The Limits of Public Relations

I remember a funny story I heard a few years back. A man tried to sue a certain auto manufacturer claiming their product was unsafe. When there was a bit of discovery done it had turned out that the man had crashed the auto and was upset that while the airbags had deployed, they had not prevented damage to his car. He claimed that everything he read about airbags spoke about how safe they are and that this resulted in him driving less-than-safely due to the fact he believed the airbag would somehow envelop his entire auto.

I always like this story because I think it does a good job of illustrating the limits of public relations. PR as we know has never had a really firm definition like accounting, nor has it had a strong oversight board like the American Medical Association or the various state bar associations. I think the best way to initiate a discussion like this is to say that PR does have limits and is not a magic cure all that will solve any problems. I will list a very few limits of public relations here but be assured that I will not list them all because that would simply be impossible.

One great limit of public relations and the one I see most often used in publicly traded companies is the idea that PR exists to "goose" a stock price or somehow make a company more palatable for sales. Very simply put, PR does not sell your product. Public relations exists to disseminate truthful and wholly accurate news about the organization. One term I despise is the term "spin," because it is not the role of PR to take information and try and paint it in an inaccurate light. I fully acknowledge that is what often times happens but in doing so you weaken your brand and the organization.

Another great limit of public relations is the concept of damage control. Without a doubt one of our greatest contributions as public relations professionals is in the area of crisis management, we can not be called on to turn lemons to lemonade as a matter of course. Still many organizations make decisions that they know put the brand and the organization at risk with the belief that the PR team can come in and simply clean up what ever may go wrong. That amazingly shortsighted viewpoint is what often results in organizations being forced to deal with crisis that, had they consulted with PR earlier in the cycle, could have been greatly avoided. It is much easier to put out a fire when it is a small flame than if the entire structure is consumed.

The last limit of PR is one that I hope will fade away as a result of the recent market crash. That is the concept of using PR to boost the ego of senior executives. All to often, PR people have been called on to write materials that are essentially irrelevant to the organization but do have the executive in question look like the king of the world. If you take a look at the organizations that have failed, going all the way back to Enron and beyond, you will see organizations who saw PR as a means of protecting them from any pesky questions they don't to deal with. Again, senior executives seem to think that PR exists to dance around like a puppet on a string. It is the role of the PR person to drive the process and as such we can not be expected to jump in and do the biding of a senior executive who feels they are being neglected . Our first opportunity is always to the brand and the organization.

In conclusion, I would say that PR can accomplish amazing things and that there are very few things we can not do. That is not to say however that our boundaries are limitless. Some of the limits on public relations, must be places by PR practitioners themselves because we are in charge of protecting the brand and it is our job to make sure the organization pays heed to correct means of messaging and message delivery. One may argue that if a PR person tries to express limits on public relations that they will be replaced. I can not discount that theory except by saying the following. If you want the best PR people you have to listen to what they say, and the best PR people are telling you that there are limits on PR that you must pay heed to if you wish to succeed.