Public relations: 'a pseudo-profession'

Read this outstanding piece by Amanda 'Strumpette' Chapel about what's systemically wrong with PR. She gives a Top-10 list of things fundamentally wrong with the PR business today, including the bait-and-switch (the pro who shows up for the pitch meeting but never does any work on the account), overbilling, unethical flacking of ideas/products/industries that don't work, terribly poor writing, silly productization (a pet peeve of mine, too -- read the piece for more), and others. This line was nice, concerning PR's outmoded business model:

Forget the financial aspects, the goal of PR was and still is essentially to influence a target audience. Now you're lucky to get their attention (see Economics of Attention). That puts PR in the essentially dishonest position of denying that we have ulterior motive. We do and we always will.

I couldn't possibly put it any better than this:

Simply, PR is the business of manufacturing perception used to influence; and the very same tools that have given consumers the upper hand today, also have provided the ability for hyper scrutiny. Regrettably, what ultra-close examination has revealed in most cases is that the sum total of PR's work product is... well... hooey. There’s no there there. Add to that, that modern technology has compressed the sales-belief-disappointment cycles so much that the net result is that before I've had a chance to get over from the last time you schtupped me, I look down and you're rabidly humping my leg again.

In reply, Matthew Stibbe gives some excellent advice on improving press releases and eliminating the 'Frankenquote,' the entirely inevitable committee-written and approved 'quote' that never came from a human mouth.

When issuing press releases, associations' releases are often buried in in-boxes under the avalanche of business PR-generated releases and must compete for editors' very limited attention and news space. Often our worst enemies are (1) the overinflated expectations that leadership has for coverage, and (2) our frequent inability to distance ourselves from the types of PR practices Strumpette points out.

Tagged: Associations, Public Relations, PR.