Public Relations diversity conversation with Bryan R Adams of FAB Communications in The Network Journal

1. W
hen Terrie Williams closed
her public relations firm in
September, the industry lost
one of the most successful
Black-owned agencies and a seminal
professional.
Founded in New York in 1988, The
Terrie Williams Agency boasted a clien-
tele of some of the biggest names in
entertainment, sports, business and pol-
itics. Williams, who now plans to focus
on personal wellness, family, travel and
the next chapter of her life, was the first
person of color honored with the Vernon
C. Schranz Distinguished Lectureship
in Public Relations at Ball State
University in Indiana, considered one of
the industry’s most preeminent honors.
She was the recipient of The New York
Women in Communications Matrix
Award in Public Relations, the first and
only woman of color to be so honored in
the award’s 30-year history.
The closure of her agency comes as
the public relations industry remains
mired in a human resources conundrum,
by its own admission hiring and retain-
ing far too few people of color, notably
in high-ranking positions.
“I’m concerned that the PR profes-
sion and [the Public Relations Society
of America] aren’t advancing fast
enough … At our National Assembly in
October, there was one Black person in
a room of perhaps 250 delegates —
Andrew McCaskill — and far too few
others representing racial and ethnic
minorities,” Anthony D’Angelo, PRSA’s
national chair, complained in a February
post on the organization’s website.
Brad MacAfee, CEO of Porter
Novelli, echoed those sentiments in a
report on diversity in the profession
authored by Angela Chitkara, PR track
director in the Branding + Integrated
Communications program at The City
College of New York “One of the
biggest challenges we have,” he says,
“are in terms of the recruitment of
minorities, diversity, and ethnicity at
more senior levels.” Porter Novelli
ranks 17th on The Holmes Report’s
2017 list of the world’s Top 250 PR
agencies.
According to the federal govern-
ment’s Bureau of Labor Statistics,
African-Americans accounted for just
8.3 percent of the
country’s PR
industry as of
January this year,
with whites
accounting for
87.9 percent,
H i s p a n i c -
Americans 5.7 per-
cent, and Asian-Americans 2.6 percent.
Add related services like advertising,
marketing and communications, Blacks
were 5.8 percent of the combined sector,
with 84.6 percent of it white. These per-
centages persist as the United States
continues its shift to a “minority white”
nation. Ear-lier this year, the U.S.
Census Bureau projected that
Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians,
Native Americans and multiracial indi-
viduals will comprise 50.2 percent of
the population in 2045.
Not there yet
In a mini-documentary released by
PRWeek during Black History Month
this year, McCaskill, senior vice presi-
dent for global communications and
multicultural marketing at Nielsen,
shared the frustration of being Black at
senior levels in PR. “There were so
many times when I was the first or the
only [Black] in the room. The only or
the first in the room in 2017 is a tough
pill to swallow,” he said.
Efforts do exist on the part of agen-
cies, corporations and industry groups
to make things more palatable. (See
“Diversity A-
List” on page
22.) PRSA, for
example, has
made diversity
and inclusion a
priority within
its three-year
strategic plan. Its
f o u n d a t i o n ,
whose core mis-
sion is advancing
D&I, funds
scholarships to
attract and pro-
mote candidates
of diverse back-
grounds.
Diversity advo-
cates contend that current efforts are not
enough. “If the goal of the PR industry
is to authentically reflect the profoundly
diverse ‘general market,’ we have quite
a way to go. As an industry, we are com-
ing into a stark and deeply humbling
realization of how much work will be
required to assemble and enable a ‘bal-
anced’ collection of equally valued per-
spectives,” says Matthew Neale, CEO of
PublicRelations
Its internal war over senior diverse talent
By Rosalind McLymont
INDUSTRY FOCUS
10 The Network Journal • Fall 2018 • www.tnj.com
“It’s not a numbers game.
It’s a culture game.”
— Tracey Wood Mendelsohn, founder
and president of the Black Public
Relations Society New York.
Source: National Black Public Relations Society, www.nbpr.org

2. Golin, one of the world’s Top 10 PR
agencies. “If we want increased and sus-
tained diversity for our industry, the
focus has to shift to the consistent appli-
cation of inclusive and equitable values,
policies and business practices across
key corporate and industry systems. At
this point, it is safe to say that, collec-
tively, we aren’t there yet.”
Neale explains why in his lengthy
email to The Network Journal: “The
industry has a complex set of ecosys-
tems. One of those ecosystems is the
agency personnel and career progres-
sion model. Many PR professionals
have dedicated their entire careers to a
single agency, waiting in line with the
hope and expectation of being awarded
the top spot. This tradition makes some
sense, given the industry’s long business
cycles and dependence on deep, long-
term client/agency relationships.
However, a crippling side effect of this
industry tradition is that it exacerbates
the historical biases and social norms
that have kept entire groups, people of
color, low-income, LGBTQ-plus,
underrepresented in public relations.”
Tracey Wood Mendelsohn, founder
and president of the Black Public
Relations Society New York, finds fault
with agencies and corporations alike.
