[sociate] Public Relationships (an open letter to PR agencies)

 <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/technology/16song.html> Two
<http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3394841> articles I read
this morning reminded me of an old idea. 

Among my peers, the  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations> PR
<http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Public_relations_firms>
industry is regarded with considerable skepticism, to put it mildly. In my
<http://www.sociate.com/About_Jerry_Michalski/History/history.shtml> time
with New Science Associates and writing Esther's newsletter, I appreciated
most of the PR professionals I dealt with. I had no misconceptions about how
they went about their business or how they prepped their clients for
meetings with me ("mention online communities, he loves them!"), but I found
the relationships mutually beneficial overall.

For example, one of my practises was to end all briefings with the question,
"what can I answer for you?," after I had offered the best feedback I could
during the briefings, which I treated as mini consulting sessions. I found
that the best PR people figured this out and used me often as a sounding
board. They got early pitch advice ("we're 20 slides into your pitch and I
have no idea what you do; there's a problem here") and I got to see things
in earlier stages, blunders still included. I wasn't in any rush to scoop
anyone, so they didn't get bad press from these mistakes.

Fast-forward almost a decade, during which I've spent considerable time
pondering the word "consumer" and its many implications. Along that path, I
learned more about the  <http://www.prwatch.org/> checkered
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465061796/jerrymichalskisr> history
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0517704358/jerrymichalskisr> of
<http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/spin/> PR, but I also
started thinking about potential paths out of our consumer-capitalist trap.
In that spirit, I present the following suggestion to corporate executives
who deal with Public Relations:


What if your Public Relations department became the Public Relationships
department? What if its new mission were to help individuals and groups
inside your company form better authentic relationships with their various
publics outside?

To do this, your PR team would improve disclosure, increase transparency,
train everyone, seek opportunities, make introductions and then get out of
the way. They would be open-communication consultants, looking for places
where your company is screwing up by behaving in less-than-credible ways,
and helping heal the problems rather than buff them up and spin outsiders.

Be prepared for plenty of justifiable skepticism from the outside. Your PR
executives may currently have little credibility outside, even if they have
been practicing their trade with great integrity.

That doesn't mean they can't get to work inside your company. Many PR
practitioners already emphasize building relationships between their key
staff and members of the press and analysts. I'm suggesting they go much
further, that they become internal activists for transparency and
relationship-building at all levels. 

This may sound impossible, or at least improbable. It may also sound easy to
game. I can see many a rebranding effort (come see our new Public
Relationships department!) without the requisite rethinking and tearing
apart that I believe is necessary. This is not easy.

Or is it? In some sense, what  <http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/> Scoble is
doing for Microsoft with  <http://channel9.msdn.com/> Channel 9 is in this
direction.

Goodness knows that  <http://www.wagged.com/> Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's
eternal PR company, has done absolutely nothing to defend or improve the
company's reputation over these many controversial years. Or maybe it has,
and things would be worse.

Maybe the big question is whether and how PR departments and agencies can
become credible Public Relationships specialists.


posted by Jerry Michalski at 2:49
<http://www.sociate.com/blog/archives/2004_08_01_archive.html#10926725567853
7635> PM

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