Do we need to teach Public Relations?

“Public relations is a complex profession, an emerging industry that is at the heart of all communication” (Henslowe 2003, Public Relations: A Practical Guide to the Basics)

 The most recent Chartered Institute of Public Relations definition:

“Public relations is about reputation the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. It is also the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.” It is regarded as a two way process as much about listening as it is about providing information, recognising that issuing propaganda is no longer sufficient, the audiences demand engagement.

 

Globally PR has been seen as “the art and social science of analysing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organisation leaders and implementing planned action which will serve both the organisation’s and public interest” (World Assembly of PR convention in Mexico 1978) and this still stands in the current millennium.

A quick history lesson …. PR in the UK began to grow after the Second World War in response to the need for government and other public sector organisations locally and nationally to promote and explain policy. It saw a big expansion during the first major review of local government in 1974 and has continued ever since (Franklin, Hogan, Langley, Mosdell & Pill, 2009, Key Concepts in Public Relations). Some of the biggest in-house employers of PR professionals are still in the public sector as recently as 2009 the NHS was up-skilling and expanding its communications (PR) workforce investing in Masters level qualifications for its senior staff and employing undergraduates from PR degrees. For example locally Lincolnshire County Council’s PR team expanded from approximately four people in 2005 to around 25 in 2009. Lincolnshire NHS moved from a band of two to a team of 10+ in a similar time period.  OK, these teams have seen some reductions since the austerity measure sof the present government have seen some reductions in the teams but not back to 2005 levels.

However these days, as indicated above the term PR has become replaced by ‘communications’ – it remains as much a practical discipline as a theoretical one, based as it is on an understanding of the media agenda as well as the business and corporate objectives of the organisation on whose behalf PR is being conducted. Although it is argued in PR Today – The Authoritative Guide to Public Relations (Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy, Palgrave MacMillan November 2011) that this is a form of coyness on the part of the PR profession – a discussion for another day!

There is evidence that Chief Executives now spend more time dealing with reputation than any other issue – including finance! (Burson Marstellar/PR Week) And they are also interested in how to engage with the developing new media channels of social networking, blogging to manage that reputation. They look to their senior PR person to craft strategy and words.

There are 2,500 agencies and 47,800 people working directly in PR in the UK according to Key Notes (2007) Review of the PR Industry, with a turnover (In-house and consultancy) of £6.6 billions. The growth, since the 1980s, is in all arenas – central and local government, the emergency services, military, other public bodies and the voluntary sector as well as the corporate private sector. The news media increasingly (and sometimes grudgingly!) rely on PR to shape and inform their work. (Davis 2008 ‘Public Relations in the news’ ; Lewis, Williams and Franklin 2008 ‘Journalism Practice’ and ‘Journalism Studies’)

 So, what should PR teaching comprise?

 “Unfortunately in academic institutions there is still the outdated view that PR is part of marketing” (Franklin et al 2009). It is not, PR works upstream to influence and change.

The distinctions between marketing, advertising, PR and media relations are increasingly becoming blurred in favour of an integrated approach to communications challenges. There is now an assumption that communications will be integrated using the best from all the disciplines but ultimately relying on the written and verbal skills of the well briefed ambassador – face to face or online.

These days Directors of Communications (the top PR people) sit round or near to the top table providing counsel in much the same way as the Board Secretary might do because “what people say about you matters” a phrase coined by Mark Fletcher to describe the rationale for his company Reputation. Today’s PR professional still needs to understand what makes news and to manage the 24 hour hungry beast but s/he also needs strategic skills and knowledge to be effective.

The role of PR counsel comprises some or all (and probably more) of the following:

• Reputation management – horizon scanning, corporate identity and image as it relates to the organisation and its key players.
• Integration and co-ordination of corporate, commercial, political or brand campaigns across media disciplines. Brand management in a very different way from the past.
• Stakeholder analysis, engagement and management – including (particularly in times of change) internal audiences, investor relations and corporate social responsibility. Relationship management by another name.
• Corporate Affairs – lobbying, managing shareholder activism, corporate social responsibility (again), horizon scanning (again), issues management  and its badly behaved sibling crisis management
• Ethical communications (now the age of the spin is dying) – the law of communication, consultation and persuasion, and more corporate social responsibility.

They are the organisation’s story tellers.

 

University of Lincoln students

The key skills and tools of the trade a fresh faced young graduate will still need to excel in include:

• Research and planning at a tactical and strategic level.
• Appreciation of how business and corporate objectives morph into communications objectives
• Professional understanding of and ability to write for different audiences and channels of communication from tweets, blogs, news media and speeches to weighty public consultation and strategy documentations to justify policies. Today’s PR operates though multi platforms of sound and vision.
• Working with journalists and the news agenda
• Strong personal communication skills such as networking and presentations
• The practical application of the academic theories of PR delivery

Employability is high – even last year’s crop (2010) have a high hit rate on real jobs either with agencies or in-house with 77% of PR graduates find work in public relations within 6 months of completing their degrees!

PR is a key skill for successful Chief Executives and Entrepreneurs; it is critical to good leadership.

• Look at the importance placed on PR by our politicians – how did New Labour win over the CBI?
• Look at the successful business leaders such as Sir Richard Branson, Sir Alan Sugar, Richard Reed and Bill Gates.  They would all spend their last penny on PR because they know “what people say about you matters”.

Did I mention I teach PR?

I shall explore at some point soon why I think we need to teach PR as a subject in its own right at University but for now I thought I would just mention this post that one of my former students brought to my attention this evening.

