PR Council declares mission to ‘champion earned media’, Michelle Hutton joins Comms Council board
PR Council’s new logo
The newly formed PR Council has laid out its plans for next year, with a mission to ‘champion earned media’.
The PR Council was formed earlier this year by The Communications Council to represent consumer PR agencies. Its launch followed complaints that the Public Relations Institute of Australia – a long-standing PR industry body – was not living up to its remit.
An early coup for the PRC is securing a place for a senior PR executive on the national board of The Communications Council.
Edelman Australia boss Michelle Hutton, the vice chairman of the PRC, becomes one of the few women on the board.
The PR Council – led by chairman Stuart Gregor, the boss of Liquid Ideas – has the following remit:
- Represent the interests of the consumer public relations agencies to other specialties within the marketing communications industry, as well as clients and the wider business community.
- Provide a unified voice on issues facing consumer public relations agencies.
- Develop specific training, advice and best practice projects of relevance to PR professionals.
Gregor told Mumbrella that one of the key tasks of the PRC was to raise the level of professionalism in small PR shops. PR is the most fragmented of the comms disciplines in Australia, with hundreds of shops operating with no more than one or two staff, Gregor observed.
To this end, three initiatives are to launch in the new year.
A small member workshop for PR agencies, which is to take place on 12 February at the Langham, Sydney. Second, an all day workshop featuring a range of speakers and presenters. And a PR course within The Comms Council’s AdSchool, as well as client briefings by way of a client advisory panel.
The PR Council’s new logo was developed by Liquid Ideas’ design team.
Hi Tim,
You may want to add the letter “l” in the work “Pubic” in the second para ASAP 🙂
Graham
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Oops. My bad, thanks for pointing this out Graham. Now amended.
Cheers,
Robin – Mumbrella
Good initiative and all, but I don’t see why the professionalism of small PR shops is singled out. There is shitty PR going on at all levels and in all types of agencies – just as there is really good stuff going on in all of them too. Moreover, plenty of the boutiques are set up by exiles from big-agency land, who got tired of the politics and pressures.
I’m also unclear why it’s only focused on consumer. Corporate PR is just as important and I am sure there are opportunities to boost its profile and professionalism too.
But good to see support and momentum all the same.
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Public Relations Institute of Australia, International Association for Business Communicators, International Association for Public Participation, The Centre for Corporate Public Affairs and now the Public Relations Council… *sigh*
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I agree with Belinda. Singling out the ‘small shops’ seems to be a way for the board members to sidestep poor practice in their own ‘shops.’ If I had a dollar for the number of complaints I get about the practices of big agencies …
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