"PR people who don't regularly talk to journalists should go and work in advertising. It's that simple."
So writes Julian Henry in a hard-hitting piece in today's Media Guardian that should be required reading for PR's chattering classes.
Most of the major PR agencies in the UK construct their business around writing strategies, drawing up Q&As, drafting positioning statements, scripting advertorials, collating briefing packs, printing press kits and countless other bits of waffle that underpin our daily trade. This rationalising process gets charged to the clients, who in most cases seem happy to pay for it...
Get rid of all this stuff and you would demolish half the industry at a single sweep...
If you were to reduce the role of the PR consultant to its most basic function what do you have? The man or woman on the phone whose job is simply to offer a description of their client's product in a topical, creative and engaging way.
To be a great publicist (note his word, publicist, not PR) Henry argues "you must start by thinking as a journalist. This means creating stories, working to deadlines, moving quickly through the trees of the jungle, engaging people by being interesting, and, most unfashionably, having a mind that likes to question what is put in front of you."
Henry lashes out at agencies who attempt to "legitimise their existence and increase their perceived importance by talking grandly about their role in creating a difference with the consumer" pointing out that the resulting work simply fails to live up to these claims.
I wonder if anyone has told Julian Henry that 'PR is dead'? If so, it would have been fun to watch his no doubt robust response...
- Andrew B Smith has a good post on "Julian Henry's rant in today's Guardian"; Andrew also runs an interesting (and new to me) site, The PR Surgery, which is worth a look.
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