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Downtown Q&A: Celine Kaplan and Amy Focazio

Photo by Stephane Baunach

Meet the fierce duo taking the NYC public relations world by storm. Celine Kaplan is a PR pioneer and founder of her own luxury boutique agency, CKPR. By her side is her managing partner, Amy Focazio; a maven in her own right. Focazio has over 20 years of public relations experience, 16 years at Estee Lauder, and 12 at M.A.C. Cosmetics.

CKPR has had to evolve with the times, modernizing and rebranding to better suit today’s climate. For instance, they partner with influencers, an important facet of the public relations world. The agency’s current clients include Ladurée, Orveda, Clinique La Prairie, and Le Bon Marche Rive Gauche, to name a few (no biggie). 

These two close friends and business partners might have different approaches to business. However, get a glimpse of their synergy, and you might find that these two great minds think alike.

Meet Celine

Downtown: What brought you to the US?
Celine Kaplan: As A French woman – it was a love story of course… then I fell in love with NY…

DT: How did you get started in your industry?
CK: I started in the art world arriving in NY — then realized I needed to pay bills and worked at AIR FRANCE for the Terminal One project in public relations- that is when I realized the power of the press.

My passion was beauty and fashion so I was able to start working for Bourjois and Eres (part of the Chanel Company Limited). [This] lead me to open my own boutique agency with Eres, Laduree, and The Webster…to name a few.

DT: What is the most difficult thing to accomplish in public relations when you have a new client?
CK: TRUST. PR is a long-term investment and clients need to know that you will absolutely do what is right for the brand but it takes time… Even if it is saying NO to certain opportunities.

DT: Do you find it more difficult to get products covered in print than online?
CK: Print for sure… the print publications have a limited amount of pages, that’s all.

DT: Do most brands prefer online advertising?
CK: Brands LOVE both and always want it all. Our clients are luxury so print is still major.

DT: What industry is most prominent for the brands that you work with at your agency?
CK: At the moment, beauty and lifestyle. Fashion post-COVID has been more challenging.

DT: What is it like to work with a partner? Furthermore, what strength differentiates you from your partner, and vice versa?
CK: It’s the best tool and weapon…to ideate, to share, to negotiate… Amy and I have been friends for over 20 years. We have the same taste and understanding for luxury but very different strengths.

Amy is Type A so everything needs to be perfect. She comes from a corporate background and is methodical, strategic, laser-focused on the details, a natural leader…. and she has a wicked sense of humor! I will let her answer about my strengths.

DT: What do you look for in new clients?
CK: I always say if I already bought your product I can do a good job… I guess it’s called Sex appeal.

DT: Who inspires you most?
CK: Women in general – collectively… wives, mothers, lovers, businesswomen all at once. It’s impressive.

DT: What do you hope to achieve by this interview with Downtown Magazine?
CK: World fame and recognition… kidding. New business leads would be great of course.

DT: What is your favorite place in Lower Manhattan?
CK: Laduree, The RealReal, Bode, the Frankie Shop, The Brant Foundation, The Swiss Institute, The Whitney… not in that order.

DT: Where do you go to relax in NYC? Downtown?
CK: Well, I am lucky enough to have one of my close friends who is a chef founder, and owner of Left Bank and rotisserie chicken Poulet Sans Tete in the West Village… and it is my home away from home.

Biking, running, walking near the Hudson is always calming and relaxing. [As for] Uptown, I love The Mandarin Hotel spa and The MET.

Photo by Stephane Baunach

Meet Amy

Downtown: How did you get started in your industry?
Amy Focazio: I have always loved fashion and beauty. When I was 13 I had a pipedream and wanted to be a model…. I’m 5’4 mind you. Let’s just say that didn’t work out! Right out of college my sister kicked off her career in Fashion Public Relations. As soon as I was handed my diploma I beelined it for NYC and interned at her PR agency. The rest is history.

DT: Where did you go to university?
AF: Ithaca college. I grew up in New Canaan and love nature. Ithaca is beautiful, but the winters are brutal.

DT: What is the most difficult thing to accomplish in public relations when you have a new client?
AF: We have launched a lot of new brands and it takes time to build awareness. Managing expectations is the first thing that comes to mind, but when the brand finally takes off there’s nothing more satisfying for us. It’s the best feeling. Also, PR really needs to be a long-term relationship, not a one-off.

DT: Do you find it more difficult to get products covered in print than online?
AF: Yes, but having longstanding relationships with the press certainly helps.

DT: Do most brands prefer online?
AF: That would be a yes. For luxury brands, seeing their product in the glossy pages of a magazine is still important.

