Are we to lose this fundamental quality that gives PR its overwhelming POD as part of this process of, as a new study implies, ‘dropping the PR’ from what we call ourselves?

These topics of how PR should be termed and how will it evolve in the context of other business communication disciplines were raised again recently by the appearance of Ogilvy PR’s thought provoking Peripheral Visions Study (in itself a terrific example of applying the strategic alliance methodology to gain enhanced credibility, due to its partnership with the IABC). The study is based on extensive research amongst Australian PR and communication professionals.

PR and marketing: happy singalong

The notion that public relations and advertising will be “merged into hybrid/blended agencies” was one finding (60% agreement), but from this I’ll extrapolate that this belief is not just relevant to agencies. I can’t see how agencies can exist in this hybrid form if the reality isn’t reflected in the manner in which in-house communication teams are organised.

However, this raises the interesting question of whether agencies do now, and should in the future, reflect the way organisations structure their business communication (e.g. marketing and PR, primarily) teams. To the best of my knowledge PR and marketing, though clearly connected, genuinely run their own shows. And this is reflected in agency structures (i.e. PR and marketing delineation).

Of course, the spanner in this mix is a snotty little ingénue called social media. Everyone is claiming the right to run this show. PR (over marketing) ‘seems’ to have the inside running, but I’d be careful about punting too much on the PR pony. I can envisage social media-specific departments within some organisations, reporting through neither the PR or marketing silo, but direct to whoever has responsibility for all three areas.

There is so much synergy between fundamental aspects of PR and social media that I can’t see the logic in the two being separated, but marketers can be a self-focused bunch and if it can help turn a buck, they’ll want it.

Two of the big issues that will need to be addressed if blending the PR and marketing disciplines into an integrated ‘brains trust’ are:

• Marketing tends to be more about brand; PR tends to be more about reputation
• Best practice PR is based on two-way symmetrical communication; marketing is predicated on turning a buck. The two don’t always align.

Whilst two-way symmetrical communication is a pipe dream for many and not commercial enough, for me at least it provides an ethical, inspiring target to aim for.  Based on the two-way symmetrical mindset, I wonder if PR is actually anti-economic growth, based on the supposition that growth has a greater upside for the well off and increases the disenfranchisement of the less well off. Economic growth also tends to come with a larger population and accelerated environmental degradation.

As Jonathan Franzen wonders very, very loudly in his most recent riff-fest, Freedom, is an increasing global population the root of all evil?

Marketing, of course, is all for economic growth, more money making products, more money in the pockets of those who own companies etc.

It’s a political, social and moral discussion. Can PR and marketing ever really sleep together in comfort? The s*x might be tempestuous and astounding, but will they respect each other in the morning? Perhaps more to the point in the longer term, what will the kids be like? Social media freaks and born with an iPhone in their hands, that’s for certain.

Can you blog in utero?

Giving PR a new name

76% of respondents to the report’s survey agree that we’ll refer to ourselves as communication professionals rather than PR professionals. Kieran Moore, Ogilvy PR Australia’s CEO and my inordinately intelligent and insightful ex-boss, got it right when she said PR needs to redefine rather than rename itself.

“While we don’t agree with dropping ‘PR’ from our discipline, we think this shows that companies, organisations and individuals are demanding authentic communications advice that focuses on the reality of reputation – in the real world context of business and organisational needs,” said Kieran.

It isn’t an easy issue to come up with an answer to. So many people think PR is media relations alone, due to the evolution of the discipline, that I can’t envisage a day when the term public relations will ever be perceived as what it really is:

A wide ranging business communication discipline that, on a strategic level, encompasses PR, strategic planning, marketing communication approaches and more, whilst on a tactical level is everything from media relations and social media to event management and crisis management to employee communication and positioning.

So I fully empathise with those that want to change the name. But with the wealth of academic work that has been developed to underpin our discipline, including my much-nagged about two-way symmetrical communication hobby horse, I just don’t think it’s worth the agony.

And what the hell is a ‘communication professional’ anyway? As a brand, it pretty much sucks deeply. Marketers will laugh at that brand. It tries to say everything and says nothing.

