In the wake of a blog post yesterday by Seth Godin about the distinction between publicity and PR; that publicity is the art of transferring an idea into ink and PR is the art of crafting a story that other people can retell in their own words, I’d like to tangentially remind you that PR is not about public relations.
Not really.
I refer you to bold words last November by David Mullen that the “P” in Public should stand for People.
Yes, I know that “public” refers to groups of people, but that still feels a bit cold to me. This is more about changing our mindset, for those of us who need it. People expect more personal relationships and one-to-one conversations. People want to share their dreams and fears. People want to be heard. People want connections.
Upon reflection, I can’t agree with him stronger.
If David is correct that PR is strategically centered to leverage connections between people and their brands, then shouldn’t the art of those relations be about people? I think so.
Reading references to Seth Godin’s PR-publicity distinction, such as Dave Fleet and Urban Johansson, I question why everyone isn’t using the same terminology.
Urban says it best (bold styling by me):
For me to care about what you have to say I either have to have established some sort of relationship to your product or be in acute need of that product. Marketing can drive to create that need or to make that relationship but putting ink in the paper is not the goal. The goal is to make people care about what you have to say.
I applaud Dave Fleet for breaking public relations into seven categories:
- Media relations
- Government relations
- Stakeholder relations
- Investor relations
- Internal/employee communications
- Customer relations
- Social media relations
But don’t all of those categories involve communicating, marketing, advertising, or otherwise relating to people? If so, why not call it for what it is?
PR agents understand the importance of listening to influencers and participating in conversations to expand knowledge and adapt to changes in new media.
Yet when I recently approached a pair of PR agency c0-founders and asked them how their new “people relations boutique firm was progressing,” I was greeted with curious stares.
“People relations?” one of the girls asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re relating with people as we’re talking now. Shouldn’t the industry term be people relations?”
She didn’t understand why it was necessary to change the mindset.
Jennifer Leggio, are you listening? The next time ZDNet runs a survey on the PR industry (a very good survey, at that), may I suggest asking agents and clients to challenge the status quo?
“A few people have a publicity problem, but almost everyone has a PR problem,” Seth summarizes at the bottom of his blog post. “You need to solve that one first.”
Is that so, Seth?
If David Mullen is correct and that PR be remolded into people relations, who has a problem with that?
About Ari Herzog
Twitter Comment
RT: @mediaphyter Really good analysis of PR /= Public Relations from @ariherzog – [link to post]
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I am probably on the fence on this one. In some situations it can be considered what you refer to as “people relations” but unfortunately, the end goal is to have a message that many are hearing – the public. It would be unfortunate if we only related to one person. On the flip side, influencing one person who then carries the message to a large group is a great thing.
We observe the public to understand the people who are interacting with products and services that our clients represent. We create messages that will speak to a broad audience in hopes of attracting new people to whatever it may be that we are marketing.
Anyway, I appreciate the post and have pondered this quite a bit myself. Things have changed, perhaps the profession gets a new title too?
Btw: I would add analyst relations to the mix. That is a big part of the work we do.
Melissa Hourigan´s last blog post..Facebook – The Social Support Group
I like Dave’s categories as well, though I don’t think social media relations should be separate. I think social media represents channels you can communicate to, interact with and engage the audiences in 1-6 (which are really publics, aren’t they?).
Jeremy Porter´s last blog post..Are Journalists Outnumbered In The PR Game?
Twitter Comment
Interesting…Stop Saying PR is Public Relations [link to post]
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“People Relations”? Nonsense.
This is typical millennial soft-headed illogic. If you subtract planning, strategy and desired outcomes from PR, then for sure it is “People Relations”–but you have those with your family and friends.
Every type of PR you list has implicit of explicit desired outcomes which involve motivating and influencing publics. The “People Relations” I have with my family and friends are not freighted or coloured by expectations or desires for beneficial outcomes. Can you say the same about the PR activities you’d like to reclassify as “People Relations?”
As a former government employee, I held many meetings with government relations groups. Despite Dave Fleet’s perspective, neither I nor they ever referred to GR as PR. Nevertheless, while the role of government relations may involve impacting the “public” at-large eventually, the initial relationship is with influencers, aka people.
And… I can’t speak for David Mullen, but I’m not a millennial. Wrong generation there.
Paul,
It’s interesting that your website has the blurb:
“…a PR professional with 15 years of media relations, marketing and communications experience.”
By using the acronym for public relations, yet the full description of media relations, aren’t you then saying yourself that public relations is a misnomer?
Just a thought…
Danny Brown´s last blog post..The Continuum Theory of Social Media
Interesting break down here, although it took me a minute to get my head around it all (thinking: wait, doesn’t PR stand for public relations?) I agree with your point that bringing the message to the people is the ultimate goal, but I am wondering about the applied semantics here. The public encompasses a wide variety of mediums as aptly defined by Dave Fleet. I hesitate to make it simpler than that list (and perhaps more). Part of my work as a PR/Public Relations person involves assessment of trends and “what’s out there”, which is not always about people. I feel public is more encompassing a term, and gets to the larger, complex picture of what we do.
Public relations is difficult enough to explain to people. The last thing we need to do is change the name of our industry and really confuse them. Although I get your point about “public” being cold and not personable, I think people are smart enough to realize that “people” are included in “public.”
Sadly, Godin is right. A great many PR firms only do publicity, not PR – though I don’t think that it’s “most” of them. Similarly, there are a lot of clients out there who are still thinking that all they need is publicity – or when they look to a PR agency they only see publicity as the end result.
I think Godin and @dmullen are actually on the same page. The real meat of Godin’s post is this:
“PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It’s the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.”
He’s talking about people there… and how a true PR firm needs to understand not just who those people are, but what kinds of things need to be done to engage those people in conversation and/or to get those people talking. That challenge (Godin’s use of “problem” may have been unfortunate) is indeed something that needs to be addressed first. The story telling that Godin talks about is about people and for people.
Twitter Comment
The Publicity vs. PR debate goes on. Here is what AriWriter has to say in reply to Seth Godin [link to post]
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I think you’re splitting hairs here. If professional practitioners don’t understand that the “public” is comprised of “people,” they should find another profession — quick!
Suppose you’re right and I’m splitting hairs, Debbie. If the public is comprised of people, then why is it called public relations?
I don’t necessarily disagree with the essence of your argument, but don’t see this as being such a distinction that it merits a name change. I agree with Lisa’s comment above – let’s not make our already misunderstood profession any more difficult to understand. But many thanks for an interesting discussion!
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@menomavens I absolutely agree with @ariherzog in [link to post]
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Those of us who have an education and/or professional experience in public relations strategy would refer to publics as groups of people. An easier way to look at this might be to consider “publics” as “target audiences” (pick up any book on public relations strategy and you’ll see this is what we’re really talking about with publics – and yes, target audiences are made up of people… I can’t believe we’re even discussing that point).
I think another way to look at your “people relations” point is that audiences (publics) are getting smaller and more focused, potentially representing only a few people – or one person if you will. It’s now The Long Tail of PR (as referenced in @briansolis and @dbreakenridge ‘s new book). You’re going to have more and more micro-audiences (micro-publics), which could be a few people, or one person.
Good to see people are still passionate about the foundation of public relations principles.
Jeremy Porter´s last blog post..Are Journalists Outnumbered In The PR Game?
Curious how this discussion has evolved.
I still maintain that Godin’s key point is correct. Then entire discussion of ‘People’ vs ‘Public’ while interesting doesn’t affect that – in fact, it may bolster it.
Reverse engineer if you will…
- we want to create conversations between people. Those conversations are their retelling of a story. (People Relations)
- we recognize that people form discrete groups. These groups tend to be interested in particular aspects of a story. (Public Relations)
- there are numerous tools by which to do this. There are many ways in which we can offer the story to be told. (PR tactics – only one of which is Publicity)
- Before we choose any tools, we need to understand the groups and the people. (PR Strategy)
- Before we can get a true bearing on which groups and people are relevant we must make a story that is remarkable enough to warrant conversation. (The core of what PR is)
That is the challenge (Godin’s “problem”) that good PR practitioners aim to solve.
Sure it’s never as linear as that… but they key to Godin’s post was not ‘people’ vs ‘public’ … it was that PR is about more than just tactics (publicity and otherwise) … and beyond that it was about the importance of recognizing how crucial ‘story-making’ (nod to @dinKyDK for that) is.
Twitter Comment
discussions from Godin’s blog http://bit.ly/3x1ST on PR vs publicity continue. @ariherzog has a good one going on [link to post]
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Great discussions here and a lot fodder to ponder.
So, allow me to add some more fuel to the PR fire: If you agree that PR would not exist without clients, and clients would not exist without people buying their products and services, then is not a PR agency working directly for a person?
I can’t agree that PR must exist without clients. It certainly does exist without them.
I would also question that the only reason for PR is to get people to buy products or services. That’s a small – though profitable – slice of the PR pie.
I’ve always said that PR should be Personal Recommendation.
If you wouldn’t sell/promote/recommend/be comfortable with (delete where applicable) then why would you do so for a pay check? Isn’t that a little hypocritical?
If you can’t be passionate about what you’re promoting, that will come through and people will see that you’re just spinning a tale. And yes, while PR is all about story-telling, I’d rather be a fan of non-fiction than fantasy.
Danny Brown´s last blog post..The Continuum Theory of Social Media
I can’t see how anyone can disagree with this. Public = people. You can have an advertisement reach the general public, but if it doesn’t speak to any of the people, then what good does it do?
~ Kristi
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Couple of points on publics over people.
1. One of the origins of “public relations” was that it contrasted with “private relations” and so implied what was being undertaken was out in the public arena rather than just being something between two private individuals.
2. Publics are different to stakeholders, audiences and even your use of people, in that publics originate in relation to common interest in, and power over, issues. This reminds us not to see the world entirely from our organisational perspectives but to recognise that publics form independently and we need to engage with these rather than talk at them (as per an audience).
People is too wide as it encompasses everyone and when it comes to public relations, the need is generally to engage with those who have an interest (whether they know it or not) and power in relation to an issue.
That also enables the distinction between PR and publicity, which is about generating interest in something (a form of marketing/PR) rather than building relationships.
Heather Yaxley´s last blog post..CIPR qualifications – top marks for professional practitioners
Ari, great food for thought and discussion.
Public Relations is about people indeed, hence the carefully selected title of the new book http://bit.ly/prbook.
But, PR has a PR problem…it means a lot of things to different people – and most of the time it doesn’t conjure positive sentiment.
There’s an incredible post by Ariel Waldman on why the Government isn’t ready for Gov 2.0, in it she shares this observation, “The mindset of people in government is deeply rooted in using the term “the public” when referring to anyone who doesn’t also work in government. Not only does this term massively inhibit their ability to communicate effectively and connect with anyone, but it also frames their view for using the social web – something that “the public” uses and thus they should use as an extension of their job (instead of having a personal AND professional interest in it).”
http://is.gd/2Jn16
In the end, we have to remind communications professionals and marketers that all of this is about “people” and not an audience.
I’ve had this discussion with some of the most amazing minds who would love nothing more than to abandon the term PR or Public Relations.
But, believe it or not, there are many, many additional categories of Public Relations that Dave missed and therefore to switch an industry to a new name when in fact most of the people within it have yet to realize that there’s a social revolution taking place, is impractical. Our energy is better focused in helping people discover and adopt new tools and methodologies to help them interact and potentially influence the people they need to reach. Remember, this is a century old profession (at least as documented in modern times). The press release is officially 102 years old, yet many also think PR stands for press release…
Everything we do is about people and I have yet to encounter a business where its success isn’t determined by those individuals who in reality define it.
The State of PR and Its Future: http://is.gd/2Jncn
.-= New from Brian Solis: Does Social Networking Impair Learning? =-.