One of the major reasons that I never wanted to get involved with Public Relations when I was in College, was the idea of spending endless evenings kissing butt, calling everyone “dahling” and pandering to the outrageous demands of spoilt people…. I term this the Ab-Fab effect.
While that lifestyle is desired by many, it’s not my bag and luckily PR has more to offer than practically any other career. Why? Diversity.
You would be hard pressed to find an industry that can be so diverse amongst practitioners in different industries. Entertainment PR and Business to Business PR are in effect two different businesses. Sure they share some common tools, but their execution is, in my humble opinion, fundamentally different.
PR has a perception problem, I think we all know that. While government spin doctors, Hollywood PRs and ridiculous films such as Phone Booth (awful Flash warning!) grab the headlines, these icons bear little resemblance to my daily professional life or yours.
Guess what, the PR discipline is getting harder all the time.
There’s more competition, more practitioners, and according to some recent research from Delahaye less space.
The research which covers the Fortune 100 in 2003 found there was 23% less coverage of these firms during the year. Microsoft, which remained at #2, enjoyed a 31.4% fall in their coverage across newspapers, magazines and television.
Disney, which came in at #1, bucked the trend, increasing their share by over 17% and the only other gainer in the Top 10 was Wal-Mart. Merrill Lynch lost over 50%, IBM and Intel lost over 40% each and AT&T lost 37%.
The good news is that the overall “esteem” of corporate America improved by over 200% in 2003 compared with scandal ridden 2002.
“Among other things, it means the top U.S. companies had a more difficult time getting their messages out in the news media, and may have to look more deeply at advertising and other communications options for making up the gap.”
So if you were in any doubt that you were in a tough business, these figures should remove those doubts. If you’re looking for challenges, PR delivers!
Murphy's Law 