This or That: Plentiful or Fair
It’s pilot season here at Per My Last, which means I’m experimenting with new formats and series. This week I’m launching 👉 This or That 👈, in which I break the world down into two types of people.
Think cats and dogs, coffee and tea, Angelina and Jen, Natalie and Caroline. I’m excited to launch this because I am, at heart, a judgmental bitch systems girlie who is constantly trying to map the world.
So (drumroll please) introducing the first This or That: Plentiful versus Fair communicators!
When I worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the communications team liked to say that its job was two-fold: to ensure that coverage of Secretary Clinton was both plentiful and fair.
It’s a framework that stuck with me as I built my own career in comms, and I’ve come to believe that, much as communicators tend to be either wartime or peacetime-oriented, so too do they tend to be experts at either plentiful OR fair coverage—rarely both.
What’s the Difference?
Plentiful
Communicators on the plentiful side of the spectrum are zero-to-one thinkers who can create something from nothing. They’re focused on coaxing water from stone.
They tend to thrive in early stage companies that need to land splashy launch coverage. Or they might work at an existing, well-known company in its moonshot arm or on a new product. They’re good at the storytelling required to convince audiences that a new company or industry is worth paying attention to.
The best plentiful communicators can help not just explain why a new company or candidate is great—they can conjure entirely new industries from thin air. You should hire a plentiful communicator if you’re doing something novel, like emerging from stealth or launching an underdog campaign for office.
Plentiful communicators might work on longer timelines, because they need to build conviction with reporters, and often that requires several data points. They’re good at linking what others might not see as proof points into a compelling narrative whole. In high school, they were the kids who could make anything cool.
Fair
Fair communicators are experts at controlling the firehose. They thrive working for established organizations or individuals that are under threat. This might be a late-stage private company replacing their V1 comms strategy with a V2 or an individual going through a messy public divorce.
Most of Hillary Clinton’s comms staffers were fair communicators, because Hillary had no shortage of coverage; the question was what reporters were going to say, not whether they would write in the first place.
You should hire a fair communicator when something is broken. They might work on your litigation comms or rapid response. Perhaps they’ll rebuild your internal comms function after hypergrowth, when all your existing systems start breaking down.
They’re sprinters who work on fast timelines, can execute hairpin narrative turns, and love to get on the phone to debate with a reporter. In high school, they were the debate kids, the perpetual Devil’s advocate. (Okay, maybe I’m projecting…)
Why Does It Matter?
Sprinters don’t build the muscles needed to run marathons—and vice versa.
People who excel at getting fair coverage sometimes don’t understand the work involved in audiences interested in brand new ideas. And those excellent at “plentiful” coverage don’t always understand that changing the flow of coverage requires a different skillset than turning on the spigot in the first place.
Whether you’re hiring a new hire, a consultant, or an agency, you need to understand what kind of expertise you need. The firm that handles your public listing isn’t going to be equally skilled at announcing your holiday product drop.
Or, to put it in more of-the-moment terms, the comms firm you hire because Blake Lively has turned your movie cast against you isn’t going to be the same firm you hire to publicize that same movie.
You should be wary of those who try to convince you that they can be all things to all people. Agencies and individuals may be passable at several things—and you may only need them to be passable at some things!—but generally they’re only excellent at one or two.
Know what you’re optimizing for and hire accordingly.