DT: What industry is most prominent for the brands that you work with at your agency?
AF: So many… Beauty, Fashion, Home, Hospitality, Travel.

DT: What is it like to work with a partner? Furthermore, what strength differentiates you from your partner, and vice versa?
AF: Celine and I are polar opposites. Her head is in the sky. She’s very creative and impulsive, imaginative, a master networker. Organization is not her strength but it all gets done… Her sense of humor is through the roof. We laugh all day long.

DT: What do you look for in new clients?
AF: Celine and I share the same philosophy…. We have to love the brand, [and] want to buy it. We can’t promote a brand to the press and consumers if we don’t believe in it. It’s also important that they are cognizant [of] the issues we face today. It’s important to consumers that brands are responsible.

DT: Who inspires you most?
AF: People that are not afraid to speak out about important issues. Who use their voice for the greater good. It’s beyond inspiring.

DT: What do hope to achieve by this interview with Downtown Magazine?
AF: Fame, fortune, and glory…. All joking aside, I love Downtown Magazine and I’m excited that we’re doing this. Of course, new business opportunities would be great.

DT: What is your favorite place in Lower Manhattan?
AF: Of course Ladurée. I’m a vegetarian and the vegan eggs and croissants are to die for. My husband is French and Lucien always makes him happy. The Warm Store in Nolita and New Museum is always a go-to for me.

DT: Where do you go to relax in NYC? Downtown?
AF: I lived in Tribeca for a long time and my sanctuary was going to the Hudson River. I love to be near water… it’s calming. As Celine and I have been friends for 20 years we share a lot of the same friends. Our friend who is the owner and chef of Left Bank restaurant in the West Village is like family. We go regularly … it has a great vibe. ★

For more Downtown Q&A, click here.

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Business

Advertising During the Crisis: The Rules of Crisis PR

Advertising During the Crisis: The Rules of Crisis PR

 

A protocol is integral to many processes in the industry, and this is especially true in crisis management. Whether it is damage control or a boost in popularity, a general idea as to dealing with a PR crisis must be put in place. When you expose yourself, public relations tend to have both a direct and indirect impact on how you move forward. 

Because of this, experiencing a crisis in public relations means having to go through means to mitigate the impact of the event. Whether it’s writing an essay for you or managing your social media presence, here are the rules of crisis pr that need to be followed.

 

 

  • Be Authentic

 

This generally means being human. Not everyone is fully capable of grasping the good and bad sides of what you did. Admitting your wrongs and taking responsibility for it is the first phase in pr crisis management. Be unafraid to expose yourself in a way that will humanize your image to people.

 

  • Seek Professional Aid

 

While you may be confident in your skills, having professional help is the best way for you to make sure you get the message across. Whether it’s a public speech or a published essay, looking for someone to write your essay for you means having more time. Edubirdie is somewhere I go when I need someone to do my essay. During those times when you think “I need someone to write my essay for me”, it’s great to discover all options available.

  • Be Prepared to Answer ALL Questions

 

 

In crisis public relations, many questions will be thrown at you regarding the event. Make sure that you’re well-read on what happened and that you are prepared to answer even the most minuscule details. As you expose yourself, public relation is a necessary tactic to control what happens after. A pr crisis is basically a public execution, and you must be prepared for the worst.

In the world of PR, there’s no such thing as being too prepared. When facing a public relations crisis, always make sure to have your best foot forward. While it may only be one person facing the mobs of questions and interviews, it takes a whole team to make sure that a person’s reputation is kept safe and in great condition. Remember these three guidelines, and you’ll be able to handle any pr crisis that possibly will come your way!

Conclusion

To conclude, any crisis can be accomplished if you understand how to accomplish PR. Remember these three guidelines, and you’ll be able to handle any pr crisis that may come your way!

Categories
Book Club Culture Movies

Top publicist Dick Guttman on Hollywood, New York City & PR

Photo courtesy of Pexels
Dick Guttman & wife Gisela

What do Barbra Streisand, Audrey Hepburn, Jay Leno, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Elizabeth Taylor, Warren Beatty, and Goldie Hawn have in common? Superstardom aside, all of these stars have chosen Dick Guttman to represent them as their publicist. Dick’s 60+ years as an in-demand publicist inspired him to write Starflacker: Inside The Golden Age Of Hollywood, a memoir full of stories about working with some of Hollywood’s biggest stories.

Downtown had the pleasure of speaking with Dick a few months ago, and that telephone conversation had lots of leftover wisdom. In turn, it was only right to post Part 2 of our Q&A; Part 1 can be read here.

