I was catching up with an old friend recently; in between updates on our respective personal lives in New York (me) and London (her), Judy mentioned to me that she was really curious about my daily work routine. She wanted to better understand what exactly it was that filled my days as a PR agency professional. Judy’s question reminded me that the role of public relations in the marketing mix is frequently misunderstood (or not understood at all), and I appreciated the invitation to pull back the curtain on some of the diverse and delightful tasks that make up my Monday to Friday life.

PR practitioners, after all, aren’t easily defined: we lack any widely-understood “cultural shorthand” to describe our work that such professionals as doctors, teachers, politicians, and fire fighters can revert to (although if I was feeling cheeky, I’d argue our profession bears remarkable similarities to each of those trades). I always struggle to find an easy way “in” to describe the scope of what it is that I actually do. I have the pleasure of working with several clients in the Procter & Gamble Beauty division, and of course these accounts are top-of-mind for me when I think about how to transcribe my typical day.

There’s a phrase currently in vogue at P&G that I keep coming back to: “bringing the outside in”. It’s a mandate shared by many functions, but in its purest sense (i.e. being open to and aware of the world outside, and bringing that world into marketing planning in a strategic, actionable way), I’d be so bold as to say it’s probably most relevant to the function of PR in the marketing mix. Not to mention it’s frequently the most fulfilling – and fun.

On any given day, my team is busy with competitive research, trendspotting, conversations with journalists, blog reading, and industry networking on behalf of our clients. One of my favorite recent days involved taking a group of senior P&G Beauty executives on a “retail inspiration” tour of Manhattan (yes Mom, some days I do get paid to go shopping). Just today, my daily reading produced an article that was a perfect postscript to send my Pantene clients after spending yesterday with them in Chicago brainstorming some exciting new ideas for our Pantene Beautiful Lengths cause marketing program.

When “bringing the outside in” becomes your daily mantra, it begins to feel as though almost any activity can be grist for the beauty inspiration mill. Listening to my favorite online radio station introduced me to a singer named Tristan Prettyman — who turned out to be the perfect artist to entertain editor guests when I booked her to play at our Noxzema product launch event last fall. My colleague Laura’s passion for Bikram yoga opened the door to a great influencer pre-seeding opportunity for a client’s new beauty product scheduled to hit stores next year. Another colleague’s Monopoly prowess helped take a spark of an idea I had for Sephora into the perfect present for beauty junkies everywhere last Christmas.

In fact, it’s hard for me to think of another profession that encourages such passionate curiosity and rampant cultural consumption: it’s practically an order to get outside. (And yes, occasionally, to go shopping.)

Amber Meredith
Vice President of Pantene, DeVries Public Relations

Photo uploaded by GinArt

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 11:51 am and is filed under Pantene Beautiful Lengths, Procter & Gamble, Stephanie Sage Smirnov, DeVries Public Relations, Jim Allman, Pantene, Jon Cronin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.