Well, here we are. Still just days into the New Year. Time to turn over a new leaf. Start a new chapter in our personal or professional lives. Pick your metaphor; it feels good. Enter 2010 refreshed and re-energized.
Apparently what characterizes our optimism at the Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education – the Institute – is not necessarily mainstream. The lead in the weekend Wall Street Journal claimed: “Few decades have been as resolutely dismal as this past one, which is thankfully all over.” There have been many similar pronouncements about the times in which we live.
Instead, I draw inspiration from a new book, Sonic Boom, by Gregg Easterbrook. The author steps back from the drumbeat of headlines and considers larger trends and concludes, rightly, I believe, that we are at the front end of the phenomenon of globalization. The positive aspects – “ease of communications, more freedom of speech, markets closely attuned to consumer demand, rising education levels in the developing world” – are in the early stages. The world is going to become a lot more “global,” and stress-inducing, dwarfing anything before now.
Easterbrook relies on many striking facts, including The National Academy of Sciences estimate that 85 percent of economic growth is caused by new ideas. Indeed, the world economy depends on innovative ideas that arise with entrepreneurs, are backed by venture capitalists and can be rapidly, cheaply spread to much of the globe.
Institute Trustee Rob Flaherty strikes a similar theme when he describes the Institute’s mission to bridge the academic and practitioner communities in public relations. When we identify and pursue research, contributors (think of them as VC’s) ultimately decide funding based on practical applicability to what companies, clients, constituents and stakeholders need in their day-to-day lives, not on of something done solely to prove an academic point.
Finding this middle ground, Rob says, where the discipline of academic research meets the real-world challenges facing our companies and clients is a marketplace-driven approach that can make the Institute’s research immediately applicable and more valuable.
Building that bridge between the academy and the profession is a journey, remains the Institute’s fundamental mission, and causes me to believe that we who work in public relations still are at the front end of really big opportunities in our increasingly global economies and societies. In the United States alone, employment for public-relations positions should increase 24 percent by 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
With the benefit of the recent holiday respite, a good book (and the clock ticking toward a January discussion with the Executive Committee of the Institute’s Board), I drafted a new operating plan for the Institute. It provides Trustees and Staff with a high-level overview of 2010 initiatives designed to foster achievement of the mission and goals identified in our Five-Year Strategic Plan.
These 2010 initiatives are defined broadly (and in order) by four major pillars:
1. Refocus on Mission: Public Relations Research
Support research that adds depth to knowledge in public relations. Provide fresh thinking and insights that enable people in both academic and professional communities to better understand our rapidly changing global environment and to use public relations to help drive change in our companies and client organizations.
2. Outreach and Education
Create dialogue. Be the moderator of discussions in public relations education and in the profession. Create more interaction and programming that offers persuasive research, practical advice and measurement and evaluation tools and techniques.
3. Thought Leadership
Position the Institute by its thought leadership, always seeking to demonstrate the impact and value of public relations solutions.
4. Operational Excellence
Ensure that the Institute operates efficiently and effectively in our fast-changing profession and business environment, has the resources it needs, maintains ethical practices with an emphasis on mission, and is transparent and accountable to its Trustees, donors and constituents.
Stay tuned to this website (which itself will be rebuilt in 2010) to access the knowledge we assemble for our profession, and please join our conversation.
Thanks, again, for the opportunity to advocate for our great profession.
Happy New Year!
Bob Grupp
President and CEO
Institute for Public Relations
“Public relations, done right (and it will have to be done right in the high-pressure, high-stakes decade ahead of us) aligns the behavior of organizations with the expectations of the society in which they operate.”
Yes, Paul, couldn’t agree more. Now if we could just get CEOs to care about that, we’d have it made. But they don’t care about it, because all CEOs want three things: 1) eliminate competition; 2) avoid taxes; 3) circumvent or escape regulation. Unless that mindset changes, nothing else will.
Posted by: Paul Holmes at http://www.holmesreport.com/blog/index.cfm/2010/1/4/Why-This-Really-Will-Be-a-Happy-New-Year-for-PR-People
Why This Really Will Be a Happy New Year for PR People
Posted At : January 4, 2010 10:17 AM
Public relations ranks among the 50 best careers of 2010, according to U.S. News & World Report, which should be good news for all of those wishing good riddance to 2009.
U.S. News expects the public relations industry to rebound strongly this year, and so do I. Every major trend–the rise of social media, declining public confidence in major institutions, increased transparency–suggests that building stronger relationships between organizations and their stakeholders will be vital to any success those organizations (be they corporations, governments, or non-profits) enjoy in the coming decade.
If you want more reason to believe that the immediate future is bright, two articles in the mainstream media–one on either side of the Atlantic–suggests that public relations is gaining a little respect from those on the other side of the media divide.
Paul Argenti has an impressive piece in the FT–drawing on the ideas presented in his new book–on the new communications challenges facing companies in the 21st century. “In addition to rethinking the definition of communication, the best companies are rethinking its structure,” he says. “There is a greater need for integration, collaboration and partnership among corporate leadership, human capital, finance, sales and legal teams.”
It makes an interesting companion piece to this article in Forbes by the Reputation Institute’s Roger Johndrow, which examines the role of the “chief reputation officer” asking who should fill that increasingly vital role. (It should be obvious. It’s a tribute to the PR industry’s ability to undersell itself that it isn’t.)
But likely growth is not the biggest reason I’d put PR at the top of the list of the best careers.
Public relations, done right (and it will have to be done right in the high-pressure, high-stakes decade ahead of us) aligns the behavior of organizations with the expectations of the society in which they operate. It’s hard to think of any function more vital to solving the problems we currently face.
This is a decade for public relations people to finally demonstrate the value to the organizations that employ them and the world in which they live.