Another Huffington Post piece of yours hints at old Hollywood coming back, and you’ve mentioned in interviews things that were better about old Hollywood. But what are some of the things that you think are better these days about how Hollywood works? Is there anything?

Dick Guttman: I think there must be. (laughs) Really the strange thing is the film that served end of the Golden Age was one of the best movies of old time, Star Wars. It had all the conventional things that a good movie had with real compelling characters and really strong narratives and wonderful comedy…but it was the first film that sort of showed that the visual imagery…You know there will be Star Wars sequels forever just like there’s Batman sequels forever, and I think that it distracted Hollywood from the concept of introducing really compelling people…I mean, they still make wonderful movies…

Do you have any hobbies away from Hollywood? Or have movies always been your career and your passion?

Dick Guttman: This is really embarrassing, and I think it’s the latter…one of my hobbies is etymology. I love to read dictionaries and I love to know how words are constructed. It’s really astonishing. I was looking up the definition and the derivation of “atonement.” That’s an interesting thing…It doesn’t come from Latin or anything else, it comes from a Middle English phrase for they had a phrase that was “at-one-ment,” the state of being at one within yourself. So it was really not “atonement,” it was “at-one-ment”…I remember in French class we were talking about, it is a very important word, “remorse”…That’s great if you can actually make discoveries that nobody else knows about.

Sure, and I’m sure you’ve been to New York hundreds of times for press trips and business. Do you have any favorite restaurants here?

Dick Guttman: Actually I haven’t been there as often as you’d think…The last trip, Turner Classic Movies invited me to be a guest programmer. Well that was a greatest honor I could ever receive…My most interesting trip, my wife was with me and Freddie Fields, who was the head of MGM…He said, “Are you guys doing anything tonight because I’ve got this kid Mel Gibson here. He is in the film, he doesn’t know anybody, could you take him to dinner?” It was a really interesting thing because he was so insular, very sweet actually.For that reason I remember the Odeon restaurant in SoHo, and the one place I would go for quite often I have a really good memories is the Russian Tea Room.

Oh yeah, on 56th Street…

Dick Guttman: Yeah, it just seemed to be an interesting place where interesting things happen. It was where in the film that Dustin Hoffman where he was transgender…

Tootsie?

Dick Guttman: Tootsie, yeah, they stage this great scene with Sydney Pollack there. For me, out here it was the Hollywood Brown Derby, because when I was a kid I would do two or three interviews there every week. It was really a holy place and you go in there and there would be Joan Crawford and there would be Errol Flynn and there would be George Stevens and all these great people would gather there. It’s where Lucille Ball stalked Bill Holden, you know it was famous for that, and so it’s turned out that it was torn down. I’ve been very much involved in an effort to return filmmaking to Hollywood. I mean, it’s tragic for me that I grew up and you would go to MGM and on stage 25 and all the great films are shooting there. You walked among the giants.

Because of that we started a new tradition called Made in Hollywood Honors when I was handling The Artist…I wanted a really great place to stage it and my daughter is sort of the managing partner of a very famous apartment building, luxury apartment building in Hollywood at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, 1600 Vine. 1600 Vine was the address of the Hollywood Brown Derby, and so I said, “You know darling, you have an obligation here, you sit on one of the greatest holy places in Hollywood. Let me use your facilities and your terrace.” She sponsored it. 1600 Vine is the sponsor of these awards which we give every year…That Honors ceremony is kind of my hobby and we’ll get people back here.

That’s wonderful that you found a way to give back, that’s not just a typical fundraiser or just the self-congratulatory way. You’re giving back to actually rewarding the people who keep the business there…

Dick Guttman: Last year we wanted to expand that and give a lifetime achievement not to people for their excellence but for their dedication to Hollywood and all that. So we chose John Williams. Williams scored 70 films…There may have been a couple he didn’t score here but almost all of them were then with Hollywood musicians. Hollywood made an incredible contribution to music because in the 1930s, when so many great composers of the century were forced to leave Europe to come here, it gave them a place to practice their craft…He won many Academy Awards and his scores were fantastic, but he had a very volatile personality, which I enjoyed.

So finally, Dick, any last words for the kids?

Dick Guttman: When they allowed me to do the Turner Classic Movies event, the last question to me was, “If you were starting over, would you do it again? Would you have made the same decision? Gone on with the same profession?” I’d never been asked and I had never thought of it and I said, “No.” It just struck me as strange but the answer was no because it’s lost the human component. It’s not as strong as it was.

