Burson on PR

I attended PR Week's 15th anniversary dinner last night, largely because they were honoring my former boss, Marilyn Laurie, along with five other PR luminaries. 

It turned out to be  more fun and more instructive than I anticipated. 

The evening's organizers wisely opted to skip the traditional acceptance speeches in favor of a brief panel discussion. That saved a lot of time, but even better it provided a note of spontaneity these evenings seldom have.

For example, the moderator started the discussion by asking each of the honorees to define PR. I was especially taken by Harold Burson's definition.

"PR is an applied social science," he said, "focused on two things: behavior and communications." The big problem these days, he went on to say, is that we spend too much time on communication and not enough on behavior, and that's why the public distrusts our institutions so much.

Harold, the legendary founder of Burson Marsteller, is 92. But his mind is as quick as it ever was. And he's an old hand at these kinds of events. He's received 10 of these lifetime achievement awards so far.

When I looked around the room and realized he was one of the few people I recognized, it made me feel old. But it also made me feel luckly to know him. His remarks last night just reinforced the feeling.