PR Has a PR Problem—Curtis Sparrer Wrote a Graphic Novel to Fix It

PR often gets miscast as spin—but Curtis Sparrer wants to change the script. The Page member, PR pro-turned-graphic-novelist, joins us to talk about "Game Face: Becoming a PR Detective," his new graphic novel that puts public relations in the hero’s seat. What started as a way to explain PR to his niece became a clever crash course for kids, clients and anyone who's ever struggled to explain what we actually do.

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Transcript

[00:00:00]

Eliot Mizrachi: I often joke with my friends that when I'm at a cocktail party and somebody asks me what I do, I seem unable to answer it in fewer than 10 sentences, and even then, I'm not quite sure that they get it. Sometimes I wish I was a fireman or a paramedic. Jobs that can be explained with just the word.

It's weird. PR has a kind of PR problem of its own.

Curtis Sparrer knows it. And he's written a book to help fix it.

Curtis Sparrer: I'd say to anyone listening to do this, if you're thinking about writing a book, I say absolutely do it. But know going in that this is not going to be a walk in the park

I'm Eliot Mizrachi, and this is The New CCO

Eliot Mizrachi: What inspired you as a public relations professional to write a book for a young reader audience,

Curtis Sparrer: I have a young niece and very early on she asked me what I did for a [00:01:00] living and I did what anyone would do. I went to Amazon to see if I could find a handy book to explain it.

I found the Barbie book about being a journalist. I found another book about being a journalist, but I didn't find any books about PR not suitable for a young person. Later on. I would be thinking about our agency's 10 year anniversary, and I was thinking, what could I do that would be dramatically different than the typical anniversary things?

And it came to me that this would be some perfect symmetry, that I would write a book about PR or 10 year olds on our 10th anniversary.

Eliot Mizrachi: Well, Curtis, congratulations on Game Face. It's such a cool product, a cool story. why PR? what inspired you to, actually go through all the effort of developing a book around it?

Curtis Sparrer: Well, part of it is my own journey into PR. I didn't think, hey, I wanna do public relations. When I was growing up, I wanted to be an actor, The reason why is I saw that the actors got to fly the spaceships on Star Trek and Star Wars, [00:02:00] and I wanted to fly those.

And that in a nutshell is my professional career where. A lot of half starts into things like, theater, movie making, TV editing have brought me to where I am and I thought about it and I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I had read a book that had given me a sense of what I could be doing way back when, so I would've had a much better idea and PR is one of many careers that doesn't get the sort of treatment in the, young person literature that it should. And so to me, PR is actually one of those hidden careers. Now granted, there are a few entertainment icons of PR. I think of Samantha Jones in Sex in the City, for example, or maybe one of the evil silos in Battlestar Galactica.

But regardless. They don't really encompass what PR is, and so I wanted to write a book that didn't really have to create spaceships or [00:03:00] battles or, you know, wild soirees, but gave a sense about what PR is and why it's exciting and how a young person could access it and understand it and be the hero of it.

Eliot Mizrachi: It is not lost on me that there's irony in the fact that PR has a PR problem, that it, it is not understood and appreciated the way that it should be. And I think this book is a great contribution to reaching younger audience to help them understand that profession. Especially since you see in the media, as you said, you know, there's sort of a limited view of what that actual role is and sometimes it feels more like spin than actual public relations.

You mentioned your niece Sloan was, was an inspiration for this. Tell us about her A little.

Curtis Sparrer: Sloan is, how do I say? She's now 16, but she's 16 and still nice. She is really focused on the visual arts, and we were actually having a discussion about the book and she said, well, she liked it. She [00:04:00] doesn't think PR is for her, and that's fine.

The thing about books like this is it's supposed to help people at a young age understand about themselves and what the world is like outside of themselves. I'm glad that Sloan knows this. I think that more young people need Exposure to this. Most young people, their job exposure comes from their parents.

And most parents in research that we commissioned say they don't know either journalists or PR people. And so this is a way of making those fields more knowable.

Eliot Mizrachi: Yeah, and and I'm guessing Sloan was a partner for you in writing this.

