When the late Lester Thurow was dean of M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management I produced an admission video for the school.
Thurow had three legs to the program he was implementing at the school. He believed that the business leaders that they were educating needed to:
- Be comfortable operating globally
- Understand technology (a perfect approach for a school at M.I.T.)
- Know how to work in teams (he would say, “In school working in a team is called cheating…”)
That all sounds good. But this was 30 years ago. He was ahead of his time in many ways.
I decided that the people considering Sloan didn’t need to see a bunch of students saying, “This school is great. And the professors really care…” like every other admission video. What would move them to prefer Sloan would be to hear from business leaders that Thurow’s approach was what their companies were looking for. So through Sloan I arranged to interview some of the top people of Citibank, Motorola, and other leading companies of the day.
I interviewed John Reed, the chairman and CEO of Citicorp, in his office on the second floor of the old Citicorp building in Manhattan. (Not on the top floor of the new Citicorp building? The rumor was that he was afraid of fires and wanted his office on a low floor.) Of course there were endless requests from the media to meet with him so Reed set aside one hour every week to meet with a reporter. That was the slot that they gave me one week. I had to wait about three months for it.
While we were setting up in the camera and lights, etc., in the library of his office around 8 in the morning, Reed came in and introduced himself. He was wearing a white shirt, which would not look great on video. But he asked, “Would you like me to change into my blue shirt?” He knew his stuff. After all, this was the person who had essentially introduced ATMs into banking.
That idea of setting aside one hour a week for PR stuck with me. No matter how busy a senior executive is, it’s worth 2% of their time to represent the company to the world, comment on important issues, and take advantage of free media.
You may not have reporters lined up for an interview with you, but you can use HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to find out what stories reporters are looking for experts on and get visibility that way. It’s free.
PS: A friend of mine was working at that time in NYC as an investment banker. I told him I was coming to New York to interview John Reed for an hour and he said, “No you’re not.” I assured him I was. Again he said, “No you’re not. Do you know how much people would pay for an hour with John Reed?” Later my friend became Obama’s “Car Czar” and then Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy. But that’s another story.
