Recently I've been thinking...
Thinking of what I've been reading so far about Web 2.0, its influence on PR 2.0... and while I'm on the topic of PR, how it differs from public affairs.
Thinking about the narratives that are going on about this, and trying to see through the supporting narratives and arrive right at the central theme, if you will.
Well, two questions immediately pop to mind. First, is there a difference between PR and public affairs? I mean, really? And second, what is it that truly matters?
The General Thoughts about PR and Public Affairs
I know there is a basic, almost boilerplate-like, differentiator of the two functions - and I’ll be revisiting these differences in a while - but just as a preamble, here’re the current schools of thought in a nutshell (you'll see these ideas fleshed out later...):
One camp sees that PR and public affairs are separate disciplines, with PR essentially as an approach to gain unpaid media publicity and raise awareness for the organization to maintain goodwill (among its many functions, and not to be confused with advertising), and public affairs as the platform for managing government and public policy related issues and communications.
Another camp sees public affairs and PR as inherently the same, with one function the subset of the other, but essentially to communicate with the public and to advantageously project the organization’s messages and influence.
Who's right on this? It’s a bit like trying to pinpoint the right-wingers, the lefties and the centrists are, isn’t it?
With PR, public affairs (plus lobbying and advocacy groups) collectively forming a multi-billion dollar industry in the battle for rhetorical preeminence and the dominance of public mindshare, I think we ought to be clear what the ruckus is all about, right?
As we develop this piece here, we’ll also be doing a brief exposition of the history of PR and public affairs, as well as developments in technology that’s forcing perhaps the greatest renaissance for the communications business. Along the way, I'll also develop my position on this issue, of which I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!
The Modern History of PR
So let’s start from the basics, and no, I won’t try to question whether PR or public affairs started first (however intriguing this may be as an academic teaser)… I mean, would you consider, say, an edict from the royal family in ancient Egypt announcing the building of a new pyramid in honor of Pharaoh as public affairs? Or would the chief engineer’s attempt to desperately explain to Pharaoh the reasons for delays to the completion of the monument, be seen as PR?
It’s a chicken and egg issue I’d rather not touch.
The turn of the 20th century seems a more reasonable place to start though.
In their book ‘Putting the Public Back in Public Relations,’ authors Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge talked a bit about the genesis of modern PR as we know it.
In the early 1900s, Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays assumed the role of strategic [communication] counselors and created and defined the art and science of modern PR. In fact, Lee was the one who developed the idea of communicating to the media through the news release. Solis and Breakenridge (2009, p. 23) note, “Lee believed PR was a ‘two-way street’ – that is, he believed that communications professionals were responsible for helping companies listen to the people who were important to them and communicate their messages to them.”
Bernays, on the other hand, was a theorist who saw PR as a management function where the responsibility was to measure public attitudes, define the policies, procedures and interests of the organization, and execute a communications plan of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.
According to Solis and Breakenridge (2009, p.24), Bernays saw PR as a case of applied social science that is affected by psychology, sociology and other disciplines that could be used to manage and manipulate people’s thinking. While some people may refer to this as the start of ‘spin,’ let’s not lose sight of his insight of PR as a matter about people and not the tools.
The authors go on to state how, as the years of PR practice went by right till the new millennium, criticism and skepticism were mounting against the industry because of the issue of spin and the purported absence of quality to back up the claims given in the narratives. People were losing trust in the PR practitioner (Solis & Breakenridge, 2009, pp. 25-26).
But this isn’t a recent development.
As early as the 1980s, McGuire (1982, p.36) was already noted in The Public Affairs Handbook as saying that because the term ‘PR’ had taken on a negative connotation in sectors of the community, many organizations then took the route of melding media relations functions (which was what PR was primarily focused on in the past) into the responsibilities of community, government, or investor relations subsections of an organization’s public affairs department.
Or perhaps it's also due to economics.
Armstrong (1982, p.6) points to the trend in large corporations at that time to centralize all external relations functions of the company under one portfolio, though there is no uniformity in the title. [Apart from being called public affairs,] some offices also began going by the names of corporate relations, external affairs, PR and others. What is clear, he says, is that PR and public affairs would be working much more closely together.
