We’ve all seen the job advertisements for PR roles that follow a standard formula: they scope out the primary duties of normal day-to-day, while still alluding to the fact that the individual will be required to jump in on various other aspects of the job as they arise. PR has evolved so much in the past decade that we now struggle to justify what PR is and the value it brings because it’s so much more than what previous generations know it as.
Quiet quitting, the practice of doing only what is required at work and absolutely nothing more, is all the rage right now and, in many industries, can be a good thing. However, there is simply no room for quiet quitters who practice PR, especially those who are new to the industry.
Why is this?
It’s quite simple, really. Because the days of stock-standard, rigid content plans and matter-of-fact press releases are over. Because the annual plan you agonized over for your client was outdated two weeks into the year. Because so much happens in a 24-hour period you often wake up and are already behind because of what happened elsewhere in the world while you were asleep. Because the algorithm for the social media platform you finally mastered is no longer relevant – your audience is now onto the next big platform. Because anyone can become a celebrity in a matter of hours, and any celebrity can be cancelled in a matter of minutes. PR is an all-out job that requires a passion to make your brands relevant to their relevant audiences, no matter what the news cycle is.
While I am all for a healthy work-life balance, setting professional boundaries and switching off in your free time, a PR practitioner who checks out and simply delivers the bare minimum will very quickly become obsolete. The biggest mistake anyone new to the industry can make is to view themselves as “just an administrator” or “just an Account Executive.” Yes, there is a lot of grunt work to be done in your first few years, but this is also the time for reading the news daily across entirely different beats, seeking newsjacking opportunities of trending hashtags or proactively coming up with a pitch for a part 2 of an article you came across.
It’s not a job where every day will look the same or where you can simply mail-merge a press release to a bunch of journalists you haven’t ever looked up. Anyone entering the PR industry hoping to gain experience and work their way up needs to be focused from their very first day on the job. They need to get to know the brands they are working on, understand the relationships with the client, do a deep-dive into the beats they will be working across and getting to know the tier 1 media they need to start building relationships with as well as what those journalists are seeking content-wise.
We need to be agile, quick, proactive, and reactive while simultaneously showing that our brands are relatable, and loveable and view customers as human beings rather than cashflow bottom-line boosters. We do this by creating meaningful dialogue with the audience, rather than talking at them.
While it sounds crazy (and often is), PR is exciting, rewarding and rapidly evolving, so lean into it. When you are at work – be at work in the way you think. Make suggestions, do research, and ask as many questions as you need to. That’s how you’ll set yourself up for success.