The CIPR is at a crossroads and why it needs to change

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) President election is an opportunity to decide about the future direction of the Institute. Here is a summary of discussion paper I independently produced in my role as a CIPR Council which was presented for the Council meeting in July.

This paper includes the contribution of 12 very senior people in the industry, all with significant experience of working with the Institute either in an official role or as a partner.

Do read, do share any feedback and hope it illustrates the need for the Institute to seize the opportunities from profound disruption to change its culture and be a membership-led body.

These are my personal views, and not those of either candidate. Please get in touch if you would like a full copy of the paper.

Check out the candidate manifestoes and decide who you think offers real change from the status quo.

Going forward

We need an Institute that is focussed on:

1.      Being a champion for increased self-regulation, with strengthened codes of practice, supported by education and censure for breaches. Achieving this can enable the public relations and communications sectors to contribute to addressing the issues of trust and communications in wider society.

2.      Being a Thought Leader in enabling practitioners to develop practice and thinking.

3.      Being a lead collaborator to address gaps in provision and development of the sector

4.      Aware of the need to avoid becoming self-serving and bureaucratic

The Character of a post Covid-19 Institute

#1. Persona

The Institute needs to move away from being a ‘Ruler’ persona - someone in charge and commanding its sector (this being more aspirational than real and ends up as a ‘Regular Guy’) to being a ‘Creator’ - an expert collaborative partner who by sharing their expertise, wisdom and experience enables others to fulfil their potential. If the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has shown anything it is that collaboration is now accelerated and CIPR must show and cement its position within the PR community as being for the ‘societal good of the profession and in turn society’. Business and organisations are accelerating this. The CIPR needs to embrace this role through this different persona style.

#2. Collaboration Quotient

We need to move away from being a ‘Controller’ where the Institute insists on being in control and lays down the rules, to move to more of a ‘Cultivator - a helpful partner who helps develop and nurture the capacity and ideas of other or a ‘Connector’ who creates connections between people and suggest new ones to create a more powerful force for change.

#3. Strategic Narratives

1.      Champion for professional standards and quality

2.      Thought Leader - a beacon of best practice for current and future ways of delivering PR

3.      Passionate about collaboration

4.      A virtual, agile futureproof organisation

5.      Champion and promoter of greater media literacy and public relations principles

Themes

1 What does a radical new-style Institute look like?

The Institute’s business model is currently dislocated/broken requiring urgent review. Income streams from awards events and face-to-face training have or stopped or are at significantly reduced levels.

Lockdown has witnessed a flood of free content and webinars. Can training events of the future charge or even be priced at existing levels?

The Institute at last Council recognised the need to restructure. Can this be driven by a fresh appraisal, a strategic approach rather than incrementally trimming and cutting back from its existing model?

2 Focussed on gaps in service

Going forward does the Institute need to adopt a strategy that it primarily does what is not being provided elsewhere? Or look to gain renewed strength from the power of the legitimacy of its brand?

3 A freemium strategy

Should the Institute aim to offer the widest and wisest range of quality easy-to-access tools, White Papers, Skills Guides, events and revisit the offer of student membership?

4 A more collaborative approach

Uses its funds to commission projects to curate Thought Leadership:

·        Curation of key sector data

·        Curation of the best academic research (at present academic involvement in research-led activity is almost non-existent)

·        Curation of the best award wins (Instead of running its own award scheme, driven by the need to sell tickets at awards ceremonies, why not have an expert panel that curates the best of existing other award schemes and distils these into learning and training materials).

·        Curation of best new thinking from young professionals (a model currently used by the PRCA with the Reggie Watts Awards)

·        A network of free or low-cost Unconferences - where the Sector and Regional groups and their community shape and run the agenda - to curate participation from members across sector groups and regions

5 A ‘Tummler’ not a ‘Cruise Director’ culture

How do you enable a community of like-minded purposeful people to realise their greater potential? We need new job roles, such as that of what is known as a ‘Tummler’.

A ‘Tummler’ is a Yiddish word for some who get a party going. Think about parties where despite the music playing, no one is dancing, until a few are on the dance floor and others are encouraged to follow. Unlike a ‘Cruise Director model which stimulates activity through their presence, but the activity dies away once they are no longer there, the ‘Tummler’ builds the capacity of others to sustain the activity to carry on without them.

6 A non-London-centric organisation

There are numerous anecdotes of expecting non-London members to travel with no thought to cost or time. How do we genuinely become a more geographically devolved body.

7 Explore merger with other organizations

Radical times require radical thinking. As one member put it to me last year: “I’ve just been made redundant. Why should I have to pay two sets for public relations professional bodies?

Thinking here is about seizing opportunities from a crisis. The idea of strategic options of merger need to be openly considered where if something new is born out it, we get something fresh and potentially re-invigorated whether it is organisations such as the PRCA or IoIC (Institute of Internal Communication).

8 Separate core function and separate social enterprise trading division

To ensure the Institute maintains being a ‘Purposeful’ organization rather than a ‘Business -led’ one it should consider splitting its organization between a core function and a social enterprise-driven business operation. This would guard against the Institute becoming Business-led rather than being Purposeful-driven.

9 Free Student membership

Everyone is suffering. A key Comms lesson from Covid-19 is to recognise there how many are suffering. Yes, the CIPR is facing some tough financial challenges yet there’s others in its communities suffering even worse.

Personally, I believe the Institute has got its student recruitment strategy fundamentally wrong. It needs to offer free membership as part of a long-term recruitment/relationship strategy. It also needs to do this now to send out a signal that it believes in the future and is doing something to help those who are facing even greater hardship, (This could be delivered at minimal outlay).

10. ‘Comms’ or ‘Public Communication’ a new way ahead

In his forthcoming book ‘Beyond Post-Communication - challenging disinformation, deception, and manipulation’ Professor Jim Macnamara says, “we are all complicit in creating a post-truth society”. Disinformation, deception, and manipulation are not new. But levels are escalating with advanced new technologies in data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), such as bots and machine learning applications, being employed in an environment of out of date media literacy, weak regulation, and poor standards of corporate and professional ethics. He argues contemporary societies are facing “a perfect datastorm”.

His research discounts bad practice is just a ‘few bad apples’. Instead he highlights how public communication practices used by business and government including advertising, marketing, and public relations. are increasingly targeted and manipulated with new technologies. He also notes that many leaders of communication industry organizations admit that more ethical and socially responsible practices are required.

He describes a ‘sea of disinformation’ and post-truth society from the collapse of media business models and the atrophying of independent and investigative journalism. A viable public sphere requires increased self-regulation by advertising, marketing, PR, and corporate and political communication professionals where codes of practice and codes of ethics are weak and out of date and need to be strengthened and supported by education and censure for breaches. He calls for increased media literacy, including teaching of online fact checking in schools and adult education, which can contribute to inoculation against disinformation, deception, and manipulation.

Macnamara’s research and analysis paints a stark picture of a world of post-democracy, post-capitalism, and even post-society - a complete collapse of civilised society.

He proposes a concept of ‘Public Communication’. (Note: not communications. This is significant to distinguish it from the generic word of ‘communications’.)

Never has the need for an organised response from the community currently known as ‘public relations’ been so needed.