Muscle up PR pros. Stop bitching at your name and go about fighting for territory and delivering quality.

This is the same way I look at brands. You can call it what you like. You can create whatever logo you want. You can conceptualise the most creative, eye catching ad campaign in the world. But if the product or service itself is weak, then THAT is the brand, that is the outcome and no matter what clever marketing spin you put on it, that product or service will flunk.

And don’t come crying to your PR pro when your lack of rigour in looking at various aspects of your new gun product or service comes back to bite you for some crisis communication or positive media placement. Think bigger picture. Think, in fact, PR 101 two-way symmetrical communication.

Do you think PR should change its name? What are your thoughts on this hybrid communication discipline that it has been posited may emerge? Why all the talk about PR’s name change? What will it change? Is it a superficial, ultimately hollow move, which is basically what I argue, or is it something of greater substance?

But I’ve posed this question: are public relations’ firms and their in-house sisters’ fixation with this approach hindering their ability to generate credibility for itself and not sufficiently pragmatic when being used by profit-driven organisations?

Well, through numerous public relations marketing LinkedIn groups, and in personal emails to me, the differences and caveats and justifications have been coming in thick and fast. Some of the fallout has been generated by me asking why isn’t making money a KPI for public relations jobs?

This question was prompted by insights from The Annual Insight Into The Communication Profession 2011, undertaken by the only Australian recruitment consultancy specialising in corporate affairs and communication executives, Salt & Shein. The survey identifies that profit-related KPIs are barely visible for those in Australian public relations jobs.

Why PR is should not be measured on turning a buck

Professor Jim Macnamara*, Professor of Public Communication at the University of Technology, Sydney, leads the teaching of PR at Australia’s leading public relations education university. He is virulently opposed to the notion of PR being measured on its profit or sales-generating outcomes.

“While some marketing PR likes to, or would like to, show how it drives sales and profits, and it is important to have objectives related to the overall goals and objectives of the organisation, the reality is that sales/profits are the outcome of multiple influences and activities,” says Professor Macnamara.

“This includes distribution strategy and effectiveness; the sales channel and its work; pricing; competition, product/service quality etc. And this is even before you get to marketing comms.

Any one of these factors, or a combination of them, can significantly affect and determine sales and profits. Then within communication, there are the influences of advertising, promotions, online, etc that are all intermingled and combined in consumers’ minds.

“It is very difficult to show direct causation by PR in sales and/or profits because of this fusion of multiple influences, information sources and experiences.

“The same is true of advertising – although the advertising industry typically has failed to acknowledge this and misled management. The high cost and lack of proof of advertising’s impact has come home to roost and resulted in many organisations turning away from big budget advertising.

“I don’t get why PR is obsessed by, or is expected to generate, sales and show direct correlations to profits. Many other specialist functions in organisations are not judged this way. For example, we don’t expect HR, or the legal department, or the production department, or even the CEO to generate sales and profits. We recognise that they contribute to ultimate success – but they do so through specialised functions.”

But then again, who’s paying the PR bills?

Increasing the quality of stakeholder relationships, encouraging them to buy into an organisation’s vision, along with getting stakeholders’ perspectives so that an organisation can evolve, are all vitally important elements of public relations. That’s why PR is so much more important to an organisation than marketing.

But can we balance these seeming potentially oppositional, or certainly tension-rife, dimensions? Can we undertake best practice (and some may say, idealistic) public relations whilst still doing what some organisations say we must do – undertake activity to help make money?

• “I teach this to students at Notre Dame. PR is about the triple bottom line, sure. But when it boils down to business, it’s about making money and keeping shareholders satisfied (just the bottom line).” – Dr. Greg Smith, Senior Media and Communications Officer, Department of Training and Workforce Development, Western Australia
• Not having a profit or sales-generating focus is one of the reasons why PR is relegated to a back row in business says an  an international branding and communications expert from Germany
• “I think we’re deficient if we don’t include a financial component in any plan we propose. [The difficulty] should not deter us from reflecting or having an explicit financial objective as part of that program.” – Alan Smith, corporate communication consultant
•  Another PR and marketing professional says that good PR should drive sales as that is what the client wants.

