What are you doing here?
I had just started a conversation with a fellow participant at Story Movements, a two-day gathering convened by the Center for Media and Social Impact (CMSI). Part of the American University School of Communication and funded primarily by the MacArthur Foundation, CMSI is an “innovation incubator” and research center that aims to create, study and showcase media for social impact.
The woman, a producer and media consultant, had just described her fascinating documentary project focusing on dance as a connector between people and the universe.
When she asked me about my work, I told her I worked for a public relations agency based in the New York City area. Her brow furrowed and she looked at me, perplexed.
Why are you here?
I couldn’t help but smile. To paraphrase a line from one of my favorite movies, Moonstruck, what people don’t know about PR is a lot.
Over the next two days, I became immersed in a thought-provoking, creative environment. Presenter after presenter stirred my emotions with descriptions of the brilliant ways they applied their unique genius to raise awareness and ignite action on criminal justice reform, transgender people, mass incarceration, immigration, police brutality and many more daunting social issues.
I was moved to tears listening to their stories: investigative reporter Curt Guyette’s exposure of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan; creative director Jenny Nicholson’s harnessing of her own poverty-stricken childhood to create Spent, an app that enables users to virtually experience 30 days on the brink of homelessness; writer and human rights activist Jamie Kalven’s relentless quest for the truth about systemic police abuses on Chicago’s Southside; and more than a dozen others.
So, what was I doing there? The light bulb switched on for me when I asked myself the question, “What am I advocating for on behalf of my clients?”
I realized I can apply the conference’s four themes to inform the communications strategy for every one of my clients:
- Represent: Frame (or reframe) the narrative
- Expose: Reveal the need
- Empathize: Help people see themselves in the “other”
- Participate: Move people to take action
On the last day, we were grouped together and tasked with developing our own hypothetical media tool to communicate about immigration reform and then pitching it. Our group’s idea was a series of short, shareable videos introduced by storyteller-extraordinaire Lin-Manuel Miranda (who else?) that would tell the immigrant’s story to millennials, building empathy by putting them in the shoes of the “other”. The underlying theme was, “My story is your story, too.”
That notion resonates deeply for me. As a PR professional, I’m a storyteller. I believe that effective storytelling in PR simply highlights the point of intersection between what a company or organization offers and what the audience needs. Once we make that connection for the audience, the story can become their own.