Looking Back at Looking Forward

Working on the fifth edition of The Public Relations Handbook, I realised that I have been writing about the future of the industry for well over a decade. So it felt like a good time to review my crystal-ball gazing to see whether any of the issues that were raised in 2001 had been resolved by 2015.

• 1st edition 2001
  • – Change the name of the industry
  • – Reputation
  • – Quality of entrants and training
  • – Measuring results
  • – Globalisation
  • – New technology
  • – internet – Regulation

In 2001 there was a real debate about whether we should change the name of the industry. This was fuelled by opinions that this might solve the bad reputation of PR, and by a feeling that the name did not reflect what we do. Favoured alternatives were communications; strategic communications; reputation management; organisational communications; corporate or marketing communications; professional communications. On the other hand, several practitioners thought that it was an accurate name, that we do forge relationships with the public. There was also a concern that this would look like passing off and what we would advise clients against – who would have been convinced if we renamed British beef during the BSE crisis? Linked to this there was a concern about PR’s reputation – that its image in the media was linked with notorious practitioners such as Max Clifford (who has since become even more notorious when convicted of child sex abuse in 2015), Alastair Campbell and Sophie Wessex. The quality of entrants was a concern and there was a fear that PR was not attracting the top people. Evaluating results and proving return on investment were felt to be necessary to give PR more value in the boardroom. Globalisation was on the agenda both because of a feeling that there was an uneven development of PR and professional practice across the world, and that PR practitioners needed to demonstrate global knowledge to work in the new corporations. The effect of the internet in making information more readily available was discussed, as well as the need for a quicker speed of response. Despite concerns about cowboy operators, regulation of the industry by law was not supported.

• 2nd edition 2004
  • – Reputation of PR
  • – Quality of entrants and training
  • – Measuring results
  • – New technology – internet
  • – Regulation

By 2004 the thought of changing the name was now irrelevant. A PR Week survey had revealed that 85 per cent of CEOs felt effective communications affected share price and 80 per cent felt that PR had become more important to their company. In a crisis, 56 per cent would turn to their PR advisors first (Leyland 1999). However, the quality of entrants and training and the need to measure results appeared to be just as thorny as in 2001. The effects of the internet and regulation were still being debated.

• 3rd edition 2008
  • – Reputation of PR
  • – Does PR own reputation?
  • – Improving professional competence
  • – Trust
  • – PR-isation of the media

In 2008 we were still concerned about industry reputation, although Danny Moss (2008, personal communication) felt that better educated practitioners were getting PR into the boardroom. Murray and White (2004) suggested that CEOs rather than PR owned reputation, but that PR had a role in reputation management. Research into what PR practitioners actually did had raised more questions about competence. Consultancies appeared to spend more on account management than actually doing the job.

In terms of trust, CEOs, politicians, union reps and PR practitioners were regarded as the least credible sources of information. Most people preferred to trust ‘a person like me’ and Murray (2006) suggested that this reflected a move from deference to reference.

New technology, globalisation and measuring results had all moved into their own chapters, becoming current corporate concerns rather than future issues. Criticism of the industry had come from journalists who felt that PR-sourced information was being used to the detriment of journalistic integrity.

• 4th edition 2011
  • – Reputation of PR
  • – Does PR own reputation?
  • – Improving professional competence
  • – Trust
  • – PR-isation of the media
  • – New technology – a new model of practice

Gregory (2011, personal communication) contributed to the discussion of reputation by adding that when PR could clearly demonstrate it was a profession characterised by integrity, then the negative perception would change. Membership of professional organisations was falling though. Rather than welcoming social media as a way of enabling dialogue with publics, many practitioners saw it as a threat. If everyone could communicate with everyone, who needed PR professionals? Social media was also seen as a way of redressing the balance for campaign and pressure groups. Most organisations were still using it in a one-way fashion, rather than exploiting the opportunity to engage, and IPA (2010) research showed that 75 per cent of communication still took place face to face.

