Michael Morley FIPR - on the state of the profession
Acceptance Remarks given at the IPR Alan Campbell Johnson Medal Presentation 
London, 5 June 2003

What would Alan Campbell-Johnson think about the state of our profession and business today and its prospects for the future? Would he be optimistic? Or should he prepare his own demise?

I decided to review some of the significant developments in PR since I became professionally engaged in 1960 - when Alan's firm was already established as the leading public affairs consultancy in London - and to draw up a balance sheet of progress and problems. 

After these reflections I then planned to take a brief glimpse at the present and future -- heeding the advice of one of my mentors in earlier years who urged me to eschew both optimism and pessimism and become a practicing realist.

The positive side of the PR Balance Sheet is impressive indeed.

The growth of the business in financial terms is stunning. There were no figures available in 1960 but in 1990 the fees generated by the world's top ten agency/consulting firms were about $910 million. Ten years later the top ten generated fees of $2.5 billion. It is reasonable to suggest that the fees of the thousands of other smaller agencies and the direct spending on PR of organizations increased in the same proportion.

Public Relations is also a major employer. According to figures given in his address to the IPR at its AGM in April, Toni Muzi Falconi estimated that there are 3 million people engaged in public relations around the world , although only about 10% belong to professional associations. Even if the estimate errs on the generous side, I feel sure that many of us are surprised at the size of the figure. It is only when we reflect on how deeply PR as a discipline has penetrated into the world's governments, national and local, industries, not-for-profits, NGOs, military and so on does the number seem to make sense.

Public Relations people have risen high in the hierarchy of their organizations. In many corporations the most senior PR executive is a member of the executive committee. In some cases PR professionals have soared higher - into the Chief Executive's office itself. In the sphere of politics and government PR advisers have themselves been prominent in news coverage and commentary that oscillates between being adulatory, intriguing or extremely unflattering but is always controversial. 

PR education and training has blossomed in developed and developing countries alike, with a huge variety of undergraduate, graduate and now doctoral courses available.

And now it seems as if there might be a breakthrough in getting PR modules featured in more general MBA programs in the USA and elsewhere. After all, it is not much use educating a cadre of professionals if their future bosses are not given at least some insight into this important part of their function as business leaders.

There is also a great deal of empirical evidence that PR is attracting a higher caliber of recruit to the profession, no doubt because of the celebrity of some of our practitioners, the earning potential and the opportunities for advancement and entrepreneurship. But I would also like to think that there are many whose motivation is vocational, in a way that would have pleased Alan Campbell-Johnson. After all, what better craft can there be for those who are inspired to change the world for the better? 

At the same time, our traditional work has been broken down into an increasing number of specializations by industry, because the vocabulary of those who have reached the higher slopes is not open to all of us. We have added a number of responsibilities under the broad banner of public relations, that were, could be and sometimes are considered the province of other consultants. I have in mind, as examples, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sponsorship and the role of corporates in civil society.

Finally, there is now accumulating evidence, and consequently wider recognition of, the superior power of PR over paid advertising, most recently articulated in the latest book from Al and Laura Ries, “The Death of Advertising and the Rise of PR”. 

If we were to end there we could smile with some self satisfaction.

So why is it that in the past several months I have been very uneasy about this seemingly positive situation? 

There are three main reasons linked to the corporate scandals that dominated the pages of the media just a few months ago, the technology bubble, and the fight against terror and the war in Iraq. 

Big topics indeed but it is not my purpose to debate them in general; only the role played by public relations people and the implications of their performance for the reputation of our profession.

First let’s examine the recent corporate scandals and touch on the technology bubble at the same time. 

Corporate scandals and the technology bubble were not, as some people might think, merely phenomena of their own countries and the USA. They were global. Think about it. Enron, Andersen, Worldcom, Adelphi in the USA. The Neuemarkt closed in Germany with wrongdoing alleged against some of its participants. HIH in Australia, Marconi here in the UK. Heroic corporate leaders of yesteryear – Jack Welch of GE, Percy Barneviik of ABB, Jean-Claude Messier of Vivendi, Michael Eisner of Disney – are just a few of the names that moved out of the front rank of “most admired” executives into the dog house. 

