Selects: How Publicists Work

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1:01John Polk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. We're going to jump back in podcast time to September 15th, 2015 for this week's select selection, how publicists work. We've never had a publicist. You know why? Because nobody cares that much about us. So it's really not a job that would get a lot of billable hours, if you know what I mean. But anyway, it's a pretty fascinating, weird job. And we heard from a few publicists, I believe, when we recorded this. So maybe we'll hear from some again. How publicists, publicists, publicists work.

1:47Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

1:57Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. So stuff you should know. This is it. Boy, that sounded like you're introducing the final episode. My voice. This is it. Feels like it's the final episode. You won't be able to talk anymore. No, I'm getting there. That's not true. You don't know that.

2:24How's it going? It's going pretty well, man. How about with you? I think both of us had a bit of a dark time researching this article. Why? Well, because, and we're going to get, well, we're going to get flack. That's a teaser. From publicists, because what I learned is that publicists are professional liars. I would say that depends on the circumstance. Well, what do you mean? You're saying there are publicists who don't lie? No, I'm saying it depends on whether the publicist is going to the media or the media is coming to the publicist, depending on the circumstance. What I am saying is no matter what, who you work for, if you are a publicist, then a percentage of your job will be lying.

3:16Right, okay. Depending on the circumstance. Yeah. So Billy Ray Cyrus— Like you wouldn't lie about something good. Billy Ray Cyrus is like, I am going to donate a bunch of time and money to a local homeless shelter. Yeah, you don't have to lie about that. The publicist gets on the horn, starts letting everybody know, you guys should come cover this. Billy Ray Cyrus goes and does that and everything's good. Then, on the way home, Billy Ray Cyrus decides to celebrate by drinking a bucket of tequila and runs his car into a whatever. Okay. The publicist then starts getting calls and says— He didn't drink a bucket of tequila.

3:58That wasn't even him. That's overstated. What really happened with this? So the circumstances depend on whether the publicist is fibbing or not. Oh, yeah. I'm not saying that all publicists do is lie, but I'm saying if you work as a publicist, part of your job is to cover tracks and to lie. Gotcha. And, you know, don't hate the publicist, hate the system, is what I say. Yeah, they're definitely a part of a larger system. Yeah, a larger system, which includes all of us who digest news. Yeah, especially, say, like entertainment news. Yeah. That kind of thing. There's a whole, from my understanding, there's two routes a person can take as a celebrity.

4:45You can either just go off and be a normal person, and depending on your level, you might have paparazzi following you or that kind of stuff. Once you get to a certain level, it doesn't matter what your decision is. Or you can hire a publicist and feed yourself right into that machine to get as much publicity and as much press as you possibly can. Yeah, well, I think any celebrity is going to have a publicist, but it's really a matter of your directive and your goal. Right. I think some of those people like to be like the old adage, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Yeah, I ran into that.

5:21That's more of a PR term where like, so if you're into PR, you're probably representing a company or an organization or something like that. A publicist is somebody who typically represents a single person, an artist, an author, a musician, something like that. That's really the only definition I can find for a publicist. and the job, the goal of the publicist is to help maintain and promote the public image of that person that they represent. That's right. By having a good relationship with the media. Yes, that's where it starts. That's the publicist. And by the way, that no such thing as bad publicity, I tried to find the origin of that, and the closest thing I could find was P.T.

6:08Barnum. But I don't know if that's true. I don't think that's verified. Well, let's say Mark Twain. Yeah, P.T. Barnum or Mark Twain. Everybody says, oh, it was a Mark Twain thing. And I don't think that's even true anyway. I think maybe that used to be true. What, that it was a Mark Twain thing? No, that no such thing as bad publicity. I think at one point that may have been sort of true. Yeah. But these days there's clearly bad publicity. Sure. So you said the word flack earlier as a teaser. Apparently, to flak or a flak is a term originating from Gene Flak, early movie publicist in Hollywood.

