It appears that the PR field is attempting to get out in front of a crisis of its own.
A friend recently directed me to the website of the Public Relations Society of America, who have undertaken an initiative to develop contemporary language to describe their field. They have branded their project Public Relations Defined.
The group has just released three proposed definitions, and asked for comments:
Definition No. 1:
Public relations is the management function of researching, engaging, communicating, and collaborating with stakeholders in an ethical manner to build mutually-beneficial relationships and achieve results.
Definition No. 2:
Public relations is a strategic communication process that develops and maintains mutually-beneficial relationships between organizations and their key publics.
Definition No. 3:
Public relations is the engagement between organizations and individuals to achieve mutual understanding and realize strategic goals.
Some comments:
Each of the definitions themselves are, in a sense, classic PR. They nimbly toggle between precise and imprecise language, positive and negative connotation, and over- and de-emphasization, steering sentences through disorienting chicanes designed to disguise and absorb meaning (Early bias alert: I absolutely love the stuff).
The first is by far the worst offender, guilty of both peripherous language and a rather dubious “ethics” postulate. I am not the type to rail against PR as universal agent of sinister manipulation, but the drafters thickly ignore that virtually anything can be seen as unethical to someone. Is a pro managing alcohol, cosmetic, or automotive accounts no longer participating in Public Relations?
Definitions 2 and 3 are less offensive, but remain difficult to endorse.
A broad critique is that they seem to only define *successful* public relations dynamics, rather than speak to the field as a whole. The liberty would be akin to defining gambling as “Winning money through structured wagers.” Yes, the quibble can be easily negated by penciling an “attempts to” into the right spot, but its presence within the current language really does limit its applicability.
Similarly, in theorizing a definition more in tune with contemporary trends in the industry, it seems odd for the drafters to have canonized a presumption that organizations still have set and exclusive “key publics” to watch over. On second thought, probably best not to get me started on the suitability of the term “key publics” in the first place.
Perhaps most problematic, however, is the “mutually-beneficial relationship” designation present to some degree in all three proposals. That language is all kinds of funky.
The big question is obvious: What is meant my mutually-beneficial? Who gets to define it and when? The answer is clearly debatable, which is why I might discourage its inclusion in what is intended as a succinct statement.
My take would be that despite a new focus on engagement and exchange, the field of Public Relations remains largely unidirectional. Yes, PR firms essentially mediate relationships between multiple parties. But only one is paying them. And while any strategy worth its salt provides stability by balancing the interests of all involved, what agencies bill for is expertise in moving the fulcrum as close to their employer as possible. Suggesting otherwise is insincere.
At best, therefore, “mutually-beneficial” can be read as a redundant buzzword, and should be cut. At worst, it suggests a curious inability among PR professionals to step back from the language of their profession and concisely define their role.
All this to say that if I were forced to pick one definition from the list, it would be number 3. But if my reason for doing so is that it seems to lend the least precision to what it attempts to define, surely we can do better.