Enter the Propaganda Dragon...
Whatever it was that happened between the early 1900s and the 1980s, I would argue that the rise and success of applied propaganda in the modern political sense arising from the Creel Committee in the U.S. during WWI also has a hand in this somewhere.
According to SourceWatch (2008), the Creel project was created by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to sway public opinion in favor of entering the war on the side of Britain. The Creel Committee’s propaganda campaign was apparently so successful in producing an anti-German sentiment that it left a deep impression on American businesses and academic thinking about the potential of large-scale propaganda to control public opinion.
Bernays in fact coined the terms ‘group mind’ and ‘engineering consent’ as key concepts in propaganda work, says SourceWatch (2008), and this is believed to have influenced his concepts about PR later in the 1900s – concepts that are still quite firmly rooted in the modern day PR industry.
So, is public affairs in this case actually the unwanted child of a PR industry turning bad because of the supposed creeping awareness of 'propagandistic' themes in its communications? Did it, as McGuire (1982, p.36) essentially said, come about because of a need to rebrand an industry that's rapidly losing its credibility among the public?
The late Richard A. Armstrong, former president of the Public Affairs Council, may beg to differ.
Armstrong (1982, p.4) says that the public affairs movement [actually] gained momentum in the 1960s due to corporate America’s concern with the impact of a growing government presence in business.
Now, the way I see it, whether this ‘growing government presence’ and regulation of the business industry was in part related to a possible increasing public consternation about business communications given the PR spin, we’ll never know. But what’s interesting is his citation of the late President Ronald Regan’s 1981 definition of public affairs as ‘the daily link between the private sector and government... [where] It must interpret business’s ideas, goals, problems, and plans to government, and at the same time communicate and interpret government’s thinking to business.’
So here we’ve sight of one of the clearest mission statements for the public affairs movement. James Post (1982, p.23) gives it even more context when he notes that public affairs essentially serves as a window out of the corporation through which [its] management can monitor external changes, and simultaneously, also as a window in which society can affect corporate policy. Post calls public affairs a boundary-spanning function with one foot planted in the organization and the other in the social and political environment.
He says that the purpose of public affairs is to influence the direction of legislation, regulation, or social pressure, but he cautions that ‘action’ is best taken when it’s purposeful, consistent with other objectives of the firm, and integrated with other activities (Post, 1982, p.28).
This, to me, sounds like having the big picture in mind – which is what strategic communications is all about.
"Public affairs is the daily link between the private sector and government... [where] It must interpret business’s ideas, goals, problems, and plans to government, and at the same time communicate and interpret government’s thinking to business."
~ Ronald Reagan, 1981
One of the possibilities – and this is one of my posits – is that perhaps there continues to be a thin line dividing PR and public affairs because the function of the former has over time become one that’s focused on getting stories out in the media where in fact, a strategic perspective has always been a central part of the PR portfolio that includes the management and extension of corporate goodwill, and the protection of its brand and reputation.
But because PR became so narrowly focused over time, public affairs became the champion of big-picture thinking and strategic communications planning? Could it be? I’d say it’s a possibility.
So how does the purist define PR?
In this case, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) likes to think of PR as a management function that requires two-way communication and a conscious, deliberate effort to develop and maintain healthy relationships between an organization and its numerous publics. In fact, a key thrust of PR, according to its official statement of purpose, is that the function encompasses 'counseling management at all levels in the organization with regard to policy decisions, courses of action, and communication, taking into account their public ramifications and the organization’s social or citizenship responsibilities.'
Sounds pretty high level to me. In fact, doesn’t it appear like some public affairs function, sans the advocacy component?
In an interview I did with Dorie Clark, the CEO of Clark Strategic Communications (click here for the link to the interview with Dorie) and also the New Hampshire Communications Director for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, I asked her what she thought about the two functions.
“In terms of PR vis-à-vis public affairs, I think that they sometimes overlap but not always. Certainly, when you’re doing work for a governmental agency, or a non-profit that has policy goals they want to advance, they should overlap,” she says.