“There are cultural deficits on the
agency side,” she said in an interview
with TNJ. “There’s limited investment,
lack of space being made for people to
be able to be promoted, salary limita-
tions and that kind of thing that leads a
good number of people to leave — if
they can get in the door in the first
place. That’s true of the corporations,
too, in terms of their communications
departments.”
Too much emphasis is placed on
demonstrating diversity with numbers,
some argue. “When you scratch the sur-
face of those figures and ask what roles
they have, what turns up are interns,
assistants who are not even PR people.
They’re counting assistants to the direc-
tors,” says Claudine Moore, a British-
born and -raised global PR and commu-
nications expert who established C.
Moore Media, in New York. The firm’s
client roster spans the United States,
Britain, Africa and the Caribbean.
“It’s not a numbers game. It’s a cul-
ture game,” Wood Mendelsohn insists.
“If you’re talking about a lack of diver-
sity, to me that’s bias, conscious or
unconscious. At the other end of the
spectrum is indifference or discrimina-
tion. It’s incumbent on the agencies to
reevaluate their cultures and really make
room and overcome their own biases.
Statements like ‘Black people don’t
write well’ and ‘the Latinos don’t speak
English well enough’ are not true.
People are talented, educated and
skilled. It’s time for the conversation to
move past what we need to do to
demonstrate. There needs to be equity in
opportunity.”
The Three Percent Movement, which
seeks to raise the number of creative
directors in advertising who are female
and people of color to 50 percent from 3
percent seven years ago, reports that 55
percent of agencies offer
diversity/unconscious bias training, but
many of these trainings occur only a few
times a year and there is little or no
other programming to support diversity.
Where is “there?”
In her study “#PRDiversity: The
Struggle is Real. Meeting Business
Objectives With A 2020 Mindset,”
Chitkara found no consensus on the
meaning of diversity and inclusion
among the 18 CEOs of global PR firms
she interviewed. “Their thinking about
hiring is far from uniform. Some go so
far as to say that they do give prefer-
ences to underrepresented groups.
Some say that they would find this risky
to do for more senior positions. Some
acknowledge that numerical goals are a
baseline; others find numerical goals to
be unhelpful; and others find them
Bryan R. Adams,
founder/director of
publicity, FAB
Communications Inc.
Tracey Wood Mendelsohn (second from left), president and CEO, Black Public Relations Society-
New York (BPRS-NY), with board members, l. to r., Nicholas Charles, veteran journalist, digital
media expert; Clarissa Moses, executive, National Urban League; Marcus Braham, senior media
relations strategist, M Booth.
www.tnj.com • Fall 2018 • The Network Journal 11

3. INDUSTRY FOCUS
12 The Network Journal • Fall 2018 • www.tnj.com
insufficient to ensuring an inclusive
environment,” she summarized.
In a true racially diverse PR industry,
“Black PR professionals could repre-
sent white clients and Asian clients and
Asian clients could represent Black
clients or white clients. There’s no color
barrier in terms of being able to have
your clientele. That’s first and foremost
when it comes to diversity — the ability
to represent all colors of the spectrum,
all types as women, the disabled, and
vice versa,” Bryan R. Adams, co-
founder of publicity and media strategy
specialists of FAB Communications
Inc., told TNJ.
Adams, who is Black and whose
company was founded in 1996, counts
Blacks and whites among his clients.
“There never has been an issue for me
when it comes to Black and white
clients,” he says. “It depends on who the
PR person is really targeting. If I don’t
target Asian people, then I can’t com-
plain if they don’t hire me. But if I tar-
get them and they don’t hire me because
of my skin color, then that’s a diversity
problem. I know there are challenges
when you’re a business person of color
trying to mainstream it. I have found,
especially with the types of clients I’ve
been dealing with over the last dozen
years, if I network to the market I want,
I have a great shot at landing clients I
have never had before, who don’t look
like me.”
For Moore, the ideal racially diverse
PR industry means “more people of
color and women in leadership posi-
tions. That’s what it would look like.”
Although she once held a senior posi-
tion at a top PR agency, Moore, who
also is Black, questions the industry’s
commitment to diversity. “I’ve been in
PR in America since the early 2000s and
it hasn’t changed. I genuinely think they
are not dedicated to diversity on the
agency side,” she states. “You can have
all the experience they need and more;
you can have fifteen on a scale of one to
ten in terms of qualification, then you
see the person they’re hiring and they
don’t even have two on that scale. It’s
like they will try every excuse not to
hire a senior person of color.”
Golin’s Neale sees inclusion and
equity as necessary components of a
truly diverse industry. “At Golin, diver-
sity refers to a balanced collection of
equally valued perspectives and inclu-
sion refers to intentionally seeking out
and enabling those perspectives for
impact on our business,” he explains.
“Inclusion and equity are required to
fully activate diversity. Without the
other two, diversity becomes muted and
not sustainable. The combination of all
three brings a potency and authenticity
to public relations.”
