What PR pros can learn about collaboration from ‘Songland’

The TV show about the craft of songwriting on NBC gives a view into how the creative process can bear fruit when ego is set aside.

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“Collaboration” is a term you see many public relations and marketing agencies use to describe how they do business. But how many of these organizations actually practice it? How many are simply dictatorships in which only the owner, CEO or group leaders are allowed to present their ideas while the others just sit there and listen?

If you want to see what the collaboration process looks like, and the benefits it can achieve, look no further than NBC hit TV show, “Songland.”

In its second season, “Songland” is a program aimed at finding the next generation of songwriters. Each week, an established guest recording artist comes to the show to hear four unknown songwriters pitch their original material. These contestants perform their original tracks in front of the guest artist and producer-mentors Ryan Tedder, Ester Dean and Shane McAnally. At the end of the episode, the guest artist chooses which of the song pitches will become their next single.

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