My day at school proved a lesson for me.
When I signed up to volunteer for career day at my son’s school, I didn’t expect to get picked. There is never any shortage of volunteers for career day, so school counselors take applications. In a neighborhood populated with World Bank economists, forensic engineers and Naval officers, who would want to hear from a strategic communications advisor?
To my surprise, I made the cut. The event would be set up like a science fair, with tables set up around the perimeter of the gym, and kids able to choose which tables to visit. The night before the event, my 2nd grade son said, “Mom, no one is going to go to your table because your job seems really boring.”
Cue a big blow-up dinosaur, with a sign in front that said:
“Why is there a dinosaur?”
Sometimes, a company needs to get people’s attention. I wanted to get your attention so that you would come to my table and listen to my message. So, I used this dinosaur to make you curious about my career topic.
Blow-up dinosaurs are fun and so is Strategic Communications!
I also had a large and colorful spread of stickers across the table. As small groups of children approached to decide if my table was worth a stop, my opening line was, “Would you like to choose a sticker and hear about strategic communications?”
Of course, “strategic communications” doesn’t resonate easily. Not like “firefighter” or even “banker.” So I used a lot of AI-generated cartoon images to illustrate my points—the kids definitely liked those. And I distilled my message over and over, down to its barest essentials.
As I did this, I began to realize how bad I was at explaining my job to anyone who hadn’t worked in a corporate office. I showed my career day pitch to my mom, and she said, now I finally get what you do.
All this illustrates one of the things we can’t seem to do enough of in communications: Simplify. I had only seconds with each of these kids as they perused the sticker selection, with other tables, with their own great visual aids, just a glance away—the shortest, most pressured window of attention you could imagine.
After some on-the-fly honing, my pitch went something like this:
We help companies tell their stories. Most of the stories are about the good things they do, like creating jobs, or helping their communities or the environment. Sometimes companies make a mistake or something bad happens and we have to help them explain what happened and how they’re going to fix it.
I am not sure I have convinced my son that my job is cool. But he made a stop at my table. By the end of the day, he was telling me that he wanted to be an architect. They did have a pretty sweet display.