These are just a few recent perspectives taking a divergent approach to Professor Macnamara. Clearly some head clearing dialogue going on here.

Professor Macnamara wonders, however, in response to those who say PR can and should be measured in terms of sales and profits – how do they actually measure and prove that?

“I would be very surprised if they have any rigorous valid method of proving what they claim,” says Professor Macnamara. “The reality is that most marketing PRs who claim to deliver to the bottom line measure their efforts in terms of advertising value equivalents – a totally invalid correlation of hypothetical cost and value that bears no relationship to sales or profits or even effectiveness.”

If we are putting out a media release, or holding a launch event which thousands attend or initiating a Facebook promotion – all about a product or service…surely we are trying to make a sale, turn a buck et al. If this is the case, and despite PR at a higher level being more important than making money (maybe don’t’ tell your CFO this, though, okay?), then why the hell don’t we have financial KPIs as part of this program?

And if we have them as part of this program, why not embedded into certain PR roles at a deeper level?

Public relations is about building relationships

“A further key factor is that public relations is largely directed at other [non-profit relevant] objectives,” takes up Professor Macnamara again. “In most conceptualisations and models, the primary raison d’être of PR is building and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders such as employees, shareholders, investors, communities, etc. Thus, PR has a longer-term focus and a different strategy in most cases.

“Turning all relationship building and maintenance activities into money-making opportunities, or making this a key objective of public relations, is not authentic (we don’t really care or want to support communities, etc, we just want to make money) and is effectively a retreat to the early industrial era of Vanderbilt and Friedman. They said the only objective of business was making money and the only loyalty was to shareholders.”

Let’s define public relations

“As long as PR people think they can be sales and marketing people, they will struggle,” points out Professor Macnamara.  “Publicity creates awareness, but it does not sell things. Nor do events, newsletters, community sponsorships etc. You need distribution channels, good pricing strategies, quality products and services and sales people to sell. Sales and profits are their KPIs.

“I actually think it is quite dangerous for PR to try to tie itself to sales KPIs. It will inevitably fail to show clear evidence of direct causation and, thus, will be seen as failing, relegating us to being a second or distant third or fourth cousin to advertising, sales promotion and marketing.

“KPIs and objectives have to be functionally relevant and directly causal. That’s not to say that PR cannot CONTRIBUTE to sales and profits. What does it contribute?

• Relationships
• Reputation
• Awareness
• Trust.

“Then let’s measure those.”

What did you think of the perspectives in this post? Do you support PR sticking to its predominantly relationship management and reputation enhancement imperatives? Or are there other aspects that you think PR should strive to achieve? What is your professional experience in the context of these dimensions?

*Jim Macnamara, PhD, FPRIA, FAMI, CPM, FAMEC became Professor of Public Communication at the University of Technology Sydney in 2007 after a 30-year career working in journalism, public relations and media research, which culminated in selling the CARMA Asia Pacific media analysis firm which he founded to Media Monitors in 2006. His most recently published text is ‘Public Relations; theories, practices, critiques’. Jim can be networked with on his LinkedIn profile and on Twitter @jimmacnamara. 

It’s interesting to observe that the traditional divide between the marketing (paid messages) and public relations (third party endorsement) professions still seems to be alive and well judging by their positioning in most organisations.

Each profession is usually either placed in an independent organisational silo, or PR is positioned as a subset ‘add-on’ of marketing, which as we know inevitably leads to turf wars. However this need not be so in practice and it is worth the effort to step across the silos, as the following case study demonstrates.

Sue Corlette

Melding public relations and marketing

In 2007, the National Prescribing Service (now known as “NPS – Better choices, Better health”) conducted a ‘Get to know your medicines’ national campaign to educate people on the wiser use of medicines. The campaign featured two x two week TVCs and a direct mail out of campaign resources. The campaign spanned several teams within NPS and the resulting strategy became a milestone in collaborative success.

