Tim Bray has a terrific post on the Old and New public relations.

Here’s how I think about what’s going on with PR. (Note: Sweeping generalizations ahead.)

For decades there’s been a split in the industry between The Spinners and the Connectors. The Spinners think their job is to manipulate the truth for the one-sided benefit of their clients. They think they’re behind enemy lines and allowed to use every trick in the book to Win. The Connectors think their job is to connect the media and their clients and then get (pretty much) out of the way. Both, of course, do both. Connectors coach their clients in how to speak clearly, where “clarity” inevitably has elements of spinning, and Spinners work hard to get their spun words into the press.

Both bow at the altar of Brand. Brand is to be promoted. Brand is to be protected. All hail Brand.

About 20 years ago, Brand got spun, but in a useful way. Progressive PR folks started talking about Reputation Management instead of Brand Management. RM is exactly the same as BM (oh hush up, you children!) except that it recognizes two limits. First, reputations have to be based at least a little bit in reality; they are earned and can’t be merely spun out of nothing. Second, the customer has some say in it. BM too frequently thought it could foist any image on the market. You want to associate Coke with world peace? Just make up a catchy jingle about the world singing together. That’s BM. You want Coke to earn a reputation as being for world peace? Coke had better actually take some stands, donate some serious money, run some programs that help make the world peaceful without stamping the Coke brand on the forehead of every activist. (Two notes: 1. RM has strong elements of brand and spinning in it, of course. It’s a crazy, mixed up world. 2. See Chris Locke‘s Gonzo Marketing.)

Now I think PR is entering a phase where it sees itself as helping companies with their public relationships. (“Public Relationships — Adding hips to public relations”?) I first heard this term at EdelmanPR (disclosure: to whom I’m a consultant), but I don’t know who coined it. I find the phrase useful because it asserts a connection to traditional PR while pointing to a new dominant possibility. It implies, in line with Tim’s thinking, that PR needs to get out of the intermediation business. It means that more voices have to be allowed to speak from within the corporation, since relationships based on a committee-produced controlled voice will fail. It explains why blogs are such a useful tool: They are public relationships. It assumes there’s persistence to the relationship, not merely press releases thrown in our faces whenever the company has some new crap to flog. It assumes mutuality. It relies on the relationships being based on frankness and transparency.

Building public relationships seems to me to be a useful rubric for all that PR agencies do, including the traditional services they will continue to provide. For example, PR agencies are going to continue to scan editorial calendars looking for opportunities to get coverage for their clients, and they’ll continue to monitor and measure what’s being said. But if they do that within the context of building public relationships, perhaps they can help their clients get past their obsession with column inches. It’s not about that and it never was. It’s about building long-term, continuing, honest, mutual public relationships. (Richard Edelman, who blogged last week about some of the same points that Tim makes (and gives me too much credit), thinks that, in addition, PR agencies will find new business in producing substantive, factual content for their clients; this is an anti-spin position.)

And, like it or not, PR agencies will also continue to advise clients what to say. The CEO is always going to call an advisor she trusts to help figure out whether the main point about the acquisition of XYZ, Inc. is that it expands the company’s European presence or that it puts 300 new sales folks on the street to generate revenue. Inevitably this is spinning, but now (we hope) in a context where truth quickly embarrasses those who spin out of control and where the spun words are only a couple of threads in a far wider web.

I don’t know what the PR industry will be like in ten years. But I’m convinced that spinning — even truths expressed in words that sound phony — will be have the same effect as a salesclerk gobbing on a customer. [Technorati tags: pr PublicRelations TimBray RichardEdelman GonzoMarketing RageBoy Marketing Brand]

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