6:48And that's with a CK. That's right. F-L-A-K, to take flak, is named after a type of German gun in World War II, a German anti-aircraft gun. Two different things. But in this case, it is a pejorative term for publicists. They don't like it. A PR flak. Yeah, you shouldn't say that to someone that works in PR. No. Or call them a liar. They don't like that either. Yeah. Yeah, I looked it up. Apparently it means that you can't be trusted. You'll do anything for money. That's what a flack is to them. One article I read said that's like calling a personal injury attorney an ambulance chaser. Yeah. Just not a nice term.

7:28Gotcha. So there you have it. So a publicist, like you said, works for their client to make them, to get their good deeds out and to, if they don't have good deeds, to spin things to make it look like they do. Right. You know? Here, hold this baby lamb. Yeah. Or we take your picture. Exactly. And then they get photographed later eating euros down the block. The two events were totally not connected. No. So what they do is they pitch ideas to the media, and they probably have to be good writers themselves because a press release oftentimes is a starting point. But press releases, as we know, can get lost in the shuffle and never see the light of day.

8:16Yeah. Seems like a huge waste of time. It can be. But if you have a good publicist, they will be well-connected to the media to ensure that that publicity blast is not lost. Right, exactly. So there's direction one, which is from the publicist to the media. And the publicist is going to have all these contacts with different entertainment reporters and business reporters and anybody that could possibly run a story. Yeah. Anybody that could possibly run a story on their client, right? That's right. And they'll say, Billy Ray is going to donate some money. Why are we picking on him? He just seems like the type who would donate a bunch of money to a homeless shelter.

9:03Okay. And go down there himself and help out. Great. So Billy Ray is going to be down there. Plus, it rolls off the tongue, Billy Ray. Sure. So why don't you send one of your cub reporters down, and let's get some coverage for this. Right. And since they're friends, since these people have worked together for decades now, this reporter and your publicist, the reporter actually might respond and show up or the editor or the news producer, whoever the contact is. That's great. Like that's you hired a good publicist and now this story is going to make it out there. That's right. Because they didn't just write up a press release with a bunch of exclamation points in the headline and fax it to every media outlet they could find and get zero response.

9:48Yes, a publicist is only as good as their relationships, I think. The other way on that street that you were talking about is from the journalist back to the publicist, if they hear, I heard Billy Ray Cyrus drank a bucket of tequila and ran over a prostitute with his car, they will then get in touch with the publicist, and then they go, Jack, buddy, hey, we go back a long way. Would I lie to you? Would I lie to you? So that's how that goes. And they will be more forthcoming with people who have – it's a scratch your back, you scratch mine type of scenario. Yeah, like that reporter that actually showed up at the homeless shelter and covered it and made a nice piece and everything.

10:31Yeah, I'll give you the scoop. When that guy calls, he's going to get the better treatment from the publicist than somebody who ignored the pitch before. That's right. Yeah, it's a lot of backscratching. A lot of backscratching. Feeding the machine. I've seen a lot more women as publicists than men, and I've always wondered why that is true. I don't know that that is true. In researching this, I saw about an equal amount. I used to think that as well, but it seems like there's an equal amount these days. It seems like every publicist I've ever known has been a woman, and I just figure just because women may be more level-headed and more able to smooth out a situation and some big dumb guy.

11:12But I guess the guys who are publicists aren't big dumb guys like me. I'd be a bad publicist. Oh, yeah? So what would your response be if somebody called to find out what stupid thing your client did or why they did some stupid thing? I'd say, you know what, it's really none of your business. Stop bothering me. Bad publicist. Yeah, well, that was something I ran across was, you know, saying something like my client needs their privacy respected right now would just immediately shut down a relationship that you've cultivated over the years. You have to give as a publicist. There has to be something that you give.

11:50So you better have something that will placate the reporter but will also is probably not the truth because that reporter will go off and write the truth about your client and your client will have just gotten horrible publicity because of you. So it's a balancing act. Yeah, or they'll just say, let me send you a gift bag from Fred Siegel. You like the last one, right? But a publicist may also, and it depends, people that have a staff of people working for them, sometimes the lines are blurred on who does what, but a publicist can arrange interview requests and set all that stuff up. If you have like a book tour or you're a politician or you're a band with a new album coming out, they might arrange all those interviews, in which case they are prepping two things.

