Political PR - tactical or strategic

My observation is that political actors tend to use PR in primarily a short term tactical way, rather than a longer-term strategic form as well. The focus is primarily on media relations, which I believe is far too narrow a use of PR.

I suggest that it is legitimate to divide PR into marketing public relations (MPR) and corporate public relations (CPR), though clearly there are linkages between both. MPR is essentially designed to create visibility for a product or service, and so tends to be more tactical. Creating hype clearly has a role to play, especially when launching products and services, as you wish to grab attention.

However, CPR suggests a more sophisticated use of PR. Essentially this is about assessing, building and changing the corporate reputation of an organisation, not just focusing on its products. Whilst essentially MPR tools such as media relations and events management have a role to play in helping address corporate reputation issues, the emphasis is on PR tools such as issues management, crisis management, promoting social responsibility and potentially internal communications.

What has brought many political actors into public disrepute is the over-reliance on spin and media management. Apart from raising ethical questions, this approach narrows politics into more of a game within the permanent campaign, with each side seeking to score points. Which I suspect for many citizens makes politics a yawn gest. Yet, I suggest that greater use of CPR tools by political actors could actually help to address citizen's negative perception of politician's.

I was struck a number of years ago when I heard Howell James, then the newly appointed Permanent Secretary for the Government Communications (GKN) admit to a group of students that up to that point, civil servants have placed too much emphasis on media manageemnt through press officers, rather than utilising a wider range of communication channels to promote the work of Government. Indeed, in evidence to the House of Lords Communications Committee report on Government Communications they noted that his vision was for "cross-government comms activity" not just short term media relations. He wanted more longer-term planning. Sadly James left the GKN in June 2008, but I agree with the sentiment of what he was saying, namely that political communication needs to be wide not narrow in scope, embracing both short term and long term promotional activities and I would also add should be more interactive and based less on one-way communication.