There’s been a lot of conversation going on lately about public relations (PR).  Many PR people are lamenting the sorry state of the profession and focusing on what can be done to improve it.  See below for a rundown of…

Do some capital letters on your business card make you an expert?  Does their absence make you incompetent? The obvious answer is no.  So what possible reason is there to pursue a law degree, earn an accounting designation, earn your professional ass…

Do some capital letters on your business card make you an expert?  Does their absence make you incompetent? The obvious answer is no.  So what possible reason is there to pursue a law degree, earn an accounting designation, earn your professional ass…

With professional orgainzation, i am even more sceptic. This kind of orgs is just all about politics. It is not about skill, not about dedication, its only about intriques and strange deals. But then again, i am still too young and naive.

Sure, membership can help you to get contacts and “credibility” but then again, why to pay for this when you can earn credibility just doing your work better than the acredited agencies and “trained” professionals?

It is up to recruiters in PR agencies to choose the right people and up to clients to select the right agency for them. Titles and accreditations or not.

My thought is that big agencies need it less because they have the big name brand and resources behind them – more so than a smaller agency.

I just wrote up an analysis of the accreditation debate. At quick glance, a lot of the big PR firm pros were against it.

By the way, I just checked out your blog for the first time. Good stuff.

I think the APR thing may be more appropriate, or needed in a big agency.

For those of us who run boutique shops the best credentials we bring is the work we do and our track records.

I do see APR as a recognition, but more I see it as a baseline of knowledge. I agree that creative thinking is essential to the practice of public relations. I also believe that you should know the basic “rules” if you will, before you throw away the playbook, at least then you would know what you are throwing away.

I also think it is easy to overlook the benefit of “industry standards.” I wish, like Leo pointed out, that we could just say the ansewer to our woes lies in doing the right thing and giving our clients, customers and employers the service they deserve.

However, this hasn’t worked out up until this point. We need some mechanism to measure the basic knowledge of employee in the field and I think accreditation is a good place to start.

Now, the real issue here is more likely that we aren’t 100% happy with the speed of innovation by our professional societies, and that is a conversation that we need to have, while also keeping in mind that these groups are run by volunteers. So, if we want change, we need only look in the mirror. I will have more on that in the months to come.

I earned my bona fides as a Certified Information Privacy Professional, an arena with a broad array of state, federal, and international laws and regulations that must be known and understood.

In PR & communications, the skills necessary to provide solid counsel are not so well defined, and may vary widely from client to client, situation to situation. As a communications consultant, I chose to earn my CIPP because of the focus of my specialty; an APR would be much less valuable to me.

As an anecdotal aside, the APRs I’ve known have been unimpressive and, in an industry that is woefully short on creativity, operated “by the book.” Our industry needs more professionals who are willing and able to innovate, not who have been trained to be formulaic. (Yes, I know my blog is woefully out of date…)

Accredited or not – practitioners still make the CHOICE to act professionally and ethically.