Are PR People "Challenged"?

I'm speaking this morning at the Puget Sound chapter of PRSA, and I've got PR people on the brain. Good thing, because I hear that I'll be meeting more than a hundred of them (according to the last count), a much larger turnout than we expected. The topic of my talk is the effect that new media has had on our profession. In my opinion, the change has been good, and in fact liberating for those who have embraced it. And no where is this change more evident than in the quality of the people who are now interested in entering the profession.

As an agency principal (a new role for me), I am preoccupied with two big HR challenges: attracting great people to the agency, then keeping them. In PR, as in other consulting businesses, it's all about the people. And if you look closely at the two most vexing challenges, it’s about (1) the younger folks who represent the future of the business, and (2) the somewhat older folks who are capable of defining the business today.   

Both are in short supply.  Let's start with the younger folks.  In a nutshell, here's the problem -- no one ever grows up thinking, "I want to become a PR person." 

There are several good reasons for this. First, the role that the profession plays in our society has never been well understood (case in point, my parents still struggle to understand how what I do meaningfully differs from what advertisers do).

Second, this is not a profession that gets much love from the world at large. Why expose yourself to the ridicule of your peers who are entering "real professions like journalism," as one communications student recently framed it to me.

Third -- if you're looking for role models, good luck. Unless you actually know someone in the profession, chances are you wouldn't know the attributes that define the ideal PR pro.

Hollywood is no help here. Future lawyers have "A Few Good Men." Budding journalists have "All the President's Men." I've searched far and wide, and the best I could come up with is a few hilarious scenes in "A Mighty Wind" (e.g., click on the clip called "He'll Make it a Fire.")  In cinema, there are no inspirational role models for PR; instead we have clowns.

The PR pros in "A Mighty Wind" make us laugh because they are so "challenged" -- they are challenged professionally, ethically, and, most painful of all (the sharpest edge of the joke), intellectually. This problem -- the "dumb PR person" caricature -- has always plagued our profession. 

But now we have an even greater challenge: the fear that new media signals the end to our profession, because PR people (duh) will have little to do. A number of prominent PR bloggers have been debating whether new media poses a real threat, which at first glance seems real enough. After all, new media provides business with DIY communication tools. Blogging, in essence, is DIY publishing. Podcasting is DIY broadcasting (a reality so stark, it has to be sending shivers through the VNR community). And wikis, one of our favorite tools at Eastwick, is DIY communities, markets, and, conceivably, social movements.

Who needs PR people in this new world, unless you are going to keep them just to do traditional media relations?

But therein lies the biggest challenge for PR. For many years, particularly in technology, PR meant media relations, and little else. Now, many of us for the first time see there's an opportunity to assist our clients in doing what our profession professes we do: "relating to the public." And forward-l0oking PR people have already awakened to this reality, and are beginning to see how what we have always been good at may in fact command a premium in the new world. It's a little thing called "social intelligence."

In the old world, some of the best PR pros stood out for their extraordinary ability to connect their clients and socialize them into important communities -- including the media community, one of the toughest of all. Today, that innate intelligence is in even greater demand as businesses realize that have the ability to create their own communities. But the social intelligence that rewards the top professionals in our industry has always been a scarce commodity. It will continue to be scarce, and we can comfortably predict that the best in our profession will always have work.

But here's the great news: the pool of job applicants will get better. Clue: take a look at some of the social rules that govern online behavior.   It's safe to say that in order for someone to be successful today in PR, they will need to be particularly smart and/or sensitive about ethics, group dynamics, and some of the nice, mechanical efficiencies that exist in the online world.  The word will get out. Today, at Eastwick, we're getting interest from recent graduates who studied social sciences, management, and public policy. Those disciplines have always sent gifted people to our profession. But for these new PR pros, the connection between what they studied and what they can now do as professionals -- well, it's a lot more real.

But it's not just the young people who are excited. There appears to be a general reawakening for the entire profession, and it is energizing and redirecting many industry veterans, some of whom admit to have lost their way over the years. Shel Israel, who now calls himself a recovering publicist, is a hot item on the PR lecture circuit and appears to be genuinely happy playing the role of industry gadfly. And I've witnessed a change in my partners, my peers, and, yes, even myself. It's a good time to be in PR because we have an opportunity to not only transform the profession and elevate it beyond the point of ridicule, but to also direct its path toward some truly good and decent things for society. The best PR folks always had this sense of purpose (they are not challenged -- on the contrary, they are doing the challenging) but the hope is that now even more people will understand what we do, and why what we do is good. Who knows, maybe we'll even get better Hollywood role models.

Comments

[Tom Foremski]

I think you've laid things out well. And I think the answer to the future of PR is in the term "communications professional" it is in helping people and organizations tell their stories in a compelling and truthful way. A lot of the loss of self-esteem that is prevalent within the PR community will go away if that kind of approach is adopted, imho.

[Divakar]

Your article was very interesting and thought provoking. It's something we've been battling all the time. And in a nascent PR consulting market like ours (India), you can imagine what it is like.

I happen to be one who actually CHOSE to be in PR (as I couldn't decide whether to become a journalist, an advertising copywriter or a marketing/brand manager). PR gives me the scope to do all three!