Does the PR industry need PR?

Sadly the PR industry seems to be in need of PR.

Do a search for PR blogs and liars and you'll find a multitude of articles talking about the perception that PR is little more than lying. The word "spin", heavily associated with PR has undertones of deceit.

Can it be true that all PR firms are little more than liars or is it more likely that there are bad firms and good firms.

How did this reputation come about which seems to have tarnished the whole industry? This reputation is not just a national issue. This problem exists in the UK, USA and looking at some of the blogs even emerging markets like India!

ActiMedia aims to improve standards although I have to admit it has so far had only moderate success. The way forward seems to be elevate the good into PR heaven and cast the guilty into PR hell.

For several years ActiMedia has provided the facility for journalists and consumers of PR services to vote and provide feedback on PR agencies. A constant gripe from journalists is that they are inundated with poorly targetted press releases and more often than not, even when the press releases are well targetted, they contain no newsworthy content.

From the voting we have accumulated 5,800 votes about UK PR firms, 2,200 votes about USA PR firms, 800 votes about Netherlands PR firms, 530 votes about French PR firms and numerous less statistically valid samples for PR agencies in 50 more countries.

For the UK 63% of voters said they would recommend the agency. USA was 69% recommendations, 77% for Netherlands and 74% for France.

Normal behaviour of humans is usually to focus on the negative so the scores are surprisingly high. Generally 2/3rds of people are happy with the PR agencies. Over the coming weeks we will delve more into the detail and see what gems we can extract from the data and name and shame bad practice.