“But I think the key thing is that it depends on the vendor that you’re contracting with. Some consulting firms or vendors have a really narrow definition of PR, i.e. ‘Tell me about what events you’re doing or the initiatives you have and we’ll try to get stories about them in the paper.’ That’s nice and helpful, but it’s only one piece of it. Public affairs generally encompasses PR… A piece of public affairs is about getting stories in the news, but it’s also about what all the strategies are that can be used to influence the decision makers.”
Sharing a slightly different view about this is Chris Ranjitkar, who works for a local investor relations firm.
“The way I classify PR is communicating and conversing with different stakeholders. So I see PR as a large umbrella. The way I would define public affairs is a piece of PR where government bodies or NGOs communicate with their constituents or target publics.”
I asked him if he’d agree that public affairs is really PR by governments and NGOs, and he bought the idea to a certain extent. But he added a refrain.
“You know, different people will answer this differently. Some people will say that PR is commercial while public affairs is government affairs. Others will say, like I do, that public affairs is a piece of PR. I think it’s just a matter of semantics. I mean, you use a lot of similar techniques and avenues such as the mass media, speech writing, report writing, so it’s a lot of the same techniques and the same tools. But for me, I would define public affairs as a branch of PR, analyzing how the government and NGOs communicate with its stakeholders.”
My Thoughts on What Really Matters!
So there you have it – a diorama of the two functions!
We’ve heard from people who feel that the two functions are distinct. We’ve also heard from those who think its all the same. There are some who see PR as a subset of public affairs, and others who see completely the opposite. We’ve also heard two different takes on how modern public affairs came about – with one camp believing that it’s due to the declining strategic focus by PR, and another who believes its due to the need to manage a growing government presence in business.
Here's what I think.
No matter how we parse the PR and public affairs functions, or how much we may disagree over the origins and status of the two roles, or what the names should be, and regardless of where our preferences and inclinations lie, I believe we can safely afford to agree to disagree on all these issues.
But what we ought to come to a consensus is this: That the central themes in PR and public affairs are all about strategic communications and building genuine relationships. Without them, we can forget about getting buy-in for our side of the story.
It's with this in mind, coupled with a eye on the rise of Web 2.0, that I've decided to name this trilogy of articles The Fall of Communication and the Rise of Dialogue in the Web 2.0 Era. My thesis throughout the articles will be to position the immense impact of Web-based social network as a force that is forcing traditional top-down, unidirectional, communication to be replaced by conversation and dialogue with our strategic communities: Customers. Vendors. General Audiences. Suppliers. Government. Et cetera.
For the remaining duration of this exposition, let’s suspend our ideologies and just look at the two functions as one about communication and building trust through it, for there's a far bigger issue for us to contemplate: The structural eroding of public trust and the loss of confidence in leadership and corporate-related communications.
TOMORROW, I'll publish the second part of the article where I'll discuss how technology may have inadvertently limited PR's strategic focus, and how Web 2.0 is today transforming the face of public communications. More to come...
Selected References
Armstrong, R. A. (1982). Part 1 - What is public affairs? In J. Nagelschmidt (Ed.), The public affairs handbook (p. 4). New York: Amacom.
Clark, D. (2009). Interview on PR, public affairs and governance 2.0. - Part II. URL: http://promulgationrubiconpr.weebly.com/5/post/2009/03/public-affairs-pr-and-governance-20interview-with-dorie-clark-ceo-clark-strategic-communications.html
Post, J. (1982). Part 2 - Public affairs: Its role. In J. Nagelschmidt (Ed.), The public affairs handbook (p. 28). New York: Amacom.
Ranjitkar, C. (2009). Interview on PR, public affairs and governance 2.0. - Part I. URL: http://promulgationrubiconpr.weebly.com/5/post/2009/03/public-affairs-pr-and-governance-20-interview-with-christopher-ranjitkar-of-sharon-merrill-associates.html
McGuire, E. P. (1982). Part 2 - Public affairs: It's functions. In J. Nagelschmidt (Ed.), The public affairs handbook (p. 36). New York: Amacom.
Solis, B., & Breakenridge, D. (2009). Putting the public back in public relations - How social media is reinventing the aging business of PR. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
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