`What's Wrong with the Kids These Days?' (And What's Wrong with the Veterans)

Mar 24, 2003

At some point in life, this phrase escapes reflexively from every adult's mouth, delivering the horrible epiphany that you have switched sides on the "We vs. Them" continuum and signaling that you have officially arrived at the end of youth.

After 20-minute periods of wincing and shaking your head in disbelief, and internal arguments where you pathetically try to recall and cling to the last time someone called you "cool," it's a natural reaction to consider the question rhetorical and to leave it unanswered.

Ironically, however, it is those who persevere in attempting to answer the question, both in life, and in the workplace, who may be most likely to retain their own vigor.

This is because junior public relations professionals do have plenty to offer. They are arriving at their first internships with an impressive set of skills, already proficient in word processing, desktop publishing, Internet research and even multimedia design. They already know how to multitask. They already know how to network. They're on the cutting edge of culture. They know what's new and hot and next. Sometimes they even come fully equipped with cool electronic accessories.

They also come poorly prepared for many rudiments of our profession. They can't necessarily pitch. They don't come out of the box thinking strategically. They don't understand the big picture. They're afraid of hard work. They have an inflated sense of entitlement. They're just like "the kids" always have been.

But as a 30-year PR pro who claims to have ridden an actual dinosaur to school recently told me, the difference now is "the kids these days" also can't write.

Perhaps the phenomenon arises from the spread of email and instant messaging, which has apparently convinced a generation that the written word is not quite as handy as the typed character, prompting millions to replace meaningful nouns, adjectives and verbs with strings of colons, semi colons and closed parentheses, i.e. ;)

Perhaps the most immediate reason your young professionals haven't learned to write is simply that you haven't yet taught them.

"So, what's wrong with the veterans these days?"

Ask a group of juniors, and it is likely they will all list the same handful of complaints about senior PR professionals. They often see the top dogs as close-minded, unavailable, and in the worst cases, out of touch with the actual in-the-trenches practice of public relations. The gripes are probably the same ones you had when you were a "flackling." Young public relations professionals grouse most when they feel their potential is untapped.

But this sort of dissatisfaction is only a byproduct of impatient passion and enthusiasm. It is the result of a desire to excel and to reach the next level.

For this reason, many junior PR professionals do actually want you to tell them a thing or two. They want to know where the gaps are in their skill sets and how to fill them. They crave awareness of the big picture. They want to understand the various factors at work within your organization beyond communications. They would love for you to truly explain the macro view necessary for strategy formulation instead of throwing tactics at them and telling them to go get ink. They would cherish your stories of initial failure and hard-earned success. They want to know how to get into your shoes. And they're listening quite intently.

Young professionals also want to tell you a few things. They want to report back to you about the successes they've had. They want to tell you what tactics just aren't working. They want to tell you about trends they've seen in the media and how they think they can capitalize upon them. They want to teach you how to operate the color laser printer. They may even have a new way for you to make more money. So, the question is, how intently are you listening?

Maybe you've long stopped mourning the loss of your youth and prefer proven accomplishment and experience to new thinking. I'm guessing, though, since you're reading PR NEWS and this column, that you never stopped searching for ways to become a more complete PR professional. I'm also guessing that you remember and crave the across-the-board excitement of your early career.

In future columns I will explore in detail some of the ways you can tap in to the passion, perspective and innovations of young professionals.

I hope you'll find that by wading in to take care of "the kids," every once in a while you get splashed with the waters of the Fountain of Youth.

Out of The Box

Out of the Box highlights inventive tactics applied successfully in the past month by members of http://www.YoungPRPros.com, an online forum for professionals in the first 10 years of their public relations careers.

Megan Licursi, of HSR Business to Business, actually sold mold to a reporter this month. UPI ran a story on AK Coatings Inc., manufacturer of a silver-based compound that fights microbial growth, as result of including the angle in a list of possible story ideas within a media kit made available at this year's National Manufacturing Week conference...Hunter Hoffmann, of Government Liquidation LLC, a subsidiary of Liquidity Services Inc., took an evergreen pitch about military surplus goods and turned it into a Baltimore Sun story by honing in on a single item - a 20-foot American flag, which he referred to as "patriotic wallpaper"... Myles Weisslander, VP of Communications for Meetup (http://www.meetup.com), snagged a New York magazine article, a spot on FOX News and hits with dozens of Vermont media sources this month. Weisslander grabbed attention by publicizing the news that Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean is using the Meetup service to create gatherings in as many as 477 cities to support his 2004 bid for the White House.

Ian Lipner (ilipner@stantoncomm.com) is an account manager for Washington, DC-based Stanton Communications. His Front Lines column will run exclusively in PR NEWS on a regular basis. He also founded and moderates an online forum for early to mid-career public relations professionals, at http://www.YoungPRPros.com.