What’s wrong with PR?
Last year’s Mumbrella360 saw a debate on the key issues facing the public relations industry.
The video highlights tackle questions including:
- How do you measure PR?
- Is it true that any girl with an Alice band, a golf and a MacBook can set up as an agency?
- Why don’t PRs understand P&Ls?
- Do you need to be an ex-journo to effectively pitch a story?
- Why are there so few men in PR?
- Can coverage be bought in Mumbrella?
- Does the PR industry need to PR itself?
Featuring:
- Stuart Gregor, Liquid Ideas
- Andrea Kerekes, Access PR
- Renee Creer
- Lex Deasley, Pulse
- Simone Drewry, Mango
- Martin Lane, Focal Attractions
- Emma Gardiner, She Goes
Public relations will be among the topics covered at this year’s Mumbrella360, which takes place at Sydney’s Hilton hotel on June 6 and 7. Discounted earlybird tickets are currently available on the Mumbrella360 website.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Stuart Gregor
Great video, although disgusted at the AAP comment. No wonder PR has a bad name, let her walk a day in AAP journo’s shoes and she would retract that biased comment. Shame a few more of us in PR haven’t worked as journalists………
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For gods sake Tim you really do hate PRs don’t you. Give it up
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Hi PeteyPie,
You haven’t watched the video, have you?
Cheers,
Tim – M umbrella
Sorry, too busy cleaning up a mess created by an overpaid ad agency to watch this in full.
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Interesting vid – why all the continued fuss around measurements?. Here at HPR we measure – or at least offer ROI style measurements specific to each campaign – that’s what all professionla PRs have been doing for years. If your PR doesn’t know how to meausre their own campaign their alice band is probably on too tight.
If the PRIA doesn’t know how to PR the industry then who should?
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only Martin Lane seems to get it
when will people get over the fact that if you need to measure PR you’re probably not managing your client or senior internal relationship closely enough?
frankly the minor obsession with this simply highlights how little so many PR people understand about business
given the extremely low cost relative to advertising media spend, the value should be self-evident and if not you should be simply making that point
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So we need men in the industry for it to be taken seriously, and by improving PR we will finally attract ‘good people’ (MEN) to it. Right.
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Great video, spot on guys!
Wish all my clients could watch this.
let us know when we find some solutions and am curious to know how we will PR the PR industry
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YES Jim MacNamara is right – PR is about SO much more than publicity.
I have worked in public relations for 10 years and about 10% of my working life is spent on media relations.
It is up to PR practitioners to educate people (namely, dominant coalition – borrowing that term from Jim!) about the value of the profession beyond pitching stories and throwing parties. I believe mandatory registration and education is a huge part of this.
But until the industry itself takes this seriously and does something about it we can’t blame others for subscribing to the Samantha Jones stereotypes.
Regarding measurement – yes it is an issue, because PR is based on longevity of benefit, not instant results for the bottom line. It is up to PR to demonstrate value beyond numbers.
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Interesting to watch these opinions. Thanks Mumbrella.
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all the strategic ‘longevity of benefit’ stuff might make you feel good if you don’t like people thinking you’re a party planner – but unless you’re getting media results (keeping bad news out, getting good news in) you’ll find yourself shown the door by clients and employers
in the corporate and financial world, where most PR men seem to live, this is highly valued and remunerated.
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Spot on beezlebub – the first this our corp clients ask is about media results – sure everything else if valuable too – but it’s all in context
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I agree with your beezlebub, media results are important, highly valued and remunerated, especially in the corporate world – that speaks to my point exactly. But it does not exclude the argument re measurement. Even the best media results are hard to define using most corporate measurement matrices (AVE doesn’t stack up). Media results are also about ‘longevity of benefit’ as opposed to immediate contribution to the bottom line.
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Thanks Mumbrella for posting this. Definitely agree that PR’s perceived female orientation and its actual female orientation, does hinder more males from coming into the industry. Males who have a more stable marketing background.
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Yes Matthew, because the marketing that men study at university is “male marketing”. The stable one. Not that shaky old “female marketing”.
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Matthew – I am hoping that your post is a case of poor choice of language.
Males who have a ‘more stable marketing background’…than who?
I am honestly interested in ascertaining exactly what you mean by this.
Meanwhile, coming back to the original subject of this post, there are some really interesting white papers about the measurement of PR success and ROI available at the AMEC website: http://amecorg.com/white-papers-and-reports/.
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