Who wins, who dies, who tells your story?

Who was your celebrity crush when you were a kid?

When I was growing up, our house had one of those attics where you pull a string and let down a ladder. My best friend and I could think of nothing better to plaster the plywood walls with than photos of Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

We were also really into Macaulay Culkin at the time, but there was only one Royal I had eyes for, Prince William. (Fun fact: Prince William and JTT went to the same school for a year.)

Since then, other than binging episodes of The Crown during the pandemic, I haven’t paid much attention to the Royals. For the most part, I stayed up to speed just enough not to embarrass myself (I’m in PR, after all!).

But I can’t help but notice how, since speaking out to Oprah about racism and mental health, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have come out as the clear winners in the public eye, while Prince William and Kate have been sprinting to catch up.

The media attention has forced Prince William and Kate into an uncomfortable place, and they are clearly playing defense. They’ve had to speak up about mental health and racism at the risk of looking out of touch and racist (not super successful).

Meanwhile, Meghan and Harry, with their candid, relatable interview and time in the spotlight since, have won over many Brits, and many more Americans.

While William and Kate are left doing damage control, staging opportunities to try to make themselves seem relatable, kind, and human.

It’s a perfect case study of being proactive versus reactive when it comes to PR.

The Royals teach us:

You can do PR, or you can let it happen to you.

Take, for another example closer to home, the runoff mayoral election in Boise, Idaho, when I managed communications for Lauren McLean, who won the general election. However, with no candidate earning over 50% in the general election, she faced a runoff against longtime Mayor Dave Bieter, who earned 30%of the vote to her 45%. Despite numerous debates running up to the general, Mayor Bieter continued to challenge McLean to debate him. With such a wide margin between them, a debate would not have been a strategic choice for McLean, so she turned him down, and he pounced on that.

So we flipped the narrative: McLean agreed to the debate, but only if it took place at a homeless shelter, something Bieter had spoken out against in his support of an unconstitutional anti-camping ordinance. Bieter was visibly uncomfortable during the debate, and McLean clearly came out on top, ultimately winning the runoff with 65% of the vote. The hubbub went on to make the New York Times.

Another example was a hospital merger I worked on that required the approval of the state’s attorney general because it included a change in tax status. This $64 million deal involved a joint venture that proactively invested in PR and “grasstops” work to create a social, political, and media environment that was conducive to making it easy for the AG to say yes to the deal. We identified the best messengers, armed them with what they needed to provide public comment and write op-eds and letters to the editor, and engaged in other tactics that made the deal a no-brainer.

The takeaway from all of this?

If you don’t take ownership over your story, someone else will tell it for you.

It’s always going to be a heck of a lot more expensive and time-consuming when you’re reactive rather than proactive. Whether you are the underdog in a public fight, or you are just on the right side of an issue, the challenge is to make PR work for you.

Once you’re proactively doing PR, you gain control. You shape the narrative and activate the listener to do something, whether that’s to like you, buy from you, or vote for you.

Take charge of your story before somebody else does.

Caitlin Copple Masingill is a PR expert who helps women leaders be seen and sought after. Do you have a PR problem? Take Full Swing PR's free quiz to find out!