In his new book, Hollywood's top PR guy says his business—and the LGBT rights movement — is changing fast.

BY CHRISTOPHER LISOTTA

Howard Bragman has the perfect last name for a public relations expert. Currently the CEO of the firm Fifteen Minutes, Bragman was a founder of PR powerhouse Bragman Nyman Cafarelli. He helped NFL veteran Esera Tuaolo come out to the media and navigated the Lewinsky family through the press after daughter Monica made that blue dress so famous. Known for working with LGBT clients, Bragman is now the author of Where's My Fifteen Minutes, his guidebook for anyone who wants to understand how to develop a message in a rapidly changing world.

FRONTIERS: You write PR no longer means “public relations.” What does PR mean?

HOWARD BRAGMAN: PR stands for the concepts of perception and reality. We live in a society where perception has become more important than reality. It is really funny, I just saw a clip of Tom Cruise on TV talking about this. The reality [of his on-air tiff with Today co-host Matt Lauer] was different than the perception, and [he said] I have to get that in line. Most people come to me, potential clients, and they say I'm better than my perception. They believe what they need to do is update perception to match their reality. There are some people whose perception is better than their reality. That's called hype.

How often do you say to a potential client, “you're a total douche bag, and I can't work with you?” Or is everybody salvageable?

No, everyone is not salvageable. I don't come down from on high and say to my staff, “You're working on this client, here you go.” We take a meeting and we sort of analyze if we want to work with this person. If they are operating on a basis of what's honest and true, we can probably work with them. If they tell me they need to be on the cover of People magazine and they are the fifth lead on a reality show, that's probably going to be a problem.

Big companies like McDonald's have been talking about how ownership over their brands have changed, where they now have more of a two-way relationship with consumers. Do you buy this? And if so is that also the case for personalities?

Absolutely. Much of that goes to the Internet and Google, and Wikipedia and YouTube. You want to have a dialogue with your consumers or fans. Our business has changed because we used to control images. Now the best we can do is manage images. And that's a huge change. I don't care how good you are, if your client is a screw up, it is going to get out in this transparent world we live in.

In 2007 Jodie Foster thanked her partner at an industry event, but it was not mentioned in mainstream media until the gay blog Out in Hollywood reported it. Anderson Cooper's rumored boyfriend Julio Cesar Recio is mentioned in gay blogs all the time but is never mentioned in mainstream media. Is there built-in censorship about possibly LGBT people?

I don't think it is so much censorship in the mainstream media. They don't know how to deal with it. I don't think they are comfortable with it. I don't think they want to quote-unquote out somebody, which is an aggressive act. And because of that they treat the GLBT community with a different standard than they would with somebody who is heterosexual.

As someone who has been very supportive of LGBT equality is that good for the community as a whole or is that in the long run hamstringing us?

We all hope for the day when somebody comes out and it’s not news. We get closer all the time but we're certainly not there yet. I don't know if it is good or bad, it's just the reality I have to live in. When I took Esera Tuaolo out, one mainstream outlet said the “recently outed.” Well, he wasn't outed, he came out. And some people said things like “admitted homosexual,” like he robbed a 7-Eleven.

What was your perspective as a PR guy on the No on 8 campaign?

My number one mantra in PR is if you do not define yourself somebody else is going to define you. And you're not going to be as happy about them defining you as you are about defining yourself. So I think we committed the PR sin of letting our opponents define us. We were far too politically correct in our advertising. Our campaign was top-down as opposed to bottom-up. We didn't build a movement. But I see a lot of good news in this. The good news I see is it stirred the next generation of activists. When people take to the street and organize meetings on Facebook that is how we are going to win. That is going to change the world for us.