This was the third campaign of its kind and was astoundingly successful compared to previous campaigns for three reasons:

• We used real people (PR tactic 101 = third party endorsement) in the TVCs
• We introduced a  newsletter / order form  targeting both consumer and health professional audiences. This replaced  multiple letters sent with sample resources  to segmented mail lists of health professional and consumer audiences  marketing tactic 101 =  DM)
• We extended the DM concept by asking third party stakeholders to distribute it on our behalf in addition to us distributing it via purchased mail lists.

The newsletter was key to the campaign’s success because it articulated both the consumer and health professional perspective.

In so doing it straddled the sometimes precarious divide between consumer and health professional organisational viewpoints.

It also ensured that the messages consumers were hearing in the TVCs would be reinforced by their health professional. It included statements from third party individuals and organisations to reinforce messages and reassure readers that the purpose of the campaign was legitimate; and it had an inbuilt ‘evaluation tool’ – a resource order form.

Importantly:

• this was the first time all the resources were aggregated in one simple form that did not require time-poor health professionals to order online through multiple pages
• the inclusion of third party organisations and individuals gave further reassurance to readers who didn’t already know NPS that the campaigns were legitimate and credible
• all people featured were also media spokespeople
• third parties signed off when satisfied the messages were consistent with their perspective and organisational values
• by default, the sign off process ensured that messages were clarified and stakeholders were aligned
• it included ‘a call to action’ resource order form to measure its effectiveness
• the number of orders generated from the form would indicate if readers were willing to support the campaign.

How did it measure up?

235,000 newsletters were distributed (to an estimated 80% of the target audience) at a cost of $23,000.

• 613,119 resources were ordered during the campaign compared to 257, 714 for the twelve months prior
• 8,000 organisations placed orders, compared to 1,000 in the previous 12 months
• The insertion strategy extended reach to 300,000, generating 8,000 orders
• So successful was the response and feedback to the first newsletter, two more newsletters followed to keep recipients informed of the campaign progress and NPS received further funding for a subsequent 2008 campaign, “Generic Medicines are an equal choice”
• The campaign received several industry awards including:

- 2008 International Association of Business Communicators Golden Quill Award for multi audience communication
- 2008 Public Relations Institute of Australia National Golden Target Award, Health Promotion
- 2008 Marketing Institute of Australia state award for Get to know your medicines national campaign.

What do you think about the integration of marketing and public relations approaches in this case study? Is there a clear line between the two professional communication disciplines, or is it pretty grey? What do you think about the way Sue has outlined the approach taken to campaign measurement? I’d really like to know how you set benchmarks for public relations and marketing activity.

About the author

Sue Corlette MA Org Comms, Dip PR, MPRIA

*Sue Corlette is a senior corporate communications and marketing executive with extensive experience in strategic planning and the collaborative implementation of successful, award winning outcomes for a diversity of businesses, both in the not-for-profit and commercial sectors. Whilst working in various corporate communications roles Sue has spent the last six years also writing course curriculum and teaching public relations and marketing for the vocational and higher education sectors.

This post explores these dimensions with the input and assistance of two of the globe’s most astute public relations minds, Craig Badings and Sean Williams, both of whom provide plenty of insights on their own estimable blogs.

The ugly communication canards

Starting with the eye rolling, it never ceases to amaze me what some wankers in the advertising/marketing world come up with and their justifications for it. Australian readers will be familiar with the Toyota debacle, where a sexist, incest-implying entry into an advertisement competition was repeatedly justified by marketers, then needed to be pulled out of the fire by public relations experts.

Arguably even more devastating due to the impact it is literally having on people’s lives, is how one of Australia’s largest banks, Westpac, raised home loan interest rates way in excess of our Reserve Bank’s guidelines (unlike some of their competitors). This was bad enough (avarice, completely contradictory to the Westpac’s supposed – and now obviously shot to pieces – CSR positioning) but it was made worse by an ill-judged video using banana smoothies as an analogy for the excessive interest rate hike…unbelievable.

Craig Badings found the GFC tiresome (hey, and who can blame him! It got me retrenched, so I know what he means). “The impact of the GFC on communication service companies has had a profound impact in many respects,” he says.