12:42They are prepping the interviewer saying, you can't ask about the bucket of tequila. If you want this interview, I'll give it to you. But this is off limits, all these things. And then, as we've learned, when we've had people work with us in publicity, they'll be prepping you as the interviewee like if they ask this this is how you should probably deal with it don't answer that bridge back to what you were saying before and my favorite thing ever are videos where celebrities walk out of interviews because the interviewer has asked something they weren't supposed to ask those are great not to sit around and watch those all day yeah you could probably find a pretty good super cut of them yeah probably so All right, well, let's take a break.

13:28And when we come back, we will talk a little bit about the skills you need as a publicist.

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16:18All right. We've mentioned lying. and you know I joke but for real if you want to be a publicist you better have a certain comfort level with with stretching the truth and lying yeah because you're gonna have to do that if you're not comfortable with that you shouldn't go into that line of work yeah is that safe to say I think very you need to be good with people and cultivate those relationships need to be a good writer well not only do you have to be a good writer you have to be a good journalist and a lot of publicists have a background in journalism because I kept running into this in this article and another article you sent.

16:57The number one rule of being a publicist is to think like a journalist. Even better than that is to not only think like a journalist, but be able to write like a journalist too. Because as we kind of demonstrated, the publicist media relationship is a two-way street. the publicist needs the media to publicize in a flattering manner their client. Sure. But the media needs the publicist because they've got deadlines and they need to come up with story ideas. And if something is brought to them, that's great. That's good. But that media professional has a reputation to protect. It can't be like, you know, Billy Ray Cyrus got off of his couch and mailed a check for$500 to a local homeless shelter.

17:42Yeah. Boring. Yeah. And it came in a press release in a fax machine. Yeah. That reporter is not going to have a very good reputation. But if a publicist comes to this reporter with a great headline, creative pitch, a good story that's tailored to that reporter and their beat and, even more than that, tailored to that reporter's audience. Yes. There's a good likelihood that reporter will say, I'm listening. Right. And that's just music to a publicist's ears. Sure, just to be listened to. Yeah, that's when you throw it into fifth gear. You can't be afraid of rejection. You've got to be outgoing and you've got to take your licks because a lot of your attempts are going to fail just by nature of the job.

18:24So you can't get your feelings all hurt. Yeah. I guess you could, but you don't want to show that because then the journalist will be like, geez, Chuck's such a baby. You are going to be eaten alive. I didn't run the story and he's complaining. Crying. A little wimp. I saw him choking up in the bathroom. Well, they may get a good laugh out of that. He probably won't want to work with you as much. Right. You got to be very patient and you have to be very flexible because if you're working for celebrities, it is a very tough job. That's another thing, too. So your hours are basically all hours. Whenever you're needed.

19:01Right. Right, so not only does your – publicists frequently also have to do other stuff, or people associated with the publicist have to do things like pick up things for the client. Yeah, like stuff an assistant would do. Yeah. Sure. In addition to that, like the higher up you go on the food chain, which we'll talk about in a minute, the more that client feels A-OK with emailing you at 3 in the morning saying, like, I need to be reassured about my celebrity status or whatever. Yeah. And the publicist needs to respond. You're basically on call all the time. Also, at 3 in the morning, your client may have done something really horrifically stupid.

19:46Yes. And some paparazzi caught it, and now word's starting to spread, and you're fielding calls from reporters at 3 in the morning to get a statement on what your client did. Yeah. I mean, when Twitter came out, I remember thinking at the time, like, publicists aren't going to be around anymore because people are doing this themselves. Well, they've actually figured out ways to use Twitter to their benefit. Well, ways to use Twitter, but Twitter is also their biggest security blanket as well because of Twitter, more and more celebrities are saying really stupid things that the publicist is then going to have to cover their tracks.

20:20Yeah, that's a good point. So they'll take down the tweet and then try and spin that. Or just, you know, the apology is always very funny to me. The awkward? Well, it's never like, did you hear about Chris Carter, the NFL guy? He's a former NFL player, wide receiver. Sure. For the Vikings, right? Yeah. He is in hot water this week because he spoke, was hired by the NFL to come in and speak to the rookies. They often do that for guys that had been in trouble to come in and say, don't do what I did. It's scared straight. Yeah, sort of. And he said in his talk to the Rookie Symposium said something about, you know, if you get caught with, you know, da-da-da-da-da, he went, just make sure you have a fall guy on your team.

