David R. Drobis
Chairman Emeritus, Ketchum
September 22, 2008

In a Facebook World, Face-to-Face is Still Important

To download a printable version of this speech, click here.

Thank you, Marilyn, for that nice introduction. It reminded me of why I've always loved this profession- nearly every moment was challenging, stimulating and often great fun.

It's a tremendous honor to have been chosen to join the Arthur W. Page Society Hall of Fame. And as I look around and see so many friends, I feel doubly honored. My career in public relations- and much of my life- has been shaped by many of you.

I thank the Board of Trustees, and I'd also like to acknowledge the other members of the Hall of Fame. Many of them have been role models and sources of inspiration.

I also thank my family and especially my wife, Bobbi, whose spirit- with great wisdom and guidance- has been perched on my shoulder for more than 45 years, pushing and prodding to make sure I do the right thing. Love is the one constant that moves us ahead. Thank you, Bobbi.
Receiving this honor is thrilling and daunting. I'm no longer as immersed in public relations, so the past six weeks- since I learned I would receive this award- has seemed like an out-of-body experience. My life has moved into a much different sphere and gear. In fact, I've finally, after several years, learned to write "retired" without cringing on all kinds of forms. And last winter I even began telling people on ski lifts I lived in Florida, instead of New York.

When you're told you're getting this award and the magnitude of it sinks in, you start to reflect on all of the people and events that got you here. And then you think about giving this speech to many of you and you think about how you're going to be meaningful.

I started by going to past speeches on the Page Web site and immediately read Steve Harris', in which he counsels not to read past speeches. Actually, I'd just like to read Steve's remarks today because I liked everything he said last year; or Bill Nielsen's of several years ago because he has such great perspective on the importance of public relations in the corporation; or Jim Murphy's because of his passion for our profession and its importance in society.

Marilyn Laurie's brought tears to my eyes when I heard it and again when I read it. Marilyn has great wisdom and humor and you see it in her marvelous anecdotes.

But I quickly realized I have to do my own thing. So, I gave a lot of thought to my career and our industry over the last four decades. And I landed on one prevailing theme: relationships.

Any success I've had I credit to the relationships I have with clients and colleagues and to relationships I've helped build for clients with their stakeholders.

A lot has changed about the ways relationships are started and maintained. Today, professionals meet and network through LinkedIn, Spoke and other Web sites. Whole public relations campaigns are conducted online.

Technology has been a great boon to our industry. But I think it's worth noting that even in this Facebook world, face-to-face is still important.

As I talk today, I'll first share with you some highlights of my career path and how I got here and then talk about some of the ways public relations has evolved. And before I end, I'd like to share a few life lessons on successfully retiring.

My path to this podium and my career- like many of yours- was both serendipitous and the result of good planning. As an undergrad focused on a career in psychology, I took a test in my senior year to determine my strengths and interests. I scored in the bottom percentile in psychology. So my psych professor and adviser suggested I look at journalism or something called "public relations," in which I scored in the top percentile.

After some investigation, public relations did sound interesting, so off I went to American University in Washington. And I loved it there- the professors, the internships, the case studies. It was where I learned my favorite definition of public relations. My favorite because it was so simple: "Do the right thing for all your constituencies and then make sure they know about it." It was from a textbook co-authored by Scott Cutlip who, incidentally, was the third person to receive this award 21 years ago. I met Mr. Cutlip at our meeting in San Diego several years ago. And it's great to be in his company.

After AU and a few jobs in Washington, I went to a firm called Ketchum, MacLeod and Grove by answering an ad in Ad Age that said nothing about the job being in Pittsburgh. But I was eventually dazzled by the big skyscrapers and by being in the then-largest corporate headquarters city outside of New York. I was hired to work on the Scott Paper business, which Ketchum lost the day I arrived. Fortunately, I was too naïve to be concerned. It was my first lesson in the agency business.

