Here is a comment by Ashlyn Brewer to PRSA’s Spin Sucks post which responded to public criticism of the PRSA’s final choices for the new definition of PR:
“When I graduated from college in 2010, I was excited to work in “public relations.” Now, only two years later, I almost exclusively use words like “strategic communications” and “reputation management” because those terms seem to communicate the strategic part of what we do better. PR does have an image problem — it DOES need to be redefined, or we risk losing the term all together.
This post makes it sound you’re giving up on the vision of finding a common ground definition that gets us excited to use the term again. Don’t! Don’t lose sight of the vision because you want to stick too closely to the process. The vision was right, the process just didn’t generate the desired results. Go back to the drawing board!”
My related comment response to PRSA (one of several):
“I think it’s very dangerous to think that this new definition only matters to members of the profession. You already know what you do – it’s the rest of us who need the clarification. I look at Ashlyn Brewer’s comment to this post, where she says she deliberately doesn’t use the term “public relations” when she talks about her own work. And she’s a Millennial, so I can bet she knows many, many people who feel the same way.
This is the future of your profession and your association. This is your future PRSA member. What happens when she’s ready to join? What happens if she googles “association for strategic communicators” instead of “association for public relations”? Your future is staring you in the face, please don’t run away from it. Evolve with it.”
Becoming a collaborative, decentralized organization is HARD. No-one expects it to be easy or to happen overnight. But when things get a little tough, as Jamie Notter would say, you have to “move towards the conflict”. Why? Because conflict prevents action. So how do you keep it from stopping you in your tracks?
Everyone cares, or people wouldn’t feel so strongly about it all. They wouldn’t be participating in the first place, or discussing it on blogs. The PRSA needs to just stay in the conversation, stay with the work. It’s not about consensus – it’s about getting to a point where the conversation is finished, where everyone can respect the outcome. The future of this association is at stake here.
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I could not agree more with this post! I’m not a member of PRSA and never have been, but I’ve been paying attention to this conversation specifically because it is a prime example of an association playing with fire and potentially alienating even more members than they already have. I can’t tell you how many PR people I know who have dropped their PRSA memberships in recent years; now as you point out they’re alienating the potential next generation of members. Who will be left?
In my opinion, associations who say stuff like “Regardless of what you think of the final candidate definitions, you can rest easy no one is forcing you to adopt the “winning” definition. PRSA will, and if you’d like to do the same, great; if not, that’s fine too” are setting themselves up for extinction. Will it also be “fine” if the people who don’t care to adopt their nonsensical definition of PR also don’t care to renew their memberships or join in the first place? Will it be “fine” when people decide that, since the PRSA’s definition of PR is bogus, their professional credential, the APR, is also not worth maintaining? Will it be “fine” if the PRSA ceases to exist? As an association professional and an association member, I sure wouldn’t be “fine” with those outcomes, nor would I ever make such a glib statement on behalf of an association I worked for or with. Associations exist because of members. Telling them “we’re doing this whether you like it or not” isn’t super smart, IMHO.
@maggielmcg I hear you. I think it’s only natural to get defensive, and that’s actually ok to some extent. But what I’m not hearing anywhere is a really strong defense of their position with reasons why.
Right on Maddie, I do think membership is in jeopardy. Over my career I’ve had a love/hate relationship with PRSA. In recent years, I felt they were really making an honest effort. That in combination with the fact that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to realize how important it is to have an industry voice. I don’t want them to fail — I want them to wake up!
As for the membership question, I was waiting for that to come up in that comment discussion on SpinSucks. I think you are spot on and it’s a great point for everyone to consider.
I’ll add a link to this post with the others I’ve got listed – thanks for the comment.
@Frank_Strong Thanks Frank! I subscribed to your blog, btw
@maddiegrant Awesome! Thank you so much. Ever here of #DCFlacks? Maybe when I get back (not long to go) you can join us — monthly happy hour group of PR types headed by Margie Newman.
@Frank_Strong would love to check it out, thanks!
@maddiegrant @Frank_Strong Uhmmm…hi??!!
You’re certainly welcome, too Jayme.
@maddiegrant There are a couple of interesting points about this. Thanks for posting.
PRSA is presumably about, um “public relations,” but for some time their official definition (or at least the one that I used when I was teaching) was something like “developing and maintaining mutually-beneficial relationships between organizations and the publics’ upon which they depend for the societal license to operate.” I may have added a word or two, but I think I am close.
First, public relations – in theory, but especially in practice – should have clarity – subject, verb, object, Sometimes, organizations get too wrapped up in all-encompassing definitions that say a lot but tell little (the one one above). Second, the field is evolving, but so are the tasks. “Reputation management” is about playing defense; “public relations” (presumably) is about playing offense and defense. “Communications” is a term that people have come up with that is so watered down and so broad that it’s often hard to define exactly what it is. I once spent an entire week in my class at Georgetown making clear the differences between public relations, public affairs and marketing. They are close, but not the same.
