Howard Bragman Advises Public Relations People | Big Think

Howard Bragman Advises Public Relations People

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Howard Bragman unpacks how we have redefined what PR stands for.

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Howard Bragman:

Howard Bragman is Hollywood's premier public relations professional. He founded Bragman Nyman Cafarelli Public Relations and Marketing (BNC) in 1989. The Company is one of the most respected public relations agencies in the United States with billings of more than $15 million annually and a blue-chip client roster of celebrities, consumer products and events. In 2001 BNC was purchased by Interpublic, one of the world's largest holding companies for marketing companies. He founded a strategic media and public relations agency, Fifteen Minutes, in 2005.

Bragman is a nationally respected crisis counselor and has provided litigation support for a significant number of high-profile cases and individuals. These include: Joseph Steffan who was kicked out of the US Naval Academy for his sexual orientation; The Lewinsky Family; and Sharon Smith in Smith v. Knoller, a high-profile civil rights and justice trial involving a tragic dog mauling death. Bragman was also an adjunct professor of Public Relations at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications for six years and has been honored for his teaching excellence by his students and the University. Bragman has written articles for publications including: Advertising Age, The Advocate, The Los Angeles Times and Playboy. A frequent television guest on issues involving the entertainment industry and popular culture, Bragman has appeared on local and network news programs more than 100 times. He has been a featured speaker for numerous groups including The US Conference of Mayors; The UJC Youth Congress; and many others. He is also the author of Where's My Fifteen Minutes?: Get Your Company, Your Cause, or Yourself the Recognition You Deserve.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What are the obligations of PR people? Bragman: In the early part of the 20th century was a practitioner named Edward Bernays, and he’s known as the Father of Spin or the Father of Public Relations, and one of the things that he said was, “A PR person…,” and it’s still relevant today, “A PR person has three jobs,” and I’ve always taken this very seriously. The first, obviously, is to present your client to the public, right? But the second is to interpret the environment that your client’s going into. That is, if you are going out with a story, if you’re an auto maker right now and you are going out with a story about a new car, you have to deal with the environment you’re dealing in. I have a real estate company, a high-end residential real estate company that I represent in Los Angeles, and the story we’ve been saying is, “Why do these morons own a high-end residential real estate company and launch it in the middle of the worst recession in decades,” and we’ve gotten a lot of [plague] based on that. The third job of a PR person is to do good, and, for lack of any better vision, to make society a better place, to affect positive change, these are the good things we do and I’ve always tried to follow that in my career. Question: What are the key elements of PR today? Bragman: You need to manage your perception in this world. It is a basic life skill. Let me explain. PR used to stand for Public Relations, no longer. PR now stands for ‘perception and reality,’ and the job of me, a media relations person, a Public Relations person is to manage that relationship between perception and reality. And for most people, if this is perception and this is reality, the reality is better than the perception. That is most people. I’m really good, people just don’t know it. I’m a great actor, I’m a great dentist, I’m a great environmental activist. For some people, their perception exceeds their reality.

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