Thanks for your compliments. And for bringing so much value - client-side endorsement and insights to this single post.

Everyone is either an ‘in-house person’ or an ‘agency person’. And there’s so much work to be done in improving the way agencies and clients can and should perceive each other and work together.

But I think we’re getting there…

you’re right that the public perception of the PR profession needs some work.

Perhaps the reason is this - while PR is very often categorised as a communication discipline, it really is a far more strategic component of a company’s business than mere marketing or communications.

I’ve always asserted that PR is NOT marketing. It’s NOT communications. It’s NOT about writing or speaking or holding events.

Public Relations is Business Leadership clearly communicated. Everything else follows.

So yes, we need to improve that public perception of PR’s true role in businesses. Clients need to understand that too, so that PR consultants and agencies can be more effectively employed by the organisations.

And that’s what I hope this blog will help achieve.

sidenote:
But I think in Asia, we’ve come a long way from the misconception that PR is all about the boss’ pretty daughter flirting with customers in order to keep them coming back to the shop!

Very very well written piece about the dilemma some PR practitioners face each day.

The logic you presented on having an external team with more scale, more efficiencies and wider reach is on the spot. The education process from agency and to the client though, is still lacking in our industry.

Business operational costs will increase with each ‘expert’ that you bring onto the team and often, the more expertise in-house that is present, the more that will be expected of the internal team to deliver.

So I fully support your view of outsourcing to the experts and remaining fully aware of core competencies within a company.

“If you have a product/service to sell, then jolly well sell it! Stop trying to figure out whether the logo should be on the right or left side…”

Walter, good point on budgeting and evaluating in-house capabilities but honestly, unless a company has either big budgets or a big team, an agency can help provide that more-than-extra creativity and resourcing to create better campaigns.

End of day, everyone’s end goal is similar, it’s how the campaign got run that determines whether it was a good investment or not.

And while a company needs to own their campaign, it doesn’t hurt to have more people on their side as they run it. Both sides just need to learn respect and decisiveness.

First, I will ask myself how much funds I have available for the year and whether those funds would be better spent in engaging external PR expertise or developing inhouse publicists. I will also evaluate the level and depth of my own team - what are our strengths and weaknesses, where are our core competencies, and where are our gaps.

Next, I will do an evaluation of the publicity potential of a particular activity. For campaigns of a certain scale, I know that I will need a lot more hands to follow up with different journos on different leads, and the size of my team alone will not suffice. However, smaller run-of-the-mill affairs are probably best done inhouse at a lower cost.

For PR strategies and plans, I personally believe that a company has to take ownership of it some way or other. PR agencies certainly can provide value added and offer 3rd party perspectives that may be missing. However, it has to be the client ultimately that does what is best for his or her business.

Besides your blog, Priscilla Tan’s blog has written about issues that have long existed in the early days before blogs became a household word. This show a neverceasing misunderstanding of what public relations is about.

It looks like PR as a discipline needs a magical dose of its own medicine.

I would once again reinstate how be it traditional media (e.g. newspapers), new media (e.g. web), social media (e.g. blogs, social networks), businesses should not be seduced by the newness of a media to warrant repetition of the same issues.

Ultimately. they are all merely channels, and all channels need to be watched and responded to if one wants to manage how the audience perception on issues. This take time and effort, and a kind of talent which speaks to the culture within each channel.

I see it like this:
In any business, any decent professional representation would give a competitive edge, be it representation in accounting, IT or PR. It’s a choice, an option, and it’s up to the business to figure out if it’s right for them. It won’t always be right (expectation-wise) for every business.

“Appropriateness” is the key term we seem to be lacking here!

For your reference: I came across your blog post from Constantin Basturea’s weblog (his deli.cio.us to be exact).