Retro television sits on table

Pop Culture Incorporated: PR on TV

If there was ever a career rep­re­sent­ed on TV that needs some PR, it’s PR.

The small screen is over­flow­ing with cops, doc­tors and lawyers. And espe­cial­ly dur­ing many cur­rent PR prac­ti­tion­ers’ for­ma­tive years – in the 70s, 80s, and 90s – sit-coms and dra­mas fea­tured a vari­ety of well-defined careers for all sorts of icon­ic char­ac­ters: Mike Brady was an archi­tect. Lav­erne & Shirley worked at a brew­ery. Bob Newhart was a psy­chol­o­gist. But it’s tough to put a pos­i­tive spin on the sit­u­a­tion for PR pro­fes­sion­als, since it was almost nonexistent.

As our PR agency, Bell­mont Part­ners, cel­e­brates its 25th year, we’re look­ing back at some of the pop cul­ture influ­ences that got us inter­est­ed in pur­su­ing a career in pub­lic rela­tions in the first place. Spoil­er alert: Fic­tion­al PR role mod­els are few and far between. In an infor­mal poll among PR pros, not a sin­gle one cit­ed a pop-cul­ture rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the indus­try as direct­ly influ­enc­ing their career path.

And for good rea­son. If you watched “Sex and the City” you’d be for­giv­en if you assumed PR was all cock­tail par­ties and back-room deals. New York pub­li­cist Saman­tha Jones had a thriv­ing PR career in the 90s dram­e­dy, but I don’t ever recall see­ing her write a word. Instead of spend­ing hours por­ing over a Bacon’s media guide to find just the right edi­tor to pitch at the Oma­ha World-Her­ald or assem­bling a clip report, she went to brunch with her three friends and made sure they were on the guest list for some of the most glam­orous par­ties in town.

And were you even aware that Jamie Buch­man from “Mad About You” worked in PR? Appar­ent­ly, she start­ed as a PR exec­u­tive at a New York agency, then ran her own agency and ulti­mate­ly worked for City Hall. Even though I watched it through­out most of its sev­en-year run, I’m hav­ing a tough time recall­ing more than a few plot­lines that had to do with PR. Maybe she should have issued a press release.

Through­out the decades, our indus­try like­ly got the high­est-pro­file rep­re­sen­ta­tion from polit­i­cal PR. And why wouldn’t it? Pol­i­tics affords a dra­ma-rich, high-stakes back­drop for the lives of Wash­ing­ton movers and shak­ers like Olivia Pope and her cri­sis-man­age­ment firm in “Scan­dal” or White House Press Sec­re­tary CJ Cregg from “The West Wing.” Enter­tain­ing, sure, but it didn’t exact­ly chart a course for where the major­i­ty of us land­ed: at an agency, cor­po­ra­tion, non­prof­it or solo.

There’s no big­ger argu­ment for the lack of PR rep­re­sen­ta­tion than the fact that one of the fun­ni­est, most accu­rate PR-agency depic­tions was prob­a­bly Com­e­dy Central’s rel­a­tive­ly less­er-known “Kroll Show.” It fea­tured a recur­ring seg­ment about two women – both named Liz – who run a PR agency called Pub­LIZ­ity. (“It’s based off our names.”) Hilar­i­ous and, in all hon­esty, some­times a lit­tle bit too on point.

So few accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tions of PR on TV, and yet mil­lions of us chose this career path. What was it, then, that actu­al­ly did play a role in piquing our col­lec­tive inter­est in com­mu­ni­ca­tions? Five words: Mary Richards and Mad Men. I’d argue that jour­nal­ism and adver­tis­ing – plen­ti­ful on TV, both – played a major role for many of us.

In my next Pop Cul­ture Incor­po­rat­ed post I’ll be look­ing at how fic­tion­al ver­sions of the adver­tis­ing and news busi­ness­es sparked a gen­er­a­tion of communicators.

Leave a Reply

Trade Shows are Back! Three Ways to Maximize your Trade Show Presence
March 22, 2023
Five women stand together on a stage
Seven Takeaways from the 2023 Explore Minnesota Tourism Conference
March 16, 2023
Graphic of three headshots in circle frames
Bellmont Partners Promotes Three Team Members to Support Continued Growth
March 10, 2023
Reporters listen to the governor speak at a ceremonial bill signing
Five Ways to Break Down Communications Barriers and Champion Change at the Capitol
March 6, 2023
Two women sit talking
Q&A With Bellmont Partners’ New Project Manager, Gretchen Sitzer
January 31, 2023
Going Green Earns Gold
January 25, 2023

Categories