Transparency, Collaboration and Public Service: Three Opportunities for Public Relations as a Global Profession

 

 

“Three connected opportunities...[for] the global public relations profession … are: transparency, collaboration and public service.”

 

Good morning, everyone.

     

Thank you, Dean, for that very kind introduction.

     

Here at the outset of what promises to be a very engaging day of discussion about global public relations, I’d like to offer just a bit of prologue – perhaps a context – for the galaxy of speakers, starting with Ambassador Ed Brynn, who will follow. I’m also hoping that after Ambassador Brynn and I offer our brief remarks, you will join us in a spirited dialogue about this fascinating and seminal subject.  

    

But first, I must congratulate the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, for its wisdom in establishing the Center for Global Public Relations – and its extremely good fortune in luring my friend and colleague Dr. Dean Kruckeberg to serve as its executive director. Dean has probably traveled more miles internationally than some U.S. secretaries of state, on a mission almost as sweeping as theirs – the development of public relations education in countries around the world.

    

Dean has asked that today we examine the “challenges of 21st century global public relations.”

    

With just a bit of sleight of mind, I’m going to convert that word “challenges” to the word “opportunities.”

As you know, that’s something public relations professionals often accomplish.

    

So I have a short list of the fascinating, overarching opportunities – actually three such connected opportunities -- that come to mind when I contemplate the global public relations profession in this century. They are transparency, collaboration and public service, and I present them under the title “Public Relations: Global Profession.”

    

I chose that title because it’s much more direct, much snappier, than an alternative that I considered: “The Peripatetic Public Relations Professional: What I Saw and Heard in Russia, China, India, Argentina, Brazil, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Italy and Switzerland.” Besides, I think that Dean has probably delivered that paper – or something like it – on many occasions.

    

(Incidentally, let’s not be distracted as to whether public relations meets the classic definition of a “profession.” After all, we do have a code of ethics; we’ve developed a vast body of knowledge -- although it’s so vast that it’s difficult to codify; we are certainly dedicated to research; and, with the fine work now being done at our colleges and universities on outcomes assessment, we’re moving gradually in the direction of an entry credential.)

      

(Too, there’s the dictionary definition of a profession – a definition that certainly supports my title – a profession is “a vocation or occupation requiring advanced education and training and involving intellectual skills.”)

 

So to the matters at hand: What are the outstanding opportunities for global public relations in the 21st century?

      

The first overarching opportunity for the public relations profession today is the growing demand for transparency in institutions of all kinds here and around the world.

     

I need not remind you of the vast transparency deficit that has plunged global society into economic distress. And we need not discuss “credit default swaps” or subprime mortgages to get to the heart of the transparency issue.

    

The core of transparency issue is its effect on public trust and confidence.

    

It’s encouraging to note that public relations professionals are already addressing this issue. Witness initiatives such as the Arthur Page Society’s Authentic Enterprise program and the Edelman Trust Barometer.

    

But to reduce this issue to its simplest terms, it may be helpful to consider the old Johnny Mercer song: “Ac-centuate the positive, and e-liminate the negative.” (I could sing a few bars, but it would probably clear the room.)

     

Of course, I’m not suggesting that an organization should make everything public. There is valuable proprietary information –- especially in the case of national security and intelligence information – that warrants protection. But public relations counsel should rank with legal counsel in helping management make the necessary distinctions.

    

In this connection, many years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis offered us a valuable piece of advice when he said, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”

    

And, to help us better appreciate the power of effective communications, playwright Tom Stoppard has written “If you get the right words in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”

 

Now some of you may be wondering why I haven’t given the “new information technology” – social media and social networking – equal ranking among the overarching current global public relations opportunities.

     

There’s a very simple answer: While I’m sure that its impact on our field will be substantial, I haven’t figured out what exactly that impact will be.

    

Yes, consumers and citizens are increasingly being empowered and dialogue is expanding in many directions. And it’s true that public relations departments and counseling firms are racing with advertising experts and others to add relevant expertise. Ketchum CEO Ray Kotcher once described this race as analogous to the early twentieth century Oklahoma land rush.

    

So I will just listen attentively to other speakers today to learn how the new information technology is likely to affect global public relations. 

    

But my friends, all these things being said, “transparency” is largely our turf. How we handle it in the many organizations in which we toil may well define how public relations prospers in this century.

 

The second seminal opportunity public relations professionals can, and must, now address is the increasing need for collaboration at the many levels of society.

    

Some time ago, an American diplomat, Vernon Walters, offered this global aspiration: “Let us make the world so economically interdependent that war will go out of style”

    

OK, as we as all know, you have to be careful what you wish for – the current global economic crisis has spread like a virus around the world because we have, indeed, achieved a great degree of global interconnectedness in the financial world.

    

We should also consider the admonition of the great American philosopher Woody Allen, who has told us that “Yes, the lamb may lie down with the lion, but one of them is going to spend a sleepless night.”

    

But having said that, there’s no denying that we are all already connected globally on many levels, so we had better get this connectedness right. Capital flows, immigration, information technology, trade, health, poverty, security and regional conflicts all have significant fallouts far from their points of origin.

