It's both gratifying and encouraging to see my research being discussed with such enthusiasm - it doesn't happen often to an academic! As well as musical tastes, the survey addressed respondents' knowledge and preferences in terms of visual art, eating out and general cultural activities (the questions were taken from the existing National Survey on Cultural capital and Social Exclusion - full reference can be obtained from me). The results confirmed that PR practitioners are a pretty homogenous bunch, generalists rather than specialists, and populists rather than elitists in their cultural tastes.
A number of factors are likely to be behind this: they are a pretty young lot, over 70% of my respondents were aged between 25 and 44, and as such will have similar cultural reference points in their childhood and adolescence. Perhaps more importantly, over 90% had gone through the formal education system and many respondents' parents had similar educational and employment histories.
For PR practitioners, such similarity with one's colleagues makes integration into the profession much easier. On the client side, knowledge of a broad range of relatively popular cultural artefacts makes for easier small-talk with clients and chief executives, journalists and analysts, enhancing the all-important relationships that keep them in a job.
But there are significant disadvantages to such a high level of homogeneity. Consciously or unconsciously, aspects of similarity are used by members of the dominant group to assess the 'fit' of newcomers. Practitioners who don't 'fit' the mould are likely to find it much more difficult to get work, achieve recognition or enjoy personal success because of this discrimination. Minority groups, already poorly represented in PR in the UK, will suffer as a result.
This is not merely a moral issue for those of us who believe in equal opportunities. It is also critical for a profession briefed to communicate with audiences that are more diverse, challenging and geographically spread than ever before. The biggest problem with the sources of potential discrimination revealed in the survey is that they are frequently implicit rather than explicit. To overcome them requires not just diversity programs that focus on numbers, but a seismic shift in how we perceive our own and others' importance to the future of PR in the UK.
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