PR is dead! Oh no it isn’t! Oh yes it is!
Well, it is panto season…
In my last role, “PR” was used as shorthand for “press release”. I swear they only said this to watch the tortured expression on my face.
It’s important to remember that public relations is a field, within which there are various disciplines; media relations, stakeholder engagement, internal communications, marketing communications and digital activity, to name but five. There’s also strategic communications planning, reputation management and content curation. Curation is always better than “flooding the internet”.
All of these things are in rude health (curation needs to try harder, look at your LinkedIn timeline), even if we don’t call them “public relations”. So PR is very much alive and kicking.
And yet…
I can’t think of one role that I’ve applied for in the last 10 years that had “public relations” in the title. My last, permanent role was Public Relations Officer, but since then I’ve been applying for Media Relations, Stakeholder Engagement, Communications and Marketing, etc. roles. Disciplines, not the wide-ranging field that I much prefer working in, being one of those people who knows a little about a lot and hates specialising.
Visit the CIPR website and have a hunt for the list of CIPR-approved university courses. Only one of the undergraduate courses is in Public Relations; most of the rest are something-and-public relations. Some of them don’t even mention public relations in their title! At the Masters level there are more “straight” public relations courses, but even then not that many.
Perhaps, it’s not so much dead as that people have forgotten what it is and what it can do?
Remember the old joke about public relations being bad at its own PR? Maybe… it’s time we changed that.