Serving PR Straight Up
By Warren Strugatch

Steve Haweeli has already launched his East End public relations consulting firm when a client asked him to write a press release. What, Haweeli wondered, was a press release? It speaks volumes about the genial ex-bartender that not only did his PR business survive such an unlikely start, but that he can laughingly and comfortably relate the story today.

Having spent the past 20 years as a bartender, Haweeli has not encountered the industry term; as every flack knows, a press release is an announcement promoting a client's product, service or upcoming event. The idea is to generate press coverage.

"I had never written a press release," Haweeli - whose name rhymes with ah, really - recalls. "But I was willing to learn. I didn't know how much to charge, though. I had no idea," he confesses, "what my hourly rate was."

That was 1992. Since then, he and his staff of two full-time account exec have written hundreds of such documents for a growing client roster heavy with East End restaurants, but including authors, event promoters and even one vodka distillery, Peconika. Many have indeed been picked up by newspapers, magazines and TV stations. Haweeli's fledgling agency, WordHampton, has become buzz builder of choice for East End restaurants and other clients seeking the limelight. Haweeli himself has built a reputation as the one to provide "PR without BS," a slogan he coined and frequently repeats.

As recently as three years ago, Haweeli still tended bar, working one shift a week at Nick & Toni's, the celebrity-studded East Hampton restaurant. It was among his first PR accounts. Bartending not only kept him close to his customers, he contends, but reinforced a way of doing business based on personal relationships and trust.

For Haweeli, bartending also opened the door to public relations. "I worked at some great restaurants that just never got their crowd, never got their buzz," he recalls. " I got known as someone who can write, based on letters and things I wrote, that people seemed to like reading. I began to get some work doing direct mail for restaurants," says Haweeli a former English major who briefly pursued an MBA. (It was my parent's idea," he asserts.)

Bartending, he says, polished the skills he uses for media schmoozing today. "In some ways bartending is a good foundation for any business, he contends. "Despite the crush of people demanding drinks, you try to keep a smile on (the client's) face" - a state of mind his clients say he maintains doing PR too.

"What drew me to him," says author Jodi Della Femina (Shortcuts to the Hamptons), "was how relaxed and down to earth this guy is. I found him amazing. This is an industry where people get very uptight and jaded. Steve just stays totally relaxed. Last year, at the height of the summer season, he handled my book party along with maybe six other parties and he didn't break a sweat."

Haweeli's unusual background helps him stand out. Most PR consultants come from one of two camps: Either they toiled for years for agencies or they're ex-journalists offering up mountains of contacts and the promise of inside scoops. While there is arguably no dearth of PR types familiar with the inside of drinking establishments, most of them spend their time there bending elbows rather than mixing concoctions.

Providing bar drinks to order is akin to customizing a PR product for individual clients, he said. All too often PR people forget to do this, he believes, and attempt to foist their information on reporters without establishing need or interest.

"The way PR is done a lot of the time is really malarkey," he says. " I make it a point not to do things the traditional PR way, much of the time."

His "PR without BS" concept is well accepted. "It's true, absolutely true," say Colin Ambrose, chef-owner of Estia and Little Estia. "He was doing something I knew our restaurant needed, and he was a pal so I gave half my advertising budget to him. It was," he says, "a great move."

A 20-year veteran of such upscale Manhattan joints as Memphis, Raoul's and Rakel, Haweeli left his full-time occupation as a bartender some seven years ago, but did not forget the business lessons he learned from behind the spigot. He took note when one restaurant employer failed despite its popularity; management failed to get a firm handle on the business side. Another restaurant ran into problems caused by the unhelpful involvement of people frequently in need of criminal defense attorneys.

"Those guys were gangsters, and I'll say that right out," say Haweeli.

Ten years ago, Haweeli and his wife Ellen took inventory of their lives and began planning on relocating to a more family-friendly place than Manhattan. Chefs, bartenders, waiters and maitre d's were moving to the East End in droves, lured by the region's burgeoning luxury resort image and the arrival of thousands of hungry, upscale Manhattanites.

Still keeping his day - or rather night - bartending jobs, Haweeli began building WordHampton into an agency specializing in restaurant promotion. His marketing approach was low key. He and Ellen would stop and chow down for lunch or dinner, and catch up with old friends. Business? Only if they showed interest.

"I'll sit down with my clip book and we'll talk about the press coverage I've gotten" for other restaurants, Haweeli says. "The proof's right there on the table. There isn't that much to fuss over. If they want a proposal, I'll do a one-page summary of the basic concept." That concept in brief: "Hire me, pay me on time and I'll get you and your restaurant into the media."

One of his first accounts was a new East Hampton restaurant, Nick & Toni's. A virtual magnet for media coverage, a parade of reviewers came, saw and gave stars.

The owners, Jeff Salaway and Toni Ross, were spectacularly well connected with the Manhattan media - Toni's dad was the late Warner Chairman Steve Ross. Regular Joes were treated well, too, and seemed to tolerate rubbing elbows with celebs like Steven Spielberg, Robert DeNiro, Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel.

"Nick and Toni's became our signature account," say Haweeli. "We became known for helping build a buzz for them. Our success there helped bring in other accounts. It's like we tell clients, publicity breeds publicity."

Richard Weiner, a vice president with Porter Novelli, a public relations firm in Manhattan, has been a mentor to Haweeli as he changed careers, offering a link to mainstream PR. Weiner agrees his protégé is unconventional, but in some ways represents a throwback to the press agents of yesteryear.

"Steve operates rather the way the old-time Hollywood and Broadway press agents operated, seeing a media need and coming up with an idea to fill that immediate need," Weiner says.

"He's entrepreneurial and energetic, and really partners with his clients in way they come to appreciate as they see it succeeding." To Haweeli, it all comes down to what he learned behind the bar. "You learn how to size someone up from the way he digs into his pocket for his wallet, from the way he asks for a drink.

"You learn how to talk to hundreds of different people a night. These are people skills you develop night after night, and they come in handy no matter what business you're in. The work changes, people don't."

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