It wasn’t presented to Congress but it was a state of the union address. Paul Holmes, President/CEO of the Holmes Group, offered an interesting perspective on the state of the public relations industry. Paul has been covering the public relations field for 15 years and has observed a profound shift in how public relations is viewed by many organizations. The good news is that public relations has become a more important function in corporations and institutions. The bad news is that the public relations professional is not reaping the benefits.

Holmes sited the cases of both WorldCom and Enron as examples of forcing news organizations, as well as the general public, to place corporations and institutions under the highest level of scrutiny in modern history. Now, there are beat reporters covering everything in an operation and there are more consumer groups in existence than there were ten years ago. All of this is forcing public relations professionals to realize that, in the past, they were able to control information. Now, they have only an opportunity to put information into context.

Paul talked about the obstacles facing the public relations field including:

1) Public relations departments within an organization that have different reporting lines and need to be consolidated; and

2) Finding the right person to run the public relations department can be a huge challenge as that person needs to have the ability to counsel senior management and make sure everyone in the organization understands the PR is part of their job too.

Finally, he stated that the ethics and integrity of organizations continues to be critical to building a positive reputation. Organizations need to understand that reputation building is based on developing relationships with the stakeholders. He noted that “spin” refers to a transaction interaction (how you get people to do things for you one time); while “public relations” refers to building relationships. He feels strongly that public relations professionals stand on the threshold of adding more value to organizations as the organization values the relationship building.

Holmes:
Paul Holmes