The Best Of Both Worlds
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.
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