Thomas Miller | April 12, 2011
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| Photo by Thomas Miller |
| Michael Herman of Communication Sciences International spoke at the recent PRSSA regional meeting. |
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Herman’s 40 years of experience in national and international public relations earned him the Public Relations Society of America Gold Anvil for Lifetime Career Achievement award in 2009. He gave the keynote address at the conference, which brought more than 200 attendees to IU.
Here are the highlights of Herman’s Q&A:
On your first two years out of college: “The only thing a degree gives you is the ability to learn, and if you keep your mouth shut and your ears open, you can learn more in your first two years in the real world than you did in all four years of college.”
On what it takes to have a career in PR: “It’s a lot more competitive now than it was years ago, because there are a lot of people out there who have a lot of experience who aren’t working right now. You to have to restructure your search. You have to look for opportunities that are less than what you might have demanded a few years ago. I have a great deal of admiration for those kids who are doing two or three internships in their last couple of years.”
On the future of the PR industry: “PR is never going away because it’s not based in technology. It’s about problem solving. It’s about creating the message and leading public opinion. It’s about taking the opportunity to listen and take the understanding you have to solve people’s problems.”
On the importance of having a flexible career: “You just have to be smart enough to realize that you may not be working for the same institution (for an entire career)."
On the difference between journalism and PR: “The reality is that public relations began with former journalists. When I joined the PR fraternity in 1970, virtually everybody was from a newspaper or a television station. We’re all storytellers and we’re still storytellers.”
On measuring success in public relations: “The only way we can measure what we do is to see if we’ve changed someone’s behavior.”
On the future of social media: “Five years from now, social media will be so old-hat people will look at you funny when you talk about it.”
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