The Evolution of PR

When I first began my career a decade ago, making tea and answering the office phone at the Mail on Sunday’s Night & Day magazine, PRs were given short shrift. The newspapers held all the power and apart from a few brilliant individuals in the business, journalists were scornful of the public relations industry; often rudely abrupt to that polite perky voice on the line.

But not long after I had memorised who in the office wanted sugars in their tea, I was learning who the PRs were and which of them needed a little sweetening. Night & Day was one of the first supplements to pick up on the reader’s thirst for celebrity, running a ‘face’ on the cover every week, to accompany an interview and a photoshoot. To secure these interviews we had to seduce the PRs.

This was new to journalists and didn’t come easily. The newspapers had never had to slip sugar in the PRs tea. Before, there were had been just a few covers to go around and the star with a movie to promote needed the paper more than the paper needed them. But soon we were up against ever multiplying supplements and weekly magazines that were also vying to win the best cover story of the week.

Fearful of losing a cover star to someone else, PRs were wined and dined and cocktailed. We promised we wouldn’t ask too many horrid questions (we lied) and that we would make their clients look more beautiful than they had ever looked before (we did). The celebrities began to demand their favourite photographer, hair stylist, make up artist, designer. (It’s nice to know that the really big stars never did – Lulu would spend all day on a shoot and make no demands nor try to walk off with any of the clothes at the end).

Now that PRs controlled the celebrities and the magazine covers, they quickly learned to control all aspects of celebrity obsession: the more readers wanted to buy their bags, go on their holidays and use their face creams, the more control the PRs got. Everyone wanted their own PR agent and everyone wanted to be in the papers.

The consequence of so much power being thrown about is that people got greedy. The journalists were seduced by the products and started to think of themselves as more important than the story; the PRs demanded total control of the press in return for lavishing them with champagne and First Class tickets. The tide turned for me when I was asked to guarantee two pages in the magazine in exchange for a trip. (Just so you know – it didn’t work with me then and it doesn’t work with me now. No journalist worth their salt would be told how the story runs in advance, but in return: no freeloading.)

So what next? After a decade of extravagance and extravaganzas, we need to refocus. All three parts of the relationship – the PR, the journalist, the client – needs examination and clarity. No more furtive favours, no more hiding behind the cocktail umbrella. In short, we have to step back from friendship and get back to business. Deals should be sealed with handshakes not air kisses.

While PRs and journalists need each other as plants need water, it’s a relationship that has grown without boundaries and has even, dare I say it, forgotten the soil in which it grows – if you can bear with me a little longer on this metaphor – the client, the story. Without any clear guidelines on how to help this plant life survive, the whole industry is in danger of withering to a shriveled version of its former self. The good news is that in 2009 we have the opportunity to shape the future: don’t miss it.