Curtis Sparrer: Absolutely. You know, it's important to be able to go to someone who's. Not 50 years of age and say, Hey, I am thinking this. Does this make sense to you? Is this how you would say it? And she's a lot closer to a 10-year-old than I am. And so you can't ask for a better collaborator. And that was also the nature of the book where. [00:05:00] I am faced with a big PR problem, a crisis, and I am trying to get into the heads of the people who actually use the game that's experiencing the crisis.

And Sloan is the closest person I can go to to get inside the view of a gamer who loves a product. That is something that I merely represent.

Eliot Mizrachi: So you actually that that was the next question I was gonna ask you was how did you decide on what story to tell in order to illustrate what PR is and why its value is?

So a video game felt like the right medium because it was something relatable to kids. Like how did you come up with the crisis scenario?

Curtis Sparrer: Well, I. First of all, you hit the nail on the head. A video game is relatable to kids. It is technology. It is something that I would touch on. In fact, I've represented games like Tetris, for example, and so this is a very knowable field to me and knowable to anyone outside of PR.

Eliot Mizrachi: I [00:06:00] understand that some of your clients have said that they wish they had something like this to explain PR to their bosses, that that's a pretty incredible KPI for a book like this.

Curtis Sparrer: You know, when I told people that I was writing this, that was always the response I got from clients is, wow, I can share this with my boss.

I can share this with my product managers. And the kids was like, yeah, I guess I could share it too with them too. They need to know. But there was this sense of relief of being able to use something that was so simple to explain something that is often so complex. And I think that's when you really know that you've hit the bullseye.

Eliot Mizrachi: public relations is so multifaceted and multidimensional.

How did you go about trying to filter out the complexity to make it relatable to that audience?

Curtis Sparrer: Well, part of it was just digging in the memory banks and thinking about stories that I had faced and how I had retold them and retold them and retold them. Because whenever you're retelling a [00:07:00] story, that's like the first act of fiction because you kind of shorten certain things and you make it easier to understand and digest, and you, finesse it.

So the punchlines are punchier. there have been times where I have. Been brought into a crisis situation, and sure the crisis was super technical and hard to understand, but as you recounted it and recounted and recounted it, it became more elegant and more accessible. And similarly, this is the same sort of iterative process where.

I have faced horrible, awful complex moments, and when I've had to recount what happened to my husband, I'm able to shorten it and simplify it in a way that doesn't leave him hanging or thinking, what are you talking about?

Eliot Mizrachi: Yeah. Yeah. it kind of, it reminds me, at least for Page, we're so focused on the fact that public relations is not just what you're saying, it's how you're shaping the organization.

It's values, it's about integrity and authenticity. And [00:08:00] I, I, I wonder, you know, I think the, the mechanics of public relations are, are one of the things that you can talk about. But actually that strategic impact, that strategic value comes through as well. what sort of influences contributed to that for you?

Curtis Sparrer: I think the one that I kind of repeated again and again is the bug is a feature because there have been several kind of eureka moments in tech where someone has discovered something that they thought was a bug. And has realized, wait a second, this isn't a bug at all. This is something really useful.

This is interesting, this is valuable. And the other thing that I thought was important was the fact that in the book we focus on listening to your audiences, and that's where we find that the bug isn't. But something really useful to other gamers, other people who care about the game. And I think that there's been not enough [00:09:00] telling of those stories about how PR people really dig in and listen.

And because they're listening, they have a better understanding of the product and the product experience and what that can mean for the brand. And that's the journey that we wanted to take Sloan on, is where she encounters what she thinks is a bug. She discovers that I'm dealing with this crisis. I realize she's the best person to help me understand the gamer's point of view.

And we go on a journey where we understand what's going on with the game, what gamers are saying about the game in this new bug or feature, and then how we communicate that to not only the client. Journalists and how we get everyone to come around to a new way of perceiving this game, this ecosystem, and this community.

Eliot Mizrachi: I love that because it kind of demystifies the, the work that we do. you chose to do a graphic novel [00:10:00] instead of just a regular written book.How did you decide that it was gonna have a visual component to it?

Curtis Sparrer: Everything is new for me. This is my first time doing any of this. and so there was a lot of thinking about what would be accessible, and I thought that if I was going to write a book for 10 year olds, that I needed to have a strong graphic component to make certain elements come to life. And so that's what inspired me to add a graphical touch to it.