      

The opportunity here is for public relations professionals to bring their training and experience to the formation of collaborative, effective partnerships – win-win partnerships that contribute to mutual progress. As Harold Burson has so wisely observed, public relations has evolved to the point where today we often deliver counsel on policy/performance as well as communications per se.

     

And many years ago, Allan Center told us that as a profession public relations has as its fundamental mission in society . . . harmony.

      

Fortunately, we are well on our way in this mission. Public relations educators have been in the forefront – teaching abroad in places like Qatar and Slovenia, the old Soviet Union and the new China. And they’ve been publishing many relevant texts, such as Dr. Judy Van Slyke Turk’s co-authorship of a book on public relations in less-developed countries.

     

And our professional societies have been hard at it as well. The Institute for Public Relations has expanded its work internationally; The recent International Public Relations Association symposium in Beijing focused on IPRA’s latest Gold Paper, “Public Relations and Collaboration: The Role of Public Relations and Communications Supporting Collaboration in a Complex, Converging World.” And The Public Relations Society of America’s International Section sponsors conferences, some at United Nations headquarters, on compelling global communications issues, often reprising these subjects in the society’s Strategist and Tactics publications.

   

Also, many public relations professionals -- in companies, counseling firms and nonprofit organizations – have built impressive win-win partnerships in the area of corporate social responsibility. Think Wal-Mart and the Environmental Defense Fund.

 

But perhaps you know all that, so Dean has asked me to touch briefly on two enterprises with which you may not be so familiar. They are the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, and the Commission on Public Relations Education.

    

The Global Alliance for Public Relations is, in effect, PRSA times 63. In other words, it’s an eight-year-old cooperative of national and regional public relations professional societies in 63 countries spanning the world. Its aggregate membership, via its member societies, is about 160,000; these public relations professionals can attend any of the many member-society conferences around the world at member fees.

    

GA’s mantra is “One Profession, One Voice.” That’s meant as a call to service the profession around the world. So GA has coordinated a global protocol on ethics and is developing universal accreditation options. And it has produced a very valuable series of national profiles of how public relations is practiced in countries around the world – about 20 such “PR Landscapes.”

     

And GA, in collaboration with the U.S.-based Commission on Public Relations Education, has just launched a study of public relations curriculum standards among in countries around the world. For more on the GA, consult its Web site: www.globalpr.org.
 

The Commission on Public Relations, as many of you no doubt know, has for decades published recommendations on undergraduate and graduate public relations education. In that connection, you may well know of the Commission’s most recent study, called “The Professional Bond, Public Relations Education And The Practice.” We’re happy to report that the study’s executive summary is now available in translation in five languages – Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and Arabian. You can check it out on the commission’s Web site at www.commpred.org.

     

As I mentioned a moment ago, GA and the Commission are collaborating on a three-phase global research program, managed by Dr. Elizabeth Toth at the University of Maryland, to identify public relations curriculum standards in many parts of the world. Elizabeth is renowned for her many initiatives in international public relations education.

      

We hope to publish the study, the result of Web site research as well as qualitative and quantitative analysis, this fall.

 

The third stimulating opportunity facing the public relations profession is that of expanded public service.

    

Yes, many public relations educators and practitioners have long been involved in pro bono efforts with nonprofit organizations at the local, and even the national, levels. And more such efforts certainly are encouraged.

     

But for a moment, let’s take public relations public service to the macro level and reflect on the opportunity that history has now given us to make a significant contribution on the world stage by helping the United States mount a truly effective “public diplomacy” program.

     

Ambassador Brynn and Bob Grupp may speak to this subject more authoritatively and at greater length, so I’ll be brief.

   

“Public diplomacy,” in essence, should also be our turf.

    

After all, where is it written that some of the most informed, experienced and articulate communications professionals in America should not play a role in the “global marketplace of ideas”?

    

Where is that stone tablet that says that well-prepared and motivated communicators – international public relations professionals – should not help in the vital development of America’s coming “soft power” initiatives?

    

Fortunately, there is good news here. The parade is forming to support a genuine, new, robust American “public diplomacy” capability -- and several public relations professionals and organizations are at, or near, the head of that parade.

    

One such organization is Business for Diplomatic Action. BDA -- composed of leaders from public relations, advertising, academia, government, think tanks and civil society – which is organizing a special task force to keep “public diplomacy” high on this administration’s agenda. Yes, even with all the complex, existential economic issues now facing the country and the world.

    

The BDA effort is somewhat analogous to the U.S.I.A.’s private sector advisory group Harold Burson chaired during the Reagan administration. Harold’s committee offered that administration counsel on people-to-people diplomacy based largely on a series of meetings we held with high-level Soviet communicators in Moscow and Washington. A few in this room today may remember “glasnost” and “perestroika.”

   

Now I will simply conclude by confessing to you that with such opportunities – such exciting prospects for applying public relations to the interconnected 21st-century world -- I do have one regret:

    

I wish I were starting in public relations all over again.

    

Thank you.