Edward Lee

Sharing news of a new job with my friends and family often elicits the same response: “That’s great! Congratulations! What is it that you actually do again?”

I can understand it. There are a few reasons why my nearest and dearest don’t know how I spend my weeks. And not all of them are exactly my fault, for example:

A lot of PR men and women started their careers in another field, so it can be hard to pin down a ‘PR type’. With a few very big agencies, and a lot of smaller ones, much of the training in the industry can be pretty ‘sink or swim.’ A proportion of PR folk are not really very good and so kick up a lot of dust to little effect.

But most of all, I suspect it is because the term PR covers a whole range of disciplines, job roles, and functions. When people do encounter a PR in the wild, they will tend to see them performing a few particular functions and then assume that all that they see is the whole job.

So speak to a journalist who has only been on the receiving end of ‘media relations’ and they will tell you that PR is all about sending dozens of emails. And then dozens of nagging follow up emails. There was quite an amusing, if narrow, article along those lines in The Economist earlier this month.

Speak to a Corporate Financier and the PR’s job will seem to mostly consist of setting up meetings between clients’ Chief Execs and equity analysts; and also somehow getting an article into The Sunday Times the day before a float is announced.

Speak to the Head of IT at a corporate suffering a cyber-attack and the PR will be an anonymous voice on a conference call insisting quite firmly that there is no need to say anything no matter which newspaper wants to know and, by the way, can someone please provide the Twitter passwords immediately so that they can be changed?

The truth is that all of those examples can fall into a PR’s remit, as do elements of marketing, branding, graphic design, videography, policy, polling, market research, and sales.

What all of this boils down to is helping clients: define the narratives they need others to believe; place them in the context of the wider story of their sector; persuade their target audiences about where they are going – and how they will get there. And so ultimately why you should buy their products; engage their services; invest in their shares; vote for the policies they want; or just generally pay attention to them.

Any clearer on what I do for a living after that?

Well, hopefully future posts will enlighten you.