“I am nervous that some of these will become de rigueur moving forward. For example, some companies have become extremely process driven in their approach to comms. This is all well and good when used to measure outputs and impact on ROI but when it comes as the expense of innovation and creativity I start fearing for the relationship. These approaches, if taken too far, inevitably kill the passion.”

Sean Williams, on the other hand, took the other major elephant in the room over the past year to task. “Crap social media claptrap. There is a ruling class in social media consulting who regurgitates the same old, tired canard of gobbeldy-gook that makes social media out to be the reinvention of the structure of society itself, declaring the End of News Media and accusing anyone who disagrees of being stupid, corrupt or worse.”

Examples of best practice public relations

On a more positive note, Craig looked back with satisfaction on a campaign he had worked on with law firm Henry Davis York. This…“resulted in the government of New South Wales settling with a family whose home was situated on an old radioactive waste site.”

Sean pointed out an excellent campaign by The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, called ‘Drawing Board’. “They are my client for measurement, so I can’t take credit for the single best and simplest explanation of financial regulation I’ve ever seen [unintentional banking and video connection noted...!]. They’ve also done a follow up video on the consumer price index…”

Getting better (at communicating) all the time

There is nothing that we all can’t get better at, but Sean and I would love to win more new business for our consultancies and I am sure Craig empathises with this as well. I question whether really profound, organisation-changing work can be done from the consultancy position, as opposed to working in-house in a PR capacity, but there are certainly plenty of exceptions to this position.

Sean, like most of us, had a big social media learning and ‘doing’ time in 2009. “Twitter and blogging make up a huge part of my day/week,” he says. “And the amount of information (some good, some not) I’ve gleaned from reading others in our field has been great.”

Plenty of us would have the tools to get better at our jobs by reading Craig’s book, Brand Stand; seven steps to thought leadership, which was published this year, whilst professional communication blogs by the likes of Karalee Evans and Trevor Young make an ongoing contribution to professional PR learning.

Incorporating the perspectives of others into my work and approach is always one of the more interesting and enriching dimensions of a professional life. Of course, embracing the views of others is analogous to public relations so it’s hypocritical not to bring such a mindset to our work.

And for 2010?

“I think more and more executives and communication professionals are beginning to understand the true power of good thought leadership and, if done properly, it’s ability to impact sales,” postulates Craig. “The biggest battle, however, is getting some people to understand that the focus of thought leadership doesn’t have to be on the product or service and that it is perfectly OK to ‘give away’ or share information and insights.”

The ‘giving away’ of information is similar to social media best practice. But social media still remains a war zone, according to Craig. “Many of the large corporates are still battling with the concept of engaging online. Speak to Dell, Walmart, Kryptonite locks, Pizza Hut and a host of others to find out just how important it is, if only as an early warning device for issues and a way to help manage crises.”

Sean says, “2010 could well be the Year of Measurement – that means doing long-delayed internal comms research, reducing dependence on ‘more more more’ in media relations in favour of better targeting and generally looking critically at how communication affects the business.”

It was reinforced for me during 2009, and I’ll be applying this in 2010 and beyond, how important flexibility and believing in yourself is. I was retrenched during 2009, I started my blog, I was forced to start my own business and now juggle a permanent role, my own business and this demanding blog baby.

An upside out of this was meeting, networking and collaborating with a wide range of public relations professionals, many of whom provided me with a great deal of support, inspiration and professional education. It reinforced to me what a rewarding, worthwhile profession I work in.

 So tell me, what were the highs, lows and ‘learnings’ of 2009 for you – and what do you think the professional business communication world will bring in 2010?

This is the beginning of an article that I wrote whilst with the very excellent business and technology public relations agency Howorth. It was syndicated to a number of publications, including Third Sector, where you can read it in full.

Among other topics/dimensions, the article discusses:

• what marketing initiatives deliver quick, meaningful wins
• the added focus on ROI in a recession
• why media relations gives excellent ROI
• getting the most out of advertising
• why a recession is an excellent time to build your brand and position it as a leader.