Ketchum then put me on a group of industrial accounts, but I wasn't real happy writing about widgets. So I lobbied to work in the corporate and consumer practices, where I handled the speaking schedule and eventually wrote speeches for legendary H.J. Heinz CEO Tony O'Reilly. I spent two weeks in Houston for the splashdown of Apollo 11 because our client Stouffer's fed the astronauts returning from our first moon landing. I really liked being in public relations. It was so interesting and it was involving.

When Ketchum opened a San Francisco office in the early '70s, I asked to leave the hills of Pittsburgh for the more spectacular ones in San Francisco. I spent the next decade there as San Francisco evolved from its agricultural economy to the technology-powerhouse it is today.

In the early '80s Ketchum moved the public relations headquarters from Pittsburgh to New York and I didn't want to miss that. So we gave up magnificent San Francisco for what I thought of as the "big time." My daughter, Melissa, and son, Craig, still talk about the dinner during which they were told they were leaving California as one of the worst nights of their lives. Not surprisingly, both live in California today.

With hindsight, I think about how naïve we were, as well as how smart, to even think about planting the Ketchum flag in a city that already had a lot of big flags.

But, to me, the magnitude and intensity of New York were amazing. In San Francisco, there were two or three issues a week. In New York, there were two or three an hour. I loved New York because of the many world-class corporate clients it attracted. And because of the people, who were creative, smart and full of energy. In the '80s and '90s, our profession was also becoming a force around the world- Paris and Munich and Sao Paulo and Beijing. It was great to be a part of our business as it was flourishing and becoming more relevant.

My appreciation for the Arthur W. Page Society comes here. There are so many reasons my career and life benefited from our Society- starting with the relationships I have with so many of you, along with your spouses and partners. Some of you I know well- others, casually, through brief conversations at cocktail parties and meeting "breaks."

In almost every face-to-face contact, you can learn something. Certainly, I did.

Through the Society, I also developed a new appreciation for the power and importance of public relations in the corporation. I'll admit I didn't know much about Arthur Page when I became a member, but I did take the time to learn. And I had a few people, like Jack Koten, who took the time to teach me.

Page's concept of public relations was much bigger and more thoughtful than some of our other founders. He put us at the management table.

Public relations is the fabric of the organization - not just a department. "It pervades everything in the organization," he said. "The whole company depends on it." Arthur Page was so ahead of his time.
I often wonder what he would think about our profession today, the constant change both in our industry and around it. Media consumption has changed and become so fragmented. There are fewer mass-audience, shared events. Entertainment trumps news. Everything is converging onto one hand-held device. Online social networking is pervasive among young people and is migrating up the generations.

Other things have changed, too. Companies and brands are under much more immediate scrutiny and criticism. Trust is more elusive. Just look at our financial institutions, our media and the political environment. Blogging has created the new first draft of history, and it is sometimes a pretty sloppy first draft. Globalization is real as issues instantly jump across continents. You needed only to have watched the Olympics to see how much the world is shared. Or watch the value of the dollar in relation to other currencies to feel the impact of a global economy.

It has been terrific to be a part of that for the past twenty years. Public relations gave me that opportunity.

But speaking of currency, I believe all of this just heightens the importance of what we do.Now more than ever, real relationships are the currency of brand building and good corporate leadership.

If you're building a brand, you know that the only brands people trust are the ones that actually deliver. Today in public relations, we do our best work when we help a brand to do the right thing and only then tell consumers about it. So, Scott Cutlip and Arthur Page had it right all those years ago.

But today more than ever, it's easier said than done. We have to invest in giving our people the tools to push back and effectively counsel management on what it means to do the right thing and actually change brand strategy and behavior. Because it's the right thing to do and because trying to "spin" it today only gets you on You Tube, with a drumbeat of e-mails that follow.

Investing in our people reminds me of one more issue that's always been important to me, and that's talent development and public relations education.

Don Wright covered it well in his Distinguished Service Award speech last year. It's always concerned me that we as a profession don't do more to support the schools that are training public relations people- either by hiring their students or working with the schools to improve the curricula process so we want to hire their students.

This came home to me recently when I spoke to a group of graduate students at the USC Annenberg School. The students were smart and diverse.

