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Aug 20

PR is not synonymous with “publicist”.

I have seen so many posts and buzz these last few days about PR becoming obsolete, everywhere from TechCrunch to ZDNet. In some cases I felt compelled to post comments. Now I finally have a bit of time to log into my WordPress account and write a proper post about it.

Let me address the issue at its core: PR is not synonymous with “publicist”.

PR is much more than media relations or pitching bloggers. It’s much more than being the conduit between a company and the media (be it traditional or social.) It’s about been strategic on what you want to communicate, how, when and to whom. A good PR campaign can (and should) reach all the stakeholders and the influencers beyond media and blogs, such as financial analysts, industry analysts, academia, legislators, partners, employees, consumers, customers, local communities, online communities, Wall Street, etc. It depends on the company business and its business goals.

If the point of these posts is that the media landscape is changing and therefore PR people need to understand it in order to provide sound counsel to their clients (regardless of whether you are in-house or on the agency side) then I agree with you. However, good PR people are much more than publicists. They know that blasting a pitch email hoping that it sticks will not work. And most importantly, it never worked (not with media in the past, not with bloggers today.)

Knowing your audiences, building relationships, crafting stories, managing a crisis, engaging your stakeholders, and providing them with what they need is what PR is all about. Nothing new. What is changing is the complexity and the environment, which is richer, and, in my opinion, a lot more fun.

Good PR is here to stay. Good PR practitioners will always find a seat at the table if they continue to do what they have been doing for years: listening and adapting to an ever-changing landscape.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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10 Responses to “PR is not synonymous with “publicist”.”

Eric Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
We still have so much to do to educate about what PR means really… And I agree there is nothing new but the environment, bad PR never worked before.
Luca Penati Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Eric,

I couldn’t agree more.
Tim B Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Do you define a publicist as a bad PR practitioner? Publicists are one kind of PR practitioner, and they are not by default bad ones. Their jobs may be a world away from yours, and the extreme examples may be responsible for many of the negative stereotypes within the industry, but by saying publicist = bad PR, are you helping to dispel any myths? It may be that good publicists despair at geeky ineffective tech PRs with woeful social skills!

Eric, it seems like PR’s been around for quite a while now, shouldn’t we have managed to gain an understanding of the discipline amongst the audiences that matter to us? What does that say about us as communicators?
David McCullloch Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Luca, ‘publicist’ is to PR what ‘gossip columnists’ are to journalism. They get lots of attention, perhaps they even represent their industry in the public consciousness, but they no more represent the pinnacle of their profession than Perez Hilton represents the journalists of the Wall Street Journal. The real barometer of the success of the PR profession is the client CEO, not the press. Of course, our press partners are crucial members of the communications ecosystem just as advertisers are a crucial part of theirs, but that doesn’t make advertisers good judges of journalism, nor journalists good judges of advertising strategies.
Jane Evans-Ryan Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Well said, Luca.

But, from the vantage point of the reporter/blogger, PR begins and ends with media relations. Certainly understandable.

Your post goes a long way toward altering that perception.

I’d also add that good PR practitioners pitch ONLY the reporter who counts among his audience people who will buy from our client, invest in our client, partner with our client or influence their business success in some other way. That’s our starting point. From there, we seek out the one reporter who’s informed, understands our client’s [often esoteric] technology, is engaging and routinely writes accurate pieces. For me, that’s a reporter/blogger that can deftly move from semiconductors to carbon nanotubes, to tidal energy technology in a matter of seconds. A rare breed, for sure, but there’s a superb few out there. In return, they get provocative, interesting, newsworthy stories from us.

But as you pointed out, that’s just a small part of what we do. Lost in the evolving debate is the fact that most PR practitioners are working globally, which renders our business far from obsolete. We work with U.S. companies that need to reach customers in Asia; European companies that need to communicate with U.S. customers, and emerging Asian clients eager to differentiate themselves from their more established competitors. They all need to communicate. Globally. And that’s the core of what we do.

So, if PR is narrowly defined as “Publicist”, 75% of my business just vaporized.
Graham White Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I firmly believe one of the issues that leads to comments like this is a belief that PR is just about media relations. So wrong. You can understand why a journalist draws this conclusion, but the reality is that much of what we do within the broader discipline of PR is hidden from them. With many more influencers now able to easily share their thoughts about a brand, a product or an issue, the demand for PR grows. The reality is we now have many more stakeholders to consider and potentially communicate with. It is a good time to be in PR and the future is a very strong one.
Luca Penati Says:
August 21st, 2008 at 6:26 am
Tim,

I am not saying publicist = bad. I am saying PR is not = publicist.
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