Near his 100th birthday in the early 1990s, Edward Bernays, who is considered the father of public relations, campaigned unsuccessfully to get legislation passed in
Massachusetts and other states that would have required the licensing of public-relations practitioners, sparking a big debate in the PR profession.'
Here we go again.
After several years of making major improvements, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has started to offer an upgraded version of the PR accreditation exam.
Turnout has reportedly been low, but we're more interested in what the 'APR' designation is worth once it's burned onto your business card. A survey conducted in April by the
Universal Accreditation Board (UAB) and distributed to nearly 4,460 accredited PR pros found significant gaps between the "Expected" benefits of the APR moniker and the
"Realized" ones (see charts).
"We need to do a much better job of getting the designation out to HR managers, chief marketing officers and the people who do the PR hiring," says Blake Lewis, 2005 chair of
the UAB. "We're not going to accrue the full level of expected [APR] benefits until we start to educate the people who can make a difference."
Others, however, say that regardless of better outreach efforts by the UAB, the APR designation doesn't count for much near the tippy-top.
Bill Heyman, President-Founder of Heyman Associates (New York City), which is one of the top executive search firms specializing in corporate communications, says
questions about the value of APR is like déja vu all over again. "This has been a question I've been asked for the 20+ years I've been doing this, and this answer is no [client]
has ever asked us for an APR designation in all that time."
Ken Kerrigan Deputy Director, Americas Public Relations, Ernst & Young, says the "APR label has to be a CPA equivalent" by having it state licensed "the same way
every other profession has. Otherwise, the PRSA should take the money it spends on administering and marketing the APR exam and apply it to a broader ethics program for the
profession."
However, Steve Lubetkin, a PRSA board member and liaison to the APR marketing committee, says that giving the states authority to regulate PR invites into the argument First
Amendment and free speech issues. "People are going to argue about [the merits of APR] whether it's regulated by the states or not," says Lubetkin, who is managing partner of
Lubetkin & Co. Communications (Cherry Hill, N.J.). "You may not get a raise from it, but it shows you have gone the extra mile in professional development."