The Art of Perception

Memoirs of a Life in PR

Robert Leaf

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857899590
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Biografías de ciencias sociales

Contents

Introduction

1 How I Got Started

2 Early Years at Burson–Marsteller

3 Starting in Belgium

4 Moving to London

5 Starting in Asia

6 Japan

7 China

8 Opening in Australia and South America

9 The Middle East

10 My Most Memorable Clients: Good and Bad

11 A Positive Perception of the CEO: A Key to Company Success

12 Managing Perceptions: The Key to the Future for Communicators, Politicians, Church Leaders, Doctors, Lawyers and Even Jobseekers

13 How Has Public Relations Changed in the Last Fifty Years and What Does the Future Look Like?

Index

Introduction

It was 1970. Nixon was in the White House. Brezhnev was running the Soviet Union, and the Cold War was in full swing. The Russians had recently invaded Czechoslovakia and had an iron grip on the nations of Central and Eastern Europe. So it came as a great surprise that the government-run advertising agencies of Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia were all interested in hearing about the latest trends in advertising and public relations. I was invited, along with two publishers and another senior executive, to go on a seventeen-day lecture tour around Eastern Europe culminating in a visit to Moscow.

Much to my surprise and delight, we were treated like royalty nearly everywhere we went. We were generously entertained, taken on trips around the region and talked to with incredibly sincere honesty. This was not what I was expecting from our cold war ‘enemies’. One of the key local executives proudly told me that his son had translated One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn into Romanian. The book had been outlawed in the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn had been expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers for having written it.

The men and women I met were fascinated by our stories about advertising and public relations in the United States and what it was accomplishing there. You would have thought the cold war was a figment of some politician’s imagination. . .

In Czechoslovakia, though, the mood was very different. In Prague, you could still hear the firing of cannons in the outskirts of the city where Russian troops were stationed. Presumably the soldiers were taking artillery practice and reminding the Czech citizenry of their presence – and who was boss. Our hosts, who had invited us to their beautiful city, seemed wary of being too close to us Westerners. And who could blame them? Our meetings had a formal air and, unlike all the other countries we visited, there would be no hobnobbing or social activities after the formal discussions were over.

In Moscow we were met with a high degree of cordiality, and were taken as guests to the opera, ballet and numerous museums. We were given English-speaking guides capable of answering our questions. It was obvious that our hosts really wanted us to enjoy their city, and there was a great deal there to see.

Yet, in spite of the warmth and cordiality extended to us, it was obvious that there was still a belief among many Russians that Western marketing techniques were tools of capitalism and thus open to question: should they be used in a communist society, and if so, how? This attitude became increasingly apparent to me during informal discussions I held with some of the audience before a talk I gave at a conference. Even though the audience of government officials, academics and business executives was engaged in advertising, it was still considered an unappealing tool of Western capitalism.

I was the final speaker and gave a presentation on what carefully considered advertising was able to accomplish. When I finished, the floor was open for questions. An academic who I had been talking with before the conference began, asked: ‘Mr Leaf, how can you justify any social good in advertising?’

I paused for a long moment while I studied the audience. After some careful thought I replied, ‘Let us say you are trying to sell harvesters you manufacture in Soviet plants to Egypt. And at the same time, Americans are also trying to sell them American-produced harvesters. If the Americans succeed in making the sale, the profits would usually go to individuals in private companies who can use the money in any way they see fit and for their own pleasure. But if you sell the harvesters, you can use the money to build hospitals, improve roads and provide a better life for the more impoverished. But to be able to do this first you have to sell those harvesters. And if it is your advertising that helps you to accomplish this, there is no question that it definitely has a social good.’

The professor immediately replied, ‘Mr Leaf I can accept that completely.’ Looking out at the audience, I got the feeling that he was not the only one who bought my reply.

I’ve often thought about this meeting in later years and my response to the learned Russian gentlemen’s question and what it accomplished. I became more convinced than ever about a strong belief I had always held – about the key to successful communications, no matter who the audience is. That key is the need to manage perceptions and that belief is that the public relations business is, in reality, perception management.

The fact that one good answer could change the mind of a very learned man steeped in a particular ideology and change his attitude towards what he saw as a pernicious practice of Western capitalism – that showed what changing a perception could accomplish.

My belief is underlined by the fact that my encounter led to a significant client assignment and gave us a chance to create a closer communications tie between the East and West during the cold war. As a result of the conference, I was later able to negotiate a deal for Burson–Marsteller (the public relations firm of which I was the international chairman) to represent Vneshtorgreklama, the Russian state advertising agency who hosted our trip to Moscow. The relationship then led to our parent company starting the first Western advertising and PR firm in Russia.

