While working in public relations in America is highly respectable, in Britain somehow the idea that someone is paid to plead a special case or to be employed to persuade the public is thought 'wrong'. As public relations is offered within management, marketing, and social studies courses at more and more universities and colleges; as the various professional public relations organizations and professional bodies mature; as the public relations field becomes one of increasing specialty skills, so using public relations will become, like advertising and marketing, just another tool of modern management, is a place where good careers may be made.
However, those in public relations do have a clear duty to consider the effects of their campaigns in the public sector for they operate with the powerful forces of media, information, social groups, and opinion formers. It does no good to pretend that public relations are not a formidable instrument of change it is, and you will have to make value judgments.
The age of information
The sheer volume of information available in our society has rapidly grown and the messages to everyone have proliferated. We are in the Age of Information. As this bombardment has grown so have the services surrounding it, and public relations is the leading contender to see that one bit of information or message gets through amid the onslaught of mass media advertising and other information providers like the media that constantly continue to assail.
The study of how we receive and deal with information and how information is actually communicated are now fields of academic study. The current public relations practitioners in Britain hardly touch the surfaces of the discoveries about human behavior that are readily available to them. In fact, most people in public relations agencies are not highly educated in the fields most likely to be of importance to them in their work. Yet they get along. Indeed, many draw very high salaries, run profitable businesses, have satisfied clients, and some become millionaires.
How this is possible, if the art of persuasion is such a highly skilled task? The answer rests in what work is asked of public relations today. If such skills are not necessary for the campaigns wanted or the solutions needed, then why bother? This is changing fast, and clients are more and more wanting advice and action that calls for considerable finesse, knowledge, and intelligence. Those planning to enter public relations in the future will not be able to offer superficial solutions or thinking to any client. A quick look at just a few areas of today's public relations work confirms that prediction: Social issue pressure on manufacturers Post industrial society and capitalism Vested interests and central legislation Social intervention and engineering tasks (e.g. health education on drug abuse) Community relations and law and order Politics and Parliamentary influences Financial image making for international companies.
