The PR inquisition goes on . . . .

This gets tiresome. 

Weekly, it seems, there is some national source that, essentially, “trash talks” PR, maintaining the US pop culture worldview about the nature of PR. This week, it comes from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and her blog on “Should there be an inquistion on the Pope?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/opinion/31dowd.html?src=me&ref=homepage). 

Without commenting on her main argument, Dowd’s “inquisition” of PR proceeds from the first sentence with the phrase “the unholy art of spin.” Lest the reader be briefly puzzled about what this phrase means, Dowd quickly clarifies in the second sentence “the church has started an Easter public relations blitz,” indicating that “spin” and “unholy” are essential parts of the definition of “public relations.”  The idea is elaborated by allusions to “cover-up,” and the list of strategies from the “Washington P.R. handbook for political sins. “

Apparently, as a professor who teaches Public Relations, I am promoting an unholy art (ironically, at a Catholic college!).

Having to constantly defend one’s subject is tiresome enough, but it is made more so by the fact that portrayal is not entirely false. The “spin” image of PR could not be sustained if there were not some truth there, some practices that clearly match the charges. There are too many people who consider themselves to be “PR professionals” who make a full time practice of the reputation management of corporations and celebrities, with no regard for whether the image projected matches the actual identity of the case in question: truth is not what they are being paid to do, they argue, their contract only asks them to make the corporation/celebrity look good.

Such practice is almost always unethical, even by the standards of the PR industry.

Such practice is also, I firmly believe, not the whole story.

The problem with claims such as Dowd’s is that they essentialize PR, and them selves “spin” it only to the side of evil. The basic relational perspective on PR, however,  argues that there is far more to PR than that, and that a “spin” practice is ultimately unhelpful to accomplish the basic goal of ongoing organizational/public relationships.

The basic idea is this: fundamental falsehood is ultimately destructive to any relationship, organizational or personal. Sooner or later, the one party discovers that they have been lied to, and they lose trust in the other, frequently leading to a desire to pull out of the relationship.

There are flacks who practice spin in the name of PR. Effective PR professionals, however, will always promote fundamental honesty in how an organization communicates to its publics.

Celebrity PR?

The whole recent discussion about the PR needs of Tiger Woods often employed an unstated premise:  the term “public relations” can be used to describe how a celebrity relates to the world and especially their fan base.

It’s a premise that needs some thought.

It must be remembered that, in mainstream academia and even the industry,  public relations is defined as strategic communication working to enhance relationships between organizations and their publics. A key word in that definition is “organization:”  a theory- based argument can be that public relations inherently has to do with organizations, as they are abstract systems dependent on interaction with their environments.

So, is the Tiger Woods situation a PR situation?

NO: (1) on the abstract level, this is because inherently PR has to do with organizations and their relationships with publics. (2) On a more practical level, even a minute of thought should demonstrate to one that the celebrity/fan relationship is not precisely like a personal relationship: if nothing else, because a person cannot really have “relationships” with thousands + of people they don’t know, and these fans generally only know the publically generated image of the celebrity.

YES: insofar as a “celebrity” is not completely a person!  An odd statement, but it stems from thinking more carefully by what a “celebrity” is. Stable (that is, existing over time)  and prominent “celebrity” or “image” (“brand”?) does not happen randomly or by accident: it has to be deliberately cultivated over time, and that requires people actively engaged in the process, and doing so because they receive some benefit from the activity.  A collection of people functioning in integrated professional roles is another way to define “organization,” and in this case the product is the “brand” of the celebrity.  Given this view, a “celebrity” is, ironically, an impersonal entity analogous to an organization.

 So, in the latter sense, we can say that the Tiger Woods situation is a PR situation, but only if we make a distinction between “Tiger Woods” the brand, and Tiger Woods the person. A relative few actually know or have a relationship with the latter, Public Relations is a characteristic of the former.