On PR Again

Some months ago I wrote how online worlds change PR. My main points were that the old "paint it over" over type of PR is dying, but there are thousands of people working in the profession of PR who do not get it. They resist the change and they keep selling the old stuff. This may result in a funny situation when people outside PR do communications better than many people inside PR profession (since they are not able to adapt).

Recently PR has become a rising topic in the blogosphere. My personal favorite is Loic Le Meur's post on PR secrets as Bullshit, which is most honest and also tries to prove the same point - better PR can be done outside PR. There are also many tips around to PR people, so that they could understand the blogosphere better, like this one. And an interview with Ross Mayfield on changing PR also caught my interest.

What is happening? I am for a radical scenario and I believe that PR as many think of it will not exist in some years. It does not mean that good people will be jobless. I believe that the function of communications advisory that is very similar to management consultancy will remain in place, creative marketing ideas may find their place and also some kind of research, but "middlemanship" between the media, blogs and the subjects of consultancy is definitely on the decline.

It also seems to me that on some markets PR is defined by the middlemanship, but on some markets, communications advisors are invited to the boardroom to give serious advice. Why? Because it does not matter how you are called, a lawyer, a management consultant, a PR person, or a joker, a priest, a prophet in the past... Leaders have always been and always be in need to understand and be understood, it does not matter how this person who advises them, is called.