The PR Spotlight with Gini Dietrich (Arment Dietrich)

We at Coopr connect with international PR professionals daily. From Sydney to Vancouver and from Cape Town to Helsinki. More and more PR professionals connect with each other online, via Twitter, blogs, podcasts or Facebook. To share their knowledge, thoughts, doubts and passion for Public Relations. With 'The PR Spotlight' we wish to contribute to this active PR community. We will try to approach some of the best in PR for you. To help you find answers. 'The PR Spotlight' today is on Gini Dietrich, founder of PR firm Arment Dietrich and author of Spin Sucks. Please enjoy her 7 answers and help us share the story!

1. Who are you and what do you do?
I am Gini Dietrich (or Aunt Gini as I'm known to 14 little munchkins) and I don't really do anything but watch re-runs of Oprah and eat bon-bons. No? OK. I founded a PR firm (Arment Dietrich), I author Spin Sucks, and I'm launching a new business (Project Jack Bauer) in May.

2. What does PR mean to you?
Is this a trick question? PR is customer service, communication, human resources, sales, marketing, and advertising wrapped up into one. While PR professionals aren't experts in all of those areas, it is our job to effectively communicate every aspect of each of those roles, both internally and externally.

3. How do you see the role of PR in the near future?
Boy! PR is changing so quickly. Our industry has been the same and, in some cases, stagnant, for a very long time. But with the advent of new media and companies being able to create their own content without relying on the "experts," our industry is changing so quickly that it's pretty difficult to keep up. I think PR pros really need to stay ahead of the trends, use new tools so they understand the pros and cons, and keep clients (or colleagues) informed and educated.

4. PR sucks because...
I don't know so much that PR sucks as much as spin does. The reputation (especially of late) of our industry sucks because of things such as astroturfing, using hashtags of heavily publicized events as anchors for publicity, and creating fake personas. And we do a terrible job of doing our own PR so the bad guys get talked about more than the good ones.

5. PR rules because...
PR rules because it's the first impression a potential customer has of a company or brand. If done correctly, PR can help shape people's perceptions of a company, even in a crisis mode.

6. What's hot on your radar right now?
What's hot? Hmmm...I'm pretty curious about what Google is doing with small publishers in order to help them develop online content. I'm also watching what traditional media outlets are doing around monetizing content. And I'm paying pretty close attention to what's happening in the music industry and how they're staying afloat (or trying) because I see a lot of similarities between that industry and ours.

7. Who's the best in your field? And why?
There are a lot of people I consider the best, but they're not necessarily all PR pros. For instance, Beth Harte, Danny Brown, Mark Schaefer, Paul Sutton, Valeria Maltoni, Jay Baer, Elizabeth Sosnow, Arik Hanson, and Jeremiah Owyang.

If you have other questions for Gini, please feel free to post them in the comments below ('Reageer') or connect with her via @ginidietrich.

Thanks again Gini!