On the advertising side, says Wood
Mendelsohn, there would be people of
color in decision-making roles to pre-
vent gaffes like Pepsi’s 2017 commercial
in which white reality TV star Kendall
Jenner joins a Black Lives Matter march
and defuses tension by handing a Pepsi
to a white police officer. “Not only was
it patronizing, but it also exploited an
iconic photograph of the social justice
movement,” she asserts.
Pressing change
Changing ethnic and age demo-
graphics are exerting tremendous pres-
sure on the PR industry to become more
racially diverse in numbers, culture and
equity of opportunity that yields higher
retention rates. The pushback that Black
talent cannot be found, for example, is
hogwash, experts say.
“The young professionals I
encounter in the agencies are super-
knowledgeable, superfocused, and
ready to make the most of it them-
selves. Millennials are very determined
and don’t really accept the notion of
barriers. But when they hit those walls
they are prepared to walk,” Wood
Mendelsohn says.
Clients are squeezing their agencies
hard. A case in point involves Hewlett
Packard and Edelman, the world’s fore-
most public relations firm, which han-
dles HP’s $14 million product and
communications work. As widely
reported, last September, after HP con-
ducted a one-year media audit of its
agency partners, then-CEO Antonio
Lucio publicly admonished Edelman
for lacking racial diversity and inclu-
sion. The following month, Edelman
appointed a Black woman — industry,
White House and government veteran
Lisa Osborne Ross — president of its
Washington, D.C., office.
“I’m pleased that clients are making
the agency side really step up,” Moore
says.
Chitkara writes that most of the
CEOs she interviewed agree diversity
and inclusion is a business impera-
tive tied to meeting client expecta-
tions for more diversity on their
accounts in order to reflect the
changing demographics of their mul-
ticultural market and to fuel creativi-
ty and diversity of thought in their
campaigns. Golin’s actions affirm
that finding.
“To better meet the needs of its
clients, Golin is focused on assem-
bling and retaining a team “that
Claudine Moore, founder, C. Moore Media

4. authentically reflects the profoundly
diverse marketplace of the coming
decades,” Neale reveals.
Reaching true racial diversity in pub-
lic relations requires dismantling a stub-
born, age-old human resources ecosys-
tem. The industry won’t get there with-
out agencywide resolve. “Until agencies
hold their managers accountable for
diversity, you’re never going to get that
issue solved,” McCaskill says. TNJ Matthew Neale, CEO, Golin
Clients. “Get to know your client or clients. Build a relationship
with them because you represent that client’s image, and you
need to know how best you can share their story. Each client is
different; each event requires different skills. You might not share
the same political views or values as the client, but remember:
you are doing a service for this company or this person. It is
important to make connections with local writers, artists, busi-
nesses, and your local area politicians (if some of your client
bases involve people involved in politics or policy).” — Barfield
“You have to work a lot faster. You always have to
have a preparedness strategy ready — not just ready for a
crisis, but also for a multitude of scenarios, even for some-
thing happening in your industry. You have to respond to
quickly. Your strategy has to be in place more than ever
before.” — Moore
Competition. “There are a lot of practitioners out there, so
there’s definitely that kind of competition. The media land-
scape shifts a lot, so try to stay not only on top of the technol-
ogy but also on top of what media outlets will be more impor-
tant for your client year to year…You have to position yourself
as “I am the one who can do it for you rather than the others
you are interviewing.’” — Adams
Networking. “As business people we have to know how to
network, to get uncomfortable where everybody doesn’t look
like you. Charm them; if you’ve got the talent and skills and
you meet the right people, you will get the opportunity. Some
places will be harder than others; there are some industries
that are not going to like what you look like because that’s
how it is.” — Adams
Relationships. “The most significant aspect of what we do
in, our industry, is building relationships between people and
communicating with each other. The next generation of PR
representatives should always remember the “Relations” in
Public Relations. This isn’t a virtual relationship alone, it needs
to be a true connecting with the client, it is that “thank you”
note, it’s the acknowledgment that we are people, not just an
algorithm.” — Barfield
Technology/Social media. “You’re always doing a crash
course on what the new social media tools are, what the tradi-
tional outlets are doing as they change.” — Adams
“Use technology responsibly, but don’t rely solely on it
for facts. It’s important to be able to send a press release to
Facebook or get “likes” on Instagram, but the old school fol-
low-up by telephone and in person, meetings can never be
replaced. Some of the traditional ways of communicating with
each other shouldn’t be taken for granted.” — Barfield
“We are living in a world of hyper connectivity.
Now you’re working in a 24-hour news cycle. You have to use
technology to help keep you informed — beyond Google Alert
— of what’s happening in your industry. Hyperconnectivity
becomes part of communications as well.” — Moore
— Rosalind McLymont
Succeeding in PR
Bryan R. Adams, FAB Communications Inc.; Pauline Barfield, Barfield Public Relations Inc.; and Claudine Moore,
C. Moore Media, offer the following tips to help PR entrepreneurs succeed in the current industry environment.
www.tnj.com • Fall 2018 • The Network Journal 13