Hello PR person.
Do you work hard? Are you hungry for success? Will you put work ahead of everything else in order to fulfil your potential and meet the expectations of your employer?
Thirty years ago PR people may have given quite different answers to the same questions. Things were different then (not that I know first-hand, I was in primary school), before the 80s boom and long-hours culture took hold.
Having watched a few episodes of Kirsty Young’s excellent series on Britain at Work, charting how earning a crust has changed in this country since the post-war period, I got thinking about how much PR has changed in the same time. Or more specificially, since the introduction of computers in the 1980s.
There is so much crap flying around at the moment about the future of PR, how social media is just oh-so-friggin’-wonderful and how PR is now somewhere between one of the most important things a business can do and an irrelevant niche exploiting fast-declining media. So it’s time to take a long hard look at reality, and history. Not just look to an uncertain future, but see what we can learn from the past, and then see if that gives us some food for thought about the future of PR, given our past mistakes and advances.
PR is on the cusp of some definitive change. If only we knew what. Some agencies fear change, others are falling over themselves to stuff our heads with digital things, some are doing the same old thing and hoping for the best. Some people get it, some people don’t. Change is the only thing that is certain, and those that get it right will be the successful ones.
Why will it be worth reading this blog over the next few weeks? Well, I don’t know whether it will, but let’s give it a shot. Each week I’ll be focussing on one of the past three decades, bringing together some perspectives (or memories, for the grey-haired amongst us) on what it was like, what progress we made and what we’d rather forget. I’ll be interviewing some of the people who’ve been in PR a long time, others who’re done a decade or more, and some fresher faces.
This week it’ll be the 1980s. The decade of the Falklands conflict, hairspray, the Mini Metro and some of the greatest yet cheesiest pop yet produced.
Next week, the 1990s. Grunge, Maastricht, Britpop, the rise of the internet and the first football team to win the treble.
After Easter, the 2000s. Dot.com flop, credit boom, credit flop, ropey music generally.
Then bang up to now, with some thoughts on what we can learn from the past and how PR may look in the future.
These posts will cover things like how success in PR has changed, how techniques have changed, the agency/client relationship, part-time and remote working, dress codes, and the conspicuous consumption of booze and drugs. Perhaps.
So some properly thought-out out stuff, about PR across old and new media, across old and young people. Without all the jizz about influence, sentiment, successes, learning and early bird discounts. More anon.
