Attack of the Flak When did PR become synonymous with BS?
When did PR become synonymous with BS?
Wednesday, 17 December 2008 00:09
It seems every time I see the two letters that define (one of) my profession(s) in print, there's some diminishing qualifier in front of it.
I thought googling "just PR" of "PR BS" might reveal a host of quotes from mainstream media outlets defaming public relations. It wasn't as clean and definitive an exercise as I'd hoped.
That being the case, I had dinner, half a bottle of chardonnay and a coupla PBR and sat back down here to finish this post.
I went to this industry event two weeks ago and listened to people talk about social networking. Ironically, there was a woman I'd worked with at Edelman there who I hadn't seen in damn near a decade (she was actually sitting in the chair where I'd deposited my backpack, having moved it during the time it took me to get a drink at the bar and come back).
If I hadn't moved my physical being away from this cursed screen and gone to some blah blah blah event in the "real" world (I'm not sure why I used quotation marks) she and I never would have reconnected.
I'm now trying to figure out what this has to do with PR being thought of as BS...
Oh, yeah, there was this woman from Microsoft who was on the panel and she kept differentiating Marketing from PR, she also clearly defined PR as something separate and distinct from "branding" (I used quotation marks there cuz I think "branding" is BS [at least how MSFT woman talked about it]).
My old Edelman colleague and I nearly scoffed up our banquet chicken (it was actually a fairly tasty squab, but that's beside the point). PR is not media relations. PR is not writing press releases (do me a favor, if an exec refers to a press release as a "PR," stick a Bic in his jugular).
PR is public relations.
And that is FINALLY starting to be true. When I fell into this business, it was all smile and dial, it was working the analysts, it was drumming up case studies. Well, you know what, everything's changed. I'm not entirely sure of all the ramifications, intracacies and some other words I might insert her, but I've gotten the distinct feeling that this is a good thing and I might actually be proud of doing PR if it all works out as I think it might, which again I am incapable of elucidating upon at this time.
OK, I'll probably delete this in the morning.