Longleaf Express

My earlier post of May 29 , which touched on the issue of mislabeling propaganda as public relations — Capstrat and its BCBS storyboards being the illustration at hand — might have left readers begging the question, “So, Andrew, what in your view is public relations?”

That’s a perfectly reasonable query, and I inserted an intentionally vague and somewhat open-ended answer within the post for the purpose of setting up an occasion to revisit the subject for a fuller explanation … which I’ll do now.  But before I launch into that, let me note that describing what PR is doesn’t negate the significance of underscoring what it is not, or ought not be.  Selling publics on a product, service or idea is not what public relations is about.  And that simple statement is apposite to a whole universe of activities that cross every imaginable type of organization, no matter its size (General Motors to Britney Spears Inc.) or origin (an entrepreneur with a widget, or a congress formed from a constitution).  So delineating what PR isn’t can be just as instructive as defining what it is, and consequently I don’t intend to abandon the former here in singular pursuit of the latter.

It used to be that the definition I packed around with me was this:

Public relations is the strategic management of relationships with stakeholders essential to an organization’s success.

(I defined “success” as an organization’s viability within its operating environment.)  This definition seemed to satisfy what was inculcated into my thinking by formal study and professionally seasoned opinion, as well as what my own aspirations for the discipline extrapolated from the theoretical ideal toward the end that’s practical application.  Although my own operational definition can’t be found verbatim anywhere in a textbook, it bears familiar trappings to what you’d find if you consulted one.  Speaking of which …

This suggestion of consulting a PR text has particular significance explaining my sometimes acerbic swipes at large portions of the “practicing” population.  The reason for my jaundiced regard — perhaps “disregard” is more genuine — of so many of my colleagues, particularly those in public affairs (i.e., public relations in the government sphere), arises from the all-too-frequent occurrence that these individuals trace their professional backgrounds from the ranks of journalism rather than public relations.  Indeed, I daresay the majority of public affairs and information officers, as they’re typically called, have never cracked open a public relations textbook in their lives.  Consequently, the public affairs profession has traditionally defined itself by what it knows best, namely journalism, or what’s best labeled (from the PAO perspective), media relations.

PAOs have pretty much yielded themselves up heart and soul as liaisons and pitch men to the news media.  That’s understandable because, for many, it was the center of their worlds at one time, and it’s what they feel knowledgeable and competent in dealing with from a government agency side of things.  We all tend to gravitate toward our comfort zone, and PAOs, PIOs and PR practitioners are no different.  However, the phenomenon is exacerbated by two additionally common factors.

First, even for someone who leaves her post-secondary institution with a major in public relations (less likely, he, since women outnumber men in the PR classroom by about four-to-one), there’s still a good chance she studied within a journalism school.  The proximity to, and exaltation of, the journalistic professions that necessarily come within that context are pervasive, and cross-pollination through the influence of basic reporting coursework requirements, journalism faculty and journalism majors is inescapable.  This is in spite of the fact that PR majors may outnumber journalism students by a wide margin.  (This was the case where I studied.)

Second in the race to bias public relations pros toward a media-centric focus concerns the means by which they enter jobs.  Ignorance of public relations as a profession is widespread, and that’s as true for folks who hire PR staff as it is for the overall population.  I say “staff” deliberately here to make allowances for the possibility that, in PR agencies (at least in theory), one could presume the hiring is done by experienced practitioners themselves.  But that caveat may be unjustified at this point in time because it’s also true that many of those doing the hiring within PR firms are older managers just as likely to have entered the trade through journalism or another media-related business like advertising or marketing, as in the public sector.  Still, within government, the probability is greatest that a public affairs officer is being hired by someone with no formal training in public relations whatsoever, accompanied by all the ignorance and misconceptions found in the general population.  This dynamic goes a long way toward explaining why the so-called press agentry model of PR is so firmly entrenched in government agencies; the practice is self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating.  Hiring managers simply bring on board those PA-types who share their parochial, ill-informed expectations of what public relations is all about, and thus staff agencies in favor of that dreadfully antiquated, restrictive model.  So public affairs personnel routinely function as no more than press agents and publicity hounds.

It’s a curious irony that this function is so easily served in state, local and federal government when it’s often unwanted, but so hard to come by in the private sector where business owners and executives desperately covet publicity, usually to no avail.  While serving in public affairs, I always found it rather comical to hear my private industry counterparts tell of their struggles to get news outlets interested in clients.  I pointed out that if they really got their jollies out of attention from the press, then they needed to work in government, where your agency will get noticed whether your boss likes it or not.  Personally speaking, I always welcomed the press scrutiny.  Public affairs is one of the few areas of service where you have a mandate to come clean with the citizenry; full disclosure is the order of the day.  If you don’t, then you’re not fulfilling your obligation to the people, and that includes yourself.

Well anyway, returning to the original subject … [Just to remind readers who fell asleep or lost track, I was addressing the matter of defining PR.]

The definition I offered above (as one might infer, and as I implied) is one I’ve replaced more recently because it largely overlooks another element that gets a lot of coverage by PR scholars, but is too rarely acknowledged or practiced outside academia; this is research.  Now, I don’t mean research as in, what academics themselves do, but rather, research as a natural function of the PR practitioner’s efforts toward managing the organization’s relationships.  One can’t improve relationships if they don’t know the organization or its stakeholders, and that requires research.  But as a matter of practice, PR types aren’t usually asked to do this; in fact, to the contrary, they are typically expected not to indulge in an activity generally thought by management to be unproductive or otherwise redundant.  This outlook reflects that the client already believes it knows itself intimately, and certainly doesn’t require any insight into its publics that the marketing department doesn’t already know anyway.  Furthermore, it dismisses the managerial/strategic role that a sophisticated realization of public relations might contribute.  What management wants of the hired PR guns is to follow orders, which means serving as publicity mouthpiece and media technician, a task for which, judging by the available evidence, Capstrat was gladly willing to step up to the plate on behalf of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, à la, the Bomb Obama’s Health Reform Offensive.  The video spots (most likely only one part of Capstrat’s duties for BCBSNC) show no sign of research-based public relations; they’re simply spinning out the client’s position using the very language and imagery health insurers love to invoke to polarize the issues and shut down constructive debate.  No investigation of the facts was necessary to produce them; indeed, they are utterly void of content in that respect.  Again, as I noted emphatically in the earlier post, Capstrat is only churning out propaganda.

One could extract no support in condemnation of this glaring deficiency by turning to my old, obsolete definition of PR, and that’s a weakness in the common understanding of public relations — and my former definition of it — begging for remedy.  So I think I’ve summoned a solution by way of a revised definition that not only underscores the value of research, but most importantly I feel, captures the spirit of doggedly independent inquiry public relations ought to pursue.

But for that new, improved definition, you’ll have to wait until the next gripping installment!