Why don't "we" get it - Public Relations needs to change.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 at 16:40 
Image by sgursozlyJust in a matter of a couple of days I read 2 news items that made me go "damn, why don't we get it ?" - where the "we" stands for the Public Relations profession and those representing it, myself included.
The first was a phrase in an article by colleagues John Clulow and Richard Morgan in the Communication Director Newsletter of this month;
...If Beder is right, and the consumer is becoming angrier, then corporations have something to fear. This is because the advances in technology that allow companies to modernize and improve their communications are also being increasingly used by the very people the companies wish to target...
Why, when we write about our profession, our techniques, our audiences... do we tend to see things as opposites, as "good & bad" ?
Why do we see our audience, or rather "the people formerly known as the audience" as a "target" ? Are we going to shoot them ? Bombard them with spam messages disguised as press releases ?
The article is partly about the impact of social media on the profession and at the end asks the following question:
Will they [companies] adapt their goals and products to changing opinion, or will communications be able to work around these new forces; or perhaps a combination of the two?
Work around a consumer voicing his feedback about your product or service ? Why would you want to do that ?
Instead, I would recommend every organisation to listen to their customers, through the use of social media if and when it makes sense. You would be amazed at what kind of useful recommendations you would receive, free, for nothing...
The second article came through Ragan's PR Daily.
It spoke about how the Dewey Square Group, a public affairs firm, was caught astroturfing by Matthew Naddler, Editor at GateHouse Media New England. You can read the full story here.
Actions like this give our industry a really bad image... But the thing is that the people setting up these schemes are not the brightest at all.
The Editor in this case just had to check the caller ID and search the web to find out who was behind this. Or as he writes:
What bugs me is that they seem to think I’m stupid. Or maybe lazy. Or both.
As long as professional communicators continue to plan their activities by "looking down on the village from a safe distance" and take the villagers for "stupid people", we will not succeed as a profession.
We will get stuck with our more than 50 year old communications model (opens a PDF) and follow the same faith as traditional newspapers do... They die.
As communicators we need to "become part of the village, mingle with the locals and contribute to the conversations taking place on the market square". We need to become "villagers". And yes that means getting dirty in the mud and listening to people first...
But that's all about fostering relationships, opening doors, adding value and promoting clear and transparent communications... That's what our job is all about, we PR people.
What do you think ?
