Member Chat: Robert Austin, APR: ‘Be a Strategist from Day One’

Robert Austin, APR, chair APR Committee

By: Regina Martel, member, PRSA Colorado Communications Committee

For more than 30 years, Robert Austin, APR, has been involved in the many disciplines that comprise public relations. From managing reputations to developing strategic campaigns to counseling executives and providing media training for spokespeople, Robert has been in the communication trenches as both a freelance writer and a PR director for a leading nonprofit in Colorado. 

No matter the industry or communication tactic employed, Robert is a vocal proponent of research citing strategy as central to successful communications.

We recently reached out to Robert to talk to him about his career, his work as a professional in the nonprofit sector, the benefits of PRSA and the power of the APR credential.  He also opined on “fake news” and how adherence to ethical standards and practices elevates our role as strategic advisers.

Regina Martel: Tell us about your current position and how you chose PR as a profession.

Robert Austin: I lead the Public & Professional Relations Department at the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank, which is the nonprofit organization responsible for the recovery and transplantation of donated eye tissues from organ donors in Colorado and Wyoming. We are a small nonprofit with a worldwide impact. While our recovery area for eye donors is Colorado and Wyoming, we can transplant corneas anywhere in the world. We look for a transplant recipient locally first, then domestically, then internationally.

I’m not sure I made a conscious choice to get into public relations. My first career was in laboratory medicine, but after a decade, I no longer felt challenged. So I switched careers. From my college days on, I did a lot of freelance writing, and decided to return to that. I wrote everything from restaurant menus to features for consumer magazines. That focus on audience experience, along with [furthering my] education, helped me make the transition to PR and communication.  

RM: What would you say is the value of PRSA to you as a professional?

RA: I believe very strongly that continuing education is vital to any profession. For me and my colleagues at the eye bank, PRSA is the primary way we continue to improve our knowledge and practice.

RM: Given the complexity of the eye bank, how would you describe your audiences?

RA: On one end of the audience spectrum are the grieving families of our eye donors. At the other end is the transplant recipient whose sight is restored through a cornea transplant. In between those two audiences, there are a lot of intercessory audiences that we rely on to fulfill our mission: hospitals and their staff, hospices, coroners, other tissue and organ banks, funeral homes, transplant surgeons and surgery centers.

Outside of these core audiences, we have the typical audiences found in any nonprofit: volunteers, monetary contributors, legislators and sponsors. When it comes to public education, our efforts are focused on the roughly 30 percent of people in Colorado (40 percent in Wyoming) who have not yet made the decision to sign up as an eye, organ and tissue donor.

Finally, because we are an international eye bank, we also find ourselves doing some of the advance groundwork when we send corneas to a new country, i.e., getting documents translated, researching regulations and customs requirements and ensuring all our communications are culturally appropriate. We are then involved in developing ongoing relationships with those foreign transplant surgeons and transplant centers so that we fit into their system.

I truly believe our team gets a breadth of experience that few PR pros get. We must be deft enough to manage the communication geared toward a grieving mother just as effectively as managing the outreach targeted to a South African custom official or a 15-year-old learning about organ donation at school. It’s that variety that makes our work so interesting and challenging.

RM: What are the challenges for a PR practitioner in the nonprofit sector? How is it different from for-profit PR?

RA: It’s important to remember that “nonprofit” is a tax status and not a mission, so I don’t think there really is a big difference between the two. Perhaps, one difference in a nonprofit with limited resources is that we tend to do it all and don’t specialize in one aspect of communication, such as social media or media relations. As a result, my team gets experience in all aspects of public relations and communication: graphic design and layout, audience research, message development, management of communication channels, measurement and providing communication counsel to administration and staff.

I do think, however, that most people in the nonprofit world will tell you they find rewards beyond just professional satisfaction and a paycheck. At the end of the day, I get great satisfaction knowing our work not only cured someone else’s blindness but also provided some measure of comfort to a family who just lost someone they loved very much. It’s such a privilege and I’m humbled by it every day.

RM: You mentor young professionals and speak at conferences about our profession. What's one piece of advice you would give to a young professional just starting out in PR?

RA: Be a strategist from day one and never, ever skip the research. Public relations, at its best, is about changing behaviors. That requires you to think and act strategically from a position of knowledge of the issue and understanding of the audience — even when your assignment is tactical. I think that, too often, those just starting out are given task-oriented work without the context of why they are doing it and how it impacts the bottom line of the organization. I would advise young professionals to ask the tough questions of why a particular tactic was chosen, how it is going to be measured in a way that matters to the objective (outcomes over outputs) and how it furthers the goals of the company. If you think strategically, you’ll excel in this profession.

RM: You are the Chair of PRSA Colorado's APR Committee. When did you get your APR and why?

RA: I earned my accreditation in 2004. Prior to my public relations career, I worked in a profession where people were either licensed or registered so it just made sense to me. It was a way I could demonstrate my knowledge, competence and dedication to a solidly strategic practice.

RM: How do you think an APR benefits today's practitioner?

RA: A lot of accredited members will talk about the sense of professional and personal accomplishment. While that is certainly a big part of it, I honestly think the biggest benefit isn’t to the practitioner, but to our profession.

I don’t buy the oft repeated mantra that “PR is an art form.” It is not. At its core are principles of communication theory and social science. Sure, it has a strong creative element, but there is a strategic and scientific method to successful public relations practice, and the accreditation process cements that in the practitioner. I’ve spoken to many accredited members and each one of them has confirmed that the APR made them more strategic and methodical.

In today’s world of “fake news,” dishonest spokespersons and billions of messages across thousands of platforms, our profession must adhere to ethical standards and processes that are highly strategic, based on solid research, tactically adept and measurable to outcomes. I believe very strongly that accreditation instills this in both our profession and the professional.