New Book ‘Game Face’ Teaches Kids the Adventure of PR

When Curtis Sparrer’s niece, Sloan, asked him what he did for a living, the PR executive realized there weren’t many resources available to explain the profession to kids.

Sparrer’s conversation with his niece sparked his idea to write “Game Face: Becoming a PR Detective,” an illustrated children’s book that introduces PR to young readers through an engaging, gamer-friendly story. In the book, Sloan is the main character and helps solve a PR crisis when her favorite video game glitches worldwide. She learns firsthand how PR professionals overcome challenges. (The book will be available on Amazon beginning April 2.)

PRsay spoke with Sparrer, a PRSA member and principal and co-founder of San Francisco-based agency Bospar, about the inspiration behind “Game Face,” the importance of introducing PR to the next generation and how storytelling can make the profession more accessible.

How did this book project come about?

When Sloan first asked me about PR, I thought, “I’ll do what a good uncle does, and buy a book that will explain it to her.” Well, I couldn’t find one. But then a few years later, as Bospar PR’s anniversary approached, I thought, “For our ten-year anniversary, what if we wrote a children’s book for ten-year-olds, about PR?”

And I wondered, “Could I give this book to my boss? Could I give it to the product-team people that I work with, who don’t understand PR?”

To write the book and go through all the steps has shown me the complexities of writing. But fundamentally, this book is a love letter to PR, and a love letter to Bospar. I had to self-publish, and I’m not good enough of a writer to not base it on real-life events. I wanted to share the sort of environment where everyone’s coming together to solve a problem.

I think children’s books that are really good show how the child or the protagonist can be a force for change and lead people to make the right decision. That’s what I wanted to do here.

What was your writing process like? Did your PR background influence how you structured the book?

Yes, it did. It was a matter of thinking about what instances in my PR career made the most sense to write about, and how I could revisit them in a way that was new and didn’t betray any confidences.

What aspects of PR were the most fun for you to translate into a kid-friendly adventure?

I think the best part of the story in “Game Face” is where we discover that the bug in a client’s video game is really the game’s best feature. That was fun, because there’s a lot of discovery that makes good PR great.

I think that’s what PR people really enjoy, discovering something new that they would not have known otherwise. And then communicating that discovery in a way that’s authentic and meaningful to their audience.

What challenges did you face in making PR accessible to younger readers?

Part of the benefit of my previous career as a news writer for TV is that when doing that job I had to make whatever I wrote accessible to a wide audience, at a fifth grade level. I think if you write outside of that, you’ll lose people, whether you’re writing a children’s book or a white paper.

A December careers survey that Bospar commissioned found that PR is often considered a “hidden profession.” How do you hope “Game Face” will change that perception?

When I was growing up, the diet of children’s books that I had was basically about being an astronaut, doctor, teacher or firefighter. And when I look at the children’s books available today, those options have not changed much.

We asked parents about journalists and PR people, and were surprised by how many of them did not know about either profession. Their conception of those fields was based on what they’ve seen in movies and TV.

For the next generation, PR should be intoxicating. How many American kids like to think imaginatively about writing and video, and the ways in which we communicate?

More people will think about PR as books like this one come out. I’m sure I won’t be the only one who has a good idea for a book about a career that is not easily or often understood by the public. I went with a very broad breadth of what tech PR is like, and I focused heavily on consumer, too, even though much of our experience is in B2B.

Bospar does a lot of pharmaceutical PR now, which is a totally different game. I’ve been thinking about how I could go back to that well, and tell those stories for a sequel to the book. “Game Face” is a techie PR story, but there are other interesting PR stories to be told.

Any parting thoughts about your book project?

I don’t wear a tie. But when we were trying to figure out how to make me look more adult, which I guess now that I’m 50 is a cute exercise, I thought, “Let’s add a tie.” It makes me look like a grown-up.

The post New Book ‘Game Face’ Teaches Kids the Adventure of PR first appeared on PRsay.