Have the rules of PR changed?

Not everyone gets what PR is about.

Forget about the formal definitions, in the B-2-B world PR is about generating favourable news coverage for a client, it is about managing the reputation of the client and in money terms it is about using the PR fee to gain value that simply buying equivalent media space for advertising could not achieve. It is not the world of murky 'spin doctors' who seek to manage news in the political arena. And it is not just about press releases either.

The thing about PR is that it can use many channels to communicate and this often used to cause problems in one B-2-B agency where I worked, between advertising account executives and PR account executives as to what constituted PR and what had strayed into advertising territory.  Traditionally press releases could probably be regarded as the core of a PR programme along with newsletters, company magazines, subscribed articles, White Papers and the like. But whatever the actual delivery mechanism the process ultimately required client approval before release and the news pitch was directed towards the editors of trade press publications. It was the editor who decided which press release would appeal to the readership of his magazine.

But in the era of social media the audience is not an editor writing for say a technical audience, but the end customers themselves. So it is argued the formal style both of writing and presentation should be abandoned in favour of an informal conversation with the customers. And another thing - the imperative of instant communication and response bypasses the process of review and approval. It is no longer just the press release, but the blog, Facebook, Twitter, news feeds and video that are useful PR communication tools. It is not of itself an alternative as some might assume, or without cost - whether the hours consumed are on the in-house budget or as an outsourced fee. Opening up the writing task to a roster of authors also involves risk - a wrong word here or there can destroy years of carefully constructing that reputation at a stroke.

One approach we have used to manage the diversity of news channels is to develop a PR Grid that chooses the style and form of publication and how appropriate a particular news item is for certain channels. Some items are only for the social media channels, items which are different, unusual or in some other way more interesting still go down the traditional publication route as well as the social media routes. Brought together it makes for an integrated approach that still delivers a consistent core message but in a way that recognises the diversity of broadcast options.