Robert and Dayvion: Being the Messenger

Rachael: Welcome back to Formative, the podcast where today's leaders are interviewed by the leaders of tomorrow. Today our guest is Robert Barletta, Executive Vice President at Marino Public Relations. In our conversation, he shares stories from his early years in government and politics, explains how he handles crises for clients, and gives advice for young people entering the workforce.

Hello and welcome. My name is Rachael Gazdick, and I'm your host and CEO of New York Edge. On every episode of Formative, a student from our afterschool program joins me as co-host. And today I'm joined by Dayvion from M.S. 588K. Dayvion, can you tell our audience a little bit about yourself?

Dayvion: Hi, my name is Dayvion. I look forward to being my own entrepreneur and running my own business. And today we have Robert Barletta, and I'm very excited to be meeting him today.

Rachael: That's amazing. I think you're gonna learn a lot about business talking to Robert. 

But before we bring him in, we want to remind our listeners that you can support us by making a donation at NewYorkEdge.org/donate. It would be very much appreciated. 

All right, Dayvion, let's go talk to Robert.

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Rachael: Robert, welcome to Formative.

Robert: It's fun to be on. Thank you so much for having me.

Rachael: All right, Dayvion, what's your first question?

Dayvion: My first question would be, um, in your opinion, how would you describe public relations?

Robert: Public relations…The goal of PR is to, you know, we work with McDonald's, we work with nonprofits, we work with real estate companies. It's really to send a message to your target market. We are a messenger for our clients. They have to sell themselves, so they have to communicate what their differentiators are is what we like to call it.

If it's McDonald's, they have to talk about their newest offering, right? And they have to get the message out. If it's a real estate property in Brooklyn, they have to say why somebody should rent their apartment unit, or what have you.

Most of the stuff you read in the newspaper is driven by PR people. So if you're reading an article in the New York Post and you see there's somebody quoted in there, there's a very high likelihood that somebody like me has gotten that quote in there for their client. Same goes with social media influencers, so the stuff that you see influencers talking about. If they go to a restaurant, there's a good chance that restaurant offered them a comp dinner to go there. The grill brush I bought on TikTok the other day for my grill at home, these are all being pushed by somebody. So it's a huge industry. 

I started writing press releases 25, 26, 27 years ago and faxing them to reporters and in some cases hand delivering. So it has changed dramatically with the times and with technology. Now there are less and less newspapers out there. Now social media has taken over as the new media. Influencers, content creators are essentially what reporters used to be years ago. You are working with them. They are communicating your message. Ultimately, that's what we do is communicate messages on behalf of companies and nonprofits.

Dayvion: Is there an example that you would like to share of a crisis with a client?

Robert: It was a crisis, it wasn’t just with a client,  but I was at Marino during the September 11th terror attacks, and we were working with Home Depot at the time, and we were also working with,  and we still are, the Building Trades Union, which is the union of workers that build all the skyscrapers. So for both of those, and another client was Crain's New York Business, which is a business magazine, but we had to really jump into action. I remember I was in the office on 9/11 and I saw the second plane hit the towers and we immediately went into action. 

You know, we had clients that had things to do, things to communicate. For Home Depot, it was that Home Depot was there to help with the recovery. I remember going to the Javits Center on the West Side, and there were tons of Home Depot employees there bringing stuff to help,  buckets even. If you look down during the recovery at Ground Zero, there were Home Depot buckets everywhere. 

I remember being on the ferry coming, on September 11th, going back to New Jersey, and I was looking at the smoke and I was on my cell phone making calls because the media wanted to talk to Crain's New York Business about what the heck was going on and what would be the impact on the city.

The Building Trades was our client, and they were the ones who were cleaning up down at Ground Zero, that were helping with the recovery, trying to find victims. So the media obviously needed to know what was going on. Those were just three examples off the top of my head, but there were many examples of clients that were doing things.

During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, during the blackout, during COVID, we had clients that had things to say. And you know, it's a 24/7 business. When the media calls, they're always around 24/7, so you really have to be responsive to them and communicate.

But 9/11 was a big one obviously for bigger reasons, but that was a big learning experience for me as a public relations professional, as a publicist. That was a big moment.

Dayvion: Could you describe a mistake you made at work?

Robert: I've made plenty of mistakes. I don't remember one that pops out at me. One thing that you want to be careful of, and it hasn’t really…maybe it happened to me…you don't want to be part of the story.

Actually, when I was in politics, I confronted our political opponent at an event and I became the story, and it was a distraction. He was doing something bad and I called him out on it, and a reporter got word of it and wrote a story about it. So it was a distraction. You really don't want…your client, and this was when I was in government, it wasn’t even here at Marino, but the focus should be on your client. Getting their message out, it should not be about you. Rarely do you get quoted. Sometimes, in the past, I have been quoted in newspaper articles before but very few and far between. It's generally your client, and you try to get their message out. 

So that happened a few times where I didn’t want to be in the story, but for the most part I’ve stayed away from that except that one time, which I learned my lesson.

Dayvion: All right. Um, I want to be an entrepreneur, so why would it be important for me to need help from PR?

Robert: Very good question. And it's something, it's one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make, which is not to market themselves. They think that they have a good product or they have a good service or a great idea. There are plenty of good ideas, great ideas that never made it, that should have made it, because they didn't invest in their marketing. They didn't invest in social media and getting the story out there.

There's a loose equation that 10% of your budget should be dedicated to marketing and communications. Many companies don't do that. 

