Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
I was recently introduced by a friend to another person as follows: “Renee works for a PR agency; one that does more than just the evil stuff.” I found this funny but frightening.
Why does PR = evil? I’m guessing that the assumed evil deeds we perform are to do with the so called spinning of information to generate publicity and dupe unsuspecting audiences.
This 19th century framework of PR is old and irrelevant. Unfortunately as an industry, we have failed pretty miserably at helping people understand what PR is and what PR people do.
While PR is widely known for publicity generation, this and media relations is just one facet of PR, as Craig Pearce and Karalee Evans also point out.
The media is just one channel in a host of channels PR people use to help businesses and brands meet their objectives and communicate with their many stakeholders and by that I mean markets, customers, employees, investors and so on.
When a client comes with a problem or opportunity, we solve it with the most appropriate solution:
Sometimes that’s an idea executed across multiple touch points or channels; these channels might be traditional or digital or both.
PR is a diverse field and the spectrum of roles is huge. To highlight the full gamut, I hunted down a copy of the Public Relations Theory and Practice textbook which summarises roles and activities in the following areas:
…and then there’s all the ‘relations’…
So, PR - it’s more than just publicity and not really about evil. We’ll leave evil to those nasty advertisers…wah ha ha ha ha!!
