Recently, I was asked to speak to the next generation of public relations students at DePaul University’s PRSSA (Public Relations Society Students Association) two-day conference entitled, “From Traditional to Digital: the New Ways of PR.” My presentation focused on Multicultural public relations, a space for which I am becoming a budding expert due to the work I do for clients such as McDonald’s, Wells Fargo and several others.
I was really excited (and actually kinda nervous) to speak to the students; it made me think back to my time as both a journalism undergrad and a communications graduate student. I don’t remember this being a topic in any of my classes. I knew it was important to cover issues affecting the black, Hispanic and Asian communities given I had a personal interest in black issues, but this was never discussed in my classes. And that was only a short time ago. I have always been particularly interested in History, Political Science and Religion – issue areas that are critically important to those demographic groups. I elected to take African American history and to study issues dealing with minority groups. In grad school, the topic of my thesis had to deal with the impact of new technology on public relations and media relations mainly because at the time, we were beginning to notice the impact of the Internet on everything in our lives from social interaction to commerce or e- commerce. And at that time, many African Americans and Hispanics were becoming victims of the digital divide. While some of that division still exists, blacks and Hispanics are conquering social media and the blogosphere in ways that could not have been foreshadowed.
And so as I spoke to a room filled with bright-eyed young smarties about the multicultural public relations space and how it continues to grow, I was encouraged by their attentiveness, interest and responses to this field. And while most of the room was Caucasian, I’m excited about what they took away from my view of the world of pr viewed from a multicultural lens and how critical that lens is for today’s savvy marketers, no matter what their background.
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