"I think that PR has always been about relationships, but it has changed fundamentally in that relationships have almost become the primary responsibility of a PR practitioner-and it's not just with the Wall Street Journal or New York Times-it's relationships with everyone who has a significant influence on the reputation of your company. I think it's great for the function, for the profession, and it's much more exciting for me to think about managing relationships and issues rather than practicing stereotypical PR, which is...get something from the marketing team that they want to sell, then put a press release together and call a few reporters. It's a very good development." Gary Sheffer, general manager, public affairs and employee communications, General Electric

Nine months ago (in January) I posted on another blog a first 'provokation' elaborating - in three consecutive and fairly detailed installments integrated with great comments by visitors on the same post - on the potential breakthrough for our profession, if only we could learn to transit public relations practice from a personal influence to an organizational influence model, thus transforming one of our most highly perceived added-values, namely personal relationships, into organizational relationships.

My initial arguments, at the time, were that this transition could be approached by adopting, adapting and applying, within any organization, advanced knowledge management systems; and that such process would hugely benefit organizations, both by improving their stakeholder relationship management efforts, and even more by increasing the organization's immaterial capital: thus significantly accelerating the institutionalization of our profession.

I am now proud to introduce you to a solid research paper written for her graduation capstone by Kristin Johnson, an excellent, (now former) student at New York University's Masters Course in Public Relations and Corporate Communication (where I teach Global Relations and Intercultural Communication).

In this paper Kristin develops the seed of the idea, and smartly elaborates not only in its conceptualization but, most importantly, in an on-site 'reality check' by means of direct, interpersonal and extensive interviews with a selected number of professional leaders; which in turn allowed her to structure an online questionnaire submitted to, and compiled by, another significant number of authoritative senior professionals from major international organizations and institutions around the world.

This effort was stimulated and assisted by the Institute for Public Relations and its Commission on Global PR Research, and is now being posted on the Institute's website for your perusal, in the high hope that you will want to add, criticise, comment and suggest.

In order to allow me to put all these materials (my original first drafts, additional research by Antonio Lorenzon, Kristin Johnson's capstone, your comments...) together in a proper research paper format in the next few weeks, and to submit the final results to the Institute for approval and publication.

I am very grateful for your attention and sincerely hope you will also wish to contribute to the effort.

This new book by Tom Martin - Executive in Residence, Department of Communication, College of Charleston - offers just what the subtitle says: what corporate communicators need to know about sharing their life experience with tomorrow's leaders. Tom's passion for his long career in corporate communications as well as his new career in the classroom illuminate this readable, informative, and personal guide to guest lecturing.

"The knowledge that you have--from direct experience--is a gold mine for the thousands of students sitting in college classrooms throughout the United States and the world. The demand for this knowledge is truly insatiable," writes Martin.

"The process of getting involved in the academic world is straightforward, rewarding and relatively painless. As with any new activity there are a few practical suggestions that can facilitate your entry into this world and enhance your effectiveness as a teacher. The purpose of this booklet is to provide you with recommendations drawn from both academics and practitioners that will inspire you, educate you and prepare you for participation in the essential work of educating the next generation."

The guide can be downloaded free from the Institute's website.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Group Chief Executive of WPP, and Steven J. Harris, Vice President of Global Communications for General Motors, will headline the Institute for Public Relations' Annual Distinguished Lecture & Awards Dinner. The November 5 event will be at The Yale Club in New York City.

Sir Martin Sorrell's speech will be titled, "Public Relations: The Story Behind a Remarkable Renaissance."

The Alexander Hamilton Medal, the Institute's highest honor, will be awarded to Steve Harris for lifetime achievement in public relations. Harris has spent more than 40 years in communications, mostly in the field of auto manufacturing. Harris served on the Institute's Board of Trustees from 1999-2003.

Tickets can be purchased through the Institute web site or through Jenn Moyer, 352-392-0280. The cost is $400 per person or $4,000 for a table of 10.

We're back with the third edition of The Evolution of Public Relations: Case Studies from Countries in Transition. It has been our privilege to again serve as editors of this online book, published by the Institute for Public Relations and funded by Philips and Schering-Plough.

More than 18 authors from 13 countries produced 16 cases and briefs for the book. The underlying premise is that students, professors and working professionals around the world can learn from case studies developed in a wide variety of cultural settings - not just westernized markets.

One thing really struck us this time around: The practice of public relations in these countries in transition has gained maturity from edition to edition of the casebook. Understandably, the practice of public relations revolves around media relations and other technical functions in its early stages of development. But we're seeing a growing understanding of governments, companies and NGOs that public relations is truly a strategic function. That's a very good sign for the development of public relations as a global profession.