Research conducted by Edelman shows public trust in business and other commercial institutions is in decline. Where advisory and consulting services are concerned – accountants, management consultants and analysts – there has been a precipitous plunge in public trust. 

But it seems that we in the field of public relations – so often perceived as an easy and soft target, slightly soiled spin merchants – have dodged the bullet this time. 

Should we take comfort at that? Should we imagine that people credit us with the best intentions and with being the sole blameless entity within the business universe?

Or does it mean that we are seen as an irrelevant factor in the debate over the whole question of corporate governance, or indeed corporate behavior generally?

Are you not surprised as I am that no one has seriously charged us with various sins of omission or commission? Such as:

• Being complicit in the hyping of stocks and shares, especially in the hi-tech arena ; have we been above reproach in the matter of insider trading?

• Nurturing the cult of the celebrity CEO

• Fostering a false optimism

• Naiveté and unquestioning acquiescence in making corporate announcements

• Lack of sufficient knowledge to know when we might be enmeshed in a corporate swindle

Of course, in this connection, the “fourth estate” need to undertake some self-examination as well. The watchdogs awoke rather too late.

Now to the fight against terror and the prelude to the war in Iraq as well as the war itself. Here the principal antagonists were in full public view rather than operating behind the scenes.

I was therefore very unhappy to read Tom Friedman’s column in the New York Times yesterday when he wrote “I agreed that Mr Bush should fight this war for the right reasons and the moral reasons. But he stuck with this WMD argument for PR reasons.” Friedman is also the author of the “Lexus and the Olive Tree” indispensable reading for anyone engaged in international PR, so it is disheartening when he contrasts “right and moral” with PR.

What are we to make of the two ambassadors of our profession – Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf In Baghdad and Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary in Washington DC?

Should we take heart at the fact that each of these men has attracted a huge following, each with a host of websites scoring record numbers of hits daily? Each has received many offers of marriage or other favors.

The Al-Sahhaf technique was simple. Just deny the truth. Tom Harris writes in his entertaining newsletter:

“As our troops approached Baghdad he declared, ‘Their arrival was all a lie perpetrated by the American news media.’ He said, ‘Our estimates are that none of them will come out alive unless they surrender quickly.’ The next day he announced that ‘The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad.’ New York Times writer Clyde Haberman compared his performance to the immortal Chico Marx who in “Duck Soup” said to a woman he was conning, ‘Who you gonna believe – me or your own eyes’.”

Well, who are you gonna believe? Ari Fleischer, who only last week announced that he was going to step down from his role behind the podium?

Here is the tiniest extract from the five pages Paul Holmes, an Englishman who has become an exceptionally knowledgeable observer/commentator of the PR scene in the USA, devoted to Fleischer’s valedictory: 

‘No matter how often PR people explain that their job is all about openness and honesty, if the most visible practitioner of the art practices spin and deceit, the entire profession is likely to be tarred with the same brush. And Fleischer has been perhaps the most deceitful presidential press secretary since Ron Ziegler mounted his spectacular defense of Richard Nixon.………..’All of Fleischer’s techniques …. were on display during the Gulf War. He was either the architect of or a leading participant in the administration’s public relations strategy, which was to replace the “big lie” of Josef Goebbels with a series of little lies…’ 

On the one hand we have the PR buffoon. On the other a more sinister person credited with being able to manipulate the media. Both symbols of what our critics believe to be the norm among PR people. 

This is not funny. Just as trust in business has gone down, trust in government has risen almost certainly because in dangerous and uncertain times, people expect a great deal from their leaders, including honesty. As strange as it may seem to our ears, there were many in Iraq who believe Al-Sahhaf because he was the only voice they heard.

