This week in PR (5 April newsletter - the problem issue)

We’ve gathered over 30 content links from the two short working weeks either side of Easter. From these, I’d like to elaborate on one major theme arising from these links.

Let’s talk about problems.

While public-relations-as-publicity shies away from such a concept, preferring to accentuate the positive, I’d argue for a fresh look at public relations problems. I’m not alone.

Allison Spray, discussing AI on the PR Week podcast, talked about ‘wicked problems’ (a phrase she first encountered on a university course).

‘The wicked problems piece is a perennial PR question; the ill-defined problems always seem to sit with PR.’

That’s one connection between problems and PR: the problems others don’t want to handle end up with us.

But there’s a more fundamental connection. Stated simply - no problem, no PR. There was no need for public relations in the Garden of Eden. Public relations comes about because of problems arising between the organisation achieving its goals and the expectations of key stakeholders.

James Grunig and Todd Hunt explained this in a seminal public relations textbook, Managing Public Relations, published in 1984. This book is still widely cited for its Four Models of Public Relations and for the situational theory of publics. But the authors also presented a simple model that argues that decisions taken by management have consequences for publics, and it’s these consequences can cause public relations problems.

They conceptualise public relations as the ‘boundary spanning’ department that sits between management and publics, explaining and interpreting the one to the other.

Wicked problems are those that are difficult or impossible to solve. There’s no lack of examples I could give: the climate emergency and the gender pay gap are just two.

It’s crass to believe that these can be solved by a single initiative or by a press release. That runs the risk of a charge of greenwashing or purposewashing, and Shilpa Saul was rightly critical of ‘performative activism’ surrounding International Women’s Day.

Public relations may not be the solution, but it should be part of the process.

New York University professor Alison Taylor has written a sophisticated review of business ethics and sustainable practices in Higher Ground (review forthcoming at PR Place Insights). One key quotation from this book is that ‘doing the right thing is far more demanding than it looks.’

The whole environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda is filled with wicked problems. There are many challenges and public relations advisers need to step up. She has an astute outsider’s perspective on public relations: 

‘Back in the twentieth century, public relations was simply about effective communication, not underlying culture, values or behavior.’

So how do you teach public relations, encouraging students to see the wider problem and not just the promotional challenge?

I was impressed with Sarah Cockett who I first taught as a first year undergraduate. She stood out for being a few years more experienced than the typical school leaver; she’d previously been working as a beautician.

Fast forward three years and she now has a year’s experience working in beauty PR for a major brand and is now a final year student.

Sarah was interviewed among other young voices for the CIPR’s 75th anniversary edition of Influence magazine. The fuller version of this interview has been posted online and quotes her as saying:

‘I find the challenge of constantly adapting quite exciting. I hope this continues to hanology, new practices and new ideas.’

What’s clearly needed in public relations education and practice is an openness to change and a willingness to adapt to ‘new technology, new practices and new ideas.’

We need to view education as a problem-solving process, not a Wikipedia-style provider of answers. We need to first ask better questions if we’re ever to reach better answers, using AI to assist us in framing better questions.

AI and Google algorithm updates were another feature of this week’s content. But the problem-solving approach requires you to go back to first principles. Some may be surprised at the lengthy history of public relations, that predates Google and ChatGPT by a century or more.

I’ve already mentioned the CIPR’s 75th anniversary. The first president of the newly-formed Institute of Public Relations (as it was then called) was Sir Stephen Tallents. This week Alan Anstead has taken us back to a much earlier episode in his career when Tallents, as a diplomat, established the border between Latvia and Estonia immediately after the First World War.

Reflecting on his wider legacy, Anstead says:

‘During a pivotal era, Sir Stephen Tallents left an indelible legacy shaping Britain’s communication, culture and governance.’ He was clearly a sophisticated problem solver.

Tim Traverse-Healy was another of the group that founded the IPR in 1948. He writes in the special edition of Influence magazine: 

‘Our Institute’s founders wanted, in the brave new world of peace, for communication to be used as a means of improving co-operation and reducing conflicts in society’ before noting the continuing relevance of those ambitions today.

Internal communication claims as lengthy a history as public relations - and certainly much longer as an established practice than human resources. The Institute of Internal Communication is celebrating its own 75th anniversary through an academic history of the practice tracing its origins back to industrial publications in the nineteenth century.

If you are still unsure what problems you should be facing up to, then Dan Tisch suggests the following for starters:

‘Five forces are driving change in the roles of communication leaders: the pandemic’s cultural aftermath; geopolitical conflict; the evolving relationship between business and society; the impact of technology, particularly AI; and the continuing crisis in public and stakeholder trust.’

If it’s true that no problem means no PR, then it follows that big problems suggest a major need for public relations expertise and advice. It’s another version of the old paradox: that bad news is good news (and good news is often no news at all).