It was billed as the UK PR industry’s chance to get its own back. Paul
Holmes, editor of US magazine Inside PR and author of a scathing attack
on the UK PR industry accepted an invitation to defend his view that the
UK is looking ‘more and more like a Third World country’ as far as PR is
concerned.
Speaking at the PRCA last week Holmes instead tackled the state of the
US PR industry. While PR is recognised as a ‘policy level function in
most successful corporations,’ saidHolmes, ‘the PR people within most
corporations are not fit to be at the policy level.’
Instead companies are turning to the legal, human resources or finance
departments and to lawyers, accountancy firms and management consultants
instead of PR firms. The answer, said Holmes, was for PR firms to invest
more in recruitment and training.
Stressing that good PR people had a lot to offer - Holmes said that ‘in
any sane and rational world marketing should report to PR and not the
other way round’. Companies, he said, needed to create a culture in
which everyone understood the importance of reputation and acted
consistently.
The ownership of PR firms by advertising agencies he described as ‘a
moral evil’, saying it encouraged PR people to acquiesce when clients
suggested they could advertise their way out of a public relations
disaster.
