The Truth About Public Relations

What is it with The Economist and public relations?

So far this year the magazine has written two diatribes against public relations practitioners, which in its latest outbreak leeringly refers to PR people as "flacks," slime-slingers," members of the "dark side" and "urban foxes" among other love terms.

Whatever happened to objectivity and reality?

The problem, according to The Economist is that there are just too many of these "brazen flacks," who it mistakenly identifies as men, when in fact there is a predominance of women in the profession, and who it says spend their days"hassling reporters to run crummy stories."

The article besides having a noxious tone sounds like the writer has imbibed some cynical journalists' take on PR from 80 years ago. In fact, it quotes a 1928 book by Edward Bernay, one of the pioneers in public relations, as evidence of the profession's spinning creed.

That's kind of like referring to some early medical book about blood-letting and claiming that defines the surgeon's trade. Give me a break.

I'd like to suggest that the author of the piece talk to some of the women dominating the field of public relations today since he/she continue to think it's a male-dominated field. As starters, here are two greats lists of PR women (and I'm deeply honored to be listed on both). One is compiled by the generous, astute Valentine Belonwu (http://twitter.com/#!/bigmoneywebs)http://bigmoneyweb.com/author/admin/ and the other by the awesome, terrifically hard-working duo of Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) and Tom Pick (@tompick).

As a long-time B2B public relations person, I can wholeheartedly say that there has never in my more than 20 years in the field been as exciting time to be in public relations. That's because the landscape of PR has expanded thanks to the Internet. Today, for example, there are seemingly a zillion places to get the word out. This includes everything from posting an article on your own blog or website, tweeting it, posting it on LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media; talking it up on a video, in a podcast, in a webinar, on other blogs. In fact, if you can't tout your own horn today, you're doing something terribly wrong.

And, of course, there is the media. But a legitimate PR person's job is not, nor has it ever been, "to pitch a crummy story" as the Economist suggests but to turn what might have been a crummy story into something that engages. For example, I love a story I read years ago about some scientists in Africa who were training elephants. This was a new training program and they were having a day where they were showing what the elephants had accomplished. A PR person turned this into the First Ever Graduating Class of Elephant University and made what might have been ho hum memorable. In my book that's creative. And that's the job of any PR person worth his or her salt. What do you think? I'd love to hear from you.

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Wendy Marx, B2B PR Specialist, Marx Communications