They came from all over the world and had a wide range of interests. They were genuinely excited about public relations and for the right reasons. They see it as a way to change things, make them better.

And in addition to having engaging Facebook profiles, they also were very impressive-face-to-face. In fact, they shared this frustration about the companies that recruit on campus: Most industries, they say, seek out people who are trained in their professions- while our industry often ignores students trained in public relations.

Certainly, we need to attract people who have a diversity of skills beyond communication. But we also need to be careful about sending the message that just about anyone can do our jobs.

Back to the importance of relationships: If you're building a corporate reputation or leading a company, you know that leadership has to earn the right to lead everyday. And you can no longer define a company's boundaries by the number of its full-time employees.

By design now, a corporation extends to part-time employees, freelance consultants, outsourced departments, an entire global supply chain and a network of business partners. Relationships built on trust are the glue that can hold such an ever-changing network together.

And our discipline can play a larger role in building those relationships. It's literally a world of opportunity if we're seen as the relationship experts.

So I'd suggest that while you're helping brands and companies with their B2B, B2C and high-tech word-of-mouth marketing, I hope you won't forget to throw in a little F2F, or face-to-face relationship building. Because while a lot has changed, real relationship building is still the most important game in town.

Today's environment, with its complexity, offers the greatest opportunity and challenges we've ever faced. Arthur Page, I know, would be very proud of how far we've come and the global scope of the communications process today.

Understanding this, I reflect on our profession with great pride and know we're up to the task. We do good things in the world through our communications efforts, and the information we provide makes a lot of people's lives better.

My career has been rewarding, filled with mostly good memories. The few that weren't so good I either learned from or swept out of mind. So when it came time to walk away, it was relatively easy. Each of you will get there someday. And when you do, I hope you'll remember the tips for "happy closure" I leave you with.

First: You will have a lot of free time- something I know most of you dream of today in your 24/7 world. Prepare for it mentally. Think about what you want to do and plan for gradual implementation. Among the best advice I got was not to make a lot of commitments in the beginning. You need time to adjust.

Second: If you can, retire gradually. I was fortunate because at Ketchum we had great depth of leadership and a good succession plan. I was chairman for two years after I was no longer CEO. Then I was part-time, then a consultant. I'm now "emeritus"- a title that comes in very handy for boards and when you're named to the Hall of Fame after retiring.

Third: Walk away but don't second guess. I'm still very passionate about our profession, the firm I helped create and many of our corporate clients. But while I have the historical perspective, I don't have the day-to-day to counsel effectively. Ray Kotcher and many of my other friends at Ketchum often reach out; they did particularly in the beginning. It is always appreciated, but it gets harder the further away you get.

Fourth: But stay involved in the profession. With our public relations experience, we have great understanding of how to make organizations work successfully. Non-profits, particularly, appreciate this. And this is the time to give back. I am thrilled when other board members at American University or the Naples Philharmonic Center- many of whom are current or former CEOs- turn to me for the public relations implication of an issue. My hope is that more corporate boards will soon recognize the value of having our perspective in a board seat.

Fifth: Take up something new. I'm learning to play golf after avoiding it for years. It's frustrating, challenging and takes a lot of that free time I now have.

Sixth: Get a dog. Mine is a Cavachon- she's a designer dog. Her name is Truffles. It took me hours to find her on the Internet, another many hours to pick her up at a farm in Berryville, Virginia, and many, many more hours to train her and walk her.

And, finally: Have grandchildren. My son, Craig and daughter-in-law, Sarah, had triplets a year ago next month. It takes a lot of time to watch three babies learn to crawl and put a little plastic ball in a little plastic basket. But it is great fun and wonderful to see your child as a parent. I am so fortunate that I now have the time to enjoy the most important relationships of all.

That takes us back to the beginning. I owe it all to that senior year testing course that led me to a career in public relations and the great friends and relationships I made because of it.

Again, thanks to my family for supporting me in dozens of ways. Thanks to all my friends and client colleagues at Ketchum. And thanks to all of you for putting my name on the same list with so many people we all admire- and for listening to me this afternoon.