And the thing is, is that. These graphics can be utilized in videos and other explainers about how PR can come alive. And so there is a multidimensional purpose to them that will be adding in the weeks and months to come. And so that informed it and it also helped, how should I say? Me write more into character.

For example, in the [00:11:00] book, you'll notice I'm wearing a tie. I never wear a tie. In real life, those things should go the way of powdered wigs or physical offices, but I. I thought that the tie helped distinguish me as an adult, and so that also made me think, okay, these are quote unquote adults in the room.

This is how they're talking versus Sloan and how she's talking and what she's experiencing. And so that was an important visual distinction that I took into the writing.

Eliot Mizrachi: I, I love that detail because it, it sort of goes to how writing this graphic novel was a, a thought process, an experience for you, kind of relating to the audience.

I'm curious j, having gone through the story, uh, I imagine it's drawn on your experiences as a public relations professional.

Is there a moment from the book or a detail or something that you've sort of translated from your experience as a PR counselor and it showed up in [00:12:00] the book?

Curtis Sparrer: You know, the moment that kind of makes me break into a cold sweat is the moment where the CEO of the gaming company is having a tense conversation with me and my agency, because we've all been there where there's a crisis going on and everyone's pretty frazzled and everyone's trying to solve this problem, and yet you cannot.

Not divorce yourself from the emotions that are in that moment. And so I think every time I read that part, I kind of get teleported to every tough crisis call I've been summoned to or that I've had where we've got a big thing to deal with and it's super important and there are livelihoods at stake and we're trying to make it work and.

Everything that you say or do matters. It's not a creative campaign where you're doing it for fun, you're doing it because it's important. [00:13:00] And so that to me is probably the most impactful moment in the book.

So the thing that really struck me about this book is how people reacted to their. Visual representations that, you know, I was inspired to, create based on their characters. And some people would say, I need to be skinnier, or I have more hair than that, or I would never dress that poorly.

And what really struck me was that they're reacting to the fact that this humble little book could very well. Be the thing that represents them for all time. There is a sense that, unlike a video, that there's a permanence to books. That there is a testament to history. And so when I'm writing this and when I'm looking at the characters, I, I'm learned to approach this with almost a sense of fear and trembling because of how important this could be to certain people.

The audience for our podcast are [00:14:00] senior communication leaders, chief communication officers. how would you explain to them why you did this and what outcome, what, what you're looking to achieve with this book?I think any chief communicator has had a moment where they've had to explain their job to their children or their grandchildren, and they have felt incapable of doing it in a way that's compelling and.

I think this book nicely gives a sense of what communicators, even at the chief communicator level have to face when they're working with big brands, with reputations that need to be managed. And so my hope is that if they're looking for a way. To explain what they do in a way that is entertaining and engaging and doesn't leave a lot of blank stares that they'll consider game faces as their go-to.

Eliot Mizrachi: I hope so too. And I would just add, as I [00:15:00] was reading it, I hope that it inspires a new generation of people to go into PR. That this is a way for them to be introduced to why it's such an important profession and that it's not necessarily like it seems in the media that, they consume.

I hope that the impact from this kind of a book will be really long term and really valuable for the profession. Curtis, where can people find the book?

Curtis Sparrer: They can find it on Amazon, and if you're looking for more information about it, you can go to CurtisSparrer.com or Bospar.com and there's plenty of information about the book and how to get it.

Eliot Mizrachi:

Curtis's book may be for kids, but it hits on something core to all of us in this profession. The idea that great PR isn't just about what you say, it's about what you do.

Arthur Page's frequent refrain was effective public relations is 90% doing and only 10% talking about it. Gameface shows us what that looks like through the eyes of a curious, [00:16:00] capable, young gamer who listens first, finds the story and helps others understand it.

Curtis isn't just re-imagining how to explain PR. He's also shaping the future of it. As president of the San Francisco Press Club, he helped bring the organization back from the brink so he's not new to a good comeback story.

Game faces a fun reminder that our next great communicator might right now be a 10-year-old gamer with a curious mind, which wouldn't even be the most circuitous route to the industry that we've ever heard, but it wouldn't be possible without someone igniting the spark of inspiration either.

Thanks to Curtis for joining us and thank you for listening

to the new CCO I'm Eliot Mizrachi and we'll see you next time.