We believe this also speaks to the global maturation of public relations as an academic discipline. All of the new cases were submitted by academics teaching or preparing to teach public relations in their countries. This will likely mean that, while there will continue to be differences in tactics because of cultural variations, strategy will essentially evolve from shared paradigms.

Public relations seems to truly be developing as a transnational profession well prepared to serve an increasing number of transnational clients. We encourage you to read some cases, give us your comments below, and most of all put the material to good use.

Judy VanSlyke Turk
Director, School of Mass Communications, Virginia Commonwealth University

Linda H. Scanlan
Retired Chair, Journalism Department, Norfolk State University

This column appeared in PRWeek, July 21, 2008, and is reproduced with permission.

Anyone who has spent time lately in college classrooms speaking to students in public relations and communication disciplines has seen first-hand an unmistakable trend. The field is finding it increasingly difficult to attract male students. I have spoken on a half dozen campuses in addition to my own in the last year and the gender ratio I'm seeing is about seventy percent female; some of the classes I taught didn't have a single male student.

To be certain that what I experienced wasn't a random anomaly I checked with the Public Relations Student Society of America, the largest membership group for PR students. Their most recent member survey revealed that 89 percent of current members are female, based on over 1,100 responses out of their 9,600 members at 284 academic institutions.

It's hard to identify with certainty the reasons behind this trend. I have asked younger colleagues their opinions and generally they feel it has to do with the perceived monetary reward-or lack of same-that certain professions promise. As one of them (a male) put it, "There's a widespread perception, with some hint of reality, that entry-level positions at many PR agencies are low paying, regardless of gender. I think this is a turn-off for young men just leaving school. Male college grads come out of the chute very competitive and they often equate 'best' with most financially rewarding."

I have personally mentored some outstanding young women in my role at the College of Charleston and I'm delighted that we are successfully attracting these new leaders to our profession. Yet I feel the gender imbalance we are now seeing is a troubling one, just as troubling as it would be if the student populations were dominated by males.

Why? For the same reasons that virtually any gender imbalance raises issues. More than in some other professions, ours should look like the society it serves. We work in a relationship based profession, both by definition and practice. We serve audiences that reflect a wide range of diverse attributes, including gender. To best serve them we need to best understand them and it helps if we share their demographic qualities...age, ethnicity, education and gender.

We need to reach out in creative new ways to bright promising young men on our college campuses and remind them of the many attributes of a career in the communications profession. We're clearly not having trouble getting this message across to young women, and if we can attract the best students of both genders our profession will be better equipped to meet tomorrow's challenges.

Tom Martin
Executive-in-Residence, Department of Communication, The College of Charleston
Trustee, Institute for Public Relations

(The following provides insights on USC Annenberg's fifth Gap Study, available free through a link below.)

In 2002 the head of global communications at a Fortune 50 company lamented to us, "I have no real idea of what my budget should be because there are no real benchmarks. That's true of many other aspects of managing the communications function."

Thus was born the Generally Accepted Practices or GAP Study.

We took a close look at the availability of operational data that could help senior communications executives manage their functions. What we found surprised us. While much had been written about the practice, very little was available about the management aspects of the job. That may be why brilliant communicators sometimes find themselves ill-equipped to step into senior management posts.

After gathering input from many veteran practitioners we fielded the first GAP Study in the fourth quarter of 2002. The results, and those of the subsequent four GAPs, are available to all free of charge at www.annenberg.usc.edu/sprc. We've undertaken this massive project thanks to the financial support of visionary communicators at Avery Dennison, The Council of PR Firms, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, Ketchum, Nike, Nissan, Raytheon, SC Johnson, Toyota, and Weber Shandwick.

In addition to extensive data on budgets, organization, functions, evaluation, perceptions of the profession, etc., the just published GAP V identifies 13 practices that we believe can be called "Best Practices."

A total of 520 senior professionals participated in the 38-question survey, the largest number of respondents yet. Still, we did not have enough respondents from some types of organization, to some questions, to produce statistically reliable results in those cases. Our goal is to build the numbers over time so that more granular analysis becomes possible across more categories, including global practice.

From "Generally Accepted" to "Best" Practices

When naming the study we chose "Generally Accepted Practices" after a great deal of deliberation. The term "best practices" was considered but quickly discarded. The fact that many organizations do things in a certain way does not, in itself, make it a best practice.

And GAP is a better acronym than BP, unless you're in the energy business.

