PR Studies

Are we mavericks? (to the tune by The Killers)

In an intriguing aside as he presented findings from the PR2020 research, Dr Jon White described PR practitioners as 'marginal, and often mavericks'.

By marginal, he did not mean marginalised. He meant operating at the margins - a reflection of the 'boundary-spanning' role with one foot in and one foot outside the organisation described by James Grunig.

But mavericks? The popular image of PR practitioners is as smooth company men or women with finely honed networking skills. Students will find the concept that PR people can be mavericks hard to recognise.

Jon White described how the PR practitoner often operates alone, giving advice to senior executives that is often contrary to other professional advice they receive. Let's say your company is being prosecuted for polluting the environment. The PR advice may well be to plead guilty, accept one day's bad headlines and work hard to improve environmental protection. But a lawyer's advice would probably be to contest the charge in the courts because a 'win is a win'. (Any PR student should be able to see that you can win in court but lose in the court of public opinion.)

In this context, the advice from PR is out of the ordinary, and it takes a maverick to stick out their neck and defend this position.

(I wear the badge with pride. My first consultancy boss Mike Copland described me as a 'maverick' almost twenty years ago. It wasn't meant as a compliment, but I still take it as one.)

 

CIPR 1 v 0 PRCA

Today's news that the PRCA now welcomes individual members is not a surprise. The PRCA's competitive moves onto the CIPR's territory have been clear for some time.

The CIPR has responded with a statement:

"We support healthy competition and we believe – as we have said repeatedly – that there is a role for a trade body representing consultancies and a Chartered body representing individual members. We have consistently maintained that it is in the interest of the profession to work together to promote professionalism, standards and public understanding of what  we do. It is for this reason that we believe the PRCA’s announcement does not represent a step taken in the best interests of the profession."

I also support competition, but recognise that in some fields representation is better served by a single voice. Would workers be better served by joining two trades unions claiming to represent their interests, or one? Would one or two be a more powerful lobbying/negotiating force?

There are some 60,000 people in UK public relations roles. Scarcely a quarter of these are members of either the CIPR or the PRCA today. The professional project demands more members and a clear voice for the profession.

We had one body from the late 1940s to the late 1960s (the then Institute of Public Relations). The PRCA broke away in 1969 when consultancies felt they needed stronger representation. For four decades we have had a professional body representing individual practitioners (now the CIPR) and a trade association representing PR consultancies (the PRCA).

Equally, there used to be trades unions representing boilermakers among many other specialist trades. Now there are general unions like GMB and Unison.

I would prefer to see one PR representative body in the UK - and still predict it will have to happen by negotiation. If need be, it will happen by the choices of thousands of members.

I already pay my subscription to the CIPR. I'm publicly supportive (but willing to air my criticisms of the body in private). I'm going to keep this membership, so the question for me is should I pay an additional £100 to join the PRCA. My answer today is no. If everyone makes a positive decision one way or another, the outcome will be one of these bodies emerging stronger than the other.

It will take longer than a negotated outcome - and will be more expensive - but it will lead to the same result. Vote with your wallet.

A week in the life

Increasingly it seems that education never sleeps. Particularly if there's an educational aspect to one's presence on social media.

I'm not complaining: it's a privilege to teach and I'm fortunate to be busy. Here are some things I'm looking forward to over the next seven days:

• Teaching on a CIPR Diploma course in Bulgaria (Saturday and Sunday)
• Teaching public relations to second year business, marketing and journalism students (Monday)
• Moderating a batch of Diploma scripts and some MA PR Writing assignments (Tuesday)
• Starting delivery of a new, experimental Public Relations and New Media module (Wednesday)
• Giving positive feedback to returning CIPR Diploma students and first year PR students (Thursday)
• Planning a paper for the International History of Public Relations conference
• Discussing a proposed chapter for a textbook
• Designing new social media modules for a revamped Sport Marketing course
• Giving feedback to dissertation students
• Hunting out more stories for our subject group blog
• Attending the CIPR networking event on Thursday
• Editing new stories for Behind the Spin
• Keeping up with RSS, Twitter, blogs, news, email and books (last, not least)

We all fall short of our highest expectations, and I'm sure I'll slip up and forget some things I should be doing, but I like to keep my eye on the goal. If I can put it in one word, I aim to be encouraging.

Guest lecture series: all welcome

Here are the remaining talks in our autumn public lecture series 2010, open to students and visitors.

Lectures are 5-6pm in Lecture Theatre A, Rose Bowl, Leeds Metropolitan University, LS1 3HB.

'Getting a coherent social media strategy off the ground'
Dominic Burch, Head of Corporate Communications, Asda (Wal-Mart UK)
Monday 18 October

'Future proof PR'
Paul Matthews, Corporate Media Relations Manager, Unilever plc
Monday 1 November

'PR in the boardroom'
Victoria Tomlinson, Chief Executive, Northern Lights
Monday 15 November

'PR in a changing world'
Justin McKeown, Regional Director, Grayling
Monday 29 November

'PR through the looking glass'
Rob Pittam, BBC Business Correspondent delivering the Claire Mascall Award Lecture
Monday 6 December 

PR: a manifesto for change

David Phillips - author, consultant, academic and Fellow of the Institute of Public Relations - has built on news of the departure of the institute's director general Colin Farrington to issue an impassioned call for change within the UK's membership body for public relations practitioners.

As ever with David, there's much that's brilliant and far-sighted here, but I fear that his piece sets so many hares running that it won't amount to a clear manifesto for action.

So, to keep things simple, here are two action points that I had previously kept private, but will now air in public.

• We need a UK forum for public relations educators and researchers. It could have been the CIPR's Education and Skills sectoral group, but this was taken in an entirely different direction. The CIPR's choice is either to facilitate this group under its wing, or to allow this group to operate independently (in the model of the Academy of Marketing or the US Institute for Public Relations).
• University course approvals are a mess. There are CIPR-approved courses that are no longer recruiting, and well-established courses that are not approved. Public relations education at university level is at risk because changes in higher education funding pose particular problems for the 'new' teaching universities with their PR degree programmes. For the sake of the students and for the reputation and distinctiveness of the 'profession', the CIPR either needs to grasp this nettle or resign from its self-appointed role as an arbiter of educational quality.