End-of-year reflection is the tipping point for New Year resolution. And as I look back on the public relations year in review, I see much to excite - and alarm - me. All of the excitement comes from external developments like the rise of social and digital media and the growth of the industry (but more of that, ominously, later). All the alarm comes from looking inwards at the profession. Here's the gauntlet - compared to the ad industry, PR has become rote and stagnant. It lacks creativity, it lacks the wow-factor.
Another problem with the PR industry is that it is too full of parity PR shops. Maybe this isn't a different problem but merely a reflection of the first concern I have about lack of originality. There is a mundane sameness to most of the agencies whose websites all proclaim the same grab-bag of services. Whether delivery ever meets promise is a moot point.
Also there's a splinter-off-the-same-block mentality where employees resign from agencies to start their own one-man bands. This wouldn't be so galling if there was a shred of original thinking but all these micro agencies are doing is minutiarisng the industry. Taking somebody else's big idea and diluting it through lack of resource till it's a pale shadow campaign is not growing the industry's stature.
The breadth and depth of service delivery just isn't there in these nano-PR shops and there's a bland familiarity - a dim sameness - to the rote roll-out of the work as they copy campaign templates from their parent agencies.
It concerns me that the profession is in danger of becoming down-scaled and I would argue down-valued by a seemingly endless stream of mini-me start-ups who don't manage to effect campaigns better, merely reduced and with less impact. The lack of fresh thinking is alarming. The lip-service paid to best-practice is gratuitous.
I would argue that there is a PR Method, a preferred manner of operation and a superior way of professionalizing campaigns. For PR to be effective, let alone outstanding, agencies and practitioners should look to the following principles. I offer, therefore, a PR Method built on seven principles:
- Results: Any PR campaign that doesn't produce a measurable result is either vain puffery or a PR consultant pushing paper around to appear busy and log billable hours. Without results that have been linked to client's objectives, PR is devoid of purpose. I am endlessly aware of competitor PR activity - but it largely appears to be activity for the sake thereof and not in pursuit of a business objective. It's ‘Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing' all over again.
- Creativity: Creative is a catch-all word that refers to a host of clichés - the big idea, thinking out of the box, blue-sky brainstorming - all of which underpin the PR Method. For a campaign to be memorable and for it to be acted upon, it needs to be original. And it's not the client's responsibility to come up with the ideas - proactive PR means generating the ideas that will move the needle.
- Strategy: Results are the end product of a campaign successfully executed. But you can't get to that point if there isn't a strategy in place to begin with. And strategy implies research, messaging and audience identification before you even come up with the creative mentioned above.
- Management: Once it comes to delivery - the on-the-ground implementation of campaign collateral - Method PR is always well-managed. Timelines are adhered to, deadlines are met, details are observed. Method PR under-promises and over-delivers. Method PR leaves a paper-trail (although this may be specifically a cyber one in the modern office environment).
- Rigour: To get hard-working PR, you need to work hard. Shoulder to the wheel stuff. And the wheel doesn't only turn between nine and five. Method PR is so engaged, so involved that it doesn't keep office hours.
- Intimacy: Regarding publicity which most people assume is synonymous with public relations (spoiler alert: it's not!), a publicist cannot hope to be effective in media relations without immersing himself/herself in the publication or programme he is pitching to. Intimate newspaper publicity means reading that paper regularly and checking bylines to understand who the reporters are and what beats they cover. I cringe when I hear about so-called publicity agencies that give entry level staff media lists of 200 names and tell them to email all of them the same press release. If you can't understand what's wrong with that picture, then you shouldn't even be in PR to begin with.
- Influence: Ultimately Method PR is the practice of influence. It's about getting an audience or target market to respond warmly to a brand's overtures, to change perceptions and to lead people to act upon new information or experiences received. Influence is the little black book of PR, the six degrees of separation, the endorsement. At his highest echelons, Method PR is power-broking, bringing key decision makers to the table and facilitating the introductions that will generate new business and investment opportunities.
Method PR, like drama coach Lee Strasberg's famous Method acting, should be intense, real, direct, engaging. Just like Method acting cuts through the stale clutter of old style, phony performance, Method PR connects with audiences and makes them feel, makes them react. Method PR produces reactions. Method PR produces results.
