Scene From My Christmas Vacation: How to Do PR at 70 Miles an Hour
I literally did PR at 70 miles an hour several weeks ago — driving over the Atchafalaya Swamp on I-10.
And from the parking lot of a Wendy’s somewhere in the middle of Louisiana.
And from a deck at one of my favorite Houston restaurants — which was unfortunately overlooking some rather loud construction, but the deck was big enough for my kids, who were stir-crazy and needed some good old fashioned running around and screaming time.
Part of this speaks to the amazing technology we can access in the name of keeping in touch with one another. I have a Blackberry, and without it, I couldn’t do PR in 2009. On my family’s trip back home from New Orleans — the Monday after Christmas — I was getting calls and e-mails and text messages about First Night Austin, the amazing New Year’s Eve event that allows more than 800 artists to wow 100,000 people in downtown Austin to celebrate the New Year and the arts.
In an earlier era, I would have been incommunicado for the length of that trip. Depending on what earlier era you’re talking about, calls or faxes or Usenet message boards would have been unattended as I drove home. The good news is the rules have changed. You’ve no doubt heard or even contemplated the pitfalls of being in Blackberry Nation — you’re never really “off” work, we’re addicted to information — but I’d much rather be where we are than back in the ’70s wearing out my dialing finger on a rotary phone.
As a PR practitioner, it’s great to have technology that makes information arrive instantaneously. It helped immensely leading up to First Night, and on the day of the event, it was a lifesaver more than once. (I’ve used walkie-talkies for event management before we all had cell phones, and believe me, I much prefer cell phones with text messaging ability.)
It’s not the easiest thing to coordinate interviews and generate coverage from a moving car, but I embrace any new innovation that allows me to connect media with good stories. Seeing this report about in-flight wireless makes me believe that sometime soon, I’ll be pitching journalists from a plane, and that will, even with the advances we’ve made up until now, completely blow my mind.
