Allen H. Center
Vice President of Public Relations, Motorola (Retired)
September 29, 1986

"Can we get there from here?"

To download a printable version of this speech, click here.

Four or five times in the past twenty years I've been asked to assess the state of our occupation as I saw it.

The last time was the Arthur W. Page lecture at the University of Texas in 1983. When Ed Block had given the lecture in 1982, he had posed this troubling question:

"If the essence of good public relations has long ago been so adequately described and sufficiently demonstrated -- and it turns out that chief among the guiding principles is nothing more than the application of old-fashioned common sense -- why is it so many corporations continue to commit so many fundamental blunders?"

In attempting a response, I said that if more attention were given to the long-term outcomes of decisions and communication about them, maybe we'd have fewer corporate embarrassments to rearm critics.

Well, it's three years later.

The latest postings on the ''Bulletin Board of Corporate Embarrassments" include General Dynamics, a few Lockheed Executives, LTV, and some corporations that have managed not to pay federal income taxes.

In singling out corporations I don't mean to neglect NASA... the military services' purchasing policies... a preacher with a fleet of Rolls Royces... lawyers who chase ambulances... or San Diego's former Mayor Roger Hedgcock -- as though only business people had reaped a harvest of public exposure by yielding to temptation and sin. Nor do I mean to omit the recent influence-peddling and insider trading instances embarrassing to our calling.

Reading the news, it seems at times that those who ought to be role models have forgotten what their parents told them about right and wrong. As for us, we seem to forget what our 20th-Century forbears set down as the basis of wholesome relationships.

***

Ivy Lee saw our functions as explaining the various groups in society to each other. The object was to achieve workable relationships.

He fostered two-way communication to reconcile conflicting interests. In 1905 he told the coal operators involved in a bloody strike to open their files and their books with all pertinent information to strike leaders and news media. In those times of the "The public be damned," Lee's notions were revolutionary.

Along came Arthur Page. His first priority was to persuade his associates that AT&T would enjoy the privilege of operating freely and privately to the extent and for the length of time that it conducted itself openly and honestly in the general interest.

Page identified public approval as the measuring rod. His concept, like Ivy Lee's, shook people in high places. His associates, however, found that the candor in his approach resulted in credibility and public trust. He was included in the decision-making process so that his perspective would be part of decisions needing public approval.

***

Two or three generations later, depending on how old you are, we are still a young calling. We can, however, claim significant progress in our quest for professionalism.

We are undergirded by an increasing body of applicable knowledge about what makes people think and act and what we can do to influence them. We have a growing bank of precedents enabling us to play the percentages. We have an academic discipline enabling a bright, motivated person to use communications persuasively inside and outside an organization -- and to measure the impact of that on the organization's objectives. We are attracting more teachers of higher qualifications, willing to bet their careers on our calling.

Professionally, we have assembled qualified practitioners into appropriate associations, provided them services for self improvement and established some standards of conduct and penalities for misconduct.

Outside our calling, the essentiality and force of what we do are widely acknowledged even by those who resent it. We have compiled an impressive array of successes that outweighs our failures. Even in conflicts when the outcome does not go exactly the way an employer wants, the results are usually better because of our mediation.

On a day-by-day basis, The Wall Street Journal, Time, "Good Morning America", or any hometown call-in radiocast could not long continue economically healthy without the inputs and services we provide the media.

In special events -- whether the renovation of the Statue Of Liberty or the creation of a Pure Milk Week in Cowpasture, Texas -- our participation in the planning and implementation is needed and sought.

That's the bright side of the picture. Up to here everything sounds peachy... well, almost peachy.

Our power to influence opinion has attracted the attention of employers of all kinds and stripes of news media in their role as watchdogs, and of public groups affected by what we do. What we do has become important enough that we are being judged not only by what we achieve for employers, but by the kinds of causes we represent and the nature of the ends to which we put our force -- good, bad or inconsequential. More and more we are expected to be accountable.

You don't need me to tell you that we haven't come off very well as far as our cousins in the news media are concerned.

The term "public relations' in the news usually defines or describes efforts, events or communication deemed to be insincere, blatantly self-serving, a substitute for the truth, cosmetic with little substance, whitewash, or sugar coating.

It no longer seems unusual when an international news service describes Gorbachev's extension of a nuclear test ban as only a "public relations gesture". Or when a U.S. federal official terms a Soviet proposal for a Salt II meeting a "public relations grandstand." Or when James Reston of The New York Times says of the difference between the president and Democrats in Congress, "There's little doubt who is winning this public relations game." Or when Morley Safer on "60 Minutes" complains about the nuclear cleanup on Enniwetak as a "public relations exercise." You could add more examples, syndicated or hometown.

The denigration and the adverse public impression stimulated by it cannot be changed by substituting some other term for "public relations" as some employers and practitioners have sought to do. A canine is still a dog if it barks and looks like a dog.

***

There is no dominant culprit for our mixed public image; we earned it with some of our doings and defaults.

The calling is largely unorganized. There are 143,000 people out there who say in the U.S. census that they are in publicity, a census umbrella term. No more than one in four belongs to any national professional organization, thus committing to commendable standards of performance and ethics.

So three of every four people who offer services in the name of public relations need no more than a calling card and a phone number. Those who may need discipline the most are uncontrollable until or unless they get caught breaking a law -- even though they may be selling cemetery lots in the middle of a river bed with the slogan "Improve Your Ultimate Relations." What the non-descripts do in the name of public relations helps shape the perception of your work and mine.

As for most of us who are trained and qualified, we are seen working as communication specialists on our employers' immediate goals -- be they productivity, sales, membership, fund drives or pending legislation.

