 Normally, I wouldn't comment on the funny pages - the comics in newspapers as they are now called - but Dilbert's ridicule of the public relations industry hits home. Three cheers for the creator of Dilbert.
The profession is in a mess.
With a target audience of mostly business professionals, this popular comic strip has a large readership in the United States, potentially tens of millions since the strip is syndicated not just in the U.S. but also around the world.
According to the PR character, the public relations professional exaggerates, bribes and plies reporters with drinks, and in general upsets all the furniture in the salon car of the straight talk express. So, what's new? In recent memory we have had PR companies buying off broadcasters, hawking phony video news releases, fraudulently over-billing clients and faking blogs to flak for Wal-Mart. And those are just a few of the ones that have gotten ink. In Ukraine, paying for stories is a sun coming up occurrence. Engaging in black PR tends to be the norm, and not the exception. However, modern public relations is in its infancy in Eastern Europe, and there are some signs it is maturing - though not many. Why get so excited over a couple of panels of cartoon strips? Well, for the PR industry it is as if the late night yak show host - in the United States, Jay Leno - had suddenly discovered the industry as a legitimate target to satirize. When an industry becomes a one-line joke, it is time to take serious the image of we PR folks. In other words, it is a body blow to the industry's integrity - and perhaps a well-deserved one. The reasoning is rather simple. What we do does not require a master's degree, much less a doctorate. While it is not brain surgery, we are in the business of explaining brain surgery, which is good. While not rocket science, we promote with gusto man's exploration of the skies. A PR guy will probably never contribute to the discovery of a life saving device or come up with a method of extending crop yields. We will, however, make sure that device is publicized for the masses and work with NGOs and governments in promoting methods of better farming. A PR professional quite often has to be the judicious conscience of the client. In speeches, I often give what I call my white sneakers definition of public relations: It is telling a client what he or she already knows but doesn't want to hear, and doing it in such a manner the client feels compelled to take your advice. In other words, and in a diplomatic way, you have to make it difficult for the client to do the wrong thing, and a conclusion the client himself would reach, absent the charged atmosphere of serious problem or crisis. I know many in flackdom would argue to the contrary, but most of what we do is common sense, a brand of problem solving acquired through experience. For the record, I have met many rookie PR people with brains, but very few with PR brains. You don't learn this in a classroom. But the point is, as my colleague Frasier P. Seitel pointed out in a recent piece in O'Dwyer's PR News Daily, "...the real value and power of PR lies in one word: Ethics." This is what should distinguish us from the furry primates that pretend to practice our craft - those that hang out a shingle that says public relations merely because there are no tests and they can spell the words. Whether intentional or not, I applaud the creator of Dilbert's comic strip: Scott Adams. Scotty, you hit a raw nerve. But what we do is good. No, what we do is great. Let's not continue to screw it up.
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