Doug Downs (00:10):
When the United States entered World War I in April of 1917, President Woodrow Wilson had another battle on his hands back home, a communications battle. Wilson needed the American public to be supportive of the war in Europe when many were not. Memories of the Civil War, just 60 years earlier were still strong. He needed the public to buy war bonds, agree to food rationing, support Red Cross programs, and register for the draft.
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Wilson established the Committee on Public Information and appointed George Creel to work some PR magic, but how to do that in a big country with just over 103 million people and many ethnic groups with multiple languages. It was a large, fragmented and geographically dispersed audience with no real channels to make a centralized appeal. Remember, TV and even radio were not an option. Creel recruited 75,000 volunteers to his committee, which developed colorful posters displayed in stores and on street corners. They distributed copies of pamphlets, issued press releases, took out magazine ads, organized school campaigns, and most creative of all gave speeches in movie theaters.
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Movies had become popular mainly on weekends. In the middle of each movie, the projection is needed to change the film reel that typically took about four minutes. Creel had a number of his volunteers trained to give four minute speeches during those breaks offering patriotic appeals. The campaign became so popular, it even attracted well-known celebrities to be four minute men, including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford. From 1917 to 1918, over 750,004 minute speeches were given, reaching about 400 million people today on stories and strategies, taking on the seemingly impossible communications challenges that need to be done and finding solutions that resonate with people in their everyday lives. That's what we do. No one knows that better than the Public Relations Society of America. We speak with the chair of P R S A about how we can keep finding those four minute windows of opportunity.
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My name is Doug Downs. A couple of thank yous off the top. Thank you to Ayesha Bachaw Bcha who left a comment on Spotify about an episode we did a few years back now on the modern ways to pitch the media. Ayesha, thank you for that. And thank you to Chris Mills PR who left us a five star rating and a review for this podcast on Apple in the United States. "Love this show as a PR pro and a podcaster too, this is great stuff. Intros are the best around." Chris, that is outstanding. Thank you for that. This is episode 100 of Stories and Strategies. I don't mind saying that's kind of cool. My guest this week is Michelle Egan, a special guest for episode 100, current chair of P R S A. Joining today from Anchorage, Alaska. Hi, Michelle.
Michelle Egan (03:53):
Hey, thanks for having me, Doug.
Doug Downs (03:55):
Thanks for joining. Now, I've been as far north as Cambridge Bay in Nunavut, Canada. Well above the tree line into the Arctic Circle, but I haven't been further west to Alaska. How are things in Anchorage?
Michelle Egan (04:06):
Well, I think it's time you made a trip to Alaska. I've been traveling quite a bit, visiting P R S A members, but I'm happy to say I'm home today in Anchorage and there's lots of good work happening in Alaska. We have some top-notch PR pros here, and in other news, it's definitely fall and the Northern Lights are already showing their colors.
Doug Downs (04:26):
That's what I've missed. I was too far north to see the Northern Lights. There's a certain band where you can see them, so I'm jealous of that. Michelle, you have more than three decades experience as a communications practitioner. Currently as Chief Communications officer for Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, you have a master's degree in strategic communication and leadership from Seton Hall University, and you're a graduate of Boston College with a degree in psychology. You were accredited your A P R in 2001, and your volunteer roles with P R S A have included two terms as treasurer, as well as committee service with the executive finance human resources and C E O search committees. Michelle let's start with the shiny bobble in our world. Artificial intelligence, game changer, job changer, job killer. Is this the end of the world as we know it Michelle?
Michelle Egan (05:22):
Oh, I'm not so sure. I'm a science fiction fan, but no, the world's not coming to an end, and the game's always changing. During my travels, I get to see lots of members in different chapters and districts and at conferences, and when I'm speaking, I ask, how many of you have messed around with chat G P T or another AI tool? And the differences between January, 2023 and today are striking in terms of the number of hands that are raised. But I also find it surprising how many people have not tried the tools. And that matches some data that I recently read from Stag Well's National Research Group, where 23% of Americans say they have an excellent understanding, 42% know little or nothing at all about ai. And so people are definitely a little leery of it or nervous about it. And as one person said to me just yesterday, it seems like cheating, but I encourage everyone to think of it as a playground, right?
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Check it out and see what's possible. A lot of times I give examples of the way I use Chat G P T as that's really the tool that I'm most familiar with at this point. But I recently saw a demo of Microsoft Copilot, which is being billed as your everyday AI companion, and the thought of taking a multi-page word document and converting it to a slide deck that I could then play with that really intrigues me. I think AI can take care of some of our routine tasks, and for me, that frees me up to do higher value work. So for example, if I have a written comms plan in long form and I'm getting ready to present it, why wouldn't I have AI take the first run at crafting the slides instead of me typing headlines and bullet points, I can focus on the most effective messages or creating a compelling narrative.
