A roundtable discussion: What’s top of mind now for the profession — and where are we headed?

February 13, 2009

Copyright © 2009 PRSA. All rights reserved.


By Amy Jacques

One of the important roles of PRSA’s Board of Directors is to understand and communicate the perspective of the profession — what is happening to PR practitioners and how the profession is changing.  

As they prepared to assume their responsibilities this year, PRSA’s 2009 Board of Directors reached out to the community. Each Board member interviewed 10 PRSA members to learn more about the state of the profession: the major issues of concern currently confronting the profession, the impact of the economic downturn and the best ways to measure and communicate the value of public relations.

During its first meeting of 2009 this past Jan. 24, the Board held a series of discussions to shape a multiyear, multilevel advocacy effort to help build demand for the practice of public relations. Throughout the morning session, which was led by team leaders Leslie J. Backus, APR, Deborah A. Silverman, Ph.D., APR, and Gail A. Winslow-Pine, APR, Board members discussed some of their findings, which included:

• The economic downturn is not only impacting business, but also morale. Many PR professionals feel skittish. However, many also say that they are taking advantage of this time to create a dialogue inside their organizations to reassess, evaluate and plan how they can retain current business and even promote future growth.

• The shifting media landscape (shrinking newsrooms, the growth of new media and developments in technology) is changing how PR professionals do their jobs. Many people are experiencing professional development cutbacks due to budget constraints. Some practitioners are still challenged to quantify the value of public relations to their organizations. And for others, the balancing act is a struggle — trying to keep up job performance while maintaining skill sets and staying up-to-date on trends.

Later that day, three executive-level PR professionals joined the Board for further dialogue. They were: Harvey Greisman, group executive, worldwide communications, MasterCard International, Jim Holtje, senior manager, leadership communications, Siemens Corp. and Aedhmar Hynes, CEO, Text100. John Elsasser, editor-in-chief, PR Tactics and The Strategist, moderated the event.

What’s top of mind in the profession right now
Greisman began the discussion, saying that in light of the current economic environment, senior management is encouraging his company to try to “to do more with less.”

“It’s a great opportunity to look at what we do, to think about how much more efficient we could be, to prioritize more than we ever have and to use technology whenever you can as a means of being more efficient without totally obliterating the one-to-one personal relationships that are also part and parcel of the communicator’s world,” he says.

At MasterCard, he says his team’s main priority is professional development and having “opportunity and [an] environment in which to grow."

Holtje echoes these sentiments, mentioning that several months ago his department at Siemens was reduced. One of the ways that his company is dealing with the idea of doing more with less is a migration to social media — mentioning a blogging event his company recently held called “Values Fest.”

He says that scripted blogs don’t work well, but “when executives got on wearing their real faces, saying something authentic, then there were real responses.” Holtje adds that many people are still in the early stages of learning social media.

“At the end of the day, it’s trying to adopt to a brave new world both in terms of a very difficult economic environment and a challenging environment when it comes to new media,” he says.

Technology won’t suffer as much as other industries during the downturn, Hynes adds, but will continue to grow, as people will always be looking for the next cutting-edge technology.

However, since consumer confidence and sales are down, “marketing is going to get cut right across the board,” she says. “And you can only defy gravity only so long.” She wonders how much public relations will suffer with clients trimming budgets on all levels.

“At a time like this, public relations should be steady or in a growth mode,” Hynes says.

Greisman says that there is a tendency for PR professionals to separate themselves from those who run the day-to-day business, but that they actually need to be those people. It is important for them to think of themselves as business leaders first, and then as talented communicators. “That is not just critical for success, but critical to maintaining survival,” he says.

Making social media part of a company’s overall strategy
Greisman stressed that social media is not a strategy, but that blogs, podcasts and Twitter are the platforms used to convey messages. PR professionals must discern the best vehicle to reach their destination. He emphasizes the importance of employee communications, educating them about the culture of your team, where business is going, the priorities of your organization and their individual roles.

“Externally, one of the biggest problems is suffering from a lack of trust,” he says. “One of the ways you gain that trust is by engaging and by amplifying your communications. And social media really helps you engage.”

Social media channels are less bureaucratic and more responsive to the moment, Greisman says. He mentions the success of President Obama as a metaphor for social media because he used it so well during the campaign. Now it’s acceptable to have this instantaneous form of communication that can reach more people and many demographics.

“For corporations, it’s all about expanding your ecosphere of influencers,” he says. “So we use social media on an external basis to engage, to educate and to build trust among a wide variety of stakeholders whom we’ve never reached before.”

Speaking of relevancy, Hynes says that while people may be excited about Second Life and Twitter now, they will be talking about something else soon because the world is changing so quickly.

“From a social perspective we are dealing with a group of digital immigrants moving to digital natives and getting all of their news online. It’s important to follow the rapid changes in your audiences,” she says. “These people are digital natives who will be our key stakeholders in the future.”

These digital natives have experienced a huge evasion of trust in their lifetimes. Hynes says that they don’t trust government, religion or corporations. She believes that the methods used to influence these people must change drastically — moving from amplifying a message to engaging in dialogue so that they will actually listen what you are saying. The general role of a PR practitioner must be expanded.

“The concept of saying that you can control a message or that you can have spokespeople is gone,” Hynes says, “because every single employee in your company is engaging in communications with your stakeholders whether you like it or not.”

The role of communications will now be engaging with those communicators in a way where they can help shape, determine and influence the message. Hynes also says that corporate social responsibility and internal communications will be essential. “The most important thing you can do is make sure you are authentic throughout your corporation,” she says. “Beyond that, leverage people across the corporation.”

Looking past the recession and focusing on the long-term
Holtje believes that the economy will eventually bounce back, albeit in a different form. While it’s easy to get depressed, he believes that new industries will emerge and we will adapt — creating new audiences and more opportunities for communicators.

“Right now,” Hynes says, “people value the jobs they have if they are paid a good salary and are treated well and if the work they’re doing is interesting and exciting — that is now what the new benefits are.” She says that PR professionals will never learn as much at any other time in their lives than right now, and hard work will pay off.

Holtje says that while social media is important, there is still no substitute for word-of-mouth and face-to-face and communications — 70 percent of which is nonverbal. “If we can give our employees the tools they need to communicate credibly and authentically face-to-face, then we’ve got a powerful communications tool there.”

“One of the elements of authenticity is acknowledging reality,” Greisman adds. Acknowledging a bad quarter doesn’t make you lose credibility — but he adds that you must also tell what you are doing to fix that and how you will change. “You have to give both sides of the story and it doesn’t lessen your authenticity to do that.”

Transparency is vital, says Hynes, and PR professionals must convey messages in an open and honest manner.

“What creates fear is a lack of communication and lack of transparency.”

Editor’s note: An expanded version of this discussion will appear in the spring issue of The Strategist.


Amy Jacques is the associate editor of Tactics and The Strategist Online. E-mail: amy.jacques@prsa.org.

 

For further reading: Recession impacting PR “unevenly,” study shows
 

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