A practitioner who signs up to a code of practice such that one might find among PR professionals is thereby, and evidently (judging from one of the pages about PR on offer at Wikipedia) less ethical than an avowed propagandist.

There has to be some equity in this debate.

If Wikipedia is to continue to command respect, it has to play by its own rules.

This entry is about spin and propaganda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_public_relations Public Relations is described as:
Essence of public relations
Propaganda: the general propagation of information for a specific purpose
Psychological warfare:
Psyops

I have worked in the industry for over 40 years and I find this offensive and, based on the activities of the vast majority of practitioners, lacks balance and substantive evidence.

Perhaps there is a time for Wikipedians to add balance to their arguments and their wiki.

However, AVE is indeed a persistant weed, simply because when the same marketing team want to talk about results at a higher level they need something with £ signs to show the board. For this reason AVE may continue to persist until we experiment with an equivalent £ value for other measured values.

We have found the best way to approach measurement is the same way we apprach a PR plan – it is unique to each client and covers a range of measures.
http://www.catherinelane.com

http://prezi.com/8rymdy9occsc/two-or-three-prs/

Mike Kelly

My research leads me to a similar idea that “PR” has split into two camps, but they are different to yours. Around 60 years ago, there was a separation as the post-war consumer economy took off. The previous view was that PR was a whole-of-organisation view (see Arthur W. Page and others).

Around the 1950s, it took two paths – one we call corporate or organisational communications which has uses research and strategic approaches. The other was “PR/publicity” which is very tactical and battling with advertising for share of budget. It took up AVE as its (dubious) metric and has used it increasingly in succeeding decades.

Since then public relations has developed on two directions which are now very evident. There’s no doubt that AVE is a junk metric. It’s really a cost comparison of space and tells us nothing about effectiveness, outcome or value creation for the organisation or client.

In my article, I quoted from a founder of the UK’s PR professional body who said in 1949 that: “This practice [using AVE] has done more to undermine public relations than any other.” He was right then and he is right now. AVE does not give credibility to the practice of public relations or its practioners.

Thanks for your contribution to the debate.

First: those practitioners who define what and why PR exists and is practiced that it makes total sense to measure it with AVE. They work for clients who want them to get in the press yet when it happens, don’t see an effect on sales, so need some other measure. AVE might suffice.
Second: those who believe PR exists and should be practiced in a different way that they believe is better and are experimenting with what that way should be. Along the way, they start to toss out some of the old ways and encourage all to do so.
Third: those who have stopped experimenting and actually adopt and use some new way. They are happy to have found something that works better and, other than the odd keynote speech, don’t feel the need to tell others what to do.

If this is the case, then AVE will never be eliminated until the forces that keep it alive are changed. Is it better to concentrate on stamping out something someone else believes in or should the efforts go into making the alternative path an obviously better choice?

What are the factors which keep AVE useful?

Warm regards,

umar farouk
Semarang State Polytechnic
Central Jave,
INDONESIA