Trust and the PR Profession
Edelman PR is the world’s largest independent public relations firm, with over 2000 employees. Headed by Richard Edelman (whose father started the firm), they produce the Edelman Trust Barometer.
In May 2005, Edelman spoke about trust in the PR industry itself:
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, PR people rank far down the list of credible spokespeople. In fact, just above athletes and entertainers and just below lawyers.
His advice to his own industry in that interview was to offer more truth-telling:
PR should be seen as a spur to true interaction, not a barrier. We need to eschew the Clintonesque spin machine in favor of a more modern approach of truth will out.
Trust is complex in PR. It is one of several businesses which must manage two sets of client relationships—basically brokering one to the other. The same is true in real estate, executive search, re-insurance brokerage, and speaker bureaus.
A few days ago, Edelman’s personal blog touched on the role of PR and one of its constituents—the press.
I asked McCarthy [managing editor of CNN International] about the proper role of a PR firm. He said, “A PR firm is a vital part of the newsgathering process. You provide background information and make connections to the company. Our job is to scrutinize and interpret the facts provided by a PR person.”
…I will paraphrase a quote from Alex Jones, dean of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard, who said that PR should be about credible advocacy, while journalism continues to be an independent voice offering accountability reporting of important events.
[italics mine]
“Credible advocates,” whose facts will be “scrutinized and interpreted.” Hmmm.
This strikes me as a pretty low hurdle for a professional services industry seeking to become more trusted.
First, why the adjective “credible?” Does anyone really want a non-credible advocate? (Reminds me of Nixon’s “I am not a crook”).
Secondly, the only profession I can think of that embraces advocacy is the law. Lawyers score low on trust because we don’t want them to be trusted—we want them to be advocates. Low trust is the price we pay, and we’re fine with it.
But do journalists really want their agency to be an advocate for its clients? To have to scrutinize and interpret what the agency brings to the journalist? Let’s look at parallel professions.
What about sales—another area of persuasion? Buyers of complex B2B products and services won’t put up with having to “scrutinize and interpret” what salespeople tell them. A salesperson who described himself to a customer as a “credible advocate” for his company would be shown the door in many buying organizations, with words like, "I don’t need hustlers for your issues, I need someone intersted in solving my problems."
What about other dual-client industries? If you’re the client of an executive search firm, do you want to “scrutinize and interpret” its evaluation of candidates for you to hire? No—you want them to talk straight to you—no interpretation required. Do you want them to advocate for one candidate vs. another? Not unless it’s motivated by the client’s needs.
Clients don’t want advocates, credible or not; they want advisors they can trust. If you’re pursuing your agenda and not mine, I won’t trust you.
Having two constituencies makes it more important, not less, to be trusted by both parties. A PR firm does no one a favor—least of all itself—by behaving in ways that are less than fully trustworthy to each partner.
A journalist will trust a PR person who only brings high quality material, is honest and forthright, and can be relied on to focus on the needs of the journalist.
A client will come to trust a PR firm that is not afraid to speak the truth, to call out low quality or the need for fundamental change, that will not hype the sizzle without insisting on steak to back it up.
If journalists and clients both come to trust the PR firm, all three win. The best PR people gain the trust of their clientele on both sides: being credible is the least of the matter. It has to do with keeping the client’s interest at heart for the long term, and being honest and transparent at all times.
If the trustworthiness of the PR profession is to climb above that of lawyers, it should not emulate law firms; its reach needs to extend beyond being a “credible advocate” who must be “scrutinized and interpreted."
Thank you for taking the time to look at my blog. Your article has some very interesting points. Trust builds solid relationships and for PR firms it is important to have that type of relationship with clients.
I like your approach. I do believe that credible advocacy requires transparency on client, purpose, funding of spokesperson. It also means that you tell the journalist the truth, the whole truth, including side effects of a drug or giving access to latest data on nuclear plant safety. Thanks for commenting on my blog.
Thanks Richard for the comments. I agree that transparency plays a huge role in developing trust. It reveals motives, enhances credibilty, and initiates the emotional risk-sharing that’s required of each party in a trust relationship.
Not that many CEOs write their own blogs; Richard is one—read him at http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/
You confused me a bit there when you asked "But do journalists really want their agency to be an advocate for its clients?"
As a client, I thought the agency was MY agency — not the journalist’s.
And as a client, I can give you one man’s opinion: While I certainly want them to be a trust advisor, I absolutely want them to be my advocate. I don’t see the two roles being at odds with each other at all.
Last point: I can think of two other professions that are advocates (or ought to be): medicine and financial planning.
Ron, thanks for the thoughts, though I beg to differ—I think.
The PR firm’s value to you, the client, depends on their ability to be trusted by the media you hope they will place you with. If all they do is advocate for you, without regard for the needs of the newspaper, magazine, radio station et al, to whom they are making your case, then they will come to be seen as flacks—and their advocacy value to you will decline. Hence they have two "clients" to serve, and they must do both equally well.
In medicine, doctors don’t have that dual-client role—but pharmaceutical reps do. They must balance advocacy of their firm’s drugs with the continued trust of the doctors to whom they advocate those drugs.
In financial planning, a planner or broker must balance their advocacy of one or another set of mutual funds, vs. your perception of their unbiased advice as a client. Again, they’ve got to do both.
If any of those businesses focus just on advocating for the needs of one client, they will lose the trust and confidence of the other. Ditto for real estate agents and executive search firms.
The best way to do that, I argue, is to be trustworthy and transparent to both sides. Every time I have seen a professional try to be purely an advocate to one side, they end up getting sucked in some version of dissembling when they try to argue to the other side that their advocative advice is actually very unbiased. You can’t have it both ways, unless you’re open about it.
Recommended: Trust in a Medical Setting. Hauppauge, NY: Novinka Books, Nova Science Publishers, 2006. Experience dealing with a host of difficult to impossible situations may help others in their encounters with these difficult and distrusting patients. These individuals may make up a small per cent of patients and family members, probably less than 2 per cent, but take up 90 per cent of energy in coping with day-to-day conflicts that arise from their behavior. Difficulties managing distrustful patients and family members must be dealt with on the spot, and they don’t go away. Examples come from office experiences or wards, including situations that keep doctors and nurses and therapists awake at night, aggravate waking hours and poison leisure, that is, empirical, based upon experience and observation alone without science or theory. To survive an outrageous patient or relative requires resourcefulness, patience and imagination. Street wisdom learned the hard way is what I present, and without a guide or mentor to soften the bewilderment and sense of failure and frustration that accompanies these individuals. We seldom talk about these difficult, distrustful and sometimes threatening individuals amongst ourselves; rather we suffer and endure them silently, by ourselves. The problem is timeless as recorded in the world’s literature. Out of the wreckage of human behavior comes valued experience leading to maneuvers and tactics of survival that are appropriate to almost all aspects and settings of human interaction including day-to-day medical care. Links: http://www.novapublishers.com richardsmithmd.com