Old-fashioned thinking from “The Economist”

Jan 10, 11

Today’s guest post comes from my good friend Clara Miller, the one who initially showed me the drivel that is The Economist story mentioned below (not that I have an opinion). Clara is manager of customer communications for KCP&L, the electric utility provider for the Kansas City region. She is a member of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s Centurions Leadership Program and KC/IABC. Find her at linkedin.com/in/claramiller. Note from Clara: “The opinions I’m expressing in this post are solely my own and do not represent any official company positions of my employer, nor am I writing on behalf of my employer.”

Some old-fashioned things are great. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Playing board games. Vintage clothing. Heck, I’d probably gulp down an Old Fashioned cocktail if I liked bourbon.

Something old-fashioned I don’t like is the thinking presented in The Economist’s recent article “Rise of the image men: PR man has conquered the world. He still isn’t satisfied.” The article was originally published Dec. 16, but I didn’t see it until it came through an email push I received last week.

Hearkening back to a PR 101 college classroom, the article rehashes industry history and discusses founders, Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays. We all remember Lee and Bernays engaged in less-than-up-front and honest tactics that today’s credible PR professionals disagree with.

From what I can tell, the author’s only purpose in bringing this up is to suggest that since the early days of PR were marked by dishonesty, it must still be today. While there are some wayward individuals who engage in dishonest tactics today (what industry doesn’t have this?), a few bad apples should not spoil the bunch.

After a lengthy historical build-up sprinkled with a few modern examples, the author goes in for the kill in the last 500 words.

What people in the industry are certain about, and have been since the days of Lee and Bernays, is their burning desire to be more than just press-release peddlers and excuse-makers.

I have considerably less respect for The Economist now that I know they think I’m a press release peddler. Go on…

PR folk want to be at the strategic heart of organisations, helping to make big decisions… Such optimists—the industry is full of them, of course—now spy a rare opportunity to steal a march on the Mad Men of advertising and the flipchart-wielders of marketing. In the chaotic online world of social networking, they argue, their talents are much more relevant than their rivals’.

This author must have really gotten a kick out of these fun names for everyone. Our advertising and marketing friends have now also been reduced to a caricature of their less flattering qualities.

My question is why wouldn’t PR folk want to be at the strategic heart of our organizations? Our job is to listen to and engage with those who matter most to us and those to whom we matter. Why wouldn’t that add value to our companies’ strategic heart?

If we’re doing our jobs effectively, we should be cardio exercise for our companies’ hearts.

Cardio strengthens your heart and helps ward off disease. It’s tough to push yourself aerobically sometimes, but it keeps you healthy and you’re always happy you did it.

Today’s most credible, respected and successful PR professionals give their companies a workout. We’re the ones with the opportunity to point out when a particular policy or procedure is not meeting our customers’ needs. We’re the ones who can provide valuable input for product development based on what we hear and observe.

There’s always going to be that person from operations or legal—oh, and I can’t leave out the person who’s been there forever and this is the way we’ve always done it—who doesn’t want to hear what we have to say. But we’ve got to keep pushing. The only way you can run farther and faster is to keep pushing.

That would have been a nice way to end this, but I have to close by taking issue with the “PR Men” label. As commenter TWatson1709 writes – the PR industry is made up of 70 percent women. Perhaps the author’s seemingly bitter quest to paint PR professionals in a bad light prevented him or her from thorough research—although this statistic is pretty well known and easy to find.

There’s been some commentary on this article and PRSA posted an official response. However, a quick google blog search doesn’t reveal a high volume of conversation. What do you all think?

15 Comments

  1. Love the post, @JGoldsborough & Clara! I find it incredibly disheartening that this kind of post still gets so much play in mainstream media. It’s almost as if they have no desire whatsoever to “report” on our field, they just want to keep beating up on it, since that’s what they’ve done for aeons. I suspect part of this is ignorance - they don’t know what progress is being made, since they don’t bother to keep up - and part of it is insecurity, since “PR people” often do a better job at shaping thought and, yes, influence, than they do, and more and more, we are using non-traditional methods to do so. What they forget is that THEY wouldn’t be able to do their jobs without US. And finally - they know that it’ll get us all in a dither, which might get them more attention.

    I’d love to think it will stop, but I honestly don’t think it will. Not any time in the near future, at least.

    • JGoldsborough /

      @Shonali Good thoughts, Shonali. I think you are definitely right about knowing this POV will get under our skin. PR’s position reminds me of a little brother with 3 older brothers. We’re going to have to stand up and show we can play to earn their respect and the respect of leadership. There are many examples where this is already happening, but it’s hard to change culture. Takes time, many different wins.

      Btw, interesting convo at gini dietrich ‘s place today too about this story from The Economst, what it means to PR and how we can change the “spin” perception. Thanks for stopping by :) .

