Publications: PMP Magazine: Feature Articles

The Cave Man and the Public Relations Firm: Making the Arts Meaningful
Josephine Hemsing, Founder and Managing Director of Hemsing Associates, delivered the following remarks to open PMP’s Branding and Publicity Conference on Monday, August 25, 2003.

Public Relations is the fastest growing field in the world today. While some worry that the all-pervasiveness of Public Relations is turning us into a canned society, the negative effects of PR are not damaging in the field of music. The development of public relations strategies has been more controversial, more insidious, in medicine, politics, and law. Look at four newspapers, turn on four TV news programs, or click onto your web news homepage on any given day, and you will see the exact same stories in each place. Even the positioning of the stories will be similar. It’s as though PR firms were pulling invisible strings to make each outlet sound identical. Of course, there are a few catastrophes whose coverage is less orchestrated – earthquakes, blackouts, terrorist attacks – but the release of all other information is driven by publicity. The large publicity firms, whose clients include cable television programs, political parties, major business corporations, Hollywood production companies, and even prominent hospitals have in a sense become the arbiters of public taste; they dictate which development you will think about with your morning coffee or evening drink, and, in effect, condition you to accept their version of what’s important.

All of us in this room, however, are lucky. We’re in music. No matter how many grievances we face – graying audiences, the recording glut, music cutbacks in school curriculums, commercial pandering by serious artists, or the faltering economy – we can take heart and reflect: on thousands of podiums tonight, from the humble community theatre stage to the world’s most elegant concert halls, the evolution of the human mind has made it possible for us to free ourselves from the humdrum of the day. The first man who interrupted his urgent routine of hunting for food and instead extracted pigment from a berry, dipped a stick into the liquid color, and ran the wet end of this early brush over the surface of his cave wall to recreate the graceful shape of a woolly mammoth or tell the story of a man being gouged by a bison’s horns was the world’s first artist. Imagine all the elements that went into this act: not only did he have to make that leap into the abstract, but the people around him had to allow him to do it. Whether for religious, medicinal, or esthetic reasons, he was a man apart. The next time you get bored writing a press release, think of that man 32,000 years ago. Think of him crouching in the dark on his back in a passage no higher than a few feet, the cave illuminated with nothing but a flickering torch. Think about the impossibility of freeing his mind up long enough to dream. You are publicizing him.

Everyone assumes a publicist specializes in spin and hype, but in fact, it’s the good publicist’s job to strip bare the misconceptions which may have sprung up around the artist or ensemble. After all, which self-respecting journalist is going to believe a publicist – and for how long – if you misrepresent a violinist and claim he’s the best musician that ever was? In truth, he may just be a journeyman performer. You enter into an unspoken contract with the critic; either there is trust, or you will find yourself without clients. The journalist is your conscience. Bring him a balanced view, and he may even listen to you, or at least see for himself whether he is interested. Steer him wrong just once or twice, and he will never even bother to open your press releases.

To make sure what you’re saying is believable, you have to tell the truth. Play to the strengths of the artist or organization involved. Don’t lie to the journalist; don’t lie to the artist (or client), and don’t lie to yourself. If you are the publicist for an organization or an artist and you know a particular event or concert or production is not of the highest caliber, how do you deal with it? Be realistic. There are many ways of phrasing "good." Use sensible language that conveys who the artist is, what differentiates him from others, why the journalist’s readership or listenership should want to know more about him. Ask the journalist what he needs from you: which facts, which written materials, and so on. If your pitch is properly phrased, a serious writer, editor, or producer will be able to catch the nuances. If you sense he’s not interested at all, leave room for a possibility the next time around. Don’t nix your chances of ever getting a major feature; don’t waste your one shot at asking for a huge favor from a friend who is an important television producer; weigh the possibilities of success before approaching the media.

And if you’re feeling discouraged, remember that first artist whose canvas was a cave.