Living on the edge: A contrarian view of PR
By Anita Lobo on Aug 7, 2009 in Indian PR industry, insights
I’ve often compared a PR career to living-on-the-edge – a calling best suited to people who can work really hard and smart; and bring to life ideas that lead to change.
PR requires a special kind of person who thrives on action, on ‘doing’ everyday. PR is a series of short sprints that look quite like a marathon, in retrospect.
Everyone’s favourite punching bag
However, the recent spate of critical comment took me back to the question: why is PR everyone’s favourite punching bag?
It doesn’t matter if you’re a marketing or advertising expert; whether you are a journalist, blogger or a social media maven. The bad-dumb PR story tumbles on; not a day goes past when you don’t read about the malaise in PR, another bad hack story, dumb PR pitch, etc. etc.
I’m the first to admit: mistakes are made, extremely dumb ones, arising from inexperience, ineptitude as well as rotten apples that bring disrepute [and exist in every industry].
Quite frankly, while I too shudder at the mistakes made, I can’t overlook the many examples of good public relations practitioners and campaigns.
So this post is dedicated to all the great PR people who ‘get it’ and deliver value everyday by ensuring our clients are the ‘heroes of the story’. By doing this they also inspire and attract young professionals into an industry that has managed to hold steady inspite of the economic crisis the world is living through.
The contrarian view: Good PR is more valuable now
The unending criticism also indicates that good PR is more valuable now than ever before.
For three reasons:
First, corporates are the ‘bad guys’– the high levels of mistrust and angst that companies now face has made us forget that behind every company, are people who commit blood-sweat-tears to running a business. Every entrepreneur/ CEO running a business – big or small – knows this well. Public relations can play a very important role now in making brands and companies ‘feel’ more human!
Second, the breakdown of traditional markets and barrier-mechanisms has created amazing opportunities for the innovative to create new conversations. Importantly, these conversations for brands have to engage people, as real people. Conversations have to be a part of the brands’ DNA, not slapped on after! Brands that do this well, have a competitive edge that’s difficult to blunt.
Third, the trust vacuum i.e. the absence of believability, the crisis of integrity and the hunger for credibility, have created a never-before opportunity for public relations practitioners to do the extraordinary in a credible, authentic manner.
For these reasons, public relations people must start thinking about the ‘conversation’ quite early in the brands’ evolution cycle; and develop how-do-we-get-this-out ideas that will be uniquely identified with the brand. This is the real challenge!
For the many of us who thrive in being change-makers and even for people who’ve had negative experiences with PR, let’s recognise that living on the edge always draws criticism. But its here that new ideas are formed! And knowledge, experience and preparation are all unleashed creatively – everyday!
Picture credit: Travel blog
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On Aug 7, 2009, Surekha Pillai said:
great read, anita, and am happy someone from the industry has taken this up. while i fully agree with everything you say, i believe the larger issue is to see how the industry could get opinion leaders to truly appreciate PR. while we extol the virtues of PR by frequently citing the example of advertising (paid-for-space) v/s PR (credible endorsement), our industry has somehow failed to apply PR on itself. why arent clients talking about PR? why arent journalists referring to it? why arent influencers citing PR? how i wish this post had been written by a CEO or journalist who has seen great value in PR – we all know there are plenty of them out there! when that starts happening – and on a consistent basis – is when we can perhaps truly congratulate ourselves on a job well done.
On Aug 8, 2009, Anita Lobo said:
Hi Surekha
You’ve raised a good point here.
Public recognition of the value of PR from clients and media would be ideal.
But we don’t live in a perfect world!
For instance, if such recognition were to be shared, which forum/ platform/ would it be on? Would the forum be big enough or interesting enough to attract a CEO’s participation. How can we create such forums effectively?
More questions than answers!
Cheers,
Anita Lobo
On Aug 10, 2009, Sushil said:
Nice article Anita. I second thoughts of Surekha that our industry has failed to apply PR on itself, also I am confident seeing the growth of PR and the opportunities that it gives to people, that such articles would soon be written by third party (Journalist or Clients) people.
On Aug 16, 2009, Dominique Saldion said:
PR in India also requires kissing clients arse – especially if you work for a big agency with pretense to professionalism and sole objective to sell their rag tag business to a multinational.
On Aug 21, 2009, Tipsy said:
It doesn’t surprise me that PR is so important in age of information. With new feedback mass media that give possibility to get latest news instantly PR is something that build people/companies/countries/organizations reputation for years. Everyone who wants to win any election must use PR to be recognizable and to achieve goals that he need to achieve. I agree that absence of believability is a problem, but that problem didn’t appeared without a reason. Access to information with possible feedback always make all the informations less reliable, because now almost everyone can sell or give new information to people who are willing to pay for them.
On Oct 13, 2009, Dale Bhagwagar said:
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On Aug 7, 2009, PRCAI said:
Living on the edge: A contrarian view of PR http://bit.ly/3a46kX courtesy @IndiaPRblog
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On Aug 7, 2009, text100india said:
Good read. RT @PRCAI Living on the edge: A contrarian view of PR http://bit.ly/3a46kX courtesy @IndiaPRblog
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On Aug 7, 2009, Anita_Lobo said:
[New post] Living on the edge: A contrarian view of PR: India PR Blog http://bit.ly/j66Uo #PR
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On Aug 7, 2009, surekhapillai said:
good read! RT @Anita_Lobo: [New post] Living on the edge: A contrarian view of PR: India PR Blog http://bit.ly/j66Uo #PR
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On Aug 7, 2009, palinn said:
Living on the edge: A contrarian view of PR http://tinyurl.com/natnk4 via @indiaprblog #fb
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On Aug 7, 2009, Anita_Lobo said:
Have you been called ‘names’ … PR type, flack, media-walla … then check out http://bit.ly/j66Uo #publicrelations
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On Aug 7, 2009, shilpa_kapoor said:
http://bit.ly/bpW4j
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On Aug 7, 2009, shilpa_kapoor said:
http://bit.ly/bpW4j
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On Aug 12, 2009, MikeLizun said:
Living on the edge: A contrarian view of PR (India PR Blog) http://bit.ly/v6RpD http://ff.im/-6tpL0
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