I’m pointing you to the Message from the President, which recently went online on the Canadian Public Relations Society’s website. In his message, Dr. Terrence (Terry) Flynn, APR, FCPRS, outlines an organizational need for public relations:
“My new presentation, which was launched this month in Regina and Edmonton, speaks purposely to our value challenge: we not only need to demonstrate that public relations is valuable but we need to prove it can be valued.”
Next, he outlines the five components that provide true organizational VALUE in the public relations discipline:
V – Voice and Visibility
A – Alignment and Accountability
L – Leverage and Linkage
U – Ubiquity and Utility
E – Evaluation and Edification
This is my recommendation to give Terry Flynn’s message a full read. As the website Message doesn’t appear to allow comments, feel free to use this PR Conversations platform to express your own thoughts.
Although it isn’t indicated in his messaage, the CPRS webinar (or gold-standard Canadian/international case study) with Maple Leaf Foods, “Leadership in Difficult Times: The Listeriosis Outbreak,” remains available or “on-demand” for purchase, until May 2010. Here is a link to my earlier blog post, which was partially about the CPRS webinar with Maple Leaf Foods.
And a reminder that if you belong to a national PR association that is a full member of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, you qualify for the CPRS member rate. But even the non-member rate is very reasonable. Note that the purchase price includes the opportunity for multiple listens by the registrant and/or his or her organization, plus the abilitiy to download the two sets of slides (the presentation and the research).
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Interestingly, I’ve been working on an upcoming post for PR Conversations (working title: Valuing an association move towards public relations professionalism), which I may yet modify a bit, based on Terry Flynn’s new post.
This is an excellent articulation of what PR is all about and could easily, in my view, join the ranks of SMART and other useful mnemonic devices for rattling off what PR and PRactitioners can offer.
Thanks to Judy for drawing our attention.
Thanks Bill for the thoughts and insights. Absolutely agree that the real value rests in doing our job and ensuring that those activities are aligned to the overall goals and objectives of the organization. But it does go beyond that to ensuring that those publics, on whose support we depend, are also supportive of our actions.
Great, Terry, but you could stop at A and add a great deal of value to the presence of public relations in the organization. Moreover, the V and the A are mutually supportive and feed each other. Strengthen them and the organization will benefit immensely. Most companies don’t have a voice, and they prefer to be invisible, especially when trouble starts or controversy arises. That suits the lawyers, but it isn’t doing much good for business in general.