The true origins of the PRCA

I couldn't travel to be there, but greatly appreciated participating in the Francis Ingham memorial service streamed online.

Like many others, I especially welcomed Ben Smith's honesty: in his affectionate portrait of a friend he did not shy away from the problems that led to Francis Ingham's early death.

But I'm writing to correct something Richard Houghton had said earlier in the service. He repeated the myth that the PRCA was established as a breakaway from the IPR (now CIPR). It's a myth that Francis Ingham probably enjoyed prolonging as he'd moved from the one professional body to the other and clearly thrived on the competition as he grew the PRCA into the world's largest representative body of public relations practitioners (you had heard him mention that, right?).

It's an origin myth that I'd also believed to be true - until I looked into the facts.

Everyone has their Francis Ingham story. Here's mine. I'd noticed that the PRCA was approaching its fiftieth year in 2019 and was keen to explore its origins for a paper at the International History of Public Relations Conference. So I contacted Francis to ask if I could investigate any archive material from the 1960s. He at first tried putting me off the scent: 'we're not a backward looking organisation, we don't celebrate anniversaries' he responded, probably making a dig at the CIPR. But he did think there had once been a box file containing old papers and I was welcome to look for it.

All I found was one framed picture containing some trade press cuttings from the time. Then I reopened Jacquie L'Etang's 2004 history Public Relations in Britain and found a brief but definitive account of the origins of the PRCA. This took away the need for original research, but at least gave me the answers I had sought.

Back to Francis. The next thing I noticed was a prominent 50 added to the PRCA's logo during 2019. The forward-looking leader was revelling in a backward-looking celebration.

So what is the truth? Strange to tell, it's even more interesting than the myth. So let's put the record straight.

First to the the myth slaying. In the late 1960s there was no competitive overlap whatsoever between the Institute of Public Relations (a professional body for individual members) and the Public Relations Consultants Association (a trade association for mostly large consultancies; the clue is in the name). A consultancy could not join the IPR; an individual could not join the PRCA. If you were forming a breakaway, surely you'd be competing for the same members. (As with many myths, there's a germ of truth: the IPR was at the outset dominated by public sector communicators though it didn't exclude commercial consultants or those working in-house in the private sector.)

The competitive overlap only came much later, under Francis Ingham's leadership, allowing individuals like me to join the PRCA alongside my CIPR membership. This was enabled by the renaming in 2016 so that the PRCA now stands for Public Relations and Communications Association, a much broader church.

If there was a breakaway involved, it came from another direction. Picture the 'swinging sixties': a consumer boom following the long postwar years of austerity, 'the white heat of technology', the emergence of pop culture. We were approaching the high water mark of mass media advertising (this was the Mad Men era). Advertising men like John Hegarty (sorry, we're providing historical analysis) were to become the equivalent of rock stars.

With a few exceptions, public relations consultancies were mostly minor cogs in this large advertising machine, struggling for identity and recognition. We still see an annual echo of this at the Cannes Lions festival, where public relations consultancies still struggle for awards - even in the PR category. And it's still the case that with the notable exception of Edelman, the world's largest and a private family firm, many of the best known public relations consultancies are part of much larger stock market listed holding companies embracing a range of marketing services including advertising.

Here's the documentary evidence gathered by Jacquie L'Etang from a 1995 interview with Michael McAvoy, the PRCA's first president/director general on the genesis of the PRCA. 'I came up with the revolutionary and I think unexpected proposal that there should actually be a trade association with completely different terms of reference... because the requirements of companies are in my view... quite different to [those of] individuals.'

Rather than being a breakaway from the IPR, the PRCA was in reality the successor to a now defunct body The Society of Independent Public Relations Consultants (SIPRC) which had worked in close cooperation with the IPR.

SIPRC struggled and became known as 'Shipwreck' and reportedly failed because 'it didn't have any money, partly because it couldn't attract any members and partly because nobody could work out what its members were independent of.'

The troubles that Francis Ingham encountered at the PRCA in the early years of this century were consistent with the pattern of weak institutions and stuttering progress towards professionalisation documented in Jacquie L'Etang's history. It's never been straightforward.

One year after her book was published the IPR gained its royal charter and became the CIPR. Was that the moment for much more forceful progress in the professionalisation of public relations? Perhaps not as much as hoped or intended, not least because of Francis Ingham's success in recruiting members (initially consultancies, now also individuals and in-house teams) to the PRCA.

There was no breakaway in 1969, but there has been considerable competitive overlap since 2016.

What next? I hope there are some wise and influential people now asking this question.