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Usually, it’s the filling in of my passport details online that brings home to me the passing of time. Scrolling back to my birth year – OK, let’s not be coy about this, 1961 – takes a while these days!
This time, however, it was the invitation to present a Lunch and Learn session to the Nielsen McAllister team on the history of the agency, and how PR and communications have developed during this time. And as I looked around the table at the fresh-faced youngsters (with one or two exceptions*), it occurred to me that not only were most of them not born when I established the agency in 1990, many were not even the proverbial twinkle in their parents’ eyes.
Another jolt came when I started to put the presentation together and realised how much has changed over the past 34 years. I’ve always thought of myself as having lived in the ‘modern’ world, but looking back, 1990 seems practically prehistoric! It’s a good job I didn’t tell them about life in the 1970s…
1990 was bad enough. As I said in my presentation, only four terrestrial TV channels, no internet, no social media, no smartphones, no emails.
However, what we did have were the forerunners to many of these. Instead of emails there was the fax – and even the telex was still around (look them up!). Need to get some information on something or someone? Try an encyclopaedia or a trip to the reference library. The nearest thing to Google was Yellow Pages. SEO? Advertise in Yellow Pages – or be one of the fortunate companies whose name began with an early letter in the alphabet.
In the meantime, we PR and communications professionals were busy photocopying press releases onto client-headed paper, stuffing these, together with a photograph (still predominantly black and white) into hardback envelopes, and preparing our press distribution lists from large, printed media directories. And then off to the post box! If we didn’t have the time or manpower, we farmed these tasks out to a media distribution house.
Meanwhile, for anything urgent, we had the fax machine, while agencies in London had the added luxury of sending documents and photographs by bike or taxi.
And I didn’t even get time in my presentation to cover the delights of overhead projectors, and of presentations and proposals photocopied onto acetates.
My, how times have changed. And yet, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Of course, we did things differently in the ‘old days’ but ‘what’ we were doing still looks pretty familiar. Today, online may have taken ascendency over print but maximising media coverage for clients remains an essential element of most PR and communications programmes.
Digital technology has provided opportunities for online activities, but you still cannot beat face-to-face interactions. Exhibitions, conferences, seminars, round tables, facility visits, and customer events were and are still vital elements of the marketing communications mix.
Certainly, the working PR life in 1990 was as busy as it is today. There were deadlines to meet. Planning was essential to ensure the successful execution of a campaign. This was especially true when it came to media relations, as we were dealing solely with printed titles, with different frequencies and lead times. Trying to get a story into competing weekly and monthly magazines – without offending either editor – took some organising.
More to the point, the elements of a successful campaign have stayed the same. Then, as now, effective PR required good ideas, creativity, proactiveness. Media relations programmes that delivered results were based on providing well-written, interesting and objective copy, giving journalists what they wanted and when they wanted it. All written content needed to be composed with the appropriate target audience in mind.
Similarly, client relationships based on trust and respect were fundamental to an agency producing its best work. It was always my intention from its early days for Nielsen McAllister to be seen as an extension to each client’s marketing activities. Being ‘part of the team’ remains a central principle – and our strong client retention record is testament to this.
It is comforting to have such constants in our ever-changing world. Mind you, looking back at 1990, although we didn’t have much of what we now take for granted, the year did provide a taste of many things that were to come. While TV viewing for most of us was still limited to the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 (setting the video if we were out or there was a clash), Sky had started broadcasting the year before.
And by the middle of the year, I no longer had to find a phone box (and one where the phone hadn’t been vandalised) if I needed to make a call when out of the office, as I was the proud owner of a Motorola car phone. My first mobile phone – the size of a brick – followed not long after.
Apart from the early ‘techies,’ few of us had heard of the internet in 1990 – but that year saw the writing of the code for the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee, and the creation of the first search engine.
*The photos show the ‘exceptions’ in their younger days.
Whenever you speak to someone working in PR about how they got here, the answer is never what you’d think. Find out how the NM team ended up in the industry in our latest blog.
My daily life in PR hasn't changed much for the past two years at Nielsen McAllister – but recently, I've been noticing something new on my daily commute.