BOSTON - PR firm CEOs, government spokespersons, and academics researching the communications field all are wrestling with the place of PR in a future filled with an explosion of technology and interdependent global economies. The Public Relations Society of America took on those issues last week, presenting its annual conference here as a kind of clearinghouse to debate whether communicators have the potential to become strategists, maybe even futurists.
A record 2,240 public relations professionals and students took part in four-day conference.
Change management guru Peter Drucker and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich were among the star plenary speakers at the annual gathering.
Drucker's remarks, delivered via live satellite feed from California where the 90-year old professor and prophet resides, were the conference capstone and a vivid display of the promises technology holds for the communications profession.
To much applause, Drucker argued that the role of PR is to bring information about the outside world in to the corporation and to persuade those in management to hear what people are saying, not to communicate the inside world of the company to the greater public.
The conference was titled "Managing Knowledge" but not every presenter, or every attendee, buys into that vision of PR. "I don't believe you can manage knowledge," said Drucker. "Knowledge is what goes on here between your ears."
Several keynote speakers, in fact, argued that PR professionals must bear responsibility for every world force which has an impact on their corporation or organization if they fail to play the role of corporate forecaster. This comes as a clarion call to professionals at times unsure of their role.
Both Reich and Drucker cited the economic collapse in the Far East as an event which any PR professional working in that world should have foreseen and communicated.
Reich warned that 40 percent of the world's economies are contracting and in the U.S. this year alone, 150,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared. The consumer bankruptcy level is at a 20 year high. The global nature of public relations requires PR professionals to keep an eye on these "storm clouds," Reich said.
Taking on Technology
PRSA President-Elect Samuel L. Waltz, also speaking from California, introduced the legendary Drucker who then responded to questions as they were received by fax attendees in Boston and at PRSA chapters receiving the satellite feed in several other locales throughout the nation.
Technology issues were front and center in nearly every workshop, in fact, as PR professionals prepare for full-fledged multimedia Web integration in the wake of the coming increased bandwidth, and struggle with the new challenge of building online relationships with journalists.
Journalists on one panel described the swiftly changing nature of their jobs. Emily Church, New York bureau chief of CBS MarketWatch.com, even predicted that wire services will soon disappear as journalists go straight to the Internet for source material and PR professionals learn to tailor their clients' and companies' Web sites to respond to journalists' individual beats through an interface which sends customized information to the screen according to who logs on and their coverage needs.
AT&T President John D. Zeglis painted a wondrous image of the technological world yet to come, a vision of almost limitless possibilities. He forecasts, for instance, that business-to-business commerce over the Internet would grow from its 1997 mark of $5.5 billion to $300 billion by 2012.
In the Spotlight
Members of the newly-launched Association of Public Relations Firms, representing the corporate side of the profession, met Wednesday following the PRSA conference to launch plans for the trade association.
Another group making it's debut this week was the Counselors to Higher Education, the just-formed PRSA Section of PR practitioners in higher education.
College and university PR pros were previously lumped together in a section with practitioners from non-profits.
About 45 academic PR professionals attended their initial gathering; Curt Carlson, chairman of the new section, said that more than 1,000 PRSA members would be eligible to join the group's ranks.
Collegians in the ranks of the Public Relations Student Society of America encouraged PR professionals to interact with them by affixing stars to the name badges of their elder counterparts who provided career advice or answered their questions.
Those conferees who accumulated 15 stars or more were rewarded with a free full registration to the 1999 PRSA conference.