Presidio
Sentinel San Diego
January
2016
By
Laura Walcher
Here’s how it started: around about the mid-70’s, a friend of mine organized an
Israeli Festival, to be held in Mission Valley’s Scottish Rite Auditorium. She corralled me: “You know how to write. You do the
publicity!” Well, she was right; I was already a writer, a columnist in our local pubs . I’d even been a copywriter for the only radio station in Bozeman, Montana
(when we visited there recently, the list of radio stations occupied an entire
newspaper column!).
But I’d no idea what “publicity”
entailed.
Since she was insistent, I set
off to figure it out. In the last
days of the S.D. Union and, then, Evening Tribune’s residence downtown, off I
went to find out how one “did” publicity.
Here’s what you can’t do today:
one can’t stroll the newsroom,
hang
at desks, make media friends. But
then, that’s what I did:
I told
Gus Stevens, the first guy I encountered, that I had to “do” the publicity –
and would he kindly tell me how to do it?
Did I ever have a better time in
my whole life? I GOT it! Right
around
then, the UT moved to Mission Valley, and at the elevator, I met two “suits”
who were converting single-screen movie houses into multi-plexes.
I said, of course, that I
was
“handling” (!) the publicity for the Israeli Festival. “Would you, “they proposed, “ handle
the publicity for each theater as it’s ready to open – and (drum-roll,
please!) we will pay you XXX.”
That did it. Fun AND money?
Never looked back. Civic
leader Bea Evenson, struggling to
save from demolition – at that time – Balboa Park’s “Electric Building” - asked ‘round about who was doing the
work for the Festival, and hired me to help. Yes: she saved the building that today houses the Museum of
Photographic Arts and other treasured organizations.
The Museum of Man was impressed: next client. Guy on the Museum’s board was involved at KPBS: another new
client. Homer Delawie, FAIA, chaired the station’s auction fund-raiser. I was soon joyfully embroiled in
architecture. The lady handling PR
for Diane Powers’ Bazaar del Mundo wanted out; she brought me in, and Ms.
Powers said, “OK!”
Ahh, you know, kind readers, you don’t
have time for the rest.
It’s just that this month, Laura
Walcher PR is having a reunion, and it’s going to be a good - no – a great -
time to remind my staffers of umpteen years that it just wasn’t possible
without
them. And that the payback I got
over the years to see
the
younger ones grow into serious, expert professionals, and the more experienced
ones build their already impressive resumes into their own successful careers,
has to this day been
gratifying,
to say the least. Many have continued to work in communications.
I’ve tried hard to identify and
remember everyone I’d ever hired.
Lost some altogether.
Others have new names. Some
might not want to be found. But, if it were possible, I’d find everyone – even
the few I fired! Yet, not only were amazingly few fired, but amazingly few
clients fired us – and we fired amazingly few of them! Save high-tech and bio-tech, our
clients were in nearly every profession and industry: retail, law, restaurants,
non-profits, healthcare, cultural institutions, manufacturing, sports, media –
and more. Every one a
challenge, an educational experience, a source of pride in helping clients
advance their own enterprises.
These days, daughter Jean (J. Walcher
Communications) expertly manages her public relations agency, where I play a
“been there, done that” role; now and then, clients of the past come back to find
us; and, around here, we’re having
a reunion, expecting a rollicking time of recall, good and bad, and don’t get
me wrong: I’m expecting to take a
lot of the credit – and all of the blame!
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