The future of PR is here, and we have to take advantage and make the changes ourselves. This is one of the growing trends we are seeing from the PR firm perspective, and one agency is leading the way to focusing on taking charge of personally changing the field by setting an example. Golin Harris has advocating for public relations as a field to evolve intentionally, or otherwise known as “revolve” to stay ahed of the crowd.
In other words, public relations professionals should not wait to see what they need to do in order to enhance the field or see what others are doing – it is more focusing on taking action and leading the way with this new focused, specific, and collaborative mindset. Golin Harris has not only done with their overall mission statement and vision for their PR efforts as a company, but they have also restructured and redefined some of their roles within their agencies.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/24998908[/vimeo]
Compared to the traditional horizontal and vertical hierarchy organizational model for agencies, Golin Harris has proposed in breaking each of these roles into more specialty functions within the company, including the following four speciality areas: strategists (business analysts and research), creators (idea people), content connectors (channel experts who understand all of the media channels), and catalysts (change agents can all be delivered). All of these roles make perfect sense from the new focus on having a creative and strategic mindset for a PR professional. However, while this is definitely being discussed in the professional and agency side of the field of PR, how will this be accepted into academia and research?
Well, this new perspective certainly can, and it will take academic professionals and researchers to lead the way in doing this in both their own research, practice, and teaching. Here are just a few ways to do this:
- Staying engaged with the profession: Actively attending and working with PR professionals in practice to discuss current trends and issues they are facing internally as well as externally in the field. Awareness of these issues will keep you current and up to date on what are some of the points of consideration students need to know when they get out to the workforce. Have meetings and regular gatherings with professionals in person or through social media (Google+ hang outs, Skype meetings, or Twitter chats) to see what they think about what is going on and what is needed to be discussed in the classroom.
- Research and interview PR professionals in these new roles: Interview professionals on their new roles within the PR firms to determine if they are more comfortable being specialists compared to generalists. Are there both opportunities and challenges to both of these roles, and what are some of the best practices? These findings would greatly help not only the profession, but will gain more insight and knowledge about the impact that some of these changes have made towards PR. Having this research published in the academic community will provide an opening to have this discussion at conferences and other academic functions.
- Ask the question about restructuring academic model: Professors are the professionals within the university to ask themselves if these changes are happening in the workplace and in the field of PR – does that mean that the curriculum structure for PR courses and internships have to also be adapted as well? Does this mean that PR programs need to offer more strategy-focused courses along with creative? What about more specialized courses being requirements instead of electives? Also, what about encouraging more interdisciplinary teams for campaigns? While PR Campaigns is usually the capstone class for most PR programs, what about offering the same class but ask other students to be part of it to make it more in disciplinary? Maybe having a partnership with PR and Computer Sciences or Information Sciences to really get a handle on the complex systems and data mining capabilities that should be included in the analysis of a social media PR campaign.
- Sell the idea of the mindset of the new PR professional, not the product: Sometimes professionals are only thinking about the products or services offered by the university – but it is about the overarching ideas and understanding what students want to gain from their coursework and degree in PR. Understanding what is expected for a new PR professional in terms of the level of overarching skills (ex. creativity, strategic mindset, hard work, collaborative efforts, great ideas, etc) is fundamental and should be the focus in PR courses. Technical skills can be enhanced along with these with workshops, training, and additional courses.
- Accept the need to change and evolve through education and training: Learning does not end when you finish your degree or complete a semester – the classroom is always present. With these new expectations being placed on the young professionals coming out of PR programs today, professors also have to educate and train themselves. Attending workshops, free webinars, or adding to your library of books and resources on these new trends is always good.
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