Finally, and it’s a bit of a tangent, but due to my own little writing project, I have spoken with many younger people who are interested in beginning a career in social media. I tell them that the first step – without question – is to master the art of public relations. Knowing how to devise and execute campaigns based upon relationships is first; the bright, shiny tools come second.
Thanks (again) for making me thing.
-Mark
@Mark Story That is the key to this whole post (and issue) – there a whole huge new generation of people who would LOVE to describe themselves as public relations practitioners – but they have no idea what it means, or the people they are talking to have no idea what it means, so they are describing themselves as something else. And maybe that’s ok, in the end – maybe the PR industry – as an industry, and as a definition – is really dead after all. Or almost. Maybe it’s the age of the “strategic communicator”.
@maddiegrant @Mark Story Do you ever worry that when we try to define ourselves as PR pros, marketers, advertisers, digital gurus, social media experts, etc. that we only contribute to the corporate silos that have blinded companies for years to what they should be focusing on first and foremost — the customer? Like it or not, PR has a negative connotation with many, especially execs. So do other communications disciplines. Whatever we call ourselves, we’d be best served to focus on how our communications skills tie into business strategy and the fact that “a company’s brand is what it’s customers say it is.” It doesn’t take a PR, marketing or social media guru to understand that. It takes someone who is looking to understand how the brand is perceived from the customers’ POV. Cheers!
@JGoldsborough I’d be interested in what @Mark Story says about that, since he’s specifically writing a book about how to start a career in social media. But I think that if you can be clear on what specific skills you have, some of the terms you mention are actually cross-departmental instead of silo’ing. Someone in the Spin Sucks post talked about PR being an umbrella, or marketing being an umbrella with many specific skills underneath. That might be the way to go.
@JGoldsborough @maddiegrant I like the way that you lay out the job titles that lead to siloed mentalities and then organizations. I wish that we could all think ourselves as storytellers : we have a desired listener or reader outcome, we choose a channel to tell the story. Finally we want someone to feel a certain way after hearing the story: influenced to believe a certain way or inclined to make a purchase. Titles and silos muddy the waters. Good communicators (pr or marketing or online reputation managers) should understand that a title matters to a desired outcome, but not to the way that the process should work. Good discussion, guys.
PS @maddiegrant Thanks for the book pimpage,
@MarkStory @maddiegrant But do titles and department names really matter as much as we like to think? Especially when there are negative connotations around some of those titles and department names, eg PR? A good communicator needs to be able to show how the work and counsel he/she provides gets the brand’s customers to do what the company wants them to do. IMO, that’s what integrated marketing communications does. It forces businesses to stop focusing on what PR specializes in or what marketing specializes in and to focus on one thing before all others — the customer. Good communicators start the conversation there as opposed to channels, departments and titles.
Look forward to reading that book. Agree, solid discussion and appreciate your perspectives. Cheers!
@JGoldsborough@MarkStory I think they do matter. In the same way that words matter. Which is why there’s a huge backlash against any social media expert calling themselves, well, expert, or ninja, or guru, or jedi… I think if titles didn’t matter the PR industry would find themselves needing a new definition of what they do. The PRSA guy said that only a small percentage of their members actually have “PR” in their titles. I find that fascinating. I’d love to see the full range of what they do have in their titles… and what words out of that pool could go some way towards defining the profession.
And maybe, on the other hand, it’s not a “new definition of PR” that’s needed, but instead it’s that the PRSA needs a new name to reflect the fact that the PR profession it claims to represent no longer uses the term.
Hmm. They should put that in their pipe and smoke it.
@JGoldsborough @MarkStory whoops – “if titles didn’t matter the PR industry would NOT find themselves needing a new definition…”
Curious situation. It seems that PRSA has received a lot of good advice about this in the last few days. Free advice! From a lot of bright people! Maybe PRSA just isn’t that smart.
Thank you. We’ve been debating and discussing and sharing on this topi for a week now. Everyone I’ve seen agrees “go back to the drawing board.” I do want to see posts in support of the three definitions (I’m going to be neutral because you can read my post on my non-neutral); where are they?
Has anyone come out in support of those three besides PRSA?
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing I totally agree with you – the “in defense” silence is deafening. Couple of comments here and there said they appreciated the work that had gone into the process – not one that I can remember said “these are awesome definitions and I plan to use them from now on when I describe my profession”. Why isn’t anyone stepping up to defend?
@maddiegrant If/when someone does, please advise. But with all this chatter to the contrary, they’re probably hibernating until the clouds pass over!
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