I recently revisited a comment by Adrian Wheeler, the former Chairman of GCI Europe who at a talk at the CIPR looked at the current impression of PR amongst its other contemporary business functions. Importantly he also outlined a view on where it should be going. His current view was that the discipline could be described as ‘soft, fuzzy’. ‘Soft’, as in its ability to interact with other disciplines and departments and ‘fuzzy’, as in the nature of media.
The proposed move is towards a ‘hard, fuzzy’ position, where the discipline displays a sharper understanding of needs of business, is accountable and commands respect for the contribution it can make towards the management of corporate reputation.
PR is fuzzy and soft. That’s the one of the main findings of my 2007 PhD study into why PR is becoming a female-predominent profession. Men don’t like the inexact way PR goes about its business, particularly when it comes to measurement. For all that’s been written about it, no one has yet delivered. Meantime, men move to marketing. Study summary at: http://people.aapt.net.au/~net/study