On Tuesday October 13, I tuned into a guest speaker event via Zoom with Nike's Global Communications Director Chad Kersman. This discussion was presented by Newhouse's very own Professor Brad Horn and the Newhouse Sports Media Center.
Kersman, a Newhouse alum, joined us from his home in Portland, Oregon, to discuss athlete and brand communications, storytelling for athletes, and his professional journey to Nike.
While Kersman shared many lessons that he had learned in his 20 years of experience, he first delved into his role at Nike and what he has seen and learned in sports public relations.
One of the main aspects of Kersman's job is reputation management of the various athletes Nike works closely with. In order to properly manage these athletes and their public reputations, the relationships Kersman builds with them are crucial to his success. In order to build this relationship, Kersman stressed gaining trust with the athlete (or client of any kind), but this trust doesn't just happen overnight. It takes time and a lot of concrete positive results to gain a client's trust. Through hard work and collection of data to show you are yielding positive results for your client, they will trust you increasingly.
There were a few specific quotes that I took with me after the discussion concluded. The first was, "you've got to adapt or die." Public relations is all about adaptation. You may have one plan or strategy set in stone, but then a news story breaks or new information comes in that requires you to start from square one. Public relations is an ever-changing and fast paced field, and if you cannot keep up you will fail. You must be able to adapt along the way and be flexible in order to achieve your goals and be successful in a campaign.
Kersman spoke a lot about storytelling, as his job is ultimately to help athletes tell their stories. He said that the two main aspects of storytelling are authenticity and knowing your audience. This is something that has been engrained into my Newhouse education since my first semester. Public relations practitioners at every level are storytellers, whether it is for an athlete, a celebrity, a large company, an institution, etc. Storytelling is at the root of what we do in every way, in both the highest and lowest ranking positions, and if we authentically tell a story targeted to a specific, niche audience, these stories will be relevant and successful.
My biggest takeaway from this discussion with Kersman was his final remarks. In an homage to sports public relations, he talked about representing the name on the front of your jersey versus the name on the back. At first, I thought he was talking about the implication of this concept for athletes. But really, he meant that we as future public relations professionals must "understand our own jerseys."
On the back of our jersey is our name, representing our personal brand and qualities that set us apart from our peers. In order to be successful as an individual, we must know what's on the back, what it entails, what we bring to the table, own it and advocate for it.
The name on the front of our jersey represents the client or company we are working with or for. Whether this is an agency or a client, their name is on the line with each and every one of our actions. It is our responsibility to represent them with the utmost respect and diligence to their name.
Kersman left us with a question, asking, how do you balance the front and back of your jersey? At first glance, people will only see the name on the front. It takes time, trust, building a relationship, yielding positive results and concrete deliverables in order to turn around and show everyone what is on the back.
To check out my live tweets from this event, follow me on Twitter @madelinerhunt02.