Week 1: A Conversation with Guest Speaker Clint Schaff by Kari Perez

By UCLA X469.21 Student Kari Perez

Kari Perez

“Positive Unintended Consequences”

Clint Schaff from the Los Angeles Times came to our class with a very interesting perspective on PR and social media. He focused on how serendipity can happen on social with positive yet unintended consequences.

Of course, there can also be unintended negative consequences, as with the recent public and legislative scrutiny surrounding Facebook and fake news, political interference and privacy violations remind us. As a society, we will have to work through such issues, which come with having such a connected world.

Clint Schaff

Amid the discussion on new media, Clint addressed the traditional negative connotation that PR professionals “spin stories.” He did this by considering the PR pro’s job as a choice to either “spiral up or spiral down on truths.” As a PR professional, I found this a very positive way to think about “spin” because there has been a notion in the back of my head for years involving how we flex reality to make our brands look good, rather than spiraling up a truth to build a positive story. 

Clint also spent some time on how to create a Social Media Playbook. He talked about what should be included in such a document, touching briefly on core elements including goals, strategies and tactics  (I expect our class will discuss such information in far more detail, especially when we address the final project assignment).  I’m especially interested in these topics, given that I see my teams at work very often struggle to be clear on why we are pursuing a specific tactic, how it’s part of a strategy and how it ladders up to a business goal. It can be hard sometimes for PR/social media professionals to be clear on how our work contributes to the business bottom-line.