The Recession and Public Relations
#DEVILS ADVOCATE POST#
I know that I’ve written a post about this before, but I felt it necessary to write a quick post on this. I’m purely playing the Devils advocate and I am in no way suggesting that it’s good for quality PR professionals to lose their jobs.
I came across the Bristol Editor blog a few weeks back and I’ve read it since then with an curiosity. It’s like the Bad Pitch blog but with a bit more venom. It’s brilliant! Well, after reading through it for a few weeks and being bombarded by the phrase ‘financial crisis’ I got to thinking that maybe the recession could be a good thing for public relations. Let me explain.
If editors and reporters are continually getting angry at bad PRO’s, then their unlikely to write anything regarding the bad agencies client. In financially tighter times, a client is likely to be looking for greater ROI for the same money and so if the agency is lacking on physical results (no, I don’t agree that ROI should be like this, but it often is – more so in tight times) the client is likely to look elsewhere. If this happens a few times, the agency goes bust. This is bad for the agency and the staff, but theoretically (and I know that this isn’t always the case) if they were good at their job, if the agency could be bothered to train and improve it’s staff and if they actually cared about the stakeholders involved in public relations (client, staff, media) then they’d probably stay afloat. This is good for the industry for a few reasons; it gives better agencies the opportunity to attract more clients, it raises the reputation of public relations in the media because fewer people are doing it badly and it ensures that the quality PRO’s in the industry can grow and improve without being held back by negative agencies.
Phew. Now, this is undoubtedly a harsh idea. A recession is a terrible economic situation and many, many people will lose out. However, let’s think about the state of the economy in the long-term: if the industry standards and reputation improve, then media/PR relations will flourish and clients will receive the benefits of improved relationships. This then helps to attract more clients and encourage spending on PR which then creates more jobs and ultimately, more money being pumped into the UK economy.
For those people that have lost jobs, taken wage cuts and had a generally terrible time in late ‘08 and for 09 – you have my upmost sympathy. This is not a post aimed at those unfortunate quality PR professionals, but at the unsuitable professionals and uncaring agencies that keep the reputation of the industry in the mud.