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| Tom Goodman |
In news that certainly caught the attention of the PR world, President-elect Trump last week selected Karoline Leavitt, a 27-year-old, to be the White House press secretary.
27?
Steven Spielberg directed JAWS at age 26, and he did pretty well, so there are exceptions. But his biggest challenges back then were a mechanical shark that rarely worked, a restless studio, and an ocean that made shooting (any) film on water a monumental task.
Leavitt and her bosses will be confronting much more serious challenges. Among them, China, Ukraine, Russia, North Korea and a free press at home, the latter surely being in their sights at the first press briefing, post-inauguration, if not before.
It is against this backdrop, of a 27-year-old being thrust into an important role, that I thought back to my early days in the business and the rookie mistakes that I made in my 20s.
Some were relatively harmless (or I thought), like wearing a short sleeve shirt on my first day at the distinguished J. Walter Thompson Company. Tara Nicholson, an account executive with great class and style, approached me on Day One and said, “I don’t know who you are, but if you ever wear short sleeve shirts here again, I’ll kill you.”
That faux pas paled in comparison to the disaster on my first (and last) assignment for Deutsche Bank.
Although my primary accounts at JWT PR were Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and Standard Brands, I was called in as a utility player to invite US-based German media outlets to a major press conference.
My mistake… not differentiating between West and East Germany news organizations. I ended up inviting communist East German reporters to this Western, capitalist press conference—before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The client, sweating like Albert Brooks in “Broadcast News,” was apoplectic. Luckily—and miraculously—I was not fired and I went on to a career at ABC News, CBS News and CBS Inc. before starting my own agency in 1996.
Will Karoline Leavitt avoid rookie mistakes? Will she be effective on the world stage with much more serious issues at stake?
In the landmark NBC show “The West Wing” the fictitious White House press secretary played by Allison Janney was young—but not too young—for the job. She was 40 when the show premiered. Her character C.J. Cregg seemed intelligent, poised, and experienced in the role. But, C.J. Cregg wasn’t real.
Leavitt will become the youngest White House press secretary in U.S. history on Inauguration Day. Those of us in the business will be watching closely to see how she fares, in real, non-fiction time.
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Tom Goodman is Founder and President/CEO of Goodman Media International, Inc., a New York public relations agency.
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