Over the past 15 years, the industry has continued to be concerned with its own reputation, but there does not seem to have been much progress. This has led to a continuing debate about the nature of trust, the competence and credibility of practitioners and whether PR can ever be a profession. Social media has not led to a new model of PR and Holmes (2009) declared that, ‘For good PR people, digital changes nothing’. The industry in the UK was still hampered by its lack of diversity. Although two-thirds of the industry was female, this was not reflected by the gender balance at the top (PRCA 2013). Referring to the drive for graduate-only entry, then CIPR CEO Jane Wilson (2011, personal communication) reflected, ‘This would mean that we will not be a profession which is reflective of the society we represent.’

Profession or Professional?

A decade ago, Moss (MMU 2004, personal communication), felt that the perception of PR was indeed changing:

Dr Dejan Vercˇicˇ, (President EUPRERA 2004, personal communication) was also optimistic: ‘There can be no doubt that public relations entered the twenty-first century as one of the governing institutions of our post-modern society.’

Improving professional competence, based on greater investment in training, was one of the issues to emerge from the DTI/IPR (2003) research. ‘Professionalisation of the industry is key to the future, and this is inextricably linked to education and CPD’, said Ralph Tench, then course leader at Leeds Metropolitan University (2004, personal communication).

Bowden Green (2006) carried out research into how CIPR members in the southwest of England practised PR and how they perceived it. He found that two-thirds of them regarded PR as projecting favourable messages through managing relationships with the media. Fewer than half considered PR a profession.

The debate about professional versus professionalism reared its head again in 2015. Waddington (2015) felt that this year would signal a ‘march towards professionalism’. He announced that the CIPR would be shifting its focus back to basics, on the reasons why it was established in the first place and promoting professionalism in practitioners in the public interest. He added that this would involve campaigning on standards, equality and gender in the industry.

Ingham (2015), however, felt that this ‘introspection’ was missing the point. He felt that practitioners didn’t want to be a profession, but instead be seen as professional, well remunerated and respected. In the face of the growth in the industry, with strong recruitment, profits and influence, he suggested that wanting to be loved and achieving professional status was a weakness. He offered an alternative focus from the PRCA on tangible measurable examples such as share prices and raising awareness.

This illustrates the contradiction reported by the CIPR’s State of the Profession (2015a) survey which found that there was ‘a near universal desire to be considered professional’, and that 96 per cent of practitioners considered it important to them. However, professional standards were defined as satisfying clients, and there was a lack of commitment to professional development, investment in qualifications or valuing signing up to codes of conduct. With the two progessional bodies in the UK disagreeing on whether PR should be a profession or not, and what might constitute Gregory’s (2011, personal communication) condition of integrity, this contradiction does not look as if it will be resolved any time soon.

What Do Practitioners Do?

With the emphasis on PR as a management function and the need to be taken seriously by the dominant coalition, De Santo and Moss (2004) recorded what PR managers actually did. They carried out interviews with practitioners in the UK and US and found that rather than fitting Broom’s role typology, managers spent most of their time in meetings, both internal (UK, 16 per cent of time; US, 24 per cent) and external (UK, 31 per cent; US, 15 per cent). One fifth of managers’ time was taken up by administration tasks, while troubleshooting took up 7 per cent of UK managers’ time and 15 per cent in the US. While management theorists such as Fayol defined management as a set of activities designed to enable managers to forecast and plan, organise, command, coordinate and control, only 10 per cent of PR managers’ time was spent in planning. While some of the respondents were members of the top management team and were taken seriously, most had little involvement in policy making within organisations.

