Hill+Knowlton Strategies

This week I’m eschewing my regular topic of advertising to write about PR, or rather ‘Increasing the Value, Accountability and Effectiveness of PR to Drive Business Growth’, the somewhat wordy title to the PR Week conference I attended this week #PRWgrowth.

These are some of the more contentious things I wrote down:

“PR is not a Profession” – AFME’s Simon Lewis and PR Week’s Danny Rogers were asked whether PR should now be considered a profession now that it has chartered status.  The resounding answer from Simon and the delegate audience was ‘no’ as PR doesn’t have the tough entry requirements of a profession like law or accountancy.  grrrr

James Russell of Experian and Matthew Young of Santander both agreed that “PR measurement and evalution should be directly linked to renumeration”, and nothing is as motivating to a team or agency as the idea that no coverage = no cash.  I might be paraphrasing here a bit, but does this not reinforce the idea that PRs are just press release machines?

“Social media commentary is never neutral” according to Denise Kestler of Dow Jones – something I’d never really considered.  Apparently, it’s quite normal for 80% of traditional media coverage to be neutral, but you’d expect 80% of social media commentary to be either very positive or very negative.

Lastly a couple of memorable quotes: Barclaycard’s Mark Gonnella said you need to be a “business person first and communicator second” to succeed in the boardroom, and Crossrail’s Clinton Leeks said “never waste a good crisis” as he mused about life beyond the holes.  Working as I do in Soho Square, I can’t wait until life beyond the holes, we have a massive Crossrail building site next to us.

Before I sign off, my two take-outs from the conference:

1. In-house PROs really really want to be on the board, or at the very least  have their CEO call them first (and not their financial PR agency) when something’s up
2. They still use clip-art in France!  (I know!?) Yves Romestan, Director of Group Comms at Alliance Boots used all manner of delicious clip art to accompany his presentation.  For example this is what  Yves thinks makes up  a good PR: