We’ve all been there. We’re in a pub or at a wedding reception, or maybe we’re at a party and reaching for a vol-au-vent, and someone says, “So. What do you do?”
We say we’re in PR. Oh dear. If we’re lucky the most we’ll have to do is give a brief explanation before the conversation moves on. If we’re really lucky we won’t even have to do that, because they won’t be that interested.
But if we’re unlucky they’ll smirk and say something knowing and we’ll find ourselves justifying our career choice when all we really wanted was to have a good time. And a vol-au-vent.
That’s the trouble with PR: if it doesn’t need explaining it needs defending.
Slick or fluffy
Ask most people about PR and if they have an opinion they’ll either say it’s slick or that it’s fluffy.
Why do they say it’s slick? Because it’s a word journalists and commentators often use to describe it. For them, PR is all about distortion, cynicism and Machiavellian background briefings. It’s practised by political and corporate spin-doctors and apologists for celebrities.
And why fluffy? Because, once again, that’s often how it’s painted. It’s insubstantial, trivial. In the great scheme of things it’s of no consequence. So you managed to get a free sample nail buffer on the cover of a women’s magazine? Big deal.
In fact, marketing in general is regarded as fluffy. Take any business large enough to have a marketing function and you’ll find many people elsewhere in the organisation take a dim view of it. If they’re in operations – say, product manufacturing or service delivery – they’ll question its value. And if they’re in sales they’ll regard it as the poor relation. Why? Because it’s easy to show how sales add to the bottom line, but nowhere near so easy to do the same for marketing or PR.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was wrong
The trouble with marketing and PR is that, all too often, their success is not credited but is regarded as a given. If this product was priced at this point, was promoted in this way, was made available through these outlets and then made good sales – well, of course it did. It was a good product and the sales team did a great job.
Similarly, if an item gets traction in the media and everyone covers it – well, it was a good story. These things create their own momentum, right?
The premise here is one often credited to 19th-century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson: “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”
Ralph, sorry, but no. Word of mouth may have been enough in your day, but it isn’t now. Even great mousetraps need marketing and publicity campaigns. What’s more they’re rarely slick, and they’re rarely fluffy. Mostly they consist of insight, diplomacy, team spirit, creativity and a great deal of determination and hard work.
Shop floor manufacturers need us. The sales team needs us. And for PR in particular, whether they like to admit it or not, journalists need us too. Life for all these people would be a darn sight harder without us.
It’s about time we raised our game in practising what we preach. Marketing needs more marketing. PR needs more of its own PR.
Next time we’re in the kitchen at a party let’s not simply defend ourselves. Let’s champion our own cause.
Because we’re not slick. And we’re not fluffy.
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