I’ve long held the view that when someone says a company has “a PR problem,” it isn’t so much a problem with the company’s public relations function as it is a problem with decisions the company’s leadership has made. When these leadership problems surface, it becomes a “public relations problem” because too often the public relations team is called in to repair damaged reputations.
Adam Denison, a former BYU student now working on GM’s new media initiatives, wrote a great post about this recently. I recommend it to anyone in public relations/corporate communications. Check out Adam’s blog.
The fact that public relations professionals get dumped into the role of “damage control” is one of the biggest reasons we should focus on proactively counseling management on ethics and business practices. We can provide a view of the overall reputation of the company that may get overlooked. How many crises would be averted (or at least minimized) if business and civic leaders received respected counsel from respected communications professionals before the “public relations problem” emerged. We owe it to our employers and clients to be (or become) the respected counsel that helps prevent “public relations problems” in the first place.
Hi Mark
I agree with this, and I have been recently looking at the example of BA and Heathrow. The PR manager was seen to shy away from the crisis. At the same time it is often hard for PROs to work with people who don’t take their advice for example the ops manager at BA who wouldn’t take questions from the press. As far as I can tell this went against the advice from the PR department. PROs can only work within the boundaries they are given. Often advice is simply not taken. It’s a tricky situation becuase with all the best intentions if PR is not seen as a strategic function then it won’t get the chance to shine.
Comment by Rachel Todd — April 13, 2008 @ 3:04 pm