    • GiniDietrich /

      @JGoldsborough @Shonali I’m so frustrated by this AND I BLAME JUSTIN! Clara, you’ve done such a nice job of detailing all that is wrong with the article. And I love that keithtrivitt provided insight, from a PR perspective on spinsucks today.

      The thing that bothers me the most about this is our clients and prospective clients read The Economist. So they’ve done NOTHING to dissuade the perception with our clients that we’re all snakeoil salesmen.

      Clara, I love your analogy to being at the heart of everything and your cardio health. Well articulated piece!

    • @GiniDietrich @JGoldsborough @Shonali keithtrivitt spinsucks Thanks, Gini! I’ll have to check out spinsucks . You are right about clients reading this stuff. Also internal critics if you work in a corporation. It chips away at the credibility we work so hard to build.

    • JGoldsborough /

      @GiniDietrich @Shonali keithtrivitt spinsucks And I don’t even like snake oil, Gini. So why would I sell it? :)

      We are working on a “practice what we preach, do our own PR” initiative at FHKC this year. POVs like this from our Economist friends are a BIG reason why.

  2. Thanks for your feedback. Glad you liked it. I agree PR people have a sometimes antagonistic relationship with journalists. In the end, we both should care that the readers/viewers/audience receive the best information possible.

    It’s disappointing when antagonism gets in the way.

  3. MattLaCasse /

    I’ll echo @Shonali and her comments. Incredibly disheartening that there are those who think an industry can’t evolve over the course of a century. It’s a dangerous mentality to think that an industry has no proclivity for honesty or to have the best interests of not only its clients, but the rest of society at heart.

    I doubt the constant bashing of PR will ever stop. It’s an easy (albeit lazy) column/article to write, and those lazy intellectuals will eat it up because of the time-honored belief that anyone associated with the media is a liar. It makes me that much more careful in what I do and say so my reputation for being honest is absolutely spotless. Our reputations are the only currency any of us truly has in our professional careers.

    • JGoldsborough /

      @MattLaCasse @Shonali You are right on with the value of reputations. What bugs me is the insinuation that PR is the only arm of the company that has ever been guilty of spin. I could go on and on about that, but it would be another blog post entirely. And it won’t help us work together with our peer departments, which is one of the ways PR’s reputation will finally change.

  4. saramiller /

    As a communicator who also studied economics, this article from The Economist is surprisingly uncreative and a dissapointment. It’s really a shame when you think of the stellar reporting that usually comes from this magazine. Have they stooped to just another “rag?” I hope not. And for the record, I can think of a few ECONOMISTS who have been recently cast as the villians in a drama about the crumbling of our economy based on shady math and greed. Now THAT would have been a much more interesting article.

    • JGoldsborough /

      @saramiller See, this is what pisses me off about the story. Lazy, one-sided reporting leads to PR defending itself, leads to the other sides throwing stones back, leads to silos and lack of progress across the board. All because The Economist gave this journalist a platform and he abused the privilege. Sounds cliche, but stories like this from “credible” journalists set both industries back — journalism and PR.

  5. Sara and Matt - I started reading The Economist when I was a wee intern in London. That only added to my dissapointment in their reporting on this one.

  6. KeithTrivitt /

    Excellent thoughts, Clara. I really enjoyed your point that PR professionals “should be cardio exercise for our companies’ hearts.” That’s a very apt metaphor for the strategic value of public relations to businesses, and one I honestly haven’t heard before.

    I won’t rehash all of the excellent comments that have already been addressed in this post, as well as in Gini’s yesterday (which I also commented on [see: http://ht.ly/3BNtB and addressed some additional perspective from PRSA’s point of view), but I will say that it is very encouraging to see professionals, such as you, Gini, Frank Strong, Justin Goldsborough and many others taking such a strong stance against this type of outdated, misinformed and pejorative reporting that attempts to portray the profession in a manner that simply is not accurate.

    While PRSA will always advocate on behalf of the value of public relations and PR professionals, it makes the effort that much easier when we have other professionals so passinately defending the value of their work and that of their profession.

    One quick thing I would encourage eveyrone who has written a blog post or commented about this article to do: Go to Economist.com, specifically, this article: http://ht.ly/3BNnH and submit your comment to the online version of the original Economist article. The more voices we have rebutting the article and its viewpoint, hopefully, the more success we will have in getting publication’s such as The Economist and others to truly understand and respect the business value of PR.

    Keith Trivitt
    Associate Director of Public Relations
    PRSA

    • ginidietrich /

      @KeithTrivitt Great idea to submit to The Economist. I’m doing that right now!

    • ginidietrich /

      @KeithTrivitt Oh wait. You can no longer comment. We’ll have to go the old-fashioned way and submit a letter to the editor.

    • JGoldsborough /

      @ginidietrich @KeithTrivitt I saw that The Economist shut down comments. Something funny and ironic about this whole thing. Perhaps The Economist would let one of us write a counterpoint? Or letter to the editor should work too. That’s about their speed, seems like.

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