Oprah's Touch

You know it’s Christmas time when Oprah releases her Favorite Things List. Each Holiday season, the legendary talk-show host, Oprah Winfrey, handpicks and creates a list of her favorite items and gadgets of the year. If you’re lucky to create a product she loves, a mention on this list might skyrocket your success. The fortunate products that make it in this exclusive list, experience the Oprah effect: an instant increase in sales and prestige. That’s because Oprah is one of the most influential people of our time, and has secured a huge following over the years. Those big numbers translate into big sales for the products Oprah recommends. She is not only a pop-culture star, but she is also a star-maker.

We’ve seen many success stories of products that have been featured in her Favorite Things List or secured a mention in her show, and immediately see sales peak. Yet, you can’t fully understand the Oprah effect until you experience it firsthand. While working in Orlando-based advertising agency Push, I was given the task of collecting media clippings for one of our clients, Corkcicle.

Right of Publicity?

Among the major liabilities pertaining the Public Relations industry, we find that privacy laws have been continuously arising lawsuits and affecting the industry directly. Privacy laws vary from state to state and are encompassed in a grey area where the boundary between First Amendment protected speech and commercial speech is yet to be delineated. According to Don Pember (2008), author of Mass Media Law, there are four areas of privacy law: appropriation of name or likeness for commercial purposes, intrusion, publication of private information and publication of material that puts an individual in false light. For this particular discussion, I’ll focus on the first category, appropriation of someone’s name or likeness for commercial gain without permission. 

It’s important to know that the appropriation tort is divided into two categories: the right to privacy and the right of publicity. The major difference between each other is that the “right to privacy protects an individual from the emotional damage that can occur when a name or likeness is used for a commercial or trade purpose” (Pember, 2008, p. 281), while the right of publicity intends to “remunerate individuals for the economic harm suffered when their name, picture, image, likeness, voice, etc. for commercial exploitation without compensation” (Pember, 2008, p. 281). Although it’s more common to see celebrities take legal action against companies claiming their right of publicity, average individuals can use these legal causes of action as well. 

Not - so - Fabulous Entertainment Public Relations

Being knowledgeable in legal terminology and precedents in our industry of choice is vital to maintain a successful business. This knowledge provides a laying foundation of what to expect if engaging in a legal battle.

We generally see entertainment public relations professionals in the midst of legal battles playing the role of firefighters, representing their clients as legislative public relations representatives, a sub segment of crisis management. Yet, the public relations industry, especially that related to the entertainment world, does have legal liabilities, and although not common, from time to time you'll see a public relations representative as one of the parties of a legal feud. These liabilities definitely make the industry seem less fabulous and more risky than Samantha Jone’s job in Sex and the City.

Wanted: A PR for PR

In the past couple of years, there has been a growing interest to explore and expose the inner workings of the public relations industry. Although some movies and TV shows like The Spin Crowd, PoweR Girls and The City, positioned our industry in the spotlight, they haven’t exactly portrayed it in the best light. It’s a known fact that pop culture has overly glamorized the public relations industry. From Samantha in Sex and the City series to Whitney Port in The Hills, public relations professionals are portrayed as powerful ladies dressed head-to-toe in Gucci and Dior, who spend their nights in exclusive VIP parties. All in all, the PR industry is perceived as superficial and frivolous.

Kim Cattrall plays Samantha, a glamorous PR Executive
 in Sex and the City.
Photo Credit

Artist Manager (aka Jack-of-all-Trades)

Behind every great artist, there is a great manager. Everyone knows that in the entertainment industry, talent is simply not enough. To make it big in saturated markets, such as the music industry, artists need to portray a unique image, have access to the right contacts, and have a great support system. It’s the artist manager who provides those elements that complement the artist’s craft, and enable him/her to reach stardom. 

After signing with an artist manager, the artist becomes a company, and the manager, its CEO. It’s the artist manager who oversees all aspects of the artist’s career and makes sure that the artist’s vision is articulated properly across all channels. Of course, like in all businesses, CEOs can’t do it all by themselves. While he is truly the personal representative of the artist, the artist manager has to assemble and manage a team of professionals that will help him achieve the artist’s career goals. It’s common knowledge that the artist needs a good lawyer, to protect his career against restrictive contracts or dangerous lawsuits, and an experienced accountant to manage the financial aspects. Traditionally, the manager will also bring a publicist and a booking agent on board. Yet, it has come to my attention that there’s an emerging trend, especially in the Puerto Rican market, where managers also act as the client’s publicists and booking agents.

This “jack-of-all-trades” management approach has certainly surprised me, due to the time consuming nature of Public Relations. It’s difficult for me to conceive that a manager can put in the necessary time and dedication to develop and execute an effective PR campaign, while dealing with all the other duties that artist management involves.

Words or Numbers?