The employer calls the shots. We are good soldiers and messengers. We're not seen as missionaries and rarely as policy advisors. Our work is not regarded as having an ultimate moral goal such as health to medicine, justice to law, or truth to journalism. If we were doctors, the patients would be telling us their ailments and instructing us on how to treat them.

On those occasions when some of us are seen as socially oriented, as when helping combat drug abuse, we are viewed as implementing a gesture that somehow serves our employer's interest or conscience.

Sadly for our employers and for us, even positive gestures, no matter the motives, do not see much daylight publicly. Public perceptions are created and fed more by isolated offbeat instances of newsworthy misbehavior than by the whole daily panorama of unsung acceptable behavior. To change that would require changing news values and eliminating competition among news media.

Our predicament represents a challenge to all of us who chose public relations as a career and who want our children and grandchildren to know that we spent our lives in an honorable pursuit doing things that were worth doing to help move the mountain of humankind an inch closer to its ideals and aspirations.

In the true sense of the term, this is a public relations challenge to public relations.

Meantime, adoption of the Rodney Dangerfield posture complaining about a lack of respect would waste precious time.

***

It seems obvious our long-term objective must be to create a true and complete public perception of our mission. We are morally guided toward reconciliation... for the benefit of all.

Our near-term goal might be to turn around the impression that to attain our ends we stoop to conquer.

Progress near-term or long-haul requires a zest for leadership by example and by spokesmanship.

Associations are limited in assuming these roles. They exist to attract members. They thrive by providing services for which members will pay. Standards of conduct and character, and positions on public issues, have to be set at low common denominators acceptable to all members. That puts the task up to leadership groups, such as the Arthur W. Page Society, that enjoy a high degree of homogenity and the freedom to act and speak out independently as role models for all concerned professionals -- who, in turn, have influence within their own precinct or constituency.

You and I know that whether this adds up to 70, to 700 or to 7,000 people, the waves made will send ripples again and again across the entire lake.

I do not bring a pat, quick, easy campaign plan. Rather, I'll share some ideas that came to me as I struggled with this assessment of our art.

To deal with the misfits and unfits out there among the 143,000 who claim to be in public relations: licensing or registration would not help unless it were based on educational and experience requisites. The best bet is to build our case on those things that distinguish for the general public the true professionals from all the others.

A major mark of professionalism is social science research and the applicable knowledge that comes from it. This should be continued and extended. There are practical values:

-- It says to employers, public officials, news media, and the lay public that our function is serious and scientifically sound.

-- It says that if you want to know about public opinion formation or movement -- or how to persuade -- go to the public relations expert.

-- It says to employers and clients that our work and its results are measurable in dollars against their goals.

The more that people come to us as supplicants, the more we can deal with the validity of their long-term strategy, thus gaining repute for professional performance and character.

Another way to help distinguish the qualified from all the rest, and at the same time relieve the oversupply of entry level graduates year after year, is the progressive raising of the undergraduate requirements for entry into university public relations sequences.

The time may well be at hand for a higher-level finished product to be developed through a Master of Science Degree in Public Relations.

In the matter of standards, leadership groups are free to set their own, and to publish codes with tenets several pegs higher than the norms prevailing - the honor codes of the military academies are fine examples. Means can be devised by which qualified practitioners so inclined can pledge or subscribe to a leadership code, possibly as a condition of joining the group.

A leadership code can commit to relationship principles as Lee and Page did. It can state a preference for reconciliation on the grounds that reasonable compromise of honest differences is less costly for all concerned than long drawn strife. A code could make a commitment to moderation in the tone of debate, to empathy, to civility in public discourse, to common decency and fairness, and to grace in triumph as well as in disappointment.

A leadership role model group is free to take positions on concerns and issues in public communication and thus become a ready, articulate resource for public agencies and news media seeking viewpoints. Public communication, after all, is in our baliwik.

Among many matters of proper concern is the attainment of a proper balance between individual privacy rights and a public group's right to know about matters affecting its welfare.

Another question heating up now concerns the pros and cons of deregulation on the commercial side of the media.

There is the question of how much freedom, and of what kind, is implicit in the First Amendment. Is responsibility for one's words and actions embodied in the allocation of either freedom or authority? Do privileges bestowed on special interests carry with them any obligation to protect and serve the common good? There is risk in speaking out. There is a gain in public respect, too.

Role model groups and their adherents might well possess the means, numbers and prestige to establish a nobel concept or a broadened hall of fame to recognize conduct and performance in fields other than public relations.

Recipients would be individuals or organizations found to exemplify the nobility of purpose inherent in the ultimate mission of the public relations calling -- for example, the attainment of harmonious relatlons for the benefit of the general interest after long, costly conflict between narrowly focused interests.

Such an award concept need not replace or conflict with present recognitions inside the calling - it would be of a different, more ambitious dimension. The annual event for announcement of awards could well be or become, internationally reported with tribute.

Given these measures or others of like thrust that younger and nimbler minds might devise, I still couldn't promise, based on my experience, that the consequences ten or twenty years out would constitute public relations heaven on earth. I can promise that the force of the effort would be up and away from the natural tendencies of human beings to gravitate toward self destruction when left to their own devices.

And, I must confess, I don't expect to live long enough to hear Dan Rather say on a newscast, or to read in a Ben Bradlee editorial: "We have attained a reduction in the possibility of a nuclear holocaust because Russian and U.S. leaders are finally listening to their public relations advisors." Nor do I expect to read a Wall Street Journal item saying "If General Dynamics or Lockheed ever put their fingers in the defense contract cookie jar again, the tip-off will be when no major public relations firm will take on their account."

If I should hear either of these, it wouldn't be that I had lived so long. It would be that I had actually made it to Heaven.