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Today, I feel old. Okay, not old in the pedestrians-leaping-behind-trees-as-I-navigate-down-the-road old. After all, I can still zip along the freeways as fast as a State Police Pace Car will allow me. I feel old because my daughter Ariel asked me to critique the sudden fiction piece she had written for her creative writing class. Sudden Fiction!!! What in the blazes is that?
Surely, with a BA in English I know something about writing. In fact, I can dazzle with haiku, epics, and essays. Further, I was a journalist for 15 years and now run a successful public relations agency. Communications is my middle name!
So, what is this infinitesimally, insignificant genre sudden fiction? Is it that you suddenly realize something is fiction, such as George Bush's statement about why we are in Iraq? Is sudden fiction reading a novel fast? No, no, that would be fast fiction. Is it non-fiction that is so boring you suddenly have to embellish it with fantasy?
I needed an answer. So, I reached out to my good friend Jeeves. My computer shuttered and I'm certain Jeeves sneered as he slammed me with 1.2 million references related to Sudden Fiction. By God, it's real. Well, as real as fiction can be.
To the uninitiated, sudden fiction, so Jeeves informs me, is a short, short story - on purpose. Not a story that you fear is too short so you try to make it look longer by using wide margins and triple spacing. This is an actual undertaking that demands you write as short as possible. It's a way of thinking and creatively writing with succinctness at heart and a blue pencil at hand to slash unnecessary words. Nano epics in the making.
But as I began to digest the idea behind sudden fiction, the suddenness reached out and grabbed me by the dangling participle. It is an attitude, a command. "Dive into the story," Sudden Fiction demands. Don't gingerly dip one toe at a time into the pool of a plot. Take it on. Allow the brevity of well-crafted words to hurtle the reader into the middle of something, yet feel as if he or she began from the beginning. It's fearless. It's fantastic.
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And the suddenness (not the fiction) is transforming public relations...if we dare. It is, in fact, what successful communications firms have been up to...just most of us didn't know what to call it.
Sudden PR is instant. It breaks through the plodding of cookie-cutter plans, of next steps that are so timid you want to attach a walker to them.
In a world of instant gratification, 24-hour breaking news, blogs and podcasts (don't ask me), PR is not your mom's old news release or press conference. The longer it takes to respond the less likely it is that your message will be heard. We have to move with the times and make those instant messages meaningful and resonate in the minds of a public with minute attention spans and more mediums to look to than ever.
Sudden PR isn't easy. It demands accountability. It insists on action. Just as literature has evolved into something far more daring than e.e. cummings refusing to use upper case; public relations has and continues to evolve into a high-speed access of ideas and actions that benefit the client in measurable, meaningful ways. It's dynamic with (let us not forget) the foundation of knowledge and experience.
Sudden PR breaks away from tradition. No more soft soundings and remedial PR plans. There is an edge, immediacy to a client's needs and expectations. The responsibility of team members is now shared more than ever. A firm's prized possession is no longer just the most weathered practitioner, but is also the one who understands all the message mediums and can augment that with their public relations "roots" which have been cultivated by a formal education in the subject.
Those colleagues with decades of experience certainly have the credibility earned from their years to instill confidence and to provide strong counsel to
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clients. But they can and should not lead alone. It is the newer pros. Franco PR's newest faces...those who have fewer years in the business but greater understanding of new technology, new approaches and new research that provide tremendous value to clients. They are equal as leaders and they know what to do with suddenness. Unlike many of us who came from a hodge-podge of communications backgrounds - journalism, broadcasting, advertising, etc. - this group came out of college knowing that PR was their calling, or at least they think.
Sudden PR is a new model. It does away with the belief that "earning" a place in the agency must have a timeline attached to it. It is capability in its boldest, clearest form.
Agencies that are afraid to take that risk, that hold back their "younger team members" because they first want them to do the traditional agency things, are making a mistake. They will realize, rather suddenly, that they are being left behind. Creating a balanced team in your agency and empowering those fresh faces to share what they know will - suddenly - make everything more effective.
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