In this Great Pause, as some have called it, many people are cleaning house, literally and metaphorically. As actual housekeeping makes no discernible difference, I turn instead to my erstwhile profession.
I’ve been working on a book for Routledge called Public Relations and Depth Communication: Behind the Mask for ages (Book blurb ) about new directions for public relations and allied communication sectors, but dragging my feet. Partly, I think, because I had given up on the possibility of change. Unable to imagine what might halt the relentless tide of promotion, or enact a shift back from the outer attention-seekers to the inner conversations needed for individual and collective sanity.
Until now. It is terrible that we humans seem unable to contemplate risks repeatedly spelled out to us until the fire, famine or, as now, pestilence, is at the door. But as writer Paul Kingsnorth makes clear it would be even more terrible not to use this moment to re-evaluate priorities.
There is a particular urgency for those in the communication business. For example, in political communication, it is apparent that churning out of platitudes and bromides is simply unacceptable. Daily briefings from UK and US ‘leaders’ have exposed their emptiness and inability to respond to the moment.
I suggest that this is because they are trapped in the habit so well documented by Jim Macnamara (2015 book) of talking about listening …. and talking … and talking.
Most of us will have been bombarded with communications from CEOs of every organisation we connect with expressing their concern ‘at this difficult time’ but still ending up in self-promotion. It is a hard habit to break.
Others in this field, however, are seizing the space to reflect and connect, aiming to find a new way forward.
In public relations, respected industry leader Stephen Waddington is leading the charge with a blog on scenario-planning (lockdown) and new forum (community of practice ) for discussing change. The forum already contains several clear-sighted proposals for organisations on managing their way through Covid-19.
But what if we look beyond ‘managing’ to the revolutionary potential of re-thinking the whole caboodle?
What would PR look like if it (we) worked from values or made planetary well-being the main driver, not another T-shirt slogan? Covid gives us insight into the global catastrophe that is still hurtling down the track. We can see how exploitation of nature and other humans, social injustice, structural inequalities and simple greed have combined to create a perfect vehicle for the virus.
Practitioners in advertising and marketing communications have started asking these questions, and are finding some interesting answers. In particular, I recommend checking out reports of the climate change summit organised by the sector last year and how advertising practice is evolving around these insights (change the brief).
These responses start with the acknowledgement that advertising has contributed to global harm before asking what kind of good it might offer, as illustrated in the radical work of the Reclaiming Agency .
This is way beyond managing. It challenges clients. It takes risks. Is it the/a way forward for PR? Who’s up for change?
Johanna Fawkes Research 