In Charleston, a Woman’s Place is in Her Own PR Firm

The old adage about a woman’s intuition seems to be playing out in the Charleston business arena as an increasing number of women head into the field of public relations.

A survey from the New York-based Council of Public Relations Firms revealed that 95% of participating firms are projecting revenue growth for 2007, at an average rate of 12%. The strongest growth in 2006 was found at smaller agencies, defined as those with less than $4 million in revenue, where the average increase was 19.3%.

In Charleston, a number of public relations firms are headed by women and more than a half dozen of them have opened in the past three years. These women point to a variety of reasons why they opened their businesses in Charleston and why women in particular seem drawn to public relations.

“I think it’s in our nature,” said Diane Scher of Pizazz Publicity, a one-woman operation focused on freelance writing, public relations, talent promotion and publicity.

Women are born networkers, she said. “They’re good at matchmaking and schmoozing. We’re the ‘hostesses with the most-est,’ and a lot of P.R. is planning events and handling logistics. Think about it. Women have been doing that for centuries, in churches and synagogues and at home.”

Annie Byrd, founder of Byrdhouse Public Relations, agrees.
“I think that women by nature tend to be good communicators,” she said. “It’s not that men aren’t, but I think women are drawn to the profession because it’s a lot of networking and making contacts and selling yourself and selling your clients. I think that’s very attractive to women, and it’s a fun profession. There are so many events and different things to get involved in.”

Byrd started with three clients a year ago and has since tripled her client base. She sees the P.R. field growing in Charleston because the area is growing in general.

“Now the Charleston business climate is so thriving, I think people see the value of having a local P.R. person,” Byrd said.

Sherrie Bakshi, a partner with Vladia Jurcova at Stylee P.R. & Marketing, said there is a lot of opportunity in the Charleston market right now for public relations professionals, particularly for small agencies.

“If you’ve noticed, a lot of the women in P.R. are really young,” Bakshi said. “A lot of businesses out there aren’t looking for the big, high-profile companies any more. I would say, especially in Charleston, they might not be able to afford the big high-profile agencies and they’re looking more for niche, boutique PR firms.”

Lyn Mettler, who launched Mettler Public Relations in 2005, agrees that the lack of big companies in the Charleston area means more business for public relations agencies, because smaller companies and entrepreneurs can’t afford a PR professional on salary all year.

“A lot of my clients are turning to P.R. firms because they use them on an as-needed basis,” Mettler said.
Women with degrees in communications are also finding themselves awash in a big sea of similarly qualified applicants for public relations jobs.

“It is tough to find a P.R. job in Charleston, and that might be why people are starting their own firms,” Mettler said.
Is it a lucrative venture?

“I think it can be,” Mettler said. “If you really have the experience and knowledge, I think you can charge fees to reflect that, and I think people are willing to pay for that. What I tried to do is create a niche for myself in Web P.R., which is a very new idea of taking the emerging Web technologies like blogs, podcasts and social networking and using those strategies as P.R. tools.”

Lee Deas, who founded Obviouslee Marketing two years ago, said most of the area’s small public relations firms have their own niches.

“It eliminates competition, and we’re more apt to send each other business instead of fielding every lead that comes our way,” Deas said. “I’ve noticed that instead of going out and trying to find the ideal job, a lot of people are trying to create the ideal job for themselves.”

Deas, who grew up in Charleston and wanted to stay here, said her agency focuses on working with national companies that want to navigate the Charleston and South Carolina market or with local companies that are looking to go national.

Colleen Troy, who launched Touchpoint Communications in 2005, had worked at another local public relations firm before going out on her own.

“It’s a very attractive field for women,” Troy said. “I think there are lots of studies and anecdotal evidence that says that women tend to be perceptive and are able to juggle a lot of tasks at one time and just combat challenges from a different perspective.”

Troy thinks the number of new public relations agencies in Charleston has to do with the tremendous growth in the business community.

“There are so many more potential clients than there were 10 years ago,” she said. “The hospitality industry is exploding, and there are all the new businesses moving to town, industry and service businesses and regional offices. Charleston is becoming a world market.”

Elizabeth Boineau remembers a different Charleston, when hers was the only woman-owned public relations firm in town. Boineau started E. Boineau & Co. in 1990. She left Charleston in 1996 and worked for a number of high-profile firms, including Hill & Knowlton, Fleishman Hillard and Weber Shandwick.

After living in Los Angeles, Miami and Atlanta, Boineau decided to return to Charleston. The technology bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s had burst and large companies were downsizing.

“I lived through those days of chopped-up budgets, salary cuts and hiring freezes,” Boineau said. “I was just so overworked.”

She then asked herself if she could do it again and go it on her own in Charleston.

“In 2000, I saw the tech bubble burst and that’s when I saw a lot of people in the big agencies start their own firms,” Boineau said. “I saw this in big markets. What was going on here in Charleston would have been a microcosm of that.”

Boineau brought her business back in 2002 as a “virtual firm,” and she and her consultants work from home.

“I noticed what seemed to be an uprising of what I thought to be very young women starting their own P.R. firms,” Boineau said. “I might have been reticent to do it at their experience level. But the workplace environment we are in now is so accepting of independent operators and virtual agencies. I do believe we have a town marketplace here rich with opportunities for those who are savvy, for those who are aggressive and for those who do qualified work. I applaud them, and I think there is enough work to go around. I think competition is healthy.”