of Professional Studies went from in-person teaching to remote classes via Zoom in 24 hours. Many of our students were profoundly disrupted by the pandemic and we wanted to be extremely thoughtful about what they were dealing with in their lives while trying to maintain their studies. The university’s transformation from in-person to online (in fact, locked down) learning was a remarkable feat of both logistics and teamwork. Remote teaching was challenging, but what was more important, was ensuring that our students and colleagues were safe and supported throughout a transition that was incredibly disruptive and on multiple levels. I’m so proud of what the school achieved and especially of the students from Spring and Fall 2020!

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

Two things: The first is the launch of a new degree, the Executive Master’s in Marketing and Strategic Communications. This is designed for processionals who are 10–15 years into their careers and are looking to advance to executive roles. This is especially valuable for PR professionals who want to manage integrated marketing campaigns, because it will help give them the knowledge and expertise to work with CMOs and other marketing experts at the highest levels.

The second is work I am doing with my colleagues on the role of social values in building brand loyalty and affinity. Traditionally, brands have earned customers through delivering quality and good value, as well as creating brand affinity and familiarity. We are looking at data which indicates that customers now also prefer that brands share their broad values — that they have a common world view. This could have major implications for the ways in which the largest corporate brands express their brand identity — and might pose some interesting challenges for brands operating in societies where there is polarization in terms of basic values.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

These are traits that I have cultivated throughout my career because I have found them to be valuable. They did not necessarily come naturally.

• Big-picture thinking: It’s important to focus on your immediate objectives, team dynamics and deadlines. Those are important. But to thrive, it helpful to deliberately step back from the immediate and engage with the larger end-goals of any initiative. This enhances strategic thought and creativity and often makes you a more valuable player in the work environment.
• Putting yourself in other’s shoes: When you are working on a big project, it’s too easy to let the demands of the project override the people involved. Whether it’s a pitch or a strategy meeting or a creative tissue session, it’s great to cultivate the ability to truly see and understand the individuals involved. Often this allows you to explain things more effectively, build alignment across teams and to take a project to a much higher level than before.
• Resilience: This can be difficult, especially in situations where unbalanced power dynamics result in you being under appreciated, passed over or given disproportionate work with disproportionate reward. Cultivating the capacity to move through those situations, reframe them as learning experiences, and act to create meaningful change, is very important. Building up a great group of supporting colleagues can be very helpful.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, can you help articulate what the different forms of PR are?

One of the great things about PR is that it has different specialties, and this allows PR professionals to orient towards the areas they enjoy. In every case, PR involves telling a story about something that is relatable and compelling to others and which has the potential to change minds and even shift behaviors. The main areas of PR are Corporate (managing the reputation of corporations or organizations); Public Affairs (working to create a positive political/ legislative/regulatory environment for an organization); Consumer (building brand affinity between product brands and consumers); Financial (focused on investors; financial regulators and others who influence the financial well-being of an organization); Healthcare (hospitals; pharmaceuticals; public health initiatives, etc.). There are other PR specialties, such as working with celebrities, but I think I have given you the main categories.

Where should a young person considering a career in PR start their education? Should they get a degree in communications? A degree in journalism? Can you explain what you mean?

There are exceptional graduate degrees in PR available and I think they provide a very strong grounding for young professionals. The NYU Masters in PR and Corporate Communications gives students an exceptional grounding in the fundamentals of our profession, while enabling them to also focus on electives that speak to their preferred areas of specialization.

I think any undergraduate degree can get you through the door if you are dedicated, hard-working and ready to learn. You will likely start on the bottom rung (like I did) and the learning curve on the job will be steep. You will not necessarily be fortunate enough to be in an organization that had a strong culture of on-the-job training. For this reason, I would recommend specializing in PR and/or Communications or even Journalism at the undergraduate level.

My only caution is not to go too narrow. Many students want to focus just on Social Media Management or just on Analytics. That can get you an entry-level job very easily today, but the challenge then becomes breaking out of that specialty role as you move up in your career. Unless that’s all you want to do, you should try to get a broader education in the field.

You are known as a master networker. Can you share some tips on great networking?

Networking comes easily to a minority of people, the rest of us need to work at it. A few tips. Your best network will come from the people you work with. Collogues who become your friends at work are usually the people who form your most important professional network throughout your career. Build strong relationships and maintain them once those folks (or you) leave for new opportunities. I have colleagues from my first few jobs who are leading some of the largest PR and communications companies in the world now.

Another tip is to pay it forward. Do your best to help others in your network. People seldom forget when you can connect them to an opportunity. It’s not just good karma, it can come round to help you in your own career journey as well.

Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of any business. Can you share some of the strategies you use to generate good, qualified leads?

The first thing is to delight your clients and never lose touch with them! Just like your colleagues, clients tend to move on in their careers and hopefully go on to bigger and better opportunities. If you have done excellent work with them and they have confidence in you, they become your most powerful sources for good, qualified leads.

Secondly, do a review of organizations in your field who have recently gone through change — or are at some inflection-point (a new CEO, a merger, an organizational restructuring). This is a good time to reach out and offer to do an audit of the organization’s competitive situation. You can do this yourself or work with a partner, and you may have to offer it at cost, but this approach often provides you and the potential client with a valuable introduction to each other, a strategic perspective on what needs to be done, and forges a relationship that can often lead to a much more comprehensive business relationship.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career As A Public Relations Pro” and why.

1. Speak Truth to Power: PR professionals have great instincts. However, when it comes to having our voices heard, we can often feel worried that our voices are not ready for the C-Suite. Today, more than ever, the voices of PR Professionals need to be heard at the executive level. Our perspective; our wisdom; and our deep understanding of human behavior are all integral to the success of today’s communications campaigns. One of the reasons NYU is launching the new Executive Master’s degree in Marketing and Strategic Communications is to enable professionals to develop the skills and resources they need to have an impact at the highest levels in organizations. To speak with clear and confident voices to the rest of the C-suite. To make an impact. This is not simply great for individual career growth (which it is), it’s imperative for organizational success in today’s world where perception is increasingly becoming reality.
2. Tell Great Stories: The word “story” often seems so unprofessional, but at its heart, great PR revolves around a telling great story — one that captures people’s attention, that they want to be a part of. It requires intelligence, discipline and audacious creativity. It demands that you put the audience first while leading them somewhere they couldn’t have gone to by themselves. Think of the Cannes Lions winners in PR and you will see superb stories. One of my favorites is a campaign by Ogilvy called “Immortal Fans.” Look it up to see what a great story can achieve!
3. Know Your Audience: This is fundamental. Know their demographics, psychographics, what keeps them up at night, what they love. You need to steep yourself in your target audience. I recommend physically immersing yourself in their lives in some way — go shop where they shop; go visit where they work. Your ability to reach and persuade is directly related to your ability to know what makes your audience tick — what they care about, what they want, etc. Years ago, I was involved in the original Dove Real Beauty campaign. At the heart of that campaign was the understanding that women had lost ownership of the idea of beauty — it’s meaning had become distorted and exploited by marketers. We knew that women wanted to reclaim the idea of beauty for themselves. That understanding enabled us to build one of the most successful PR and advertising campaigns ever.
4. Nail the Basics: This means hitting deadlines, writing well and consistently delivering quality work. If you let this slide, your career progress will be slower, and often more difficult. Your colleagues and clients need to know they can rely on you and delivering consistently on the basics assures them of that. That trust is the anchor for everything else and it cannot be replaced.
5. Lock in Your Moral Compass: At one level, this is about knowing what you will and won’t work on — whose stories you will tell and whose you will not. I have never worked on any accounts involving tobacco products for example. That’s an easy stand to take. The tougher work comes when you need to make fine discriminations as a PR professional. Where the lines are not clear, and the grey area is large. What stories do you tell? Which facts do you use? Here, you must do your best to create clarity for yourself. We are increasingly aware of the power of disinformation and misinformation. It’s rampant and it is fracturing our social fabric in ways we are only become aware of. As PR professional, we cannot allow the norms of social media, for example, to be our norms. For me, the key is to ask myself: “Am I opening minds with my words, or closing them?” Are my communications giving people more power to choose or less? It’s not just good for your clients, your campaigns and your career. It’s also about maintaining the ethics of our profession.

Because of the role you play, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Social media literacy. Without question. It's been only 15 years since personal mobile devices really gained momentum, and in that short time, we have seen social media having an increasingly outsized impact on our society, politics and interpersonal relationships. Some of it is good, but much of it turns out to be problematic. PR is about creating conversations; and about giving people the accurate information they need to make good choices for themselves. In many ways, the rise of disinformation and misinformation — as well as the rise of highly emotional conversations — on social media, have achieved the exact opposite. I’d love a client to commit to a campaign that looks under the hood of how social media platforms make money; how algorithms work to channel certain kinds of information our way. A campaign that helps people understand what they are engaging in when they participate in social media and its effect on them individually and as a community. A campaign that empowers individuals in relation to these new forms of mass communication.

This was really meaningful! Thank you so much for your time.