While the 2006 PR Week Survey found that practitioners were working more hours (Johnson 2007), it was questionable whether these long hours were productive. Research by Time Act Solutions with 50 agencies found that they were spending a staggering 45 per cent of their time on account management and reporting back, but less than 20 per cent on media relations – the main task recorded. Strategic counsel took up 0.6 per cent of their time. They seemed to be spending more time getting authorised than actually doing the job. While smaller agencies seemed to be more efficient, spending 42 per cent of time on media relations plus 15 per cent on writing press releases, still only 4 per cent was spent on counselling clients. This did not give a picture of an industry engaged in board-level activity (Gray 2006b).

The CIPR’s (2015a) State of the Profession survey found that inter-departmental convergence was a growing trend. More than half of respondents reported taking on new responsibilities in marketing, HR and customer service. There was still a concern with a digital skills gap, as technical skills were considered the weakest while traditional forms of written communications, interpersonal skills and creativity were considered the strongest. Competences in demand still focused on traditional PR skills, with digital skills appearing in the list of competences for junior staff but not for senior staff.

Practitioners still suffer from an imbalance between work and life. The PRCA Census (2013) found that over half of respondents answered emails or made calls out of hours and that most were working ten hours or more above contract. Zerfass et al. (2015) found that the majority of practitioners were working well beyond their contracted hours, with 47.2 per cent stating that they worked 25 per cent more than they were contracted for, and 8.8 per cent working 50 per cent more than they had to. However, two-thirds expressed satisfaction with their job. The CIPR (2015a) reported a similar story. While over half of senior practitioners reported increased stress, 63 per cent still said that they enjoyed their jobs. The vast majority (70 per cent) worked in organisations with a flexible working culture but found it hard to make this work in PR.

Changing the Model

Changes in technology and the development of social media have been offered as both a driver and a reason for a fundamental shift in the way that public relations is being and should be practised. Flint (2009) suggested that dialogue with stakeholders was the way forward and that the age of ‘we talk you listen’ was gone. Smith (2010) likened the quality of communications via the internet to ‘conversations, not shouting’, but warned, ‘We will actually have to know what we are talking about’.

Wright and Hinson (2010) found that 85 per cent of public relations practitioners believed that new communications media was changing the way that organisations communicate. They cited Gillan’s (2009) opinion that social media had ended the age of one way messaging. However, while 90 per cent of practitioners agreed that social media should be measured, only 38 per cent were actually doing it. While social media had grown dramatically, especially since the launch of Twitter in 2006, most internet users were still blending online and traditional sources to gather information. The latter were regarded as more likely to be accurate, truthful, credible and ethical. The use of social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn continued to rise and provide an additional way of communicating with targeted audiences.

Internal communications has also been affected by developments in digital communications. Wright and Hinson (2010) found that the blogosphere was empowering employees, and that positive comments largely outweighed the negative. Smith (2010) felt:

Zerfass et al. (2015) found that technology was significantly affecting the way that practitioners worked. They cited Berger and Meng (2014) as remarking that dealing with speed and information flow was not new and was going to stay. While new technology created more opportunities for communicating with publics, it also increased pressure. Young professionals especially reported feeling an obligation to be always online.

Galbraith (2015) suggested that Connectivity was one of the new five ‘Cs’ of communication. The shift to the use of mobile technology has increased the available channels for people to access information. He felt that Creativity is now business critical, involving story-telling and visual-led communication to catch attention. The old demographic boundaries are becoming blurred as Consumers expect personalised communications. His other Cs, Culture and Crisis, relate to a growing expectation that companies need to show what they stand for, beyond profits, and that the erosion of trust has led to many organisations being overwhelmed by the impact of social media.

The EUPRERA research project, European Communication Monitor (Tench and Yeomans 2009), found that 75 per cent of communications professionals felt they were taken seriously by senior management, with 64 per cent involved in decision making. The top issue was felt to be how to link business strategy and communications. By 2015 (Zerfass et al. 2015), the ECM found that practitioners were not concerned with this as they had managed to create a stronger alignment with top management. A new model of excellence was proposed, evaluating the internal standing of the communication function within the organisation as well as external results. They suggested that 21.2 per cent of organisations in their survey could be classed as ‘excellent’ according to their criteria, and that they were more likely to be in joint stock companies and least likely to be in the public sector.