I wrote Starflacker because I worked with probably 300 of the greatest talents of film history, and each one of them was a unique personality, and you know funny in his own way or her own way, remarkable, loveable…

I think I wanted to go into publishing. I’d never heard of publishing, I just got a job as an office boy at Rogers & Cowan, but when you find your North Star, you go after it, so I just loved what I did. You know there were aggravating times, talented people can be quite severe in their relationships with people, but I was in love with the people who made that great form of literature that was of our century. The 20th century gave the world visual literature that could be transported. Theater has been there since the Greeks and I’m sure long before, but motion picture had a common language and I was really proud to be part of it…I love the show, I love the business, these people who are funny, you can’t ask for more than that.

Categories
Culture Entertainment Movies

A talk with legendary Hollywood publicist Dick Guttman

Dick Guttman with Uggie from "The Artist"
Dick Guttman & wife Gisela
Dick Guttman & wife Gisela

What do Barbra Streisand, Audrey Hepburn, Jay Leno, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Elizabeth Taylor, Warren Beatty, and Goldie Hawn have in common? Superstardom aside, they have all hired Dick Guttman to do their public relations. Comparable to a movie director, oftentimes the general public does not realize when a publicist is doing their job as the strategic buffer between a client and the media. Despite that lack of recognition, Dick has been doing well for over 60 years, and is generally credited for invention of the Oscar campaign.

While owning a thriving business would be enough work for most people — Dick is the namesake of Guttman Associates — Dick made time last year to complete a 600+ page autobiography, Starflacker: Inside The Golden Age Of Hollywood. The book is filled with interesting stories from Dick’s decades in Hollywood, including appearances from Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Cary Grant, and Kirk Douglas. Another book is reportedly in the works from Dick, who often contributes to The Huffington Post. His writing credits also include two feature films and four television movies.

Downtown caught up with Dick by phone, chatting for much more than the anticipated 20 minutes with the Hollywood legend. At a later date, more from our conversation will run on the Downtown site. For now, Dick and company can be followed on Twitter, while Starflacker is available for sale through Amazon and other fine retailers.

I was very entertained by the Huffington Post article that you wrote about working with Prince right around the time he passed. You had mentioned that he had stormed out of the meeting, that you had quipped a funny line there, and he said basically that you had one favor that he would honor…

Dick Guttman: It wasn’t like he slammed the door or anything. He’d had enough and it was a shock to me because it was the first time I really had met him. I’d been working on the film [Purple Rain] and really loved the film. I knew that it was going to be a success because his people were there, but there was another audience entirely. If it reached me it was going to reach everybody and I had some ideas. So just at this point he just got up and left and I actually was angry and I said, “I look forward to not working with you,” which really shocked everybody, including me…It must have been three seconds, four seconds, but it seemed like three or four days and everybody in the room was just in shock. Then the door opened and he gives a smile…He says, “Okay, you got one.” He wasn’t that angry, he just said, “You caught me, okay, you got one.”

Did you often encounter that kind of demand from a superstar entertainer? Or was that the first major one that happened with?

Dick Guttman: You know, I never really thought about it at the time. At the time of his death, the question on my mind was I should put that story because I actually thought it was one that celebrated him…If anybody showed bad judgment it was I, and then I reconsidered. I put it into the light of who he was, he was a guy that came to Hollywood, he came into the entertainment field completely doing it his way. His managers were really brilliant, I thought, because they were about my age and yet they knew…a great manager pave the road for the client, he makes sure that the client gets a chance to express himself as he wishes to. That’s really what a manager does and they did an extraordinary job with him…They were just stunned by the variety of his talents, he could play any instrument…He came into the business and apparently he was treated very very badly by the different institutions or different companies. The label presumed his name, you know…then they felt that they own the brand “Prince” and that’s why he changed his name to The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

Yes…

Dick Guttman That was his anger about that and I have a feeling that the studio, Warners, they really like the movie. But he was so insulated and isolated, I think they didn’t really reach out to him and I think he had a great distrust for anything that had to do with Hollywood. He comes into this meeting…I realized really just recently when I was writing that recall, I realized that from him I was just another Hollywood phony. Someone who is going to try to take his name, make promises, whatever it was that he hated. He really thoroughly distrusted all the instruments of the industry, the corporations, with good reasons actually, and so I was just another guy. Then when I said that, you know I think I pulled the plug on a hand grenade and I think he thought, “Why would a guy to go to all that trouble unless he actually had something to say?” He thought he’d come back and see, he says “okay, you got one,” prove it to me.

Right…

Dick Guttman: I thought it was a very charming thing that he did and I don’t know if the story I wrote on The Huffington Post was interpreted that way. I hope it was.

Yeah I think so, if the person made it all the way through the article. I think you made an interesting point when you defined what the role of a great manager was. I’ve noticed a lot of major artists in film and music in recent years have made their new manager a publicist, whether it’s their former publicist or their longtime publicist. Did you yourself ever think of getting into management?