So that's the biggest mistake where many companies fall on their faces, not putting what is necessary into marketing. Because nobody’s going to, I mean, yes, things happen. You may hit some type of viral moment and your product will just shoot off. But for the most part, you really need to tell your story. Nobody else will, and that's where we come in.

Dayvion: What was your experience of life growing up?

Robert: It was a very good childhood. I grew up in New Jersey, in a town called Scotch Plains, it's in central New Jersey. And I'm the son of an immigrant from Italy, and my mother was Italian American. My father is Italian from Italy, so I had an interesting cultural experience growing up.

I became an Italian citizen in addition to being an American citizen, so I have dual citizenship. I speak Italian. And every summer, I used to go to Italy to spend the summers with my family there, on the beach. So it was a great place to have family and relatives. I would be sent with my sister sometimes for six to eight weeks in the summer, and I learned a lot going to Europe every year. And it's actually something that I brought into my career as well here at Marino Public Relations, where I work with a bunch of Italian accounts, Italian food accounts, managing their communications in the United States.

Dayvion: That's very nice. Um, when you once worked in politics, was that like an original goal for you?

Robert: My original goal when I was a kid was to be a soccer player. But eventually, when I went to college, I went to a school called The College of New Jersey, it's now called Trenton State College. And it was 1991, it was a gubernatorial election in New Jersey, and I worked on that campaign with former Governor Florio. 

And then I started registering voters on campus, being more active politically. And in 1992 , with the presidential election, I started working to register voters to give the students on campus more of a say in local politics. We registered a few thousand voters on campus, and all of a sudden we had rallies at our school. We had politicians visiting us because we were doing something different, registering college students on campus, in order to give us a unified voice rather than have them back in their hometowns.

So that was really where I was going in my career. I was really passionate about politics, and I still am passionate about politics. And it's one of my regrets, really , not running for office, but there's still time. So I was in politics for a number of years after college, and then I went to graduate school at a place called the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. And again, still continuing my political trajectory. 

And then I said, "Oh, I have to get some private sector experience." And so I actually found an advertisement in the newspaper, print newspaper. There was a little ad for my current agency here at Marino, looking for somebody with political experience in New Jersey. And so I jumped on it , and 25 and a half years later, I found my home here. I really have enjoyed my stay here. I thought I was just gonna get a few years of private sector experience after being in government for a number of years. And I just kept growing and doing more and more, and now I'm Executive Vice President here and just marked my 25th year.

Dayvion: Do you know what inspired you to switch from politics to PR? 

Robert: Money. That was part of it, that was definitely part of it. It's also, there was a time when there was… Politics can be a dirty sport. Sometimes, I didn't have the stomach for it. It was a little bit rough, especially New Jersey politics. It's the same in New York. But money was a factor because, let's face it, government employees don't get paid the way they should be. It's not very satisfying sometimes to be working in government and politics. 

There were just some transitions going on in New Jersey. There were different regimes came in and that was the era of… a different governor came in and some of the politics changed and so I stayed here.

But um, the onset in the beginning, it was really for getting some private sector experience, and also money. 

Dayvion: I have one more. What advice would you give for younger people looking to follow your career path? 

Robert: This is one that… I have two kids and I tell them, and they're still too young to really appreciate it, but I believe this is probably the most important advice I can give anybody.

The most important thing you can do to get a job really out of college or wherever you go, could be trade school, or not at all, is to get an internship. Work hard to network, get an internship. College is important. Don't go bankrupt to go to college. Don't worry about geographically where it is. Go get a good education somewhere. 

I do, I have hired people here before. I can tell you, I literally look directly to the bottom of a or to the middle of a resume and see what kind of internships they've had. College is usually right at top, at the top on a resume. Again, you can go to SUNY, Rutgers, Cuny, just get good internships. Absolutely nothing else impresses me, but internships, and I know others feel the same.

Rachael: Oh wow. That's great advice. Um, our last question is the one we ask every guest to close out the episode. If you could go back and speak to your 14-year-old self, the age Dayvion is now, what would you tell yourself? 

Robert: Hmm. I think you have to do in your career, what makes you happy. You have to be passionate. I'm sure other guests have said this, but you really have to, for example, in public relations, I'm sure you guys have seen TV cameras on the streets of New York, right. And I always tell people when I interview them or, or you know, colleagues of mine: If you're not curious or excited to see those TV cameras, and if you're working here for example, or another PR agency and you walk down the street and there's a TV camera there, or there's something, a protest… If you see that and you don't care what's going on, wrong industry. 

You have to really care about your industry, where you're working. It could be finance. If you go down, if you're a stockbroker and you go to Wall Street and you just walk by without even looking at the stock exchange, there's something… You need to have an interest in things. My colleagues always mock on me for saying, you know, you should get excited when you see a TV camera. I'm 52, I get excited every time I see a TV camera walking down the streets in New York, and it's happens a lot. And to me that's the most important thing, is a love for what you're doing. 

Rachael: This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much and we learned so much. 

Dayvion: Thank you.

Robert: This has been great. Thank you so much.

CREDITS

Thanks for listening to Formative, a production of New York Edge. I’m your host, Rachael Gazdick. Our production partner for this series is CitizenRacecar. This episode was produced by Hajar Eldaas, post-production by Alex Brouwer, original music by Garrett Tiedemann. Thanks to the whole team at New York Edge for making this series possible. Never miss an episode by subscribing to the series at newyorkedge.org/formative or wherever you get your podcasts.