While the PRCA Census (2013) showed that the industry in the UK had grown by £2 billion in the previous two years and was now worth £9.62 billion to the economy, Phillips (cited in Farey-Jones 2015) announced, ‘Trust me, PR is dead’. He put forward a new model of PR, stating that the industry had been guilty of pandering to CEOs that wanted to manage the message rather than let people speak for themselves. He advised practitioners to be like a ‘social activist’ and get back to providing public value, not just for corporations. Enabling employees and outsiders to have a chance to participate in business decisions should be part of the new model. This model is far from new, as Moloney (2006a) proposed communicative equality among government and other resource-rich institutions as well as NGOs, through public subsidy of PR for those organisations that could afford it. If all voices who want to speak are audible to all who want to listen, this would lead to more varied and informed public debates. In this way, the positive effects of PR techniques might outweigh the negative – just.

Jobs for the Boys

Disappointingly, there continues to be a disparity between men and women, with more men in senior positions. In 2010, 18 per cent of men in the industry were directors, against 13 per cent of women (CIPR 2010b). The most striking finding from the State of the Profession survey in 2015 (CIPR) was that gender appeared to be the third most influential factor in determining the salary of men and women. This amounted to a disparity of £8,348 that could not be accounted for by level of seniority or length of experience in PR.

Despite this fairly stark finding, Rachel Friend (cited in Lafferty 2015), president of the Women in PR network stated that ‘This is not a PR industry issue; it is a working mothers’ dilemma’. She was referring to the fact that equal salaries are common at the beginning of a practitioner’s career, while a disparity appears at officer level, is temporarily eliminated at manager level and then reappears at director level. This reflects Yeomans’ (2014) review of research into women in PR, where she cited Wrigley’s finding that there was a ‘negotiated resignation’ to the glass ceiling in PR. Some women denied its existence and adapted male strategies for advancement. It also echoes the opinion of John Lavelle, CEO of the CIPR in 1995 when I was undertaking my own investigation of the glass ceiling in PR, who said that comparing the salaries of men and women in the industry would be like comparing ‘apples and pears’, and that the two were completely different things.

Yeomans (2014) confirmed that the assumption of gender equality blinded young women and men to gender issues in the workplace. She suggested that it was the responsibility of academics teaching on PR degrees (where women may be up to 90 per cent of the undergraduate cohort) to equip students to negotiate their salaries to try and eliminate this disparity.

Moore (2015) reviewed the Athena doctrine. Authors John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio conducted an in-depth survey of 64,000 people across 13 countries. They set out to define masculine and feminine traits and measure attitudes towards them. Half of the sample classified 125 behavioural traits as masculine, feminine or neither. They then gave the same traits to the other half of the sample and asked them to rate them in importance to leadership. They found that there was a dissatisfaction with masculine traits and that ‘feminine thinking is vital to making the world a better place’. They argued that feminine values created more effective organisational strategies and concluded that feminine thinking should be the ‘operating system’ for the twenty-first century.

Moore (ibid.) found a reluctance in those she interviewed about her article to claim the superiority of feminine thinking. Heather Baker, CEO of a PR consultancy, said, ‘I hate the term “feminine values”, but I guess there are some qualities more common to women than men.’ Denise Kaufman, CEO of Ketchum London, naively concluded: ‘It’s about enabling everyone to be their best self, whether that happens to be a man or a woman.’ She also noted a difference in men and women’s confidence in negotiating salary. Julia Meighan, CEO of a recruitment company, added ‘All evidence points to the fact that the most successful organisations have more diverse leadership teams.’

Lafferty (2015) reports that the CIPR strategy is to raise awareness of an employer’s legal obligations with regard to equal pay. As the Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970, this seems like a weak response – many employers, not just those in PR, have resisted their legal obligations for over 40 years. It also seems simplistic to focus on a perceived weakness in women to negotiate their own salaries as the main reason for the disparity in pay. Maybe the fact that this disparity has now been recognised and quantified by the CIPR is some progress and that it is no longer the difference between ‘apples and pears’.

