I recently was told by a Professor that it was my duty as a PR practitioner to know all the celebrity gossip. Who told my Professor to just assume that I was going into high-profile celebrity entertainment PR? I don’t know. Not once have we ever had a conversation where I said that I was remotely considering it. Anyway, the conversation turned into a slight argument because she was telling me that it didn’t matter what type of PR I went in to, I would need to know what’s going on in the celebrity world.  I need to know who’s dating whom, who was recently admitted into rehab, who recently landed that movie deal, etc., etc. I told her while I do think celebrity gossip is important to know in all types of entertainment PR I believed that to be untrue for all others because good PR practitioners and firms don’t need celebrities, celebrities need them… or at least I see that as the best practice. She continued with a hypothetical situation as follows:

“Let’s say you are representing a new and unknown product to the market–a personal tech product- and the product’s manufacturers don’t have much for advertising, their trying to gain attention for the product solely from your PR efforts.  You only have a reach so far, BUT celebrities reach even farther. You need to know which celebrities will be viable representatives to the masses and know how much power that celebrity holds within his/her own arena.”

My rebuttal:

“No. Jocking celebrities for air time is not only taking the easy way out it’s a complete waste of time because you never know that they will represent your product; you’re always hoping they will. And if the manufacturer’s don’t really have money for advertising then they probably don’t have money to pay a celebrity for representation either.  Wouldn’t a respected public figure (not necessarily a celebrity) be a better representative? And I still don’t see why celebrity gossip is pertinent to a successful career in ANY type of PR.”

Her answer was very long and complicated but basically stated that PR success is measured by how many influential receivers accept the message. Hmm… I’ve been pondering on this for about a day now.  I still don’t seem to see things her way. What do y’all think?

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Posted at : February 13th, 2008 - 8:35 am
Filed under : FYI
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