The findings of the latest
International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) 2012 Q2 Trends Barometer[1]show
what everybody already suspects – that PR consultancies need to be creative in
their client work in order to succeed. Creativity in strategy and tactical
implementation are core to any campaign proposal but is this really the only
reason we risk losing out to the increasing number of our competitors?
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| Richard Linning, Scholar-in-Residence |
Blue sky thinking
is a truly horrendous management cliché.
But some brainstorming without limits and without preconceptions might
actually help to determine what could nudge public relations further towards
the standards of practice and public and client acceptance to which we
aspire. To extend our reach beyond our
grasp. After all one of the basic tenets
of blue sky thinking is never to assume
that something is impossible.
There
is and has been for some time something rotten in the state of public
relations. Reference to any barometer of
trust confirms that. And perception as
we know is reality. PR’s greatest
challenge is to slough off the often quite justified pejorative reputation of “spending money to minimize bad publicity”
or “hiring someone to help [the government] ‘spin’,”[2]
Public relations as practiced today is
neither what it was yesterday nor what it will be tomorrow. The origins of public relations are firmly rooted
in propaganda. As Edward
Bernays said, "What I do is propaganda, and I just hope it's not
impropaganda." What he did he achieved
through third-party endorsement. As Professor Tim Traverse-Healy – IPRA’s first Honorary Secretary
General and President from 1969 to 1973 – recalls “when in 1947 I had just put up my
plate what we practitioners talked about were releases, share of voice, column
inches, image, identity, deadlines and the familiarity-favourability
factor”.
In 1978, the
World Assembly of Public Relations Associations claimed "public relations is the art and social
science of analysing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling
organisational leaders and implementing planned programmes of action which will
serve both the organisation’s and the public interest".
For many an aspiration echoed in the 2010
Stockholm Accords’ call to enhance and affirm the role of the public relations
and communication manager in organisational success[3]. Truth to tell in this year of 2012, nine-to-five, most practitioners are more 1947
rather than 1978. The raison
d’être of practice yesterday and today is securing that all-important third-party
endorsement; facilitating the “Don’t believe what we say, listen to what the others
are saying about us” whether it is in print, hits, likes, shares, retweets etc
etc .
Measurement
of success was always been the bug-bear.
The best that the great and the good of the
measurement community could agree on in the Barcelona Declaration was that public
relations goals should be as quantitative as possible. But then the turkeys that are the competing
measurement franchise holders couldn’t be expected to vote for an industry
standard Christmas, could they? AVE’s still
rule, OK! The
International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) 2011 Q3 Trends
Barometer[4]
showed continuing strong support for Advertising Value Equivalents (AVE's) as
legitimate measurement of PR campaigns. The evaluation method most used – “number
of mentions” (75%).
Despite the implied limitations of what the 1978 World
Assembly of Public Relations Associations called “the public interest”, the previous and new IPRA
Code of Conduct are predicated on the right of everyone to air their opinion. But does the libertarian argument for the exercise
of this right in a pluralist, and increasingly transparent world always hold
true?
Cultures are
at the core of every civilisation, and from these cultural foundations develop
social practices in every domain of human activity. Doesn’t Islamic
civilisation, the community of believers, the umma, include several dozen states? Modern Western civilisation
consist of states on three continents? The Hindu and the Buddhist inhabit
numerous Asian states?
How can the competing
rights of these competing groups to be heard to be reconciled within civil
society when each one is more articulate and more outspoken? And more likely to turn to public relations
for advocacy? More tolerance, more respect
for the opinions of others or less? On
the one hand the Norwegian response to the likes of Anders
Breivik has been to advocate more not less tolerance, on the other the British
government has responsed to telephone hacking and blagging by the British – not
just the Murdoch – media with proposals to tighten controls on what and what
cannot be published.
Since we have
been “outed” as message manipulators, cannot agree on how value-added can be
measured, yet take the moral ground on freedom of speech .. where to now?
There are important questions, far more important than those of mere
process, of how to exploit for profit the latest advances in digital technology,
that need to be addressed :
+ propaganda
is our past, is it also our future?
+ public
relations itself has become the story. Can
Pandora be put back in its box?
+ what really is
the added value of pr? Are there
universally applicable metrics?
+ how do we to
respect diversity and difference?
+
asked to do something ethical for a client acting unethically, what do we do?
Perhaps if we
all engage in some brainstorming without limits or preconceptions – some blue
sky thinking - we will come up with the answers.
Richard Linning
Scholar-in-Residence
[1] http://insights.iccopr.com/2012/08/01/creativity-and-innovation-are-vital-to-success-in-pr/
[2] http://media.prsa.org/article_display.cfm?article_id=1966
[3] http://www.wprf2010.se/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Stockholm-Accords-final-version.pdf
[4] http://www.iccopr.com/common/popup.aspx?newsId=NjQ%3d-2JACbPI8Bsk%3d
