Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)* has decided to review its definition of PR, partly in the light of way PR practice has developed in the digital and social age. It has to be worth reviewing PRSA's current definition:

Public relations helps an organization and its publics mutually adapt to each other.

That seems pretty good. It makes no reference to specific technologies or channels, so there is no particular reason why it should become out of date. I might query the grammer, since 'public relations' is a plural noun, but many people use it as a singular.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR)** has its own definition:

Public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.

Same grammatical problem with this one. Again, though, it is pretty clear and sufficiently broad. It is not tied to any particular technology.

Both definitions get a few things right: they both use the word 'publics' in the plural. This is perhaps, a bit jargony. People outside PR and the study of PR don't do that. There is a more recent word, accepted as being plural, which covers the same territory, 'stakeholders', but this is ideological, arising from American management theory and British political debates. It deliberately echoes the word 'shareholder' and, even more so, the American word 'stockholder', and is designed to communicate an ideological statement about how some people think companies ought to be run. Such a loaded – or, in academic parlance, normative – word has  no place in a neutral definition of PR. 'Publics' it is, and your publics are always plural.

There is an acceptance in both definitions that public relations include communications with all publics through any channels. In academia, the marketers have generally taken over, and try to restrict PR to being about media relations and only in support of marketing objectives. Actually, PR departments often include investor relations, public affairs, internal communications, and relations with local communities and business partners. Customers form a public, and usually a very important one. I have worked in environments where marketing was 90% of the PR mix, but it should never be all of it, and can be less important than relationships with staff or regulators.

As is typical, the American definition focusses on relationships and the British on reputation.

PRSA's definition is particularly clear that communication is two-way, and that the relationship is, or at least can be, symmetrical. The organization needs to adapt too: to make what it can sell, not sell what it can make.

In the same vein I offer the following:

Public relations negotiate relationships between an organization and its publics.

It has the advantage – at least over CIPR's definition – of brevity. The word 'negotiate' (aside from being a plural verb) reflects a core PR skill, and makes clear that there is a mutuality to the relationships. It makes it clear what the words 'public' and 'relations' are both doing in the name of the discipline.

So this is the definition I offer. Comments, please.

*Full disclosure: this author is PRSA's International Delegate at Large.

**Fuller disclosure: this author is a Fellow of CIPR, and a member of its Council.