PR NOTABLES OF AMERICAN

REX F. HARLOW

Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA

1893–1993

Rex Francis Harlow joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1939 as a public relations instructor. He advocated social responsibility, including a code of ethics, and promoted the use of sociological and psychological research. He founded and became president of the American Council on Public Relations in 1939. Later, he merged it with the National Association of Public Relations Counsel to form the Public Relations Society of America, where he was a director. Harlow earned his doctorate from Stanford University, where he later developed and taught public relations courses from 1940 to 1944. He started the Public Relations Journal in 1945. In 1948, he founded and headed the Public Relations Institute of the West. Harlow authored 75 books, and is noted for developing a widely used, comprehensive definition of public relations following extensive research of earlier attempts. He was in the inaugural class of the College of Fellows. (Courtesy Wisconsin Historical Society)

Muriel Fox — Opening Closed Doors, Breaking Glass Ceilings

Despite the monumental social and civic changes occurring in the 1960s — and the wording of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibited discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin” — Muriel Fox knew first-hand that discrimination against women in the workplace remained commonplace and accepted.

In 1950, two years after graduating from Barnard College in New York, Fox applied for a job at Carl Byoir & Associates, then one of the nation’s most prominent public relations firms. The response: “We don’t hire women writers.”

Fox persisted and ultimately landed a job there, rising to become the firm’s youngest vice president. Yet she was acutely aware of ongoing barriers. She found herself bumping up against a glass ceiling at Byoir, where she was told she couldn’t go higher because “corporate CEOs can’t relate to women.” (She eventually became executive vice president.)

When Fox invited Betty Friedan — author of “The Feminine Mystique” — to speak at a meeting of American Women in Radio and Television, she remarked in her subsequent thank-you note, “If you ever start an NAACP for women, count me in.” That’s how Fox ended up as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. She helped draft, print and deliver its first press release to newspaper offices.

Fox chaired NOW’s first Public Relations Task Force, served on its board and was elected chair of the board in 1971. When she couldn’t bring a client and a journalist to lunch at the Oak Room at New York City’s Plaza Hotel because women weren’t allowed, she organized a NOW picket.

With other feminist leaders, Fox later picketed the New York Times for segregating its classified ads into “help wanted male” and “help wanted female.”

Behind the scenes, Fox drafted influential documents for NOW, including a letter urging President Lyndon Johnson to add “sex” to an executive order on affirmative action and asking the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prohibit sex-specific job ads. Her work helped expand job opportunities for all women.

Fox continued to support NOW, helped found other women’s organizations and serves as chair of the board of Veteran Feminists of America, which seeks to preserve and honor the history of the feminist movement. In her many speeches, she urged women who were successful in business to say, “Yes, I am a feminist” — declaring feminism as an asset, not an epithet.

Earth

Earth Day 1990: “Who Says You Can’t Change the World?”

1990

Twenty years after the first celebration of Earth Day, the campaign for planetary preservation needed a PR makeover.

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, launched the modern environmental movement and led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Act. The Clean Air Act passed the following year. But in the wake of the environmental disaster caused by the leaking Exxon Valdez oil tanker in 1989, environmental leaders wanted Earth Day to engage a truly global response.

Political organizers and consultants, as well as advertising and PR professionals, joined forces to promote the event — and Earth-friendly actions individuals could take.

“We are trying to generate as much interest as we can for people to start doing things immediately — at home, at work and at school,” said Diana Aldridge, on leave from Hill & Knowlton to serve as Earth Day communications director. The event’s slogan: “Who says you can’t change the world?”

E. Bruce Harrison, APR, Fellow PRSA, known as the “father of environmental PR,” promoted corporate commitment to a balance between economic growth and environmental protection. By 2005, that concept had evolved. A United Nations initiative encouraged the integration of environmental, social and governance factors in investment decisions.

Former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” galvanized public attention — thanks in part to the work of three PR professionals: Megan Colligan of Paramount Vantage, Buffy Shutt of Participant Productions and Michael Feldman of Glover Park Group.

When that PR team won PRSA’s Silver Anvil award in 2007, Gore lauded their vital role. “The filmmakers took a slide show and made it a movie. Publicity took that movie and helped make it into a movement,” Gore said.