By Wes Pedersen
I am tired of the whining, tired of PR practitioners who spend too much of their time in the fetal position, whimpering about the bad guys in the media, bewailing the fact that the public doesn’t understand the work we do.
I’m especially tired of the naysayers who continually dismiss the amazing versatility of so many in our profession, downgrading their own gifts personally by insisting that they don’t do what they do.
I’ve bounced this around before, singling out the practitioners of the art of government Dodgem who preach the dark gospel of “plausible deniability.” Public relations is plagued by the gray blasphemy of implausible deniabilities.
Let’s look at six of them.
Implausible deniability No. 1: “We are into strategic thinking; we don’t do communications.” That’s flat-out wrong. You are always into communications. It doesn’t matter one bit what great strategies you have, what wonderful charts you’ve drawn up, what 23rd- century technology you use, how many planning sessions you’ve had, or how many polls you’ve taken. If you don’t, or can’t, communicate your PR message, you are dead in the deep waters of the tsunamis of business and politics.
Implausible deniability No 2: “We don’t do marketing.” Don’t be ridiculous. That’s what PR is really all about: selling an idea, a product, a personality, a government policy, yourself, a political candidate, maybe even a war.
PR is always selling something.
The one thing public relations hasn’t been able to sell, or find, is a substitute for its name, tarnished over the years by all manner of tales.
But there is one possibility. It’s been overlooked shamefully. We will examine it later in this column.
Implausible deniability No. 3: “We don’t do public relations.” Now that’s a hoot.
Although the International Association of Business Communicators long ago expanded its purview to include public relations, many corporate communicators are still reluctant to acknowledge a kinship to PR. They are unwilling to be tainted by association with the handful of PR executives who have won enormous ink (the wrong kind) through shady business practices.
A fair number, you can be sure, are wary of being thought of as cemented in a role that is, per corporate practice, never going to win them seats near their CEOs in the C suites where the vital decisions on corporate policies are made daily.
Those who do not fancy lives in such role should consider starting their own PR or public affairs company. Consider the case of Margery Kraus, who formed her own small firm decades ago and saw it become a mover and shaker in PR, PA and governments around the world.
In the federal government, you will find no one willing to confess to engaging in the practice of public relations. Misconstruing Congress’s early 20th-century Gillett Amendment warning federal agencies against paying publicists without prior approval from above, they insist they are into public affairs or government information or, as in the Department of State, “public diplomacy.”
A covey of Washington members of PRSA discovered that a few years ago. John Paluszek, a former president of PRSA, and I were delegated to chat up the head of public affairs for one of the largest federal departments. In a conference call with other members of PRSA, I warned that the first thing we would hear when John and I entered her office would be: “We don’t do public relations.” Hal Warner, another former PRSA president, snorted in disbelief. “It’ll never happen,” he said.
So, what were those first words uttered by the public affairs chief? Of course: “We don’t do public relations.” This with a straight face, while all the modern wizardry available to top drawer public relations was whirring away around her.
Implausible deniabilities No. 4, 5 and 6: “I am not a publicist.” “I am not a flack.” “I am not a propagandist.” You betray a lack of knowledge of the history of your profession if any of these interchangeable terms seems an affront to your delicate sensibilities.
Publicizing. Every time you score a favorable mention of your company or client, you are publicizing him, her or it. Go back to the early days of the last century. Then, being a publicist was what it was all about. The term public relations was still just a germ of an idea being discussed by the likes of the Ivy Lee and Ed Bernays.
Actually, Bernays was then more than content with his title, “America’s No. 1 publicist.” If he were still around, he would be saluted at every turn as an innovator and as a master strategist. There is the irony: He helped create the term public relations because some people looked down their noses on “publicists.”
Flacking. It’s reporters’ alternate word for publicizing. You may not like it, but you are not going to change it. They are too used to using it.
Propagandizing. No one in agency PR would ever deign to do propaganda. But of course they do. Propaganda is the distribution of information. And that, again, is the backbone of PR. Back in 1928, Bernays was writing the book Propaganda. It was one of the first works on what today is PR.
Even the people in the U. S. Department of State who have been navel-deep in propaganda projects for decades claim they do “information,” “public affairs,” and/or “public diplomacy” instead of propaganda.
Is this the solution?
Public diplomacy holds out a clue for at least those in corporate PR to describe their work: corporate diplomacy.
Think about it. Corporate diplomacy sings. It is a true representative of what business PR is all about. It’s what most PR is about. If business puts its back and its clout to it, it could vanquish any meatless terms you may be using for corporate PR.
Or, again, almost any PR.
Public diplomacy across the professional board would emphasize the practitioners’ wisdom, tact, talent for innovations in communications, ability to deal quickly and accurately with problems inherent in his or her practice. All these along with a record showing ability to arouse enthusiasm for a cause, defuse potentially explosive problems, negotiate, and sell the public on candidates for high office.
Think about it. The concept needs to be pushed.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
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