Can we please stop asking. ‘what is PR?’  is a post on ragan.com and makes some excellent points to contribute to the debate going on across the pond as colleagues in the Public Relations Society of America discuss a re-definition of PR. The part that caught my eye was that PR should be taught in a Business School. Now, I have just up sticks and moved from the Business School at the University of Lincoln to the Lincoln School of Journalism where we are breathing new life into the public relations undergraduate programme. Yes, it will still be a tool of the corporate world but the move allows us to take a look at the subject in a  new way – Journalists and PR people are story tellers and that is what the new programme will focus on. It will also build on the strengths of the LSJ and its links to the Institute of Communications Ethics.

So many Journalists have made excellent PR people and PR people are so often the journalists of their organisation that there is a natural synergy. I look forward to this re-invigorated relationship but will not forget the importance of understanding business as part of that.

What do I think teaching and learning should be like?

My top five….

1. It should be interesting, fun and relevant to the student’s interests now and in the future.
2. It should help students to develop critical thinking.
3. It should challenge their beliefs and values.
4. It should develop a ‘self starter’ work ethic valued by employers and a valuable ‘lifeskill’.
5. It should help students’ find a direction for a future career or lifestyle.

I am committed to being available to the students at a time that is mutually convenient, so if this means outside the ‘normal’ working day or week and I can do so I will accommodate them. I acknowledge that for some students it is easier to ask a question by email or in a more informal setting than the seminar or lecture – and many of the burning questions occur just as the tutor disappears from view! Perhaps I make myself too available but it suits me to work this way for now.

I struggle with the trend towards the ‘marketisation’ of education and am uncomfortable with that arrangement, but we are where we are, for good or ill, and I must work within the system for now. However, Student as Producer addresses some of my discomfort and allows me to teach in a way that harnesses the creativity of the students and allows them to learn through a variety of methods.

I draw on some of what I learned as trainee teacher in the 1970s before I entered the world of communications. So, to me Student as Producer is a logical development of what I studied and takes me into the familiar territory of Jean Piaget in The Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child  (1971).

I probably understand it better now than I did then.  Constructivist learning as defined by Seymour Papert in Mindstorms: children, computers and powerful ideas  (1993) and based on Piaget’s constructivist approach, probably fits best the way I instinctively approached my teaching early on – looking for ways to apply theory; Papert’s Principle states:

“Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.”

I want my students to challenge and be able to move PR on. The way we communicate is changing dramatically and they need to respond to those changes and harness the potential of future communications channels not just do what I used to do or blindly follow the texts. This does make me uncomfortable with the prescriptive way in which we impose Learning Outcomes on the structures. However, there needs to be some way of indentifying what success looks like in a programme of study or module and albeit they are blunt instruments they work and I cannot currently think of an alternative!

What’s my approach to HE teaching and learning?

I recently (Dec 2011) successfully completed an application for Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy; this required me to produce a paper about my approach to teaching and learning and expose my approach to scrutiny by experts within the University. Having survived that exercise I plan to share what I said with a wider audience.

My background is as an industry ‘expert’, a former practitioner in the field of corporate communications, public relations and social marketing of some 25+years, all in the public sector. I have never wanted to work in the private sector as I have a personal commitment to strong public services presented in a way that people can understand how best to benefit from them. I originally trained as a middle years teacher back in the 1970s and during my communications career was also responsible for developing, motivating, training, coaching and mentoring staff at all levels and through various professional institutions.

I have a personal commitment to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and Lifelong Learning undertaking my Masters in the 1990s and by participating in my professional body’s CPD programme, which initially included regular sessions as a guest lecturer at the University when it first opened. It was as a result of this involvement with the University that I found myself taking up this work as a HE Lecturer when I took early retirement. I still see it very much as putting something back and supporting the next generation of communications professionals.

It is my natural instinct to want to develop other people – colleagues, new entrants to the profession and so on. On two occasions when I have moved jobs, a team member whom I had helped to develop through coaching and mentoring has succeeded me. Both of these individuals were then able to take the role they were promoted to onto new heights continuing the philosophy of continuous improvement. The mentoring relationship with one of the individuals has continued in the over ten years since.

I believe it is helpful to know something of the individual as this gives a context for how and why they ‘do things as they do’. My preferred learning style is active and I am a ‘Shaper’ according to Belbin (1993), both of which probably explain why I have developed ‘on the job’ and have engaged enthusiastically in developing the programmes of PR study. Myers Briggs has suggested I favour intuition and feelings, I have come out as both extrovert and introvert depending upon when I have taken the test and in what context (as a personal exercise or as part of a recruitment exercise – who says you can’t change the scores!). Coinciding with the birth of my son I became less judgmental and moved more towards perception as my preference. This illustrates just how diverse human beings are according to life experiences, context and task. In my role in HE it ensures that I am able to be cognisant of difference and allow explorations of difference. This is quite a challenge for a PR professional as the PR role is very much about managing messages – control freaks abound in the profession! Self awareness makes us all more effective at whatever we do as it allows us to understand how we impact on other people and how it is OK to come at problem solving from different points of view and in different ways.

When I first arrived at the University (2006), I was very focussed on the workplace and ensuring the students would have the right skills set for the world of work. Consequently I took a very practical approach to my teaching, littering it with examples of practice from my own career and creating opportunities for the assessments to have a portfolio element to them. I was not convinced by a purely academic approach for what I considered a vocational subject area (Public Relations – PR). However, working alongside colleagues who had opinions and beliefs ranging along the continuum from very practical to the purely academic and by reading around the theoretical and academic approaches to PR I have begun to ‘find a voice’ that balances the two. I still hold dear to the idea of ensuring students can provide employers with evidence of their suitability for the profession they have chosen and so use portfolio style assessments .