As thought leadership is a central plank of many public relations strategies it, like PR in general, frequently has the challenge thrown at it of ‘can it make us money?’ The answer, it seem, is a very tangible and measurable yes. But let’s not forget the difficult to monetise value of an excellent reputation, either, which is a currency no organisation wants to do without.

Public Relations practice in Africa has come of age, occupying the core of relationship management between public departments and the general public they cater to. Whether the PR ‘face’ is up to the task is an entirely different issue altogether. Different, pertinent and somewhat worrying, public relations at the heart of Africa’s public sector is still saddled with peculiarities, most of which are neither complimentary nor flattering.

Thought leadership is a strategic approach to business communication which helps organisations positively position and differentiate themselves, in the process creating and enhancing relationships with key stakeholders. It contributes to excellent organisational reputation and the achieving of organisational objectives, including selling products and services.

In public relations, values and worldviews are as important and relevant as facts. Together, they combine to form ‘truths’. Yet whose truth is correct? How are we to decide on the most appropriate truth and what happens when it butts heads with another’s – different – truth? Negotiation, collaboration and acceptance of each other’s right to difference will help us practice PR at its most effective level.

Public relations is an art AND a science. Art in the aspect of creativity, communication and idea genesis. Science in research and strategic planning. Whatever happened to the social scientists PR professionals are meant to be?

Public relations in Australia is, it seems, both aspiring to and actually achieving its disciplinary apogee of two-way symmetrical communication, if a recent industry survey is anything to go by. The utilisation of market research to understand key issues and stakeholders, as well as benchmark performance; the evolving of organisational operations so they are more in line with stakeholder expectations; and PR leaders having an important role in strategic organisational decision making – are all key tenets of best practice two-way symmetrical communication and are frequently being enacted across the country.

Whilst I strongly believe that marketing plays a central role in business and that PR can and must support the brand, I also believe that PR and marketing must remain two distinct responsibility centers: PR must not answer to marketing, period. They must work closely together – marketing centered on the brand, PR centered on the relationships. Or, put another way, marketing centered on the consumer and PR centered on the citizen.

It’s hideous to countenance the possibility that corporate social responsibility has been a passing fashion for public relations, for its diminishing profile in business communication has struck me as both mystifying and disappointing. A new study underlining the impact that CSR has on perceptions of the reliability of a company’s products will hopefully contribute to getting the discipline back on PR’s agenda.

In responding to industry calls for more emphasis on practical skills rather than academic education which I discussed in a previous post, the public relations industry and professional bodies need to be careful that there is not an over-emphasis on practical vocational skills and too little emphasis on producing graduates who know how to think ‘outside the square’, how to question, how to challenge current practices and envision the future, and how to participate in the wider debates and discussions of society.

There is a clear choice in how the team that runs the reputational dimension a crisis is comprised: communication and reputation management can be run either as a stand-alone process or integrated into a team that addresses the crisis’s logistics/operations side making it, therefore, a more holistic approach.