It's 1997 and the image makers are finding that one of the images they're being charged with making is their own.
That's what PR professionals told PR NEWS when asked about the issues that will drive their trade in the year to come. Or as Delena Roth of Columbus, Ohio-based Lord, Sullivan & Yoder PR told us: "What we need is a PR campaign for PR --we need to do some image control."
But that's not the only new year's resolution of agency and corporate PR executives. A number of other key issues will influence PR in the next 12 months. They include:
- How the Internet will be tapped by those in PR;
- Using intranets to maximize employee relations;
- Whether the swelling PR trade will attract enough qualified people;
- The need for PR practitioners to redefine their relationships with those in the media (which is part of that aforementioned image issue);
- The continued repositioning of PR as way for corporate America to reach its bottomline; and
- PR efforts branching into foreign markets.
"What we need to continue to ask is 'What does the PR function deliver to the bottom line?'" said David Schoeneck, director of PR for Minneapolis-based National Car Rental System Inc. "Smart managers understand the impact PR has on the bottomline. Today people are more aware of PR's ability to defend an enterprise and affect the bottomline."
Schoeneck said that because the PR industry has grown in recent years, it's led to several recent nuances: Namely that top executives within companies, as well as those who deal with PR people beyond the corporate environment, are beginning to see that being a PR person "isn't just sending out a bunch of press releases and showing your boss a pile of newspaper clips."
"Upper management is holding PR practitioners a lot more accountable today," Schoeneck added, and PR specialists are being seen more as consulting tacticians than creative copy writers.
"The definition of what PR is has changed," agreed Amanda Brown-Olmstead of ABOA in Atlanta. "Much of what we're facing is how we position this industry for growth as well as how adept we become at reputation management."
Brown-Olmstead is a fitting example of how PR has evolved through the years. Twenty five years ago, Brown-Olmstead called her business Creative Consulting - a name which, quite obviously, mirrored the more touchy-feely, expressive side of PR.
But in 1997, just as Brown-Olmstead has done in most recent years, she promotes her company for offering strategic communications.
"We have to beyond the stigma that we're just good at planning special events," Brown-Olmstead added. "What we're doing now is big picture thinking." And that thinking, according to Brown-Olmstead, will partly hinge on how PR professionals use the interactivity the World Wide Web offers to deliver their messages.
"In PR, we're always being preached at that PR is supposed to be a dialogue," said Roth. "But most of the tools (newsletters, press releases) we used in the past were one way. ow, we have the Internet and we have almost instant feedback." And a way, Roth admitted, to go around the press to reach key audiences.
"We are not just high-priced consultants pulling puppet strings," Roth added, referring to attitudes about PR people by some journalists. "The issues that keep bubbling up for PR practitioners is what image others have of PR, what is PR and how are we portrayed in the media?"
Greg Leaf, senior vice president/director of PR for Miller Meester Advertising, Minneapolis, also believes that one of the most pressing issues PR practitioners will face this year - and into the next millennium - is how PR professionals are viewed by others, including upper management.
"I see that the most important issues this year will be leadership, credibility and attracting talent as this industry grows," said Leaf.
Leaf believes part of the struggle happening within the trenches of PR is tied to a lack of industry leadership. It's a role he said the New York-based Public Relations Society of America should accept to help bolster the image of PR.
Jim Pulver, VP of corporate communications for Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which serves about 2.5 million customers in the Western Pennsylvania area, echoed Leaf's opinion that PRSA needs to take a stronger leadership role.
"PRSA tends to pigeonhole the PR practitioner as primarily handling non-product publicity and media relations," Pulver said. Instead, PR has transitioned - and continues to broaden - to include helping corporations reach their marketing objectives; working on product publicity; and becoming major players in public issues management and government relations.
"PRSA needs to be more responsive to those in the media," Leaf added. "In fact, there needs to be a better overall understanding of the news media by those in PR. Five or 10 years ago, people were coming out of a journalism background but today we're seeing less talented writers and PR professionals who are weak in their understanding of the media."
In fact, Arlington, Va.-based Rockwell International Corp.'s Director of International Communications and Public Affairs William D. Mellon ranked media relations as the No. 1 PR priority (followed by employee and marketing communications) in 1997.
Mellon said today's technologies, specifically the World Wide Web and internal communication systems such as intranets, are giving PR experts new tools. For instance, press releases for Rockwell's four major businesses (which vary from distributing avionic devises to goods for the automotive industry) are placed online via the corporation's home page (http://www.rockwell.com).
And in-house, Mellon said the business relies heavily on intranets to reach its employees to provide information on benefits and to update news about the company's philanthropic works. However, Mellon said Rockwell also uses its intranet to reveal finalized corporate deals such as mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, spin-offs and overseas partnerships - all business areas that will see more activity as globalization becomes part of the fiber of corporate America.
"It's becoming more and more important to speak your customer's language, sometimes literally," said Karen Berg, president of CommCore Communication Strategies in White Plains, N.Y. "Issues facing PR professionals this year include having a solid understanding of cultural differences within your target markets."
Berg was among the PR practitioners who pointed out that how well PR staffers fare in 1997 is contingent upon how responsive they are to senior executives, the ones making the policies and decisions they are responsible for communicating.
It's a role Brown-Olmstead thinks is key: the PR person as the "corporate shrink," the one who will help companies realize "what's the right thing" to do.
"It's the PR professionals who are establishing direct lines to CEOs and it's the PR people who are helping companies not send mixed messages," Brown-Olmstead concluded. * Today, we're providing counsel, advice and analysis."
(Lord, Sulivan & Yoder, Delena Roth, 614/846-8500; National Car Rental System Inc., David Schoeneck, 612/830-2322; ABOA, Amanda Brown-Olmstead, 404/659-0919; Miller Meester Advertising, Greg Leaf, 612/337-6668; Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jim Pulver, 412/255-8226; Rockwell International Corp., William Mellon, 703/412-6670; CommCore Communication Strategies, Karen Berg, 914/684-2330)