Can we press release that? 15 stories about the public relations industry (you won’t believe #10)
This is my CommsHero presentation. It’s an overview of industry issues as discussed by my community of practice.
Hello. Good afternoon. It’s good to meet you. I want to thank the Resource team for putting on another great CommsHero event and for inviting me back to speak this year.
I started an online community of practice at the outset of the pandemic. It’s a thoughtful and occasionally irreverent place to kick around ideas about our profession. Around 2,000 people contribute to discussions week in week out. You may have come across our Monday newsletter. It’s full of industry goodness.
There are some topics that come up time and time again in the community. I persuaded the CommsHero team to allow me to share some of them with you. I’ve 15 topics to get through in the next 20 minutes or so. Strap in. Let’s go.
1. Will the CIPR and PRCA ever merge?
The short answer is not in my lifetime. The longer answer requires a brief history lesson. The PRCA was started by a group of CIPR members in 1969 who wanted to create an organisation to address the specific needs of agency owners. It broadened its remit in the intervening years. More than 50 years on we have two organisations representing an industry that contributes £15.7bn to the economy and employs a workforce of almost 100,000 people. That data is from the 2020 PRCA Census. My view is that a single organisation would benefit from scale, standards, including a single code of conduct, and a voice to government and business. It won’t happen, in fact the issue quickly becomes dismissed in CIPR communities because of deeply entrenched views and the PRCA’s assertive industry leadership.
2. Why is the public relations industry not representative of the organisations or the public that it serves?
What can a middle-aged white man tell you about diversity? The industry is white, middle class and university educated. I’m generalising to make a point, but CIPR and PRCA data shows that the industry simply isn’t representative of society. Ethnic, gender and socio-economic diversity are issues. None of the top 20 UK agencies participated in the recent PRWeek pay gap study. The Taylor Bennett Foundation, Blueprint and mine and Sarah Waddington’s community interest company Socially Mobile aim to make specific interventions but this issue needs to be addressed downstream. We need to create a larger pipeline of practitioners by creating greater awareness for the profession as a career in schools.
3. Why is public relations conflated with media relations?
Another history lesson. Ever since Ivy Lee sent the first press release on 28 October 1906 public relations have been associated with media relations. He released a statement to the press on behalf of Pennsylvania Railroad about a train wreck that tragically killed 50 people. The New York Times printed the article in full. Publicists and agencies focused solely on the media exaggerate the issue. Managing relationships with media is only one area of practice. Earned media is one channel that sits alongside paid, shared, and owned media. Practice includes research, planning, content, and measurement, in addition to media channels.
4. Why is the press release the primary form of content for public relations?
This relates the previous point about earned media. If journalists are your primary stakeholder, the press release is your primary form of content and means of engagement. Thousands of these documents are published every day on newswires and websites. Press releases are well understood in organisations and used as a general-purpose form of communication. They act as a common, corporate language. In this sense they’re a useful tool. They can be carved up for different channels. But please understand that the press release is not the answer to every communication question.
5. Why is Chartered status in public relations not a standard and better respected?
A computer and connection to the internet is the only barrier to entry in public relations. It’s possible to earn £150k and more without any formal accreditation or professional qualifications. The PRCA Census reports that there are almost 100,000 people working in public relations and related roles. The CIPR and PRCA have 10,000 and 35,000 members respectively that adhere to each organisation’s code of conduct. Around 2,500 practitioners participate in continuous learning and development via the CIPR and there are around 400 Chartered Practitioners. The data tells the story. Professional accreditation in an industry with no barrier to entry is a long game.
6. Why does everyone in an organisation think they can do public relations?
This is the Chartered question but from the other end of the telescope. We’ve already discussed that there are no barriers to entry in public relations and therefore anyone with a rudimentary understanding can practice. Much of our work is based on the written word and any student of English literature will tell you it’s both situational and subjective. The only certainty is that everyone will has a point of view. But as we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, professional communications can help support crisis, innovation, change, productivity, and life itself.
7. Why are public relations degrees so poorly regarded by practice?
The industry has a wholly unrealistic expectation that graduates should be oven ready, and able to immediately undertake a stakeholder audit, write a blog, or pitch media. It’s a situation that is unique to public relations, and possibly marketing. Entry level roles demand work experience. In any other professional discipline, there’s a period of conversion between formal learning and practice. Hang in there. Attitudes are changing. Entry level roles command a £25k salary and it’s possible to make £35k to £50k in three to five years. The industry has been good to me.
