There are a lot of negative connotations that people associate with PR. But, from my brief experience in the professional world of PR, it seems to mostly be about trying to make everyone happy.
For example, in the nameless organization where I find myself interning, there are a lot of "experts" on a lot of different topics. This makes us a valuable resource for any reporter who needs an expert for a story they are working on. (For more on "experts" see my previous post) All media requests are filtered through our public relations office. But, imagine if we were approaching busy experts everyday asking them to talk to reporter so-and-so. They would get worn out, annoyed and would take all negative feeling out on us.
So, how do we keep our experts happy so that they will help us keep the reporters happy? We write press releases about the exciting work they are doing, we pitch the stories to the media and we get their work into print (or tv, radio etc). This makes the experts happy. When they are happy because their new project was just featured on CNN, they are more willing to say ok when we pass on a ridiculous request from a reporter.
How do we keep the reporters happy? We find them experts when they need them and we send them all sorts of story ideas and material, maybe too much sometimes. But, you reporters out there, before you start complaining realize that we are doing it all for you. We are doing it to keep the experts happy so that next time you call us two hours before deadline and need a good quote or update on research from one of our experts, we can say ok.
In this example I think its clear that we do what we do to help everyone else. So before you get mad at an annoying PR person, remember they are just trying to keep someone happy. And who knows when the day will come that the person they are working to keep happy is you?
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