The PRSA’s PR Defined campaign was never going to work, says Porter Novelli’s Angela Casey

The recent Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) redefinition of PR has already created debate and disagreement. The organisation claims PR to be “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organisations and their bodies”. If this is what PR is, then I think I had better give up my day job.

The PRCA has rejected the definition and the CIPR has said that PR is a “broad church” and I agree with them both. Doing PR is so much more than just creating mutually beneficial relationships. In fact, when I look at my job, there is so much more to it than this – and much of it is actually nothing to do with PR!

Okay, so there is no “normal” week in what I do as MD of a PR company, but there are some jobs that come up time and again that are not, strictly speaking, PR. Sometimes I find myself taking on the role of counsellor, copywriter, or even chauffeur. This week we have to sign off our audit, so I am finance director. Next week I am spending time counselling young people who want to get on in our industry; and the week after that I will be both a photographer’s assistant and a commentator on the 2012 Budget. In between times, obviously, I will be advising my clients on their marketing/PR strategy, writing meaningful press materials for them and protecting their reputations. I might even create the odd mutually beneficial relationship for them as well, I suppose.

To get on in PR you need to be ready to roll up your sleeves and get on with the job in hand. And no job is ever the same – though for me that is the great attraction and the reason why I am still here, years on. I have talked before of how in PR we are all experts in many things, and this still rings true. Over the years of my career I have done everything from speech writing for MPs, handling major crises and advising chief executives on corporate restructuring; to featuring as a model tourist on a visitor attraction’s website, sewing a 20m-long ribbon for a shopping centre opening and even being interviewed on live TV dressed as a Santa, including the beard.

If you are looking for jobs in PR and have the ambition to create mutually beneficial relationships, be ready for many surprises along the way and be flexible and ready to try your hand at other skills too. I recently interviewed someone who included in her PR job description walking the streets dressed as a haggis. However, it need not all be quite as glamorous as that! Much of the day job for someone in PR includes writing copy and features, keeping news out of the papers, handling social media, talking to journalists, advising non-PR people about the media, organising events, giving political advice and even, sometimes, creating positive relationships between stakeholders. And this is just scratching the surface. A true definition of PR would need to stretch way beyond the PRSA’s 14 words and I doubt even 14 pages would be sufficient to do it justice.