PR and Its Branding Crisis

As discussed earlier in this book, PR, as an industry, is experiencing a branding crisis. Often PR practitioners must defend themselves and the industry before they can “sell it.” PR has joined (for reasons discussed previously) other industries prone to continuous criticism: the auto industry (especially sales), real estate financing, and the perennial whipping boy, law. Our job is to adapt to the new world of influence, teach others around us, and, in the process, do a little PR for the PR industry. By doing so, we can fix the very things that spiraled PR into a state of crisis in the first place.

If you polled those decision makers responsible for managing communications strategies about how they characterize PR, the following common themes would undoubtedly emerge: