Archive for July, 2007

I just graduated from the Arison School of Business, a division of IDC Herzliya.

Three years of intensive studies in one of Israel’s most distinguished colleges has provided me with a strong foundation in business and marketing. I personally loved my college experience but did it prepare me for the real life, fast-paced and cut throat Israeli business world?

My college prides itself on providing an interdisciplinary education that combines academic study with practical training. However, I remember we often grumbled that some of the classes were ‘too theoretical.’ In those classes we simply memorized terms and theories and spit them back. It isn’t surprising that most of us would forget the material as soon as we left the final exam.

Since theory is useless if you don’t know how to apply it, our senior year attempted to turn theory into practice. I had the privilege of meeting top executives and writing business and marketing plans for three international companies, Willi-Food, L’Oreal, and Louis Vuitton. These projects gave me a ‘taste’ of real business practices and were a great way to conclude my degree.

I thought my education and practical projects were enough to prepare me for a real job. I thought I had it all figured out.

Well, I joined Ruder Finn Israel just one week ago and wow, was I wrong.

The truth is that no school can fully prepare you for the realities you will face in the authentic business world.

My first day on the job, I immediately realized that I would need to develop a system to budget my time. I had to figure out how to juggle four client accounts (in completely different industries), make myself available for office meetings, squeeze in lunch and somehow meet my daily or even hourly deadlines. There are only so many hours in the work day and proper time management is crucial.

As an intern I am a pro at “behind the scenes work” – I am often assigned a specific task or asked to research a topic. I do so happily because I know that although my contribution isn’t exciting in and of itself, it is part of a process and a piece of a larger puzzle that is exciting.

I think one of the main differences between theory and practice is that the ‘real world’ awakens a strong sense of responsibility that simply doesn’t exist in the academic world. It’s not about getting a better grade. Your co-workers and your clients are counting on you.

I know that I still have a lot to learn – and that’s exactly what I’ll do!  If there’s one thing I learned in college it’s how to learn.

This charming Ruder Finn office is my new learning headquarters and the employees are my teachers.  

I may be free from school, but my real life training has just begun.

One of our new employees – someone who’s been in the business world (as a management consultant) for a number of years, but without much PR experience, came into my office today.  

He said he had a bunch of questions.  Of course, I was all too happy to answer them.  After all, as a father of six, I’m used to hearing a lot of questions.

But these questions were different.  You see, at home, I’m used to a world of "Can I have a snack?" and "Why did HE get more ice cream than I did?"  And at the office, the questions are only slightly different: "Can I have a raise?" and "Why did SHE get a bigger cube than I did?"

All joking aside, it’s not often that I am faced with the kinds of questions this account executive had for me.  He asked the following:

1. What are the characteristics that make a good PR firm?
2. What makes a good PR professional?
3. What are the key skills necessary to be a good PR professional?
4. What are the skills that differentiate the good PR professionals from the great PR professionals?
5. Are there any specific skill sets that are critical for a PR professional in Israel as opposed to other cultures?

It is my view that the Israeli PR world is still in its adolescence.  I believe most agencies don’t even ask these questions.  And that is one of the reasons why our craft is seen as somewhat of a commodity here, with the lowest bid often winning competitive pitches, and agencies being judged solely on the relative height of the clip piles they can produce. 

We’re doing it to ourselves.

So I think we need to start asking these questions … and answering them, of course.  And over time, it will elevate our entire industry.

By the way, there isn’t enough space here to provide the answers I gave to the above questions.  However, if you’d like to hear the answers, please contact me (glenn@ruderfinn.co.il) and I’ll be glad to walk you through them.  

I’ve written a lot about the differences between the U.S. communications industry and that of Israel.  And much of what I have discussed has focused on the relative lack of sophistication in Israel’s PR world.  And, of course, that results in many challenges for us.  But I had a meeting yesterday that highlighted one of the most wonderful consequences of this phenomenon.  

We were participating in a meeting with one of our clients at a coffee shop.  (While in the US coffee shops are popular for one-on-one meetings, in Israel entire teams will meet there.)  And the topic of discussion was the relatively average coverage the company has received in the media in the first few months of our relationship.  So one of the items on the agenda was the issue of upcoming news for the company.  And the CEO said to me, "Tell us what we should announce. We don’t know."

You would think that such a response would be scary.  How can a CEO of a start-up not know what news the company has upcoming!?  But that’s just the point.  These companies need direction from us.  And not just direction on media strategy and positioning.  They, in essence, need us to run their corporate communications function.  

This lack of understanding by Israeli companies means we have the opportunity to have the best of both worlds!  We get to live in the agency world of variety and high-energy, and we also get to run internal communications functions.  

I remember, about four years into my career in New York, the senior vice president who ran Hill and Knowlton’s corporate group decided to leave the firm to become head of Corporate Comms at one of New York’s largest financial institutions.  So I walked into her office and asked her when I will know that it is time for me to move to the corporate (versus agency) side.  She said, "Glenn, I’d say you need about three more years and then you should look for a corporate position."

Now, as it happened, I did leave the agency world almost precisely three years later to join beenz.com, and later to run PR for Ciena Corp.  And both positions offered me the opportunity to build something special.  But both of those positions also felt somewhat empty to me because they didn’t have the variety I was used to on the agency side.  I mean, while at H&K, I was working on Dunkin’ Donuts one day and American Express Financial Advisors (can you throw in a tech account here) the next.  Talk about diverse.

And that’s what I like most about Ruder Finn Israel.  While we have the variety of the agency world (our clients range from early stage startups to non-profits and publicly-traded telecom companies), we also have the experience of helping a corporation build its communications function – an experience one in the States can only have in-house.