By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer
I took the photo above inside a museum. A woman was standing silently in front of ten paintings of soup cans, studying them as art. Think about that for a moment. She wasn’t looking at soup. She was looking at an idea manifest into a physical object.
That’s what great art does. It changes the way we see something that might otherwise be ordinary. And after spending most of my career in journalism and public relations, I’ve come to believe the best PR does something very similar.
I don’t approach public relations as an advertiser. We approach every campaign as an artist. That distinction has shaped nearly every campaign we’ve launched.
Art Before PR
Long before I launched this PR agency in 2009, I was producing stories for TV. I won five Emmys during my television career across different categories. The awards are great but what matters more today is the creative range across mediums.
There isn’t a formula to motivating consumers. The ingredients change by the year and evolve with the clients. That process is inherently creative. It’s also very different from advertising, where a company purchases the space and controls the message.
In journalism, nobody owes you the audience. You have to earn their attention.
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