PR losing its originality...

I did my internship for about 9 weeks. Having that chance of being in an intern has given me a glimpse of the pr industry in terms of dealing with the media which is one of the toughest task ever, writing few press releases, speeches and compiling public relations reports. Moreover I have had a fantastic experience of being involved in organising events for some of our international clients like Nando`s Malaysia, New Zealand Natural and some of the local clients like Royal India.

Working there, I have observed quite a lot of things; firstly that communication either internally or externally is the corner stone of every decision, task or activities to run/ be executed/ accomplished in such a way that it would result in a two way symmetrical model( win-win situation).

Secondly and most importantly, working in a public relations consultancy I expected to see and experience the derivation of public relations. These kinds of