Colour Blindness

The PR industry in the UK continues to be overwhelmingly white and middle class. The CIPR (2015b) found that while the majority of practitioners had received their education in a comprehensive school, one third had attended a grammar or independent fee-paying school, double the national average. At senior management level, 25 per cent were likely to have had private education. A majority (84 per cent) of practitioners were graduates, with one third of those from a Russell Group university. At director level, the latter proportion rose to 40 per cent. Thus PR practitioners are disproportionately likely to have had private education and been to a prestigious university.

Only 9 per cent of respondents identified as from a black or ethnic minority (BME) and 6 per cent as disabled. This is an improvement from 2010, when 5 per cent were from BME and only 0.4 per cent of CIPR membership was disabled (CIPR 2010b). This issue needs to be addressed if the industry is to address its concern of attracting the best talent. The PRCA (2011) set out its agenda for broadening access with a call to eliminate unpaid internships to make the industry less elitist, stating that this was ‘critical to our future’. Latest figures indicate that 14 per cent of the UK population is from BME groups and that this could double to 20–30 per cent of the population by 2050 (Policy Exchange 2014).

Ingham (2015) built on the PRCA agenda by stating that, ‘Equality of opportunity needs to exist within the PR industry just as much as it does in every part of life.’ He announced that the PRCA Diversity Network wanted to create ‘real change’ and encourage young people from diverse backgrounds to join the PR industry. Setting up a joint internships programme with PR Week that was ‘meaningful, structured and salaried’, was to be the first step.

Benady (2015) reported that there had been hard evidence to support the case for ethnic diversity. However, he cited a recent research project by McKinsey (2014) which had found a statistically significant relationship between a more diverse leadership and better financial performance. While companies in the top quartile for gender diversity of a sample of 366 public companies in the US, UK and Canada were 15 per cent more likely to have higher financial returns, this more than doubled to 35 per cent when ethnic diversity was examined. The report’s co-author, Denis Layton, suspected that ‘diversity is a marker of good general management’, but warned that diversity does not just happen and companies needed to have ‘a robust transformational programme that explicitly addresses unconscious bias’. While diversity and equality are moral issues, it is clear that the business case for both is becoming ever stronger.

Glacial Shift

As we have seen, several issues continue to affect the profession.

The opportunities offered by developments in new technology are being addressed. Senior PR practitioners are being admitted to the top table. Once there, they need to ensure that they are responding to stakeholder expectations in the face of growing distrust of the corporate agenda.

In the second edition, it was suggested that the phrase ‘it’s only a PR exercise’ might disappear from common usage as a recognition of the difference between PR and lying. This was naïve in the face of the PR Week debate where the notion that lying was acceptable was supported. George Pilcher (2007), who proposed the motion that ‘public relations has a duty to tell the truth’ and lost, posed the question: ‘How can we instruct the PR profession of the future to manage the truth if they don’t know what it is?’ The CIPR’s achievement of Chartered status had not affected perceptions even of practitioners, so how the industry expected its reputation to improve was unclear. Gooderham’s (2009) advice to clients, ‘If you cannot communicate, how will anyone follow your lead?’ could well still be applied to the public relations industry itself.

The tug of war over professional status continues, yet the industry continues to thrive despite its questionable reputation. At last, gender and racial inequality seem to have risen to the top of the pile for the professional bodies that may help to create an industry that is fit for purpose in an increasingly diverse environment.

So where next? That question will be mainly answered by the new entrants to the industry. I recently asked a group of PR undergraduates whether they felt PR had a good reputation and the answer was a resounding ‘no’. However, the same group of students was adamant that they would be able to change this when they emerged into the workplace. I, for one, will be cheering them on!