PR needs to be creative, new and different

Presidential Proclamation No. 1357 signed by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declares the month of September of every year as PR month. The executive order identifies the staging of the National PR Congress and the Student PR Congress under the auspices of the Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) as major events during this period.

The Student PR Congress, which adopts the theme  “#LikeaPRo” opens its doors to some 100 schools all over the country from Sept. 20 to 21 to showcase the stories, experiences and cases in various PR disciplines to inspire students who desire to face the challenges and rewards of a PR career. The “#Throwback” session on the first day will bring together highly respected PR practitioners who will share stories of their early years in the practice and how the profession has evolved. In the “#BoomPanes” segment, specialists in strategic communications will attempt to outdo each other’s experiences in highly regulated business environments, while the “#BalikAlindog” portion will feature the use of PR to turn around images and reputations.

On the second day, the student congress will host the Grand Prix Competition, an inter-school PR excellence challenge that will showcase the ability of the students to develop a “PR for PR” program — one that tells the story of PR, embodying and promoting the more positive face of the PR profession and making the targeted publics appreciate its importance. Rochelle Gamboa-Hilario, chair of the Student PR Congress, explains, “We want our future PR communicators to understand the professional way of doing PR, which today is really about performance and results, people and relationships, and purpose and resonance.” As of this writing, seven teams of communications students from top universities made it to the final round and are set to battle it out.

The Student PR congress hopes to supplement the dynamic process of PR education, which can be made more relevant if critical partnerships between the academe and the industry based on mutual gains are forged and nurtured. The best way to learn PR is via the quick application of updated theories into meaningful applications and practices. There is a need to institute development, influence the PR course offerings in universities, establish mechanisms for continuous professional advancement and generate greater respect for the practice.

Most communications students with about 24 units of PR are being educated to perform tasks that are not usually required of PR people nowadays. Students get excited to learn how to plan, strategize and execute extensive programs, write press releases, produce brochures, manage issues or communicate to people with varying backgrounds and personalities, but PR now is more than all these things. It has evolved into a high-end corporate career that demands great analysis, strategic communication, seamless execution and strict measures.

PR education in the Philippines continues to struggle and the reasons are basic. First, most teachers who teach PR are not active practitioners. They get their teaching materials from available textbooks or notes gathered in PR conferences, which may be insufficient to deepen the knowledge of the students. Experience reveals that obsolescence quickly creeps in if you teach, but never practice.

PR agency head and book author Ed Zitron came up with what he believes to be the core elements that should be applied to just about every PR curriculum. The first order of the day is to know these PR realities.

PR is more than just publicity, press conference handling or special event management. It’s also not about wining and dining, glamour and fancy parties. Truth be told, the world of PR involves hard work, multi-tasking, working long hours, and dealing with a gamut of egos and personalities — from friendly to aloof, from easy to difficult. The work is hugely rewarding though, especially if you are able to build an influential network. But it does not start that way. You have to work at it.

The best way to network is to show who you are. It is not necessarily to own and project a personal brand or your “love affair” with media. It’s about being a more interesting human being to all the publics you encounter or deal with.

Read, read, read. Reading and knowing the news and the world around you is more valuable than being popular on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or being the life of the party. Having a point of view on issues and being able to have great and meaningful conversations are vital skills in doing good PR work, and reading can help hone this flair.

The start of a PR career entails a lot of learning and confidence-building activities. These include document marking, package stuffing, creative writing, socializing and relationship building. These realities must be shared in school and revealed to new PR career entrants early on.

PR professionals from many online outlets say, “Media relations isn’t the core of PR. It isn’t a thing that you ‘have to do.’” But Zitron retorts, “I’m sorry, but media relations is. And it always will be, especially for new PR people.” The core elements of media relations that should be taught in school cover:

Researching and getting familiar with PR media outlets, editors and reporters. This should focus on how to read situations and people properly, how to understand and develop rapport with reporters, and how to understand the structure and operations of each news outlet.

Writing a pitch. This is the art of compact storytelling — carving your strategy and creative idea fluidly to get your desired response in under150 words, similar to the challenge of tweeting where you have to contain what you want to say in 140 characters. This is a very specific expertise that is essentially diametrical to how public relations courses are currently taught.

Differintiating the roles of bloggers, reporters, and producers. The lines are somewhat blurred these days. A reporter can blog at a newspaper and a blogger can be called a reporter. However, these roles are fundamentally different and must be approached in different ways, especially TV and radio producers.

Identifying what things are truly newsworthy. And how PR people can actually get a reporter interested and care about them. If a teacher can’t teach this, the foundation of the PR student stands on a weaker ground.

“Social media is taught in a dishonest manner by the education system. It’s really exciting to talk about social media in a way that suggests it’s the new golden goose — that a single tweet can spread your news faster than anything else, and that, you too, could have thousands or millions of followers who will share your news in the most passive and useful manner,” Zitron elucidates. Social media classes should teach:

How to use Twitter, Facebook or Instagram in a real sense. You should not just be tweeting out endless praise for your company, or how great you are. You should be an honest, transparent company or an honest, transparent person. You don’t always need these social media platforms though, since there is no actual requirement for every company to have a social presence. Conversely, for many brick-and-mortar businesses and service businesses, some social media platforms are incredibly important.

How a real social media following is built. Why trust and a reason to actually care for your brand are critical. If a company or a restaurant or anyone is just spilling out fatuous nonsense about their lives or how great they are, very few people are going to care.

Using a social media calendar or strategy can be a waste of time. Mapping out a bunch of tweets or Facebook updates or “special days” for many companies isn’t necessary unless they have an active Facebook or Twitter following.

“This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything they should know, but the core problem with PR education is that a PR 101 class should give the basics — the groundwork from which a real PR professional should theoretically grow,” Zitron declares.

What this writer would like to see in a modern PR curriculum are these skills and knowledge areas — planning/strategy formulation, writing, speaking/presentation, human relations, negotiations, production, languages humanities, history, beginnings, evolution, current affairs, business environment, politics, crisis response planning, advocacy communication, government relations, community engagement, experience management and related fields. “In the same way that medical schools exist to give the factual and theoretical ideas that will be used in treating patients, PR courses should provide the theoretical foundation and background knowledge that today’s PR professionals will need in their day-to-day work,” Zitron adds.

Al and Laura Ries proclaimed, “It’s PR that needs to be creative. It’s PR that needs to be new and different. It’s PR that needs to be original. The best way to establish a brand is to create a new category, and creating a new category requires creative thinking of the highest order.”

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Email bongosorio@yahoo.com and bong_osorio @abs-cbn.com for comments, questions and suggestions. Thanks for communicating.