21:04Like the guy in the car that's like, it's my weed. Wow. And he got in big trouble for that. And his apology was like, that's not the kind of advice I would ever give young people. It's like, but that's the advice you exactly gave young people. Yeah. Like, how can you say that days later? It's just so obvious it's a forced, insincere apology. So we either had a bad publicist or didn't listen to his publicist. Because part of the publicist's job is when you're going to make the statement, the public statement, the public apology or whatever. Sure. The reasoning behind it, the rationale, the wording of it, just the logic behind the apology is probably going to be crafted by your publicist.

21:52At least they're going to help you with it. At the very least, they're going to want to help you with it. Right. Because they're probably scared stupid that you're going to make it worse. Right. And it sounds like there's a lot of crisis management, and that is a part of it. But publicists also are just trying to cook up opportunities. I think that that's way more the day-to-day. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Depending on the client, of course. Sure. But I remember our former boss, Connell, was in a band years ago. And I read online somewhere that his band went to Elton John's. Do you remember this story?

22:32No. Went to Elton John's house and spelled out their band name and fire on his tennis court. No, I hadn't heard that. To try and get on his label or something. That's a great way to do it. I know. And I went and asked him. I was like, dude, I can't believe you guys did that. And he went, we didn't do that. I was like, no. And he was like, no. And Zaref Publicis made that up. It was like, nothing true about it. And he's like, no. They completely fabricated that story as a publicity stunt that never happened. Huh. Yeah. Yeah, so why even go to the trouble of it where you can just release a story that says that you did that?

23:03Yeah, isn't that amazing? When something like that could so easily be fact-checked, like by calling Elton John. Well, that's the other thing. He's like, I don't have a tennis court. Who's going to call Elton John, you know? I don't want to know. So I'm curious. I wonder how many media stories are just totally fabricated. Matter of fact, you out there in podcast land, let us know. If you know a media story that was just totally fabricated that everybody takes as fact. Right. We want to hear it. I love stuff like that. I do too. All right. We mentioned earlier that you might end up getting the laundry or dry cleaning as a publicist.

23:37If you're the publicist intern. Yeah. That's probably what's going to happen is you might get asked to go get the laundry and then you'll say, sure, I'll take care of that for you. And then you will go down the chain until you find the underling who is trying to be a publicist who still does things like that. Right. This person may or may not be in college but is probably college age. That's something that I ran across. If you want a career as a publicist, you do not need to spend a single penny on higher education. The entire career of publicist begins as a hands-on experience. Yeah, you can.

24:16You need to be literate. You need to probably have a knack for writing in a journalistic way and crafting good headlines and by proxy good email subject lines. But if you have that already before college, you don't need to go to college. No. You can go and major in journalism or communications or PR, but it's not like you get that PR diploma. And you're going to get some entry-level job as a publicist. No, you're still going to have to work your way up. See, it says right here, I have a PR degree, so where's my job? Right. My advice is to skip college and go straight into the workforce. as early as you can if this is what you want to do.

24:57You know, I feel and I hope that there is becoming a bigger understanding that there are certain fields out there, there are careers out there, where you don't have to go to college. No. And there are careers out there where, like, you should go to a vocational school to learn that trade. Yes. That college is not necessarily this end-all, be-all, that you have to spend money after money after money to get a degree that might even not be used in your field. I didn't need a degree to do what I'm doing. No one ever has to see it. Right. And this is a perfect example of that, Chuck. To be a publicist, you do not need a degree.

25:33You need hands-on experience. You need basically what amounts to an apprenticeship. That's right. Yeah. Good way to say it. So go in and get that job in the mailroom or as an assistant or as an intern. And it would be great if you still live at your parents' house at this point because you're going to get paid like next to nothing. Yes. And you're going to be doing all the grunt work. Yes. But if you go in there with your mindset to, I'm going to learn this, I want to learn this, and move up, you're going to be in the right environment for that. Absolutely. Like we said, you might be picking up dry cleaning.