Catherine Donnelly

I love the Gruen Transfer and read with great interest as the show’s producers yesterday announced a PR spin-off, Gruen Planet.

According to the announcement: “In 2011, we’re adding another baby to the Gruen family, Gruen Planet, a new show that will look at the news of the week through the prism of spin, branding and image control. We can’t tell you much about it yet, because … well, because it’s still a secret. Mostly.”

I’m keen to see the kind of campaigns the show will explore, there are so many spheres to PR. However, I do hope producers will select professionals who actually work in the industry to sit alongside Wil. It’s a matter of relevance. Those in PR would offer greater insights and offer deeper points of discussion in comparison to those who work in a different industry – advertising.

PR has some truly inspirational and outspoken leaders – from Ogilvy’s Kieran Moore and Chris Savage, to One Green Bean‘s Kat Thomas, Michelle Hutton of Edelman to my own boss, Judi Hausmann.

Dear lord, I would love to see a discussion between some of the industry’s finest talking about our work!

One of the benefits of working in the frenetic world of PR is the people you get to meet. My favourites are the ones who aren’t known for the sake of it, but are renowned for a talent, idea or opinion that really warrants the attention.

Dr. John Gray is definitely on this list. The author of the iconic book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus was out here to mark the DVD launch of the movie “How do you know” and he’s up there in terms of talent. He had a natural fit with the campaign, media love him and he’s so damn interesting and brilliant at what he does.

And so it came to pass that Dr John had a spare 30 minutes in between interviews and the guys on the team offered this time to me. Oh yeah… So I went in with two colleagues and a list of questions from the office and Dr John answered them so eloquently, even though he was trying to wolf down a burger at the same time. This is our account of that conversation, triple checked with those involved for accuracy and kicking off straight after initial pleasantries…

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