This week in PR (26 January newsletter): Shape-shifting public relations

There are 25 content links in this week’s roundup.

What’s the point of public relations? Part one

The links are disparate, but I think there’s a connection: this week’s outstanding content addresses the same question about the role and purpose of public relations.

There’s the news story of the week concerning the merger of BCW and Hill & Knowlton to create potentially the world’s largest PR firm by fee income, eclipsing Edelman.

Looked at from outside they’re both subsidiaries of WPP plc, so it’s a shuffling of the chairs (‘simplification’ according to WPP CEO Mark Read). It’s also a legacy play since Burson revives the name of the late, legendary Harold Burson (a name relegated to the B of BCW via an earlier merger among WPP agencies).

Edelman, by remaining an independent family firm, has long argued for the distinctiveness and value of a PR-first approach. WPP’s agencies, being part of a large, stock market listed marketing services group, probably argue the case both ways: that there’s value in a PR approach but also strength in being allied to other marketing services.

Either way, the point of public relations from an ownership perspective is to deliver value.

What’s the point of public relations? Part two

Professor Anne Gregory was in a provocative mood when interviewed for a Canadian podcast. She challenged received wisdom on that fundamental step of setting objectives in the planning process (received wisdom that has been handed down by none other than Anne Gregory herself in her widely read book Planning and Managing Public Relations Campaigns).

When we set objectives it’s always to benefit the organisation – but I think that’s ethically questionable and pragmatically I’m not sure it achieves what public relations is all about. I think we need to adjust our models for the modern age. Public relations is about securing legitimacy and we don’t do that by persuading people.’

This may sound new and challenging. In reality, it’s a reprise of the decades old argument made back in 1984 when two US scholars James Grunig and Todd Hunt proposed that the most professional and ethical model of public relations was the so-called two-way symmetric model (asymmetry representing persuasion).

So if public relations is to be unpersuasive, what’s it good for? Anne Gregory suggests legitimacy - or an organisation’s continuing licence to operate.

What’s the point of public relations? Part three

Clearly there’s still value in public relations (I’ve cited two $1 billion PR firms). Clearly there are still jobs in public relations and comms.

Another way to look at the point of public relations is to celebrate its elusiveness (just try defining it or putting it into a neat box and see how you get on). It’s a profession very suited to the complex challenges facing organisations. I recall authors Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy describing it for that reason as a perfect postmodern profession.

What’s the point of public relations? It’s the place where a disparate group of talented people find fulfilment and provide valuable advice to leaders.

Here’s my evidence for that suggestion. Have you been listening to When It Hits the Fan, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and available as a podcast series on BBC Sounds? Each episode David Yelland (a former editor of The Sun) and Simon Lewis (communication secretary to HM Queen Elizabeth II among other prominent people) review the week’s stories from a public relations perspective and reveal what goes on behind closed doors before actions are taken and statements are made.

And here’s two more. This week MHP Group announced the appointment of Lisa Hunter after nearly six years in the Civil Service during which time she rose to become deputy chief executive of Government Communication Service (GCS). Senior public relations leaders find it easy to navigate roles across the public and private sectors.

As an educator I must advocate for the gaining of qualifications; this newsletter comes from PR Academy, the largest provider of public relations professional qualifications in the UK. And yet I acknowledge that not everyone who is qualified succeeds, and not everyone who succeeds is qualified. Ours is still not a profession ringfenced by strict entry criteria and we should be careful what we wish for because a fully regulated hierarchical profession with strict entry criteria would surely become less, not more, diverse (a point made by diversity advocate and scholar Lee Edwards).

So let’s celebrate the successful mavericks. It’s thanks to his self-confessed failure to succeed as a rock musician (and not from want of trying) that 16 year-old school leaver Gordon Tempest-Hay eventually became the CEO of Lansons | Team Farner (also via a stint in the Civil Service). ‘I got lucky’, he admits when considering his career success.

But what does he say about the vision for Lansons / Team Farner?

‘The strategy is to become a European management consultancy for integrated communications.’

The public relations shape-shifting continues.