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Hearts And Minds

Public relations (PR) is claimed to be on the ascendant. But why does it remain something of a covert function?

PR factor: Still the shadows

"Tell the Truth." Ever since Arthur W. Page, the pioneering one-time chief of AT&T's public relations (PR) function, used those three words to spell out his job's first axiom, 'the truth' has struggled to find relevance in the world of PR.

Or that, at least, is how large numbers of media folk and people at large - those dependable cynics - see the story of PR's evolution down the Industrial Age into the so-called Information Age. The PR industry, being the PR industry, has a big problem with that. Which explains the bid to do a PR job on itself.

The time has come, PR professionals say, to give PR its due. The first task, of course, is to go public with what PR really is. As in really is. More like the practice of law (in the public court of opinion), that is, than some shady psssst-driven spin doctoring job. In fact, something so honourable as to inspire Al Ries & Laura Ries to write a whole book on 'The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR'. Their premise? Advertising has lost all credibility, while PR has grown in influence (over influencers). In making this claim, at least, the Ries duo have stolen one of the ad industry's most hackneyed tricks: exaggeration.

Uh-oh. "Credibility is not a sustainable advantage for PR either," says Santosh Desai, President, McCann-Erickson India, an ad agency. In that sense, the book may have done more harm than good.

Is the operating truth a lot more sobering? Sure seems like it. "Can the truth be lost in the fog of corporate spin?" asks Mahnaz Curmally, President, South Asia, Ogilvy PR, "I'm afraid the answer is 'yes'."

So much for being standard-bearers for transparency in the cause of public knowledge. Dilip Cherian, Consulting Partner, Perfect Relations, has horror stories to tell of the truth being contorted by special interests before being presented to an audience assumed to be gullible enough to buy it without batting an eyelid. The 'horror' part is that the assumption wasn't altogether misplaced.

Should that dishearten PR's PR effort? Not at all, if you ask David R. Drobis, Senior partner and Chairman, Ketchum, a leading global PR outfit with such stellar clients as IBM and Kodak. "To some extent," he says, half-shrugging, "all professionals are known by the least common denominator." So while sleaze there will always be, PR's role is to get on with the actual job, and that is not to subordinate the truth to other powers, but to uphold it. In public interest. That's what ensures sustainable PR success. What makes him so sure? Simple. "The media is not that stupid," he says, matter-of-factly.

Yet, for all that, the PR function remains in the shadows. The corporate world likes it that way. The same holds for remuneration too. For every dollar that Pepsi, for instance, spends on PR, it spends 20 on advertising (the agency, of course, gets only three dollars). Still, that's a 1:3 remuneration ratio, and it isn't about to change in a hurry.

According to Prema Sagar, Founding President, Public Relations Consultants Association of India (PRCAI), part of the problem is that nobody is too sure what PR really is. "There is no one definition of PR," she says, glad, however, that it is being seen as a "discipline", and a strategic one at that - by those who have experienced its de facto value. Multinationals, for example, particularly the sort that treat their public image as a 'key result area' (KRA). Big word, that. B-school vocab. Yet, oddly, "PR has never been a management subject at B-schools," complains Sagar.

So getting that done is the PR industry's next objective. Once PR gets all the heavy-duty academic super-structure, people will start taking it a whole lot more seriously. If advertising could do it, why not PR?

Just one minor hassle. No matter what's done, PR will still be an information intermediary, and the world is entering an era of disintermediation (the Internet plays a role in this). As time goes on, the value of go-betweens may come under question. Ries & Ries may not have noticed, but the 'art' aspect of advertising at least grants that discipline the aura of specialisation. The corporate entity hoping to engage a mass audience needs a creative wizard because the company on its own cannot create the requisite magic.

But what about PR?

The answer, perhaps, lies in good old Page's classic formulation: "Tell the truth". And more importantly, create a reputation for doing so - amongst the target group of influencers. All that needs to be emphasised is what, ultimately, is being held supreme - beyond all manipulation. If that can be sold, and sold well, hearts and minds should not be so elusive.

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