Does PR need more men? No, clients need more balls.

Havas north America says the PR industry is "too feminized", and there's quite the reaction over at the Drum.

First, lets look at what Marian Salzman said, in context.. Read the whole piece before you hit the symbolic 'male' paragraph.

My use of the word “ballsy” is intentional: The best Australian work exudes a great masculine energy, something we’re sadly missing over here. The American PR industry has become so feminized and so politically correct that I worry about where the edge has gone. It’s not even in Brooklyn or Long Island City anymore. We’ve institutionalized all the hot shops, softened their edges and finishing-schooled the brashness right out of them.

If we were using flavor metaphors, she's saying that PR in the US is vanilla, and she'd like to see more tabasco or double-chocolate-fudge on the menu. Big giant balls of double chocolate fudge. Big giant brass chocolate fudge balls.

But using gender metaphors is fantastic link bait, and Marian Salzman is not stupid. There's an army of women in PR, and some might be silly enough to not read the article in full before retweeting the heck out of it and being pearl-clutchingly offended.

She's using the word feminized to mean agreeable. Politically correct if you will. The lawyers have dotted the I's and crossed the T's. The work is perfectly poised to not stir up anything. The USA couldn't have decapitated animation characters that sing about dumb ways to die, because won't somebody think of the children?

Oreo, who did fabtastic work got the most attention for their one hundred day campaign for #1- commenting on the super bowl in realtime and #2- daring to make a rainbow cookie. Oh. my. gosh. How provocative. A rainbow cookie.

In a country where middle-american clients edit away the funny, tone down the sexy, and only ever parrot each other in social media its not really the PR industry that needs more balls. The clients need to realize that well executed PR is as targeted as a surgeons scalpel, and can reach the people who won't be offended by a slightly risque joke. You can't appeal to all of the people all of the time and more importantly all of the people aren't your potential customers. So dare the braver ideas, you as the client have to remember you are not your target market. If PR has a daring idea that will reach them, do it.