But I am alarmed at the effect of this epidemic of cynical mis or disinformation, particularly in the USA where the shock to the entire population of the implications of the horrible acts of September 11, 2001 are hard to overestimate. This provided fertile soil for the implantation of so-called facts that exploited a climate of fear.

I am also alarmed that there are many in our profession who are apt to congratulate these champions of communications for the success they have achieved in seeming credible to their different publics. In the USA, where these opinions are closely watched and measured, The Financial Times had this to say a few days ago:

‘Politicians concerned at the US failure to discover weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq may have less of a problem than they imagine. According to an opinion poll, many Americans appear to think the weapons have already been found, or misunderstood the war’s main stated objective. The program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that 41 percent either believed that the US had found WMDs or were unsure. Thirty-one percent believed that Iraq had used chemical or biological weapons during the war, or were unsure. 

While six in 10 Americans believed those weapons were the main reason for the invasion, 19 percent thought it was Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda. Twenty percent said the most important reason was “the fact that Saddam Hussein was an oppressive dictator.”

So what conclusion have I drawn from the balance sheet? Do the positives overwhelm the negatives in a way that allows us all to take great satisfaction? Or do the sins of omission and commission I have described wash away all the advantages that have been so painstakingly accumulated by Alan Campbell-Johnson and so many other PR professionals before and after him?

As a realist I believe simply that we need first to recognize the problem that exists. Just because there are so many more of us – 3 million – there are more opportunities for things to go awry whether spurred by greed, lack of knowledge or simple will-to-win through spin. Just because nowadays so much more money is involved, our skills and the tools at our disposal are so much more potent and effective; we have greater power to do good or evil. We know how to use the weapons of mass communication. But we must use them responsibly.

Once we move beyond denial and abandon the conviction that we have no need to look again at our purpose and practice, I offer these suggestions for some steps that should be taken for the continued good of our profession. If we do, I feel we can all be optimistic about the future.

1. We must review the ethics codes of the international industry associations and professional societies. Tighten them where needed; modernize them to reflect today's conditions. Offer protection to individuals who may not be strong enough to resist pressures from their employers. Here is an area in which agencies/consultancies must take the lead.

2. We should find some way of monitoring and punishing those who transgress. There is general agreement that PR has found no satisfactory solution to this problem. That does not mean the quest should end.

3. We should not honor the work of our peers when the finest strategies and techniques are shown to succeed - but at the expense of the truth. I realize that this would be extraordinarily difficult to do without gagging free speech. Moreover, I would be the last to deny the PR voice to anyone, however controversial his views. But it is important that we distinguish between, say, the right of a person to hold and advocate an opinion that might be obnoxious to many and that of cynically manipulating and fabricating "facts" for public consumption, whether in the commercial or public sphere.

4. Finally, we need to ensure more education and training of PR people in their various specialties so that they are able to ask challenging questions and form their own opinions. This can be important in the science based industries for example, but I have especially in mind the intricacies of finance. In a way, to give yet another answer to a question I raised earlier, perhaps the seeming impotence of the PR people in those companies involved in the corporate scandals stems from their inability to read a profit and loss account or a balance sheet which, along with their knowledge of the company, might have given clues as to the true state of affairs. But perhaps I am being unfair, for if the external auditors and others assumed to be expert in these matters saw nothing wrong, why should a relatively innumerate PR person? Nevertheless we need radically to improve our level of knowledge of finance if we are to be relevant at the corporate level and our antennae to detect improper corporate behavior should be very sensitive. 

I would say the balance sheet is in balance. But we must avoid hypocrisy at all costs. I believe it is appropriate for us to examine and correct our own shortcomings before we seek to censor or advise others on their behavior.

I wonder what would Alan Campbell-Johnson think and what would be his advice if he were with us now? 

Thank you.

ENDS
For further information, please contact the IPR  Head of PR and Marketing Ann Mealor on 020 7253 5151 or email AnnM@ipr.org.uk