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So I think it's good for us, but we have to be really mindful. According to a just release survey from the conference board, collaborating with Ragan, Communications communicators are currently using AI for the following, summarizing content, doing some of the legwork, as I mentioned, producing content faster, conducting research, writing, press releases, and writing speeches. One of the things I think is essential to talk about Doug, is the ethical implications of these tools. And as you probably know, PRSA's code of ethics is really at the heart of what the organization's all about, and some of the ethical considerations include safeguarding confidential information. For example, I do not use chat G P T on my company computer or with information about my company because all that information needs to be protected. Citing sources is an issue validating the accuracy and bias in ai, which we recently at PRSA held a webinar on through our diverse dialogues program, and anyone can check that out at prsa.org. So when we're talking about ai, I suggest everyone think about the considerations, the ethical considerations, and there's no doubt it'll get increasingly complicated, but we'll soon have from our board of ethics and professional standards of framework for addressing ethical issues in ai, and I think it's going to be very helpful to our members. Bottom line, we can't hide our heads, put our heads in the sand. We have to get used to it, and we have to learn to play with it in positive ways.
Doug Downs (08:55):
It's interesting. I use AI because I'm a curious, sort interesting that you, because you've reached the executive level in your career, I've been wondering if we're going to have more 20 somethings and young 30 somethings using AI and the executive not catching onto it. But do you find amongst executive level communicators they are diving in or are you the minor exception?
Michelle Egan (09:18):
Oh, I don't think I'm the exception. I think people are exploring, especially when they get to a more senior level, we want to stay current and we want to know what's happening out there. And so while I may never be the expert in ai, I think people that are my peers are spending time exploring and then talking in the boardroom about what we've found, what we've learned, and how it can be helpful in our business.
Doug Downs (09:41):
Got to understand it. You mentioned the code of ethics. P R S A founded in 1947, first code of Ethics published a few years after that. The original principles were advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty and fairness. Now, those all sound pretty good to me here in 2023, but the ethics have refreshed over the years.
Michelle Egan (10:05):
Sure, you're right. There've been tweaks since 1950. In fact, in 2000, we refreshed the entire code of ethics, but those fundamentals remain the values of advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty and fairness. As you just mentioned, they're really at the core of the code. Those are evergreen. We also have provisions of conduct. So for example, ensuring the free flow of information is one of those provisions, and that's really central to democracy, that we as communicators make sure that people have access to information. That's what makes our democracy tick. And so we're not to stand in the way of the free flow of information. So the provisions really speak to ethics in action instead of revising codes of ethics to fit new issues, because things are constantly changing. I mean, AI is going to change today, tomorrow, the next day, and the ethical implications may also change.
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But instead of revising the entire code of ethics, we really need the code to be solid and serve as an anchor so that people can go back to a code in P R S A. It's our code of ethics and say, how does this apply to the dilemma that I'm facing? We have a Board of Ethics and professional standards. These are experts in the area of PR ethics, and they regularly prepare ethical standards advisories on current issues and ways to apply the code. So as I mentioned, we have an AI framework coming out. In the past, we've published on topics like sponsored content, paying influencers and and disinformation.
Doug Downs (11:48):
I like to joke, despite the fact that I make a living as a professional communicator, that I can't communicate to friends and family what I actually do for a living. It ends up being this long paragraph or multiple paragraphs. How does the Public Relations Society of America see the rule of the comms pro? How do you describe it? Do your friends and family?
Michelle Egan (12:10):
Yeah, it certainly can be hard to explain. When my kids were young, they used to describe my job as going to meetings. That was pretty much the sum of what they understood,
Doug Downs (12:20):
Not wrong. Yeah,
Michelle Egan (12:21):
I worked at a school district and I would sit at school board meetings till late in the night. And so a lot of my interactions with my kids were over email. I don't even think we had text messages there. So yeah, mom's at a meeting, that's her job. But PR as a practice has a long history and it's dynamic and changing. Today, PR is really considered a subset of strategic communications, and I would say P R S A members, myself, of course, we see ourselves as strategic communicators because that encompasses lots of different tactics and approaches to managing reputation and achieving long-term goals and priorities, and even impacting societal outcomes. So many different disciplines, including digital marketing, social media management, advertising, internal comms, and there's lots of specialties, but they really all come under this umbrella of strategic communication. And I would say P R S A has probably grown beyond sort of the standard original understanding of public relations to this strategic communication umbrella. According to MuckRack, the state of PR report in 2021, 73% of PR pros said they didn't think the term public relations would describe the work they're doing now or in five years.
Doug Downs (13:46):
Interesting. Yeah.
