DEVILS ADVOCATE I'm a thirty something PR 'professional'. I use that term loosely, because despite attempts to the contary, I'd contend that PR doesn't really qualify as such. PR remains a grey practice, sitting somewhere between Marketing, Advertising and Events Management - with the definitions often pushed or pulled between any of those departments, depending on available budget or the need to shift responsibility or blame.

RUBBISH IN, RUBBISH OUT

Yep - there are plenty out there who'd like us to believe that PR is a science rather than an art, but sadly, my feeling after ten years in the job, is that the pseudo-intelectualisation of PR has far more to do with some practitioners attempts to PR PR, than the reality of the practice. And my justification? How many people can even properly define or agree what PR is - despite the best efforts of the double-barrelled grandees of the IPR? Precious few in my experience. The broader view continues to be that PR is the practice of smoke and mirrors - the belief that someone can 'put some spin on that'. Some highly paid and supposedly experienced managers within marketing departments have used those precise words to me. They really still believe that its possible to polish the proverbial turd. It shocks me even more to see that high profile spokespeople within the PR industry seem to want to actually perpetuate that perception. No wonder the media continues to talk in terms of 'spin'. But then again, the high profile agencies who define the perception of PR need to perpetuate that notion in order to win new business by appearing to be capable of achieving what their propective clients think they want. Its literally a self-reinforcing illusion (or delusion, depending upon your perspective!). And to continue the analogy of the polished turd, as a result, some of it has soiled the PR practitioner's hands.

JOCASTA KNOWS BEST...

The broader corporate industry view seems to remain that PR is still an adjunct to marketing and something which deals with issues as 'projects' - as though they were sausages on a conveyor belt, just a set of products coming along at predictable intervals. I think it's why PR (along with advertising and specialist marketing) is so often farmed out to agencies rather than something which is seen as a thing in which organisations should invest as an important in-house knowledgebase. I'd suggest that's why blinkered corporations remain happily myopic as to the reality that the hundreds of thousands of pounds they are spending on a retainer, is more often than not being 'spent' by the agency on the peppercorn salary of a 21 year old grauate called Jocasta, who actually knows next to nothing about the products or services her employees purport to be promoting. She's cheap, she can pick up the phone and either take a note or read the prepared statement. Does she bring anything else to the picture? Meanwhile, her agency superiors front the client relationship but often have little to do with the day to day running of the account.

THE WORTH OF AN IDEA...

REAL 'professional' PR in my view should be about the shaping of strategy - rather than the continued use of PR as either a fire-fighting department or as a means of getting free editorial to support the launch of a product. For PR to have really achieved the hype of its OWN industry protestations of worth, it must be actively involved in shaping the evolution of products, service offering and company policy. My experience to date is that this level of influence is severely limited. I seem to be spending a hell a lot of my time thinking 'I/a colleague spotted and flagged that three years ago as a potential issue/opportunity and was ignored'. If we'd been working for a consultancy, especially a management consultacy with no more knowledge or experience but presenting a hell of a lot bigger bill - I suspect our ideas would have been listened to. Thats because the culture of the UK corporate machine seems pre-programmed to assess the value of an opinion with the amount of money that it cost to hear it, rather than its intrinsic worth. Middle management seem to be devoid of ideas which haven't been outsourced, regardless of the in-house talent which often surrounds them. As long as PRs are cheap to employ (and a steady production line of desperate debt ridden graduates like Jocasta will ensure that they are) much of the value of what we have to offer will continue to be diminished or ignored.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SHORT TERMISM

The trouble with proving ourselves through the accumulation of achievement is that so little of the positive can be measured on the bottom line by the bean-counters, and as we all know, we are all in thrall to the balance sheet. In the short term we can see the coverage and even attempt to measure and assess it - but how this translates into actual cause-and-effect brand preference or increased sales often takes too long to percolate through. I beleive that corporate decision makers base their 'strategies', such as they are once you've cut through the brand verbage, principally in terms of their own career aspirations: Basically, if your activity or proposal doesn't deliver spread-sheet friendly results within their three year CV window, you may be flagging the wrong opportunity regardless, as its irrelevent to their self-interest. PR in the meantime continues to be the repository for awkward questions, unwanted enquiries and as a means of keeping the press at arms length from the bigwigs - interspersed with the occasional mad panicked rush to coordinate press attention with some sort of launch. The irony of all of this is of course that the bean-counters are ultimately answerable to the investors - and the result of the press coverage surrounding ill-conceived vetures or successful coverage does ultimately make a difference. And until corporate culture evolves to adopt a more joined up philosophy, things are highly unlikely to change.