Now, after five studies, we believe we've found a new way to think about best practices. By correlating the answers to specific questions with the answers to other questions, one can identify common patterns of behavior. In turn, when we focused on some of those patterns in their entirety (the "forests") rather than the individual factors that made them up (the "trees"), they suggested very positive approaches to, environments for, and results from, the PR/communications practice.

The final step was to take a bit of a leap and deduce that, if one positive factor can consistently be associated with a positive pattern, then it is reasonable to dub that factor a Best Practice. Why? Because for a practice to be deemed "Best," it must consistently be associated with beneficial (to the PR/communications function) outcomes. That's exactly what we saw in the 13 Best Practices described in GAP V.

Some have asked why we haven't taken this step before, given that we've seen similar patterns in the previous GAP studies. We weren't comfortable doing more than reporting on them because the factors that made them up varied from study to study, and we wanted more input. Now, with five studies under our belts, we think the time has come to step up and share this insight, so that the discussion about best practices can be advanced beyond its current state.

We acknowledge that our approach is a bit subjective, in part because we cannot scientifically demonstrate causality. We don't know for sure that Positive Factor A will definitely lead to Positive Factor B.
Also, some of our Best Practice factors don't correlate with other important factors like "Have a good external reputation" or "Successful." However, in those cases they did correlate with several other very positive factors, making it important to recognize them. (Also, as we know all too well, many non-PR factors contribute to issues like reputation and success.) But we can say this:

1. The consistency of these patterns is unmistakable.
2. The profession needs to get beyond speaking of Best Practices in a subjective way. Again, the fact that a practice is used commonly, or is used by organizations we respect, does not make it a Best Practice.

We invite reader comment on our approach but think it would be most helpful if the following proviso were honored: Our overall goal is to move the discussion in a positive direction, so criticism alone isn't enough. If you have a criticism of our methodology, please include with it a fix, a work-around, or a viable alternative.
Unfortunately there isn't nearly enough space in this format to explain the rationales behind each of the following 13 Best Practices, so we urge the reader to go to www.annenberg.usc.edu/sprc, click on the GAP V report, and download Section VII, which provides all the details.

Here, in a nutshell, is are the Best Practices that we found. While a few may seem self-evident it's essential that each be seen in full context, in our full report.

• Maintain a higher than average ratio of PR budget to gross revenue (PR/GR Ratio).
• Report directly and exclusively to the C-Suite.
• Optimize the C-Suite's understanding of PR's current and potential contributions to the success of the organization as a whole.
• Establish an effective social responsibility strategy for your organization.
• Establish an effective digital-media strategy for your organization.
• Establish an effective issues-management strategy for your organization.
• Optimize integration and coordination within the PR/communications function, and between it and other organizational functions.
• Encourage highly ethical practices across the organization, beginning with communication.
• Encourage the organization-wide adoption of a long-term strategic point of view, beginning with communication.
• Encourage the organization-wide adoption of a proactive mindset, beginning with communication.
• Encourage the organization-wide adoption of a flexible mindset, beginning with communication.
• Optimize the integration of PR and reputational considerations into top-level organizational strategies.
• Measurably contribute to organizational success.

Jerry Swerling
Professor, Director of PR Studies and Strategic Public Relations Center
USC Annenberg School for Communication

Major Jim Gregory, US Army
M.A. Candidate, Project Manager, Strategic Public Relations Center
USC Annenberg School for Communication

Now available, the report of the third annual Academic Symposium hosted by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. The event was sponsored by the Institute for Public Relations and the Arthur W. Page Society. The 30 attendees included thought leaders from the academic community as well as corporate and agency leadership.

The 2008 symposium featured academic, corporate, and agency responses to the The Authentic Enterprise, a Page Society report which examines the core drivers of the 21st century's business environment and implications for communicators. Business school, communications school, and practitioner perspectives on the publication produced additional insights into the Chief Communications Officer's (CCO) role today and tomorrow:

• Whose job is it to manage corporate authenticity? More specifically, where does the CCO role begin and end, and how does it mesh or overlap with a Chief Marketing Officer's responsibility? Both are struggling today with their respective identities (and often, "they is us").
• The notion of authenticity requires communicators to not only take responsibility for promise-making, but also promise-keeping. In this context, CCOs must be more astute about presenting the communicator's roles and functions to the rest of the corporation.
• Corporate authenticity is not functional, but must exist enterprise-wide, permeating all levels and areas of an organization. This hands CCOs an excellent opportunity to step forward and assume leadership in defining a corporation's values - the cornerstone of character and authenticity - and instill senior leader commitment.
• The Authentic Enterprise constitutes a call for CCOs to lead the process of achieving corporate authenticity rather than attempting to own the process. This will involve working with all functions- marketing and beyond- to gauge whether or not the corporation is truly authentic and realigning it wherever it falls short.

