Despite some negative ninny naysayers, practicing PR for government organisations is an excellent and rewarding option as it often takes a strategic, holistic, best practice approach, it is founded on a thorough process and great rigour, it is generally well-funded, it provides excellent career opportunities and it inherently exists to benefit all society.

The glut of information that all of us in western (and many other) societies encounter is making this information on the way to being close to meaningless, with meaning for people have most resonance through behaviour and tangible outcomes, such as products and services. An outcome of this is that unless PR practitioners focus more on outcomes of communication, not communication processes themselves, then we are on the way to making ourselves redundant.

Age delivers experience, one of the strongest influences on competency and excellence that exists, with PR being no exception. Whether it involves any form of writing, managing a crisis, developing strategy, integrating public relations into broader business and marketing activity, managing teams and working with colleagues, or simply having developed a humility that comes from the realisation that everyone makes mistakes – it’s what you learn from them and how you deal with them that matters most – age=maturity=PR/business ROI.

Business communication is normally broken up into B2C and B2B, but there is one area of immense influence, interest and importance that is another sort of B2C which is not specifically discussed to a great deal. Even in academic explorations. It’s business-to-community and precisely because it reaches deep into the roots of where we live and our neighbourhood and suburban cultures, it is a dimension of public relations that is rich in opportunity. Martha Halliday, an experienced community relations PR professional, said a key differentiator for community relations (or communication) is that, “There is much more face-to-face communication so that you are always relationship building. The community wants a relationship with whatever is impacting on them. Through the community relations person, the community has a personal relationship with the organisation and vice versa.”

Nationalism is the antithesis of public relations, as the former is inherently opposed to the notions of diversity, multiculturalism and the sharing of power and is not representative of two-way symmetrical communication: nationalism, then, is bad PR. Or is it?