Dick Guttman: Right at the beginning when, my partner was Jerry Pam. I mean there’s an interesting reason I left…When I was 19, I started working at a company called Rogers & Cowan — by leaps and bounds the greatest of all the the great publicity firms — and this was in 1954. It was right when the tide was starting to turn toward the end of the contract system, you know Jimmy Cagney and Bette Davis had come up against Jack Warner and there were little cracks in the walls…[People] were starting to think that they could make their own movies and by and large they never made the movies as well as the tyrannical moguls did. I mean, the greatest period was the 30s and 40s, and I came in and immediately I became a press agent…I formed a really close relationship with Warren Cowan, who was the “Cowan” of Rogers & Cowan.

Yes…

Dick Guttman: I was there a couple years and then I came into a personal crisis…I took off for Europe for a couple years. Really that was the best thing I ever did, but when I came back and went back to work at Rogers & Cowan, I was there for like 16 years…all the privileges of exercising my craft the way I wanted to and until one time where Rogers and Cowan was handling Blum’s Furriers. It was in Chicago, the greatest furrier in the world, its clientele was Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Gala Kurchi…

They’re opening up a store in Beverly Hills on Wilshire Boulevard and Rogers & Cowan was going to have the kind of opening only Rogers & Cowan could do. They can always guarantee 12 to 15 stars at the thing, which is all you need…You’ve got a big event, you’re going to get lots and lots of photography and that’s what they’re going to do. I came in to Warren and I said, “I have a better idea.” He said, “What?” I said, “I think that we should have guests of honor for the event. “He said, “Who do you have in mind?” I thought what are they famous for I think that the guests of honor should be Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and Gala Kurchi. Warren looked at me and said, “They’re dead.” I said, “I know that but I think we can get some great spiritualist and do a seance.” He said, “They won’t come.” (laughs) I said, “You don’t know that. Maybe they would come or not come.” He looked at me and said, “That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my whole life.” I thought it was a great idea. I went back to my office and I had another one for them that I didn’t even bother to tell him. (laughs)

I get back to my office and I was so angry. I was handling Peter Ustinov, he was making a comedy in which he was directing Richard Burton, and it was being handled by a press agent named Jerry Pam. So we’re talking about something, he said, “Did you ever think of going on your own?” I said, “Just now.” I mean there are two things that I accept is regarding the future.  One is Chinese fortune cookies and the other is confluence, and that was an incredible confluence, and so I decided to go into business.

So going back to Prince, I knew that and our relationship was okay, it was cordial. I wasn’t the kind of person that he would place any great personal trust in, but we had it pretty good and then we pulled up some interesting things. I knew that it had to be something that would carry…get across over to the general audience. It was no question that everybody who loves that music was going to be there. and so I said I want to put them on the crossover show there that had some sexuality and honesty, The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. So I sent it out to a really great guy, one of their producers.

Dick Guttman with Uggie from "The Artist"
Dick Guttman with Uggie from “The Artist”

The guy booked all the comics, Jim McCawley, was it?

Dick Guttman: MaCawley, thank you, and Jim loved it and he called me says it’s not a go. I said, “Why?” He said the name of one of the producers on the show…I didn’t even think that it was racial, I thought it was generational…He didn’t get it and I was really disappointed, but then what we decided to do was to have a big premiere and a big party afterwards. I wanted to gather all the big Hollywood names to come to the premiere because that would show the crossover of whoever it was at the time was there. The general movie audiences will say, “Maybe this is for me.”

None of them were responding to it, so I got my cousin, who had great tickets for the Olympics. It was 1984. He had tickets for the closing [Olympic festivities], that was the get of all gets, everybody wanted to go to the closing ceremonies. I said let me borrow those tickets. I want you to take an ad in the Hollywood Reporter that says, “We’ll exchange two time tickets for the closing ceremonies for two tickets to the Purple Rain premiere and party.” He said, “Oh you just deprived me of going to it and I said I don’t think so, I don’t think you’ll get takers.” But what happened was we started getting calls from the different stars, we had a very star-studded event, but I think people and there were news stories about this strange guy who had offered to exchange the tickets for the premiere. Everybody thought, “Well if his tickets are worth more than the closing of the Olympics, let’s go,” and it sort of worked.

And it worked…

Dick Guttman: It’s the strangest, but I felt I had it right because it sort of addressed the fact that Prince did have to win over the people who were separated from the age, including the people apparently at the labels. He just had this distrust of any kind of Industrial Complex it was involved in the filmmaking.