The Essential Non-Essential

The Essential Non-Essential

By Chelsea Klinglesmith

When trying to decide what I wanted to spend my free blog topic on, I scanned through my memory over the most important messages I have received throughout my time in college as a PR major. From the get go, in my first PR class at OU, a seed was planted in my brain that would be continuously nurtured throughout the rest of my strategic communication studies. “Public Relations is NOT publicity work; It’s not press agentry; It’s not glamorous event planning like you see on Sex and the City; It’s not what everyone thinks it is.” This is what a class of young of Intro. to PR students were told in the fall of my sophomore year, myself among them. I recall leaning over in class to one of my friends saying, “Uh oh. It’s not? I think I need to change my major.”

What I figured out over the next three years is that my first public relations professor was right. In fact, she wouldn’t even refer to the industry as “PR,” because of the negative connotation she believed it carried. Public relations isn’t JUST the things the general public commonly perceives it to be; It’s sometimes aspects of those things, but as a whole, so much more. Really, I think as PR majors we’re lucky if people have any perception at all of what our job is. I’ve lost track of how many people scrunch up their faces and as what PR is when I tell them my major. Now that I’ve actually figured out what PR is myself, I hate that it’s not more commonly appreciated outside of its immediate arena, because in all truth, it’s an important service that all kinds of professional industries NEED.

When you move away from the general public who has a foggy idea, at best, of what PR work is, and in to various professional fields with PR staff, I think the reality gets even more disappointing. Sure, all kinds of companies from big-time corporations to small non-profits recognize the existence of public relations and perhaps even their need for it. However, to say PR professionals are underappreciated would be highly understating the situation. To even be recognized as a legitimate communication-related career, PR has to jump through hoops larger than many of its closely related fields. Take advertising for example. What Fortune 500 Company would take short cuts with its advertising staff? No way. People understand how much they need someone to brand their products or services and expose it to the outside world. When it comes to specifying exactly what parts of that outside world need to be reached and how best to inform them about said product or service, that’s where the shortcuts are made.

The truth is that despite the merits of PR or the absolute necessity of it, depending on what field we want to work in, the professionals we serve may or may not recognize it. We will have to work harder to demonstrate how our job contributes to the bottom line and offers an irreplaceable service. Too many companies view PR as an optional addition to their staff or a non-essential contribution to outreach efforts. I don’t know how our profession should overcome this roadblock, but I do know that PR professionals recognize the existence of this “prejudice” and are working towards legitimizing our field, even as I type this entry. The longer it takes to gain recognition won’t be at our expense, but rather the companies we could’ve been building relationships for.

Photo courtesy of Chelsea Klinglesmith