PR maven Bettina Olmedo’s book captures social history

MANILA, Philippines - Powerbooks, Anvil Publishing Inc. and Chateau 1771 recently sponsored the launch of the book The Adventures of a PR Girl, by Bettina Rodriguez-Olmedo. 

After an invocation delivered by Fr. John Morota, Karina Bolasco of Anvil said the event  invited each guest to “look back on a life well-lived, not merely in terms of length but in terms of width and depth, for that is what makes its telling social history.”

She cited it as a good reference for a profession that is highly maligned, with PR professionals now derisively referred to as mere events coordinators and spin-meisters. Guest of honor Senator Sonny Angara, a legislator who represents the new image of the Senate — young, bright, articulate, and professionally committed to serve his country — informed the audience that the author had shared several advocacies with his father, former Senator Edgardo Angara, primarily education. Olmedo worked with him in the ’80s and ’90s toward the enactment of a landmark piece of legislation, the GASTPE Law (Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education), which provides scholarships to millions of students up to the present. The senator confessed that he himself took a crash course in public relations when he decided to take the big leap from Congress to the Senate in the 2013 election.

Senator Angara went on to explain the need for public relations in the field of legislation. He pointed out that two important factors are needed for bills to be enacted into law: dealing with decision-makers like the Philippine president, the members of Congress, Cabinet members, businessmen, media persons and PR practitioners; and mounting a credible PR campaign that will be able to convince people that the laws being proposed would bring a lot of benefits for them.

In order to expound on this point, Senator Angara quoted passages from the book by Adrian Slywotsky entitled Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It. According to Slywotsky, many executives think that you can change what people think and create a demand for certain things, by simply pulling the usual levers — more marketing, extensive advertising and more aggressive sales. Actually, demand creators and innovators spend a lot of time trying to get insights into human nature, trying to understand people who are usually unpredictable.

“Creating demand is actually being able to connect the dots between the human factor,” he says. Thus, in their efforts to make people change the way they think, all PR practitioners spend a lot of time trying to understand people. Senator Angara explained that PR thus plays a powerful role in touching the hearts of people and captivating their minds in order to convince them that the proposed legislation would mean a better life for them. He cited the PR campaign he and his colleagues in government had to embark on when the Senate was proposing “sin taxes.”

Their measure was met with stiff opposition, with rallies staged by different sectors of society, including tobacco manufacturers and street vendors who sell cigarettes for a living. Thus, they enlisted the support of the media to make people aware that the proposed law was not only meant to generate revenues for the government but was primarily designed to protect the health of consumers. They presented statistics that showed that among the victims of secondhand smoke from cigarette smokers were children from the underprivileged sector of society who are suffering from lung cancer. By and large, the eventual acceptance of the law by the public was effected through effective PR.

Senator Angara capped his speech by endorsing Olmedo’s instructive book, saying that he would read her work to help him push through his proposed legislation, by learning more about the legitimate PR techniques that decision-makers can use to touch the hearts and minds of people, and ultimately effect reforms in society.

After Angara’s well-applauded speech, the author made a symbolic presentation of the first copy of the book to the Senator. She then went through the ceremonial turnover of the book to her immediate family: her daughters, Bambi Araneta and Franjo Arias; her son-in-law, Rev Araneta; and her granddaughters, Isabelle Arias and Bree Araneta.

Musical intermission numbers were rendered by Bernadine Mahinay, secretary of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, and Ruby Palma, founding member and soloist of the UP Singing Ambassadors.

Philippine STAR columnist Domini Torrevillas observed that The Adventures of a PR Girl: The Inside Story of Public Relations is an interesting read, featuring the successful PR projects that the author was able to pull off with the cooperation of the media.

The author had no difficulty getting her press releases in the papers because she believed in the integrity of her PR projects. As the promoter of the Miss Caltex contest in the Sixties, the author didn’t have to resort to “envelopmental” journalism to get Miss Caltex titleholders like Elsa Payumo and Amy Gustilo into the society pages. The successful projects she mounted drew from her treasure chest of creative ideas.

The launch was capped by the turnover of books to the author’s only surviving brother, Luis Rodriguez, and her nephews Rene Rodriguez, Raymond Rodriguez and Ato Arespacochaga.

Books were also given to the people who helped her in her career and those featured in the book: Tony Cumagun and Albert Velasco, the author’s bosses from the corporate world; Ruy Moreno, the son of former Ambassador Luis Moreno Salcedo, the author of the book, A Guide to Protocol, who allowed the author to use an excerpt from his father’s book; and Luz Benigno, the wife of the former Press Secretary during President Cory Aquino’s administration, Teddy Benigno.