8. Why doesn’t public relations realise the value that it deserves?
I started my career in public relations cutting and pasting press clippings. We’d compile clipping books for clients at the end of each month. 25 years later this activity may have gone digital but it’s still firmly part of practice. We focus on impressions, reach and opportunities to demonstrate the results of our labour. These are all poor proxies for business outcomes. Use robust planning tools such as the AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework or the Government Communication Service OASIS model to align and measure activity against organisational objectives. It’s the surest way to ensure public relations activity receives its fair share of budget and practitioners are rewarded accordingly.
9. What’s the purpose and value of the CLA and NLA?
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) exist to protect the rights of copyright holders. It’s a reasonable enough purpose. If I generate content I expect a fair value exchange with my audience. That may be financial, marketing or some form of benefit in kind. The CLA and NLA pursue license fees from agencies and organisations that share content created by publishers. Public relations practitioners react badly to this for two reasons. Firstly, the industry supports media in the creation of content and rejects the additional cost as an unfair value exchange; and secondly, the CLA and the NLA use aggressive sales techniques. It’s a fractious relationship at best.
10. Why do we float campaigns down the Thames?
Floating stuff down the Thames is a lazy, often abused idea, but it’s guaranteed to get a picture story in the national media. Whether that will contribute to the reputation or sales for your organisation is another thing entirely. With no sense of irony whatsoever I’m speaking to you from a barge on the River Thames near Tower Bridge. It’s my home and office in London and is available for hire to anyone that’s interested.
11. Why has ASAP become an acceptable deadline?
This is nonsense. It’s an issue that is particularly acute in the agency client relationship. It’s PR not ER. We may operate in a 24/7 environment but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan properly. There’s always going to be work that needs to be delivered at short notice, but it shouldn’t be the norm. Messaging applications such as Slack should be a tool and not an end within itself. Even during a crisis response work needs to be planned and scheduled.
12. Why is PRWeek bi-monthly?
PRWeek is a story of the current media environment, much like any other publication. It used to be weekly but went multi-channel in November 1998 with the launch of an email newsletter and a website. The print edition went monthly in 2013, and bi-monthly in 2016. The original moniker has stuck. It works to be fair. Other industry media are also available including PRovoke, PRmoment, and blogs, such as my own.
13. Why are there so many public relations agencies in the UK?
We’ve already explored the fact that anyone can practice public relations. It follows that anyone can set up a public relations agency. The start-up costs are low. You need to cover salary costs until you win a client. In fact, there are more than 4,000 public relations agencies in the UK. Starting an agency is easy. Growing it into a large business is more challenging. Most agencies, 3,855 to be precise, employ less than five people. The agency market is a broad church that encompasses publicity, internal communications, crisis response, strategic management communication, and more. An agency a week was launched in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Wadds Inc. COVID-19 agency start-up report explored this trend. We concluded that a clear proposition and market were critical to success.
14. Why is procurement such a lousy way to buy public relations services?
Procurement is a best practice approach to purchasing bulk products such as baked beans and toilet rolls but it’s a lousy basis for buying professional services aimed at building relationships. It is optimised for financial management and suboptimal for public relations. Agencies mangle their services into a spreadsheet and purchasers end up locked into a roster of suppliers.
15. Is the public relations industry part of the fake news problem?
I’ve slipped this in at the end because I’ve just read a thought-provoking book called Public Relations Capitalism by Anne Cronin. She’s a scholar at Lancaster University who argues that public relations corrupts the public sphere. It enables corporations to insert messages into the public conversation and has contributed to a breakdown of democratic process. The chair of the PRCA's Climate Misinformation Strategy group and Don’t Cry Wolf CEO John Brown has cited BP’s campaign in 2004 to promote individual carbon footprints as an example of this issue. It has displaced responsibility for carbon emissions from industry to the consumer for more than two decades.
The subtitle of this session is why is the public relations industry so bad at managing its own image? The answer is among the topics we’ve discussed today. We’re a young growing industry. Adolescent even. We have many issues to address as we grow up.
I once asked Dr Jon White what stops him becoming grumpy and fed up with our industry’s seeming lack of progress on these issues. He’s a Henley Business School researcher who contributed to the agenda setting research and book Excellence in Public Relations and Communications Management as part of a research team led by James Grunig in the early 90s.
We constantly reinvent ourselves in a bid to professionalise and realise our value as a management discipline. His response? Our role is to keep asking questions and inspiring the next generation to push forward practice. I hope I’ve achieved that goal today.
Thanks to members of my community of practice for inspiring this session. You’d be welcome to join us.