One had to get used to the fact that different perceptions existed there, especially among publishers of trade magazines. If you wanted to place an ad in April, a publisher might schedule it in June or even refuse it on the grounds that there was no need for that particular product. On advertising, the Russian encyclopaedia says something very reflective of local thought on the matter: ‘Methods of capitalist advertising are different, but they all clearly show the character of capitalist trade. Commercial enterprises often advertise useless goods and sometimes goods of poor quality.’ In Russia, things were very different.

I have found my belief in the importance of perception management to be true from the time I started as the first trainee at Burson–Marsteller in New York (they had only six executives at the time) to later when I became international chairman and helped grow the company into the largest PR firm in the world. Throughout my entire fifty-year career in PR, I constantly saw that the way we managed perceptions was a significant factor in our success and also the success of our clients.

The importance of perception management proved true for nations, politicians, companies, executives, religious leaders, doctors, lawyers, and even private individuals. I found it to be true as I lived and worked in New York, London, Brussels, Hong Kong, and elsewhere around the world. Perception is what counts anywhere and everywhere. But it is equally important to recognize that perceptions can differ dramatically from market to market.

What do Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Pope Benedict XVI and the Taliban all have in common? They need to create the perceptions in their key audiences that they feel benefit them the most. Some do it better than others and, as President Obama – especially – has found out, perceptions can change dramatically and very quickly. Think about the way the Barack Obama of 2008 was perceived, compared to the Barack Obama of 2011.

During my career, I have watched public relations change dramatically. In the course of this book, I will describe what it was like to be both a catalyst and an observer of these changes. First and foremost, the business has expanded dramatically, and the growth continues as I write these words. Public relations firms of all sizes have mushroomed around the world: there are more than two thousand in China alone. In-house PR executives have achieved a stature unimaginable when I started. Mobile phones, digital cameras and the Internet ensure that communications are instantaneous worldwide and have prompted the need for PR professionals to react immediately to events. Corporate Social Responsibility programmes, non-existent when I started, are not only necessary, but have become the norm. The digital revolution has created a whole new world of communications, and relationship marketing has emerged as Facebook and Twitter have become vital tools for today’s PR professional. Websites, of course, have become the key public face for many organizations, a face that must constantly be reviewed and changed when necessary. Many companies, unfortunately, do not understand this.

1 How I Got Started

Years before I joined Burson–Marsteller and later established offices throughout the world, I learned how important it is was to understand that people in different countries can differ dramatically in their attitudes and reactions to everyday events and situations. What we communicate and how we communicate has to be adjusted similarly if we are to be effective.

In 1955, I was serving as an information and education specialist in the US Army, stationed in Orléans, France. My responsibilities included giving a weekly lecture to the troops, based on Department of the Army pamphlets, covering subjects important to these peacetime troops, including how to behave while on leave abroad. These lectures were supposed to reflect the various different cultural attitudes influencing the natives’ perception of our soldiers and their presence in these countries.

I explained that when on leave in France the men should always wear civilian clothes, never a military uniform. Having a history of military invasions, the average Frenchman did not like the sight of foreign uniforms, even those belonging to allies. This advice was especially important for any soldiers hoping to meet up with local women. I told them that if they tried to pick up a girl in a bar while in uniform, it could lead to a brawl.

On the other hand, attitudes were very different in Germany. I strongly advised the men to wear their uniforms while on leave there, one that was spit and polished. This was ten years after the end of the Second World War, and the German people still had a great respect for discipline and authority; in this part of the world, a well-uniformed soldier would earn respect instantly.

And then there was England, a place I had not yet visited but where I was destined to live for more than forty years. The British, according to the information I was given to tell the troops, were a very private people by nature, particularly with strangers. I told the soldiers that they should seriously avoid any discussions about politics, religion and – especially – sex by all means. When I finally set foot in London for the first time and decided to visit the pubs for which the country was famous, I found that the army’s official word was dead wrong. I engaged in all sorts of interesting discussions with the locals on politics – and sex, too. Upon returning to base I seriously modified my lecture, except when I was being observed and graded by a senior officer. In those cases, I would keep to the official line when dealing with the British.

It was 1948, and it was time for me to attend a university. I selected the University of Missouri. At the time, Missouri housed the most important Journalism school in the US. The J–School had been founded in 1903, making it the world’s first Journalism school. Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper baron best known for the Pulitzer Prize that he later founded, was involved in its establishment. At the time, it was the only school that granted a Bachelor of Journalism degree.

I initially thought that I would like to build myself a career as a journalist, probably as a sports writer. Then I decided that I should be a creative writer, and later still an advertising executive, as that business needed people with writing skills, which I thought I possessed. But after my first few years in school taking general studies, I changed my mind. I decided that I would pursue a degree in Journalism after all but would major in Public Relations, a field still in its relative infancy. The reason was simply that I found the Public Relations courses particularly interesting because they underlined the importance of developing the right messages and presenting them in the best possible manner to...