January 26, 2013

Councilmember Tom LaBonge, Chair
Trade, Commerce and Tourism Committee
City of Los Angeles
200 N. Spring St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

RE: LAX Modernization Program, Public Outreach and Education Contract

Dear Chairman LaBonge and Committee Members:

The Public Relations Society of America is an international organization of more than 20,000 public relations and communications professionals from around the world. PRSA is the largest and foremost organization of public relations professionals. PRSA provides professional development, sets standards of excellence and upholds principles of ethics for its members and, more broadly, the multi-billion dollar global public relations profession. PRSA has worked directly with local and state governments and various branches of the federal government to increase understanding of the importance of strategic communications for public agencies and to help establish such things as professional codes of conduct, contract compliance and measurement standards.

For decades – and in particular for the past eight years, the Los Angeles chapter of PRSA has been working hard to correct misunderstandings and misconceptions about the proper and important role of the public relations profession with public agencies, why it’s necessary to issue city contracts for public relations services, and to demonstrate the significant positive impact that the public relations profession has on the local economy.

Many local government employees in Southern California are members of PRSA so they can reap the rewards of professional development programs for the benefit of their employer, improve their leadership and management skills, stay current with the daily challenges and situations facing professional communicators as well as learn the latest tools required to offer their best services on behalf of their employer. Public relations contributes nearly half a billion dollars annually to the local economy, according to a 2010 study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.

Today, we are encouraging your committee and the rest of the Los Angeles City Council to review the Board of Airport Commissioners actions regarding contracts for public education communications services at LAX as you would any other contract – on its merits.

We implore you to fully recognize the need for highly skilled, experienced, highly professional and very ethical public relations services for the benefit of the city, Los Angeles World Airports, and its constituents.

Public communications plays a vital a role in the day-to-day operations of local government and public agencies – just as much as engineering, construction services, legal, finance and similar professional services. The letters “PR” should not be spoken with trepidation by elected officials, because public officials rely on strategic public relations on a daily basis and especially since the need for strategic public relations is growing, not shrinking, in today’s information-rich world.

Hopefully, by now, you have received information that tells you a couple of things about the current contract with LAX:

• The staff at Los Angeles World Airports spent considerable time evaluating the necessity of professional public relations services for the LAX modernization program and carefully developed a bid proposal that would help LAWA meet an important need -- just like any other outside contract requirement.
• LAWA solicited, reviewed and awarded bids for these communication services with the same high standards and processes that are used with every other public contract in the city. The winner for the strategic communications portion of this bid is a well-regarded and highly professional public relations agency with a PRSA member in its senior ranks.

We understand questions may be raised about the necessity of “PR” for government work. We are here to answer some of those questions and, hopefully, provide you with some economic reasons and, perhaps, even your own talking points for using professional public relations services. For instance:

• A large public agency like Los Angeles World Airports is bound to need outside public relations help. Aside from its long-running effort to modernize, the airport touches millions of lives every day in the city and around the world. The modernization efforts are highly complex and very visible. There are numerous meetings to conduct, reams of information to share and an extremely important goal of communicating to various audiences the importance of the airport to the region and why it needs to expand and modernize. These efforts require dedicated specialists who have success in these arenas. The in-house team simply is not big enough, nor does it have the various specialties required to carry out the multiple tasks required for this advocacy effort.
• Take the recent “Carmageddon” traffic saga along a major highway in Los Angeles. LA Metro utilized a comprehensive, strategic public relations program to sufficiently warn motorists to stay away. This effort required significant planning, understanding how and when to communicate important messages, how to ensure the public understood why the freeway needed to be shut down, how best to reach millions of motorists, how to anticipate other issues, such as the impact on local business, and more. Thanks to the skilled services of public relations professionals (including a PRSA member with LA Metro), both Carmageddons were a success.
• The importance of the public relations profession. You, as city council members, are well aware of the need for good communications. You use communications every day. You utilize the principles of public relations every day to talk to your constituents. You have professionally trained communicators on your staff and you utilize public relations strategies to get elected. You are well aware of how issues can get out of hand because of misperceptions, inaccuracies or saying the wrong thing. You are well aware of the need to gain public support for an issue. You are well aware that not everyone hears a message or statement the same way. You are well aware of which community groups to reach out to for particular issues.

Public relations is much more than writing press releases, crafting key messages and mailing newsletters. What is public relations?

• PR is an important process of delivering vital information to the public in a world jammed with information.
• It involves research to understand and anticipate public sentiment, how people and groups want to receive information and how they want to be treated.
• PR involves significant expertise to lay out information in a way that gets the point across and substantiate the messages.
• PR involves setting up meetings - and knowing how to reach communities who otherwise have many other things on their minds.
• PR is about calling attention to important issues and gaining support for them.

PRSA-LA strongly advocates on behalf of the professional public relations communicators who are ready, willing and able to serve the City of Los Angeles, LAWA and other public entities. The benefits of engaging PR firms far outweigh the investment. Ultimately, public relations is about building relationships between organizations and the public. And none of the benefits can happen without open, honest and continuous communications. It has been proven over and over that the lack of transparent communications results in misinformation, while further eroding public trust. All too often the public makes up its own story when organizations fail to effectively and proactively communicate. For those reasons, we urge you to support the continued use of public education communications services and that those service contracts be reviewed and evaluated based on merit.

Best regards,

Stephan A. Roth
President, Board of Directors
Public Relations Society of America – Los Angeles Chapter

CC:

Councilmember Bill Rosendahl
Councilmember Joe Buscaino
Councilmember Dennis Zine