The True Role of Public Relations Today

This article originally ran in the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

What do audiences, customers, followers and content explorers want today? It’s an ever-changing landscape and is admittedly difficult and sometimes confusing for businesses to navigate, make decisions based upon, and measure relative to cost-effectiveness and end-game goals.

Yes, marketing is changing at an unprecedented pace. After years of distributing content that was previously difficult to measure (and perhaps even unwanted), public relations outreach has come back into its own. It is admittedly less flashy and eye-catching than other outreach efforts at times, but it can be viewed not only through its traditional lens of “third-party credibility,” but also through a related and equally critical lens of “sanity.”

In an era where evidently anyone can say anything anytime about most any topic and claim knowledge of that topic, public relations – at its best and “highest use” – can help cut through the clutter and false facts and can deliver believability. It’s now more important than ever for public relations professionals to do the job for which their profession was originally intended, which is to create honest ways to tell their key audiences what they need to know in order to make well-informed decisions.

PR professionals should not so much be actively selling products and services these days as they should be discussing truthfulness and creating messages for their key audiences that help them make informed decisions as to what products to buy, what causes to support, and where to put their resources. Today’s audiences want stories with underlying values that are honestly displayed and spokespeople who are believable and non-self-serving.

With local news coverage shrinking and fewer reporters than ever, it is incumbent upon these professions to play the role for which it was initially created – and that is to help produce stories with substance and develop spokespeople with credibility, not just loud voices.

With the increasingly important role that AI plays and its admittedly unique ability to bring instant information to the surface, it still cannot explain why a story matters. Human storytellers still have the critical role of curating information and using the tools available only to them to support independent thinking and decision-making.

Cathy Ackermann is the founder of Ackermann Marketing & PR, now a part of Designsensory.