What is PR to me?

When I was younger, I always had a misconstrued perception of the world of Public Relations. People who worked in PR to me were glamorous socialites who drifted from celebrity party to record label office on a daily basis. They went for lunch at top LA restaurants and fraternized with the ‘In crowd’. This is because television and the media always represented PR practitioners in this way, especially our American counterparts.

The Spin Crowd TV show

Image sourced from Google

The first time I ever heard the term ‘public relations’ I was around fifteen years old. I used to watch MTV religiously, finding people to aspire to be like and dreaming what it would be like to live in the sun and drive a Maserati. A particular show that opened the door to PR for me was ‘The Spin Crowd’. The Spin Crowd was a reality television show that followed the lives of six employees from a Hollywood based Public Relations firm. Although the series flopped after ten episodes, I watched those ten episodes in absolute awe. I couldn’t believe that people actually made a living (a very substantial living) from lunching with celebrities and organizing lavish parties alongside ringing the New York Times. These people were glued to their iPhones or bejeweled ‘Sidekick’ phones and always wore shades and Gucci jackets.

Now, I’d love to say that this show set my life goals in stone and I chose to study PR because of this, but I’m really not that easily led. Yes, the opulence and the capital you can achieve was very attractive, but I hated how the girls in this show were portrayed to be ex-model airheads who just pranced around LA looking glam. I needed some reassurance that what I’d be doing would be beneficial and would be rewarding. That’s when I began my research.

After reading ‘PR Power: Inside secrets from the world of spin’ by Amanda Barry a few years later, I realised that Public Relations is not only about ‘bringing a buzz’ or having friends in high places, it’s so much more intricate than that. You need to be at the forefront of news, prepared to work to extremely short deadlines, be hit-back a lot by journalists, and not every client you have is going to be a beautiful celebrity. These home truths didn’t put me off as you would think, it made working within PR seem more of a challenge, and I’ve always enjoyed things that are effort-inspiring. 

To be truthful, PR to me is relationship building but on a major scale. It’s even building relationships with difficult people in order to get the right outcome for your client and building a rapport with your selected audience to ensure that a product lifts off. It’s a little bit of promotion paired with a whole lot of research, which can determine how the public perceives a product or person. There’s nothing worse than bad PR, it can break a campaign or turn a person into an international laughing stock.

Remember Susan Boyle’s PR team’s major twitter fail? Yeah? Me too. A little thing such as where to put a capital letter really can make all the difference when holding an event for an album launch. ‘#Susanalbumparty’ didn’t quite cut it.  Public Relations to me really is a major pillar in any business or famous person’s promotion, especially in the digital age.

Jenna Clarke, first year Public Relations and Communications student

@jennaclarke24