If you’re like me, getting out of high school and pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication meant not only following my dreams, but also saying goodbye forever to endless math homework and abstract mathematical concepts. That was true for the most part, because in order to meet the credits to graduate I only had to take one basic math class. Yet, when practicing public relations I’ve had to deal with numbers in a variety of ways. While I may never work with strange theorems, angles, and high-tech graphing calculators ever again, I still have found the need to understand the correlation between numbers, analyzing data and performing single math equations to fulfill adequately my tasks.

As public relations professionals, the art of storytelling plays a central role in our daily lives; and if you’re a seasoned PR specialist your ability to sway clients and your target market with your words should be astonishing. Nonetheless, we now live in an informational era, where each day our target market demands more and more information about topics and it’s our job as managers of our customer’s communication strategies to provide this information. Words are not cutting it for people anymore; they want detailed and precise information. This means numbers. Therefore, you need to know how to analyze data and come up with conclusions to include in our press releases and into our campaigns as a whole. We have to build the story with words and support it with data.

Career Kickstart

Kickstarter and other “crowdfunding” platforms have become extremely popular, taking the fundraising and social media scene by storm. This site is already even part of Time Magazine's Best Websites of 2011. That's because every week, thousands of people upload their creative projects to the website and pledge money with the hope of getting their dream project funded. The catch is that on Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before its deadline or the money is not given to the user.

Image Retrieved from

The imminent benefit of using this platform is, of course, getting the necessary funds to kick-start projects. Yet, Kickstarter is about more than just money; I find this website to have a superb underlying public relations power. Kickstarter allows the user to share their stories, their hopes and dreams. Since most people love compelling stories that exhibit genuineness and passion, and feel good supporting a captivating cause, if it’s a good idea, communicated in an attractive fashion, it’ll spread exponentially. Therefore, the buzz-generating power of this platform is surreal.

Even if the project doesn’t get funded, the storytelling aspect of Kickstarter provides space for people to discover creative ideas, identify with the storyteller, and for the user to get free exposure. Ultimately, this is what publicists want.

Joining the Club

While researching topics to write about in this blog, I found myself constantly going back to the website or social media sites of the Association for Public Relations Professionals of Puerto Rico for ideas. That’s when I realized the important role this professional association has in the daily life of public relations specialists or aspiring publicists in Puerto Rico.

This Association was created initially to establish ethic guidelines for the Public Relations industry in the Island and to establish a professional community for industry professionals. Yet, they have recently taken a much important role by serving as the official regulation committee for the industry in the Island. Since 2008, the Association and the Department of Labor of Puerto Rico joined together to establish the requirements to practice Public Relations in the Island and the Association for Public Relations Professionals of Puerto Rico was put in charge of deciding on those candidates that met the requirements to get certified as Public Relations professionals. In this sense, this Association is responsible for the future of aspiring Public Relations professionals like myself.

Touch that snake!

We live in a world that tries to divide the creative people from the non-creative, where innovative ideas are looked upon with fear and in which humans have become creatures of habit. This explains why, in a recent study conducted by Adobe, the vast majority of people stated that they are not living up to their creative potential. Although they understand the importance of creativity in their workplace, they feel like time constraints and pressure from upper management makes them be productive instead of creative. When I came across this study titled “The Creativity Gap” a couple of weeks ago, I was so sad to see how this portrayed a gloomy panorama for all industries, especially the entertainment one, that feeds and evolves based on creative ideas.

Publicists are Celebrities’ Best Accessory

Mayweather vs. Cotto Official HBO Poster
Photo Retrieved From

For Puerto Ricans and worldwide boxing fanatics, this Cinco de Mayo was much more than eating tacos and drinking margaritas. At 11pm that day, the most anticipated HBO PPV boxing fight of 2012, Miguel Cotto vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr., took place. The Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto gave Mayweather a fight beyond expectation. It was a close fight and a tough match. Cotto trapped Floyd against the ropes throughout the fight and landed hard shots to the head that for the first time ever, drew blood from Mayweather’s nose. But, Cotto’s effort was not enough. It was Mayweather's ability to get his uppercuts and jabs in with enough regularity to take most of the fight. Mayweather triumphed in a unanimous decision and blew kisses to a booing and disproving crowd, while Cotto suffered the third loss of his career.

Although a controversial fight, it was a classic boxing match where at the end, one of the opponents wins. The curious thing about this fight, looking at it in a Public Relations standpoint, was what happened after it. In a regular sports competition of this caliber, the main event takes place, a space is allowed for a few informal interviews, and immediately after, a press conference is held with the former opponents. Nonetheless, after hearing the judge’s decision, Miguel Cotto left the boxing ring and headed down to his room without facing the media, refusing to attend the post-fight press conference. As stated by El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s most important newspaper, Miguel Cotto returned to Puerto Rico yesterday and even then, he didn’t talk to the media. The only public statement he gave was through his Twitter account.

One of the best!

I’m proud to say that the School of Communications of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus is officially the first and only communications school outside of the United States that receives an accreditation from the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC). The Council visited the school this February and granted the accreditation today.

This is a great honor because it raises the prestige of the school and recognizes it as one of the top communications programs of the world.  As alumni I’m extremely thrilled about this announcement. Congratulations to the faculty, current students and graduates of the school! 

Out with the Old, In with the New

We live in a world where communication is shifting towards the Internet and social media. We’ve seen how publicists and artists around the world have been benefiting from new tools like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. to create a more direct and long lasting relationship between their clients and their fan base. 

Additionally, some renowned publicists have already made the new-age leap by offering digital press kits to media outlets in order to facilitate the information and the use of multimedia in journalistic articles. Yet, the vast majority of publicists still feel the need to incorporate traditional PR tools such as EPK’s, official press releases, press conferences and press kits. Although necessary, press kits handed out in hard copy, are becoming wasteful, expensive and basically outdated. With this in mind and a clear objective of providing new life to an old market, IndiAmbassador launched a powerful tool called Presskit.to. 

Welcome to the 10 Million Club

Congratulations to Real Madrid's player Kaká for becoming the first athlete to amass 10 million followers on his Twitter account! 
He and his publicist must be very happy for he is now the ruler of the sports related Twitter world, followed by his teammate Cristiano Ronaldo. He currently ranks number 17th on the overall list of most-followed tweeters according to twittercounter.com, where Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber rule the scoreboard with +20 million followers each.  

Fashionably Responsible

In past recent years we have seen how companies and celebrities are teaming up to fight for a social cause. H&M stores are no different. This brand, originally from Europe, has made it big in the United States and it’s famous for carrying different styles of fashion under one roof.  So they are using their affordability and power in the fashion industry to support a very controversial cause that affect millions of young people around the world, with their new line: Fashion Against AIDS that will be available on stores and online on April 26^th.

It’s really great that they are using their power to support a worthy cause while delivering a very modern and trendy fashion line, but lets take a look at this campaign from a Public Relations standpoint. What stands out the most on this campaign is the fact that a global fashion company is spending lots of money to put together a global campaign that is going to raise awareness and money towards HIV/AIDS projects. That alone is great for the reputation of the company. But there is another factor involved that makes this campaign stand out from the ones in the last four years and that makes it successful even before the fashion line has been released.

Weeks before the official release, H&M is engaging in the first stage of the campaign called "Make Out For A Cause". In this stage they encourage the young to upload a picture of them making out with someone. For each entry they donate a dollar to an HIV/AIDS project. Already, more than 11,000 photos have been uploaded from all over the world. The campaign has already reached awareness in social media sites and has become a trending topic in Twitter. Basically, they’ve already started collecting money for the cause while reaching the desired awareness in a fun and non-traditional way.

Head Over Heels

I thought I'd start this new blogger life writing a little bit about what got me here. 

During my high school years I always wanted to be part of the creative team in an advertising agency. So as soon as I graduated, I entered the University of Puerto Rico to major in Advertising and Public Relations. I wasn't very happy about this because I'd always disliked Public Relations, but I had no choice. I did a couple of internships in global advertising agencies and was very sure that advertising was my correct career path. 

By the first semester of my sophomore year, a law was passed in Puerto Rico stating that the Public Relations profession was going to be regulated and that in order to practice PR in the Island, all recent graduates had to have experience in the field and pass a test. That was the moment that I decided that since I was graduating from both Advertising and Public Relations, I should also engage in a PR Internship. So I landed an internship in a very prominent Entertainment PR Firm in Puerto Rico. 

Two weeks as an intern was all it took for me to fall head over heels for the entertainment PR industry. I cherished each day the satisfaction of being part of the team that made either an event possible or an artist grow. In my year as an intern and then as a Jr. PR Executive, I got the opportunity to work with A-list celebrities such as Ricky Martin and Daddy Yankee, and assisted with the planning and execution of notorious events such as the Enrique Iglesia’s Euphoria Tour, Shakira’s Sun Comes Out Tour, the Mega Electronic Fest and Miss Universe Puerto Rico Pageant, among others. The amount of knowledge I acquired is astonishing and the lessons learned are invaluable. It polished my communication skills and taught me how to develop public relations strategies, pitch stories, coordinate logistics for special events and effectively write media releases. This internship was a great school for me; it made me grown personally, professionally and helped me realize my higher calling: to be a publicist.

With this said, this is my take on the Entertainment & Fashion PR world… Enjoy! 

Above Left: Perfect Partners team (I'm the one in the far right) with Ricky Martin
Down Left: Me and a colleague with Enrique Iglesias
Right: Badges from some of the events I worked in