PR Council boss says bodies should merge before PRIA ‘implodes’
Stuart Gregor Chair of the PRC
Chair of the Communications Council’s sub group the Public Relations Council (PRC) Stuart Gregor has called on the public relations industry to come together under the Communications Council.
Gregor made his remarks following the most recent round of infighting at the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA), which saw Mike Watson replace Terri-Helen Gaynor as national president and much of the national board of PRIA resign en masse, following the leadership change.
“We would like to talk to them as part of the Communications Council and the Public Relations Council and see what we can do,” Gregor told Mumbrella.
Its crazy to suggest that the PRIA is imploding. The PRIA always has been more than just its board. Its a member-based body to which hundreds of members volunteer to improve the industry. It delivers much including contributing to the development of international guidelines on measurement, guidelines on employing interns, a robus awards scheme and an agency benchmark with more than 13 years of data behind it. Members and volunteers (of which I am one) remain strong, focused and involved.
“I have to give state and territory divisions time to transition their membership, said Watson. “I mean some of them have been dumped without a state president.”
Wha?
I’m not filled with a lot of confidence in Mike’s abilities at Issues Management. Not really making the membership of the PRIA feel terribly valued having been ‘dumped’ by their State-based Presidents.
Not a great approach to membership recruitment/retention.
Nice attention grabber Stuart, but your merger proposition would be like Crazy Charlie’s Phones taking over Telstra. The PRIA has roughly 1000 members in all states and territories and has been around since 1949, The Comms Council was formed last year, it’s members are mostly consumer PR agencies based in Sydney, and its membership would likely fill a couple of phone booths. The PRIA doesn’t need another offshoot group representing consultants – they’ve already got one called the Registered Consultants Group who are just as self-serving as the Comms Council. I think most members will say ‘thanks, but no thanks”
”We have a wide diversity of members who are interested in consumer (PR) and marketing communications and a lot of them do that sort of stuff. However, we also represent other specialist interests within the communication industry, not the communications industry.”
Is it just me, or is Watson repeating himself here? He’s basically saying the org covers corp, public affairs and consumer comms I think, but that quote needs some editing!
Talk about opportunism from the Public Relations Council’s Chair! Why on earth would members of the PRIA want to join his group when we have a long established, generally well run organisation which is serving its members and has done so for decades. The withdrawal of the former President’s nomination from the ballot last week came after Mike Watson apparently received more proxy votes than she did and it looked like she would lose. Then came the dummy spit – the announcement she was resignation from everything she has been involved in within the PRIA and also resignation as a PRIA member. Her supporters on the National Board and States also spat the dummy in the guise of giving the new President the chance of a new Board. If you lose, you lose gracefully and continue to work within your organisation. As for the claims being made that lobbying for Mike Watson leading up to the election was being driven by The Fellows is totally wrong and smacks of mischievous spin. I’ve been a Fellow for several years and no-one lobbied me or anyone I know from the College of Fellows and I wasn’t approached to give Mike my proxy. I think that because Mike has been the Officer for the College of Fellows some people have added two and two and come up with five. It’s been like watching children in the sandpit.
this is the reason pr has a bad name.