The full report on the 2008 Tuck School Academic Symposium is available now on the Institute's website.

(The following is excerpted from a longer version published on Harold Burson's Blog. It was written in response to a commentary by a legal commentator on CBS "Sunday Morning" who equated public relations to lying.)

Never unemployed and engaged in public relations all my working life, I calculated that, in the context of the CBS "Sunday Morning" commentary, I have been lying for more than 60 years - maybe a qualification for the Guiness record book.

This inference neither troubles me personally nor do I believe it harms me professionally. But I am highly irritated about what it says about the thousands of corporate executives, government officials, NGO advocates, and, perhaps most significant of all, editors and reporters with whom I have worked and shared confidences for six decades - not to speak of the millions of people around the world who have been the recipients of information I have had a hand in crafting.

I submit they're smarter than what the CBS commentary implies. I don't believe those with whom I have worked to disseminate my clients' messages are so gullible (or so dumbly obliging) to be parties to the communication of lies. On the contrary, I think editors and reporters have played an important role holding public relations professionals like me to acceptable standards of fact and decency.

The grey area - as with all manner of media - is not in reporting facts. Rather, it's in how those facts are interpreted. Increasingly, news media are in the business of interpretation and commentary, areas once confined to the editorial page. Many if not most newsmen forget that we in public relations are not surrogates of journalists or media. Rather, we are the paid advocates of clients who have a point of view that may be questioned by affected parties. Our interpretation in serving our clients may differ from how a reporter reacts to the same set of facts. But this is nothing new in the world of journalism; editorial writers frequently have differing points of view than those expressed in a publication's news columns.

But three score years of working in this arena have convinced me that, after all is said and done, the public gets it right. The fact is, an individual, an organization, a product gets only one chance to lie to the public. Even in a nation of 300 million, the public early on arrives at a collective opinion - and lying over even the short run simply doesn't work in a democratic society.

Harold Burson
Founding Chairman
Burson-Marsteller

Page Turner, the blog of the Arthur W. Page Society, has published my posting regarding the three kinds of research in our field, and how that relates to the Institute for Public Relations' Essential Knowledge Project. As articulated by Dr. James E. Grunig, the three kinds are:

1. Research used in the practice of public relations to identify publics, set strategies and measure results.
2. Research on the practice of public relations to understand trends, best practices, etc.
3. And research for the practice of public relations to develop broad knowledge about what works, when, and why.

Where can you go these days and not hear about the first kind of research? Conferences, trade pubs, blogs and water coolers. We get it (even if we're not always doing it).

But when it comes to the second and third kinds of research - we all know many practitioners who barely give a thought to this kind of knowledge.

The Page Society is a professional association for senior public relations and corporate communications executives. Its mission is to strengthen the management policy role of the corporate public relations officer. So what can practitioners at the pinnacle of the public relations profession do to engage their colleagues in the search for the science beneath the art of public relations™?

My thoughts are here. I'd welcome yours.

Frank Ovaitt
President and CEO
Institute for Public Relations

A recent survey from McKinsey & Co. found that 90 percent of companies say they are increasing their corporate social responsibility from what they were 5 years ago. Environmental, social and governance issues are now being incorporated into key business strategies and employees and shareholders are playing a major role in this shift.

John L. Paluszek, senior counsel at Ketchum and a former trustee for the Institute for Public Relation's predecessor organization, recently spoke with the Wall Street Journal Online regarding the increasing trend toward corporate social responsibility.

Citing GE and Toyota's fuel-efficient vehicles as examples, Paluszek says companies are looking at using corporate social responsibility as a new marketing opportunity. Companies are also building their reputation by using causal marketing and offering donations to an organization once a product is purchased.

While beneficial, CSR practices are not without their challenges. In an economic downturn, Paluszek lists layoffs, reduction of benefits and outsourcing as issues that might lead to criticisms of a company's CSR program. In the face of such challenges, managers must be aware of the company's long-term reputation and open to dialogue and input from investors, the public and employees.

Companies should start considering investments that are socially responsible as simply smart business. The CSR investment should be "authentic in the sense of relating to what kind of organization" it is and should relate to the organization's core competencies.

Paluszek offers three rules when implementing CSR practices:

• Do well at what you're supposed to do
• Do no social harm or injury and improve the interface between society and business
• Do a little extra - be sure to monitor issues and be aware of the intangibles that can affect your company

To read the original interview, click How More Companies Are Embracing Social Responsibility as Good Business.

Jenn Moyer
Institute for Public Relations