PRNewser Interview: Richard Laermer

Today’s PRNewser interview is with the one, the only: Richard Laermer. If you work in PR and don’t know Richard, well, where have you been?

The RLM PR president, author of “Punk Marketing,” “Full Frontal PR” and “co-runner” of The Bad Pitch Blog, Laermer is pretty much a walking sound bite. Ok, he’s much more than that, but that is just one thing that sticks out to us whenever we speak with him.

Today Richard catches up with PRNewser about Mark Penn’s failures with the Hillary campaign, why Gumby is the mascot of RLM PR, and his new book, “2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade,” which he describes as, “an exploration of trends that will affect our lives and a sense of what we have to overcome just before we leap into the new about-to-be-filled space. Or, as Woody Allen once said: ‘A kind of void, you know, an empty one.’”

So why another book?
This is my fourth business book. The only reason I did this book…

…is because when I did Trendspotting in 2002, I wanted to do another book on how people can become trendspotters.

When Herb at McGraw Hill said he wanted to a book with me, I said the only one I would do is on how people can become trendspotters.

The book is really seventy-seven chapters about any kind of information you’d want to become a trendspotter.

How is this book different from your past works?

Well, Punk Marketing took six months. Full Frontal PR took eight months. I took a year and a half to write this. I had this idea, wouldn’t it be great if we could jump over this terrible period of mediocrity right now?

So I picked a date, 1/20/2011 – ten years since Clinton left office. Lets look from that day on. I originally had 475 pages, but I cut about 40 chapters. Who is going to read a book that big?

I have never said this before, but if I never wrote another book, I would be perfectly content, because I wrote exactly what I want with this book.

My editor was like, “do whatever the f*ck you want,” which was amazing.

What do you make of Mark Penn’s Microtrends? Was that one of his reasons for failure with the Clinton campaign?

It’s not about microtrends. The problem with futurists, is when you think about it, what they’re doing is really good for them, but if you can’t go out and find your own future with some tools and tips, what good is what they’re saying? It’s like leading a horse to water.

I really feel like what he [Penn] does is so finger in the air. What Mark did with the Clinton campaign – these people [like Penn] get paid a lot of money and I respect them for their business acumen. They use big words and think about the minutiae of it, but they don’t inspire you to action.

I think about what I’ve got to do to move myself in the direction to take action.

How are PR people at spotting trends?

The problem with PR peple is they get scared with doing the work as opposed to being mental about it. Most PR peple I know aren’t good at being trendpsotters because most of them are focused on putting out “news” and most of it isn’t news. In order to do good work for your client, you have to look at what’s ahead.

For example, really well informed politicians are incredibly good about looking ahead. They are made aware of so much.

A good trendpsotter is someone who doesn’t get caught into knowing what they know about.

The problem with most business people is that they’re too interested in what they’re interested in. Today it is more important to be interesting than interested. People will become magnets to you.

It’s important to make people go, “yeah, that guy is really great,” as opposed to, “that is the guy I talked to about the sports scores.”

What were the biggest trends in PR over the last year?

Everything that happened last year seemed faddy as opposed to trend oriented. We’re so involved in the mediocre stuff. People put out releases. That certainly is not going to move any needles.

In the future I see PR people being less release oriented and more the actual sources for information. We’re going to have to do a lot more of the dirty work. Smart PR peope are realizing as the media shrinks, it’s up to us to figure out who the real resources are as opposed to the ones that pretend to be.

Our job is going to be to figure what matters. Either that or we’re going to be working at Starbucks.

You always hear reporters talking about how they’re constantly looking for the next “trend story.” Are there any of these that you’ve been involved with?

You have to bring reporters a trend that they’ve never heard about. PR people can’t do that because they are to buried in the client side of things. I’ve never seen a reporter not react to something that is bigger than the client, but the client fits into that. But that is a lot of work, and it requires thinking. Which people don’t like to do. People like to do, not think. I always hear people say they are working so hard, and I say to them, well stop working so hard and start working smarter.

What would happen if we all stopped bitching for 24 hrs Radar [magazine] would go out of business. Again.

If there is one thing you hope a reader gets out of this book, what would it be?

I actually have a favorite chapter. It’s about “gumbitude.” Remember Gumby [the claymation character]? Gumby is RLM PR’s mascot. Gumby says, “regardless of what happens, it’s gonna get done.” Gumbitude is this idea that every single day is about flexibility.

I write about it a lot in the beginning of the book. People are hopefully gonna go, “lets just get it done.” When I first strated writing about the book, I thought, “What’s it gonna take to gumby though.”

Are you happy so far with the PR surrounding the book?

I can do a ton of interviews and talk on TV. But I like it when people get in touch with me and talk about the book. That means they are reading and talking to me about it. Yesterday someone wrote me saying it’s a time machine.

A journalist friend called me and said, “you didn’t give a flying f*ck about what people said, you did it your way.”

So to me, doing PR? PR at the beginning is all about blogs, things like that and TV and radio. To me seeing bloggers go, “holy shit this is a book that I actually liked.” That is better to me than any PR.

The back of the book has good and bad reviews. I wanted to be the first to put both the good and the bad. I don’t care. I just want people to pick it up.

You can pick it up: “2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade,” out now.

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