Michelle Egan (13:48):
So I think, as I said, most of our members would classify themselves as strategic communications pros, and I like to think of communications pros as the Swiss Army knives of the boardroom. It's really our job to have breadth and depth in understanding the business and the stakeholders. And sometimes we're the only professionals at the table who bring that big picture into the discussion. And in our roles, we also bring an ethical component to business decisions by asking things like, are we being transparent? Are we treating our stakeholders fairly? What's the impact of our decisions on society? So I feel we're really fortunate to work in these roles. We have the opportunity to shape conversations around really important issues like civil dialogue, miss and disinformation, and D E I. And we have lots of great resources on those topics through P R S A. But it's a really exciting career, as your listeners know, and I feel really fortunate to be a part of it.
Doug Downs (14:50):
And we do still to the public at the heart of it. So public relations, as much as I didn't like the term for years, I've absolutely warmed up to it. It's the right term. Let me give you a far reaching question here. 50 years ago, 1973, it always feels like it should be longer ago, but 1973, the PR Pro was in an age of social change. They likely couldn't see the age of digital media coming quite yet. It's possible some did. The internet technically was around. Fast forward 50 years from now, 2073, what does the role look like?
Michelle Egan (15:29):
Well, if I could tell you that we would be moving on from this podcast to some amazing future for ourselves, right? Yeah. It's hard to tell, but for sure, technology is going to continue to change. We all know that. And it's always going to be the communicator's job to work with it and incorporate it into our professional and personal lives. Now, going back in history and the things that you've mentioned, the role of PR has really been to do PR and communications for good for, as I said, about the free flow of information for the good of our society and our democracy. And I think that's going to continue to be at the heart of the value that we offer. So it's pretty hard to see 50 years ahead. But a few things I think are really clear. Consumers and stakeholders are going to continue to hold more power, and they're going to demand more transparency and more alignment with their values.
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And also companies aligning with our own stated values. And this is where we can come in as advisors to the business, really understanding what people expect and how our decisions in businesses and decisions of clients align with those expectations and those values. I think we can expect to live in a more virtual reality, and the experiences will need to be more immersive. We'll need to understand technology, how to use it, and what's happening under the hood, which is really important for PR education programs. And I found this really interesting. The University of Oregon just launched a master's in immersive media communication, and this is what their summary says. You discover the power of immersive media, including vr, augmented reality, and extended reality, and how to use these new technologies to solve environmental and business problems. And this is living in the school of journalism and communication.
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So that's a little bit of a peak into the future. Also, one thing to watch is in November, the Commission on Public Relations Education going to release a report on the recommendations for undergraduate public relations education. And it'll be interesting to see what shifts they're expecting in terms of how the curricula need to change in order to prepare young professionals for what's ahead for those in the workplace. It's going to be more and more important for us to partner with our peers, peers in it, peers in HR departments. But I think strategic thinking and counseling and being a good advisor is always going to be a part of the job,
Doug Downs (18:10):
And we need to connect with one another as professionals. And I'm a big advocate for joining organizations like P R S A, the local chapters, getting involved seeking accreditation such as your A P R. I have my S C M P through I A B C, which is just different. But joining local chapters, joining organizations like P R S A, continue to be important.
Michelle Egan (18:36):
Yeah, thank you. Our goal really is to empower our members. We want them to succeed at every stage of their career, and we offer a really wide breadth of professional development. Also, networking and leadership opportunities. As you mentioned at the chapter district and section levels, there's really a strong community built, and people have lots of opportunities to engage and learn from each other. We're heavily invested. This is something that we don't hear a lot about or it doesn't get covered a lot, but we're heavily invested in the future of public relations. So programs in higher ed are a big component of what we do at P R S A. So the Public Relations Student Society of America, P R S S A, that is a thriving organization on many, many college campuses. The P R SS A foundation and the C E P R, which certifies university programs based on a set of standards. So with P R S A professionals can really grow from their undergraduate education to an entry-level certification followed by accreditation like you mentioned. So I definitely encourage any professionals in this fast changing environment to find a professional association that supports you and for me, and nearly 25,000 students in professionals, that association is P R S A.
Doug Downs (20:01):
Wonderful, thank you for your time today, Michelle. It's great getting together.
Michelle Egan (20:04):
Doug. Congratulations on your 100th episode. I really think that's impressive. And I have to say, the content that you have is just really pertinent. It's interesting, and I think it's up to the moment type of thing that communicators need to be paying attention to. So congratulations to you.
Doug Downs (20:23):
Well, thank you. And we spent number 100 together. That's the important thing.
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We did.
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Yeah. If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Michelle Egan, we have some of her contact information in the show notes. Stories and strategies is a co-production of J G R Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. Please do leave a rating and a review. Those are huge for podcasters. And if you like this episode, would you do us a favor and share it with one friend? Thanks for listening.