Is PR in the Spin, Wash, or Rinse Cycle?
I and a paid professional spent the better part of last weekend renovating my home’s laundry room. The “spin, wash, rinse” metaphor of my headline was inspired by that experience and time spent today listening to public relations advocates and experts discuss the current state and future of the profession.
Best Practices in Corporate Communications (BPCC), a member-based service and benchmarking resource for more than 50 Fortune 500-level member companies, organized a teleconference titled, “Next Practices—The Direction and Future of Corporate Communications.” Although BPCC and its three guest speakers focused on PR communications, I was able to glean some valuable thoughts to use in my internal communications position.
The speakers were:
- Matt Shaw, Vice President at the Council of Public Relations Firms
- Jennifer McClure, President & Executive Director at the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR)
- Michael G. Cherenson, APR, Executive Vice President, Success Communications Group TBA & Chairman of the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) National Advocacy Advisory Board
PR remains under scrutiny (or attack), even as practitioners in certain segments, such as PR agencies, continue to enjoy revenue growth. Shaw said PR agencies last year enjoyed the fourth consecutive year of growth, averaging 14%. “Optimism reigns,” he said during the audio conference. “We’re looking for another good year in 2007; we expect to average 11% growth” over the next few years. That growth is coming from “the technology space, consumer products, and health care,” Shaw said. The greatest percentage of PR agency work continues to be marketing/communications (54% of total revenue), corporate communications (24% of revenue); public affairs (12%) and financial-related (6%).
While that puts a nice spin on the state of PR’s health, it doesn’t tell the whole story. McClure said the profession needs to wash itself of some outdated notions that hold it back. “The official source for information in an organization (PR) is not the most trusted source of info,” she said. “That’s a problem.”
PR practitioners have to be more than a “keeper of messages” or even an organization’s “mouthpiece,” she said. Social media including blogs have created a “plethora of people who can comment on a message and state their opinions. Our messages are getting lost. We can be the ears (listen) for our organization, not just be the mouthpiece” by engaging in the conversations, she added.
“Listen to the bloggers and respond appropriately,” McClure said. “We have the responsibility to listen to blog issues and then go to our management, get their response, and then go back to the public and say what we will do.” Lower-level staff are becoming unofficial company spokespersons because they have the technical expertise that bloggers and others using social media tools want to tap, McClure said. “You need to enable them (e.g., company engineers and developers) to use the tools to be good communicators. We’ve thought of ourselves too long as being Press Relations, not Public Relations.”
What else can PR professionals do to improve the profession’s image? Cherenson suggests rinsing off some of the tactics that have been gathering dust, such as relationship-building with publics. “We found through a PRSSA conference that students were hearing journalism instructors bash PR,” Cherenson said. “We need to educate them; it won’t happen overnight.” He also pointed out that PRSA and the IABC are excellent sources of tools, tips and advice for fledgling communicators who need direction and support.
All-in-all, it was nice to hear PR professionals doing more than airing the dirty laundry.
February 28th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
In keeping with the metaphor, you might be interested in catching Spin Cycles, a six-part PR documentary that recently aired on CBC Radio in Canada. All six episodes are available in MP3 format on the Spin Cycles website.
It’s heavy on the world of politics and journalism, but worth a listen.
February 28th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Thanks Gary, I briefly checked out the site and was impressed with the breadth of content. I’ve bookmarked it for a longer browse soon.
March 1st, 2007 at 8:38 am
Since employee communications is a subset of public relations, it’s no surprise you found useful content in the session, although there appears to have been some nonsense spouted.
RE>“The official source for information in an organization (PR) is not the most trusted source of info,” she said. “That’s a problem.”
Did she bother to say what was the most trusted source?
It sure isn’t some payroll clerk with a blog.
And the dude from PRSA noticed that journalism teachers badmouth PR? Did he just wake up from a four-decade coma? T’was ever thus.
Anyway, IABC has an advocacy committee ….
Tom, on the IABC web site there’s a chart showing lots of IABC members are in PR. Any idea what PR means in the IABC lexicon?
BAK
March 1st, 2007 at 9:39 am
Hi Brian,
During my career, I’ve held positions in corporate (employee) communications, public relations, and marketing communications. I have always considered them related to each other, but not subsets of each other.
Here is how I explain it:
“In large companies, communications is often divided into distinct areas such as marketing, public relations and corporate (internal) communications. The focus of each communication area is different, although they often collaborate. Public Relations builds and maintains positive relationships with a company’s “publics”–stakeholders, customers, the media, investors, etc. Marketing primarily is focused on external customers and supports the organization’s sales efforts, resulting in an exchange of money, goods or service-in-kind. Corporate Communications focuses on the flow of information within the company.”
So I see Public Relations being on an equal footing with Corporate Communications. Perhaps other people can share their ideas. I do believe that someone from BPCC–and possibly one or more of the presenters–plan to comment here. If so, they might be able to answer your other points better than I can.
If not, I’ll review my notes more closely and do my best in a follow-up comment.
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:02 am
[...] rd disk test ’surprises’ Google HP execs: Spy scandal was ethical wake-up call Is PR in the Spin, Wash, or Rinse Cycle? Lenovo recalls 20 [...]
March 6th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Tom, as much as I appreciate your definition, what I’m really curious about is IABC’s definition, since IABC thinks the divisions are important enough to delineate, although not define.
As for “corporate communications” being the same as internal communications… sez who?
The speakers at your conference — and it sounds like a good show — are at a Corporate Communications conference, but it doesn’t seem like they are talking about internal communications very much.
And employees are the most importasnt audience of any PR department.
I hope they come back into this thread and add some more of their ideas.
Because the communications associations have done such a terrible job communicating about communications, multitudes think Public Relations is either standing at the entrance to a party, dressed in black, wearing a headset, and looking down guest lists for names. Or picking up an author at the airport and taking her to the local television station for her to give the exact same answers in Omaha to the excact same questions she was asked in Lincoln. (assuming authors fly from Lincoln to Omama — I can’t find my road atlas and my knowledge of Nebraska turns out to be slim.
BAK
March 7th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Brian,
IABC staff can speak for themselves, but I did see that my definition of “corporate communications” doesn’t match the one in “The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication.” There, corporate communications is more of an umbrella term that includes internal communications, public relations, investor relations, community and government relations, and marketing. I’m going to use that definition from now on.
I agree that professional communicators should help educate others about the various roles that we play. But we need to work from the same set of definitions. Look, if I was telling someone what “corporate communications” entailed, I wouldn’t have been consistent with my own association.
FYI, Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska are only about 58 miles apart, so one would most likely drive, not fly. Try Yahoo maps! [:>)