Time To Go Back To School
20 Mar 2007
There was a terrific column by Thomas Friedman in the March 16 issue of The New York Times that details a grassroots effort by two environmental groups that stopped one of the largest buyouts in history in its tracks.
Environmental Defense and the National Resources Defense Council used the Internet to target a large Texas power company, TXU, when the company president ignored their attempts to open a dialog about corporate plans to build 11 coal-fired power plants. As a result, a $45 billion leveraged buyout was put on hold…those interested in purchasing TXU did not want to enter an environmental battleground.
Rather, they buyer engaged in a dialog with the environmentalists and came to an agreement that resulted in a “climate friendly” solution.
Friedman makes some terrific points in his article, points I’ve stressed numerous times in this blog. Thanks to the Web, business is more transparent. Activists need no longer rely on the media to garner attention and support for an issue; they can go directly to the public. As Friedman notes, “…what TXU had hoped would be just a local skirmish was instead watched on computer screens in every global market.”
Friedman also notes that, “TXU could not manage its reputation by just hiring a P.R. firm and issuing a statement – because, thanks to the Internet, too many little people could talk back or shape TXU’s image on a global basis through the Web, for free.”
Moreover, Friedman quotes Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense commenting that, “The reputations of companies are going to be less determined by the quality of their P.R. people and more by their actual actions…”
I found these comments interesting because it positions the P.R. machines of major companies as reactive, rather than proactive. Frankly, it’s a legitimate critique of our profession. It is my belief that P.R. people should constantly be scanning the horizon to identify potential trouble spots or issues and have the POWER to alert and advise senior management on mitigating these issues. Unfortunately, in most companies, public relations is seen as a marketing function, rather than a management/operational function.
I think this is due, in large part, to the fact that public relations continues to be taught in J-schools or as part of a communications/marketing curriculum. When will educators wake up to the fact that public relations education needs to be a core component of business schools. When one takes the time to consider the costs and opportunities inherent in good reputation management, it seems like a no brainer.
On the flip side, I think we’d have a better crop of P.R. people entering the profession if they had a solid education in business as well as communications. We all know it is a common lament that the “PR folks just don’t understand the business.”
I truly believe that how we are educating our future public relations professionals is part of the root problem and needs to be addressed by moving the public relations curriculum out of the J-schools and into the business schools.
