If you haven’t read our President and resident Mommy Blogger thoughtful and engaging blog posts lately, you can check out some of them here:

October 4th - I am over the moon that I get to attend the World Business Forum as a featured blogger alongside an extremely serious group of digital big kids. Full Post

September 23rd - Time for another PR Mama guest post, and what the hey, let’s hear it for the boy…again. I had such a good time hosting PR Cog last time, I decided to invite another one of my favorite social media dads over to discuss balancing family and work life in this crazy business of ours. - Full Post

Stephanie Smirnov our President and official PR Mama brings us a great post about “How to Lose New Business (but not your soul)”.

She originally posted this on her blog

The previously mentioned new business hooplah unfortunately did not end well. This happens. Ego aside (I hate to lose), it was probably for the best given this particular client but nevertheless…I hate to lose. We got the news on a Saturday morning so I had all weekend and a bonus snow day to lick my wounds. And find comfort unexpectedly on the Starz channel, in a terrific documentary about Pixar.

I watched The Pixar Story through the lens of this new business failure, marvelling at how the studio succeeds again and again (sometimes against great odds) and gets back up again when they’re thrown a curveball.

Was amazed to learn that Toy Story 2 almost got trashed before John Lasseter and team stepped in and rescued it — essentially turning the whole production around and getting the film to market in eight months. Which is insane. I also am inspired to see that in fact, mastery and genius CAN be replicated in teams – Lasseter has done it (cf. Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton.) I am neither a master nor a genius but what I take away from this is a) you can get the crap kicked out of you and still come back with a big win and b) creativity and presentation “magic” must reside with more than one person on a team – and that the sum of a team is greater than its parts.

Speaking of crap-kicking, perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from our new biz miss was that you must never – EVER — go into a pitch being anything other than the agency you are. Do not hide your light under a bushel, as my mom used to say. Don’t apologize for anything — your size, your history, your client roster, your specialties. Be who you are, and you will win the right business.

And while it’s one thing to stretch and be courageous, it’s another thing to try to shoehorn yourself into the image of the agency you think the prospective client wants to see.

So. Who are we? We are mid-sized. Not a boutique, and not a big multi-office shop. We have a luxury heritage. An upmarket, style-informed sensibility informs everything we do, regardless of the category or distribution channel. We have a lot of big, iconic mass brands on our roster. Not niche brands, not cult brands. We do consumer PR really, REALLY well. We will not try to convince you that we do lobbying, investor relations or public affairs.

All of which is just fine. Great, in fact. We love our clients, and we love who we are. When we allow that to shine through, we tend to win new accounts. Good to remember this, and also very good to keep ego out of it because BOY is that not helpful. (Unless you’re an Oscar-winning Pixar director, maybe.)

Did you know that you can follow our president Stephanie Smirnov on Twitter? She can also be found posting up a storm over on PRMama.

Her latest post sums up our latest client win, enjoy!

From today’s edition of  O’Dwyer’s online newsletter (subscription required):  DEVRIES SUCKS UP HOOVER ACCOUNT.

Best headline announcing new business win ever.  Worrisome to imagine how that collection of words could have gone awry…but it didn’t!

I spend a great deal of time at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport which is just a hop, skip and a smelly cab ride away from the headquarters of P&G, our largest client. Like many of my colleagues, I have become intimately familiar with every nook and cranny of that airport while awaiting my fate at the hands of Delta, air traffic control, and Mother Nature – who can be counted on to kick up a nice blustery wind around the time I’m due to be winging my way home towards Newark Liberty airport – and Lord knows, we wouldn’t want to land a 757 in the middle of a little breeze. So when I’m not sorting and resorting the toiletries in my well-worn quart Ziploc bag, mindlessly deleting Blackberry spam, or gazing bleakly at the Departures monitors, I’m likely to be found spending money needlessly at my favorite airport haunt. I’m speaking of course of the Borders in Concourse B, the retail balm that soothes this weary road warrior’s soul.

This Borders cleverly caters to the interests of the captive business travelers lurching through Concourse B like so many ground-delayed undead by offering one of the best selections of business literature I’ve ever seen. Thanks to their well-edited offerings, I have learned to Blink, understand the Wisdom of Crowds, and gotten better at Organizing Genius. I’ve freaked for Freakonomics and tripped out over the Tipping Point. I’ve even attempted to condense my life into a Four Hour Work Week, but that’s not quite happening, especially when the average delay getting from Cincinnati to Newark is about, oh…four hours. Speaking of four hour work weeks, author Timothy Ferriss tells us we must detox from the barrage of information coming at us daily by delegating, outsourcing, and simply turning off the spigot: cancelling RSS feeds, ignoring emails (his book is a snappy read, by the way, as is his blog). But hey – I LOVE information. It’s part of my job, and that of my colleagues on the DeVries Strategy and Innovation team, to continually scour the on- and off-line worlds for what’s new and what’s next, and serve that up for the benefit of the account teams at this agency and the clients they serve. Information is our currency and it’s my personal addiction – and I don’t wanna go to rehab, no, no, no.

My current information drug of choice? Hands down — del.icio.us. Through the wonders of social bookmarking I can organize and tag all that glorious information to my heart’s content! I picture myself moving through the day in the gauzy embrace of my tag cloud – a floating Dewey Decimal system of my own creation that reflects the primary attributes and interests of many of my clients (beauty, self-expression, style, community, causes) alongside newer cloud bedfellows (beef, incontinence…two tags that come to think of it really should never be expressed in the same sentence.)

I may be a Web 2.0 Johnny-come-lately, but now that I’m here I have never been more energized or inspired by technology and how it’s enhancing professional life. I’ll never understand the vagaries of airport ground delays, but I can certainly use the latest Web 2.0 tools to collect, organize, share and shape information in ways that make the practice of public relations richer, more inspiring and frankly, more fun.

Stephanie Sage Smirnov, EVP Strategy & Innovation Group, DeVries Public Relations

So the much-anticipated follow-up to the now iconic Dove “Evolution” video has hit YouTube and undoubtedly, email inboxes everywhere. If you haven’t already seen the new “Onslaught” video, don’t worry—you will, it’s only a matter of time. But before I start venting, some disclosure: I run the beauty practice here at DeVries and count some of P&G’s largest beauty brands among my clients – P&G being, of course, one of Unilever’s arch rivals in the personal care space.

With that out of the way, let me be clear that I’m posting here not on behalf of any of our beauty clients, but as someone who’s watched the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty with great professional and personal interest since its inception. I am, after all, a woman who has been an avid consumer of beauty products for…well…let’s just say many years. And I’m a mother – albeit of a son – and like any other parent with a brain and a heart, I’m of course concerned about how we nurture the development of self-esteem and positive self-image in our children in this crazy, media-saturated culture.

Look, as a woman, how could I not admire a company standing for self-esteem? I’m all for loving yourself, flabby tush and all. And as a PR pro, it’s hard not to admire brands taking bold stands and investing in ideas that are first and foremost about building equity – not necessarily generating short-term sales bumps. I could handle the chicks in their underwear and the freckled girl on the billboard in Times Square and even the naked grannies. But Unilever, with “Onslaught,” you’ve gone too far. You know why? You’re accusing the beauty industry of crimes that your own brands have been – and currently are — perpetrating. You’ve been treading on thin ice from the get-go – I’m certainly not the first rocket scientist to point out that you were still hoping your celebratory underwear gals were JUST insecure enough about their cellulite to buy your firming cream, right? But how can you warn parents to “talk to their daughters before the beauty industry does” when other Unilever beauty brands are sending those messages, too?

Am I wrong? Check out the “Beauty and Style” page at the Unilever website right now to find out how YOU, imperfect reader, can get “Oscar-worthy hair” just like Nicole Kidman, Mischa Barton and – wait for it – Paris Hilton. And no, I’m not going to hyperlink you over there because I’m too cranky. Google Sunsilk or Ponds and you’ll see what I mean.

I’ve been trying to see the glass half full when it came to the Campaign for Real Beauty – seeing its successes as a galvanizing inspiration for women everywhere and even for PR professionals frustrated with their own inability to sell similarly big, risk-taking campaigns to their clients. But it’s tough to see anything as half full when the only glass I can see right now is the glass of the house from which Unilever has lobbed this particular round of ammo.

Stephanie Sage Smirnov
EVP Beauty, Health & Wellness Division

When is work more than a job? When is a job more than a career? For me, it is when I go to sleep at night knowing that I directly impacted another woman’s life in a positive way.

In the past when someone asked my husband, “What does your wife do?” he usually responded with, “she sells Pantene.” It made it sound as if I was on some street corner hawking shampoos, conditioners and light detangling mist sprays!

However, in the last year something had changed. I went from being a “shampoo-seller” to a catalyst for change. I owe all of it to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths campaign. Last year we launched Pantene Beautiful Lengths, Pantene’s first cause-related campaign that encourages people to donate their hair to create real-hair wigs for women suffering hair loss from cancer treatment.

As we enter into the second year of this campaign, we recently received some exciting news. Two-time Academy Award-winner, Hilary Swank has committed to “grow the distance” and become our celebrity ambassador for the campaign. This coming fall Hilary will cut and donate her own ponytail and help us to continue to spread the word about the campaign.

I had the opportunity to meet Hilary a few weeks ago in Los Angeles during the filming of the new print Public Service Announcement. While meeting a celebrity of her caliber is always exciting, I was really struck by how down-to-earth she was and how excited she was to be a part of the campaign. She kept saying that being a celebrity is a way for her to raise awareness for causes she feels passionate about. We are so fortunate to have her, she is everything you would want in a celebrity spokesperson: hard-working, friendly, and devoted. Being a pleasure to work with and be around is also an added bonus.

Each of us on the Pantene team is looking forward to another year of success. Our goal is to collect one million inches of hair in the next twelve months. Lofty goal? Yes, but if this campaign has taught me anything it is to expect the unexpected from people, they will continue to surprise you with their generosity and selfless acts of courage.

I have experienced the full range of emotions during this past year on the campaign, and it is a true honor to come to work each day and be a part it. A renowned life coach once said, “Life is too short to spend toiling at a job that pays the bills but doesn’t feed your spirit.” I couldn’t agree more.

Jennifer Celata, Media Relations Manager, DeVries Public Relations

Have been thinking a lot about strategy lately. More than usual, I should say – crafting PR strategies for clients is a lot of what I do all day, after all. But I’ve been wondering if we haven’t elevated strategic ability to such an exalted place on the hierarchy of PR skills that we’re making it harder and harder to pass on to our junior colleagues – as if the ability to conceive of and articulate a strategy is bestowed by an act of divine intervention or by drinking the blood of a unicorn (geek out with me, friends of Potter). Add to this the recent PR blog debates about inverting pyramidal staffing structures to right-size senior (i.e., strategic) involvement in our client’s business (See earlier post Topsy Turvy) and I find myself with some Deep Thoughts to share…

Deep Thought #1: So when did “strategic” become shorthand for “senior”? Yes, the odds that a account supervisor can more effectively advise a client than a senior vice-president with 15+ years in the business are slim. But haven’t we all known senior account people who couldn’t strategize their way out of a paper bag, despite lofty titles and multi-page resumes? And haven’t we all known mid-level account staffers who consistently demonstrate great judgement and the ability to persuasively and confidently articulate a point of view when challenged or queried by a client? So other than experience and tenure, what makes one PR person more “strategic” than another? Which leads me to…

Deep Thought #2: Tell me, please – anyone – how do you “teach” strategy? Since nothing helps me out of a conceptual pickle better than a visit to the dictionary (yes, I was the geeky kid who read them for fun), thought I’d turn to basic etymology for inspiration. Origin of the word is Greek (stratēgia, or generalship), original definition of the word was military in nature (thanks, Merriam-Webster) Interestingly, the military definitions invariably lead with “the science and art of …” I’m a right-brain type so forgive me, but I love the idea of strategy as art. Hey, I’ve gushed over brilliant PR strategies with the same enthusiasm I’d lavish on a gorgeous painting or well-made Mission sideboard — even the strategies I had nothing to do with (Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, I’m talking to you…damn you.)

Deep Thought #3: In addition to dictionary reading, I also geek out over medieval history, particularly art history (is there anything more awe-inspiring than a Gothic cathedral? Oh, the joy.) So I’m thinking, what if we senior strategic types thought of ourselves as masters in a medieval craft guild (that’s different from a merchant guild…but you already knew that) – only, instead of producing stained glass or stone gargoyles, we crank out exquisitely-crafted PR strategies. And what if we initiated our junior staffers into the mysteries of strategy-craft with as much rigor, discipline and time investment as the guild master shepherding the progression of an apprentice or journeyman?

Now, unlike medieval guilds, we wouldn’t charge our “apprentices” any dues (though that’s interesting idea…the Guild of Smirnov coffers could use a little replenishing right about now…but I digress). However, the guild system does offer some useful lessons:

Lesson #1: Let them learn by doing. Medieval apprentices worked towards journeyman status by observing the master and assisting in the practice of the craft, sometimes for as long as seven years (they were also forbidden to marry during that period and usually slept in cramped attic quarters in the master’s home, but that’s beside the point.) Key here is, they were doing. Practicing. How many times do we senior big brain types go behind closed doors during program development time or while we’re crashing a new biz presentation to “figure out the strategy” – without inviting the juniors in to observe, contribute to and learn from the process? Not such a big brain move.

Lesson #2: Let them explore. After attaining journeyman status, the former apprentice was booted out of his master’s workshop to wander the countryside as a day laborer, honing his skills and picking up additional training during short-term contract work for other masters. We can only benefit from letting our junior and mid-level staffers out of the pitching and process trenches on a more regular basis to expose them to training and inspiration from inside and outside the agency’s four walls – whether that means attending the right industry conferences, being invited to a mentoring breakfast with an agency MD or EVP, doing a job swap for a week in another part of the agency to benefit from some cross-practice training, even shadowing a junior client (assuming the relationship is rock solid and it’s not a burden to the client) to better understand their day-to-day challenges and business culture.

Lesson #3: Let them fail. The medieval journeyman could not be elevated to master rank before producing his own masterpiece – on his own time (really tricky when every day but Sunday was a sunup-to-sundown kinda day), with his own tools, on his own dime (or denarius or farthing or groot or whatever…) Then and only then was he admitted to the inner sanctum of masters and permitted to operate his own workshop. How many of us have delegated a strategic writing assignment to a promising account team member, only to yank it back because deadlines were approaching and we hadn’t allowed enough time for the staffer to try, fail, get constructive feedback, try again. Like the journeyman laboring over his first masterpiece, the process takes time, hard labor (in our case, it’s intellectual elbow grease), and undoubtedly, some failures. But as a mentor told me once, it’s okay to let a subordinate fail – just never in front of the client.

So if the elusive art of strategy is to be taught properly to the next generation of account leaders, it’s up to us to create the workshop – the managerial buffer zone — in which those staffers can observe, explore, try, fail, and try again. And – in due time — produce the strategic masterpiece that wins the new business or gives the existing client a whole new take on a serious business challenge.

The Guild of Smirnov is accepting apprentice applicants now, by the way. It’ll only cost you 500 groots and you’ll be happy to know that my attic is air-conditioned.

Stephanie Sage Smirnov
EVP Beauty, Health & Wellness Division