Hats off to Founder and CEO of BlackHouse Media (BHM), Ayeni Adekunle (Twitter: @ayenithegreat), for issuing an important call-to-action for our industry, in celebrating a first-ever World Public Relations Day (#WorldPRDay / #WPRD), on July 16.
I read a feature about this new industry-advocacy effort in The Guardian this week, and Mr. Adekunle’s words truly resonated with me:
“PR is more than a terribly misunderstood practice, but a strategic aspect of business and governance, invaluable in building relationships, achieving business objectives, and preventing crises and the kind of confusion that could ruin a company or lead nations to war.”
How true.
I’m sure countless colleagues join me in relating to this challenge of PR being “terribly misunderstood.”
The level of misunderstanding remains stubbornly persistent among far too many C-suite executives, managers and board room leaders. When an entire management function is so widely misunderstood, there is no way that it is going to be employed to its full potential. And when our profession isn’t engaged to its full potential, than neither are we.
One of the unifying parts of being active in industry organisations is the opportunity to get behind campaigns that uplift our shared work and our craft.
Being part of the PRCA and of ICCO in these recent years has given my team and me even more pride in the work we do, to help our clients be successful while also supporting the success of so many different communities and groups of people.
For this inaugural #WorldPRDay (#WPRD), I hope we can all get behind Mr. Adekunle’s message and the movement being spearheaded by BlackHouse Media (BHM). I appreciate his and his team’s leadership!
Kelly Fletcher MPRCA, is CEO of Fletcher Marketing PR in the U.S. and co-host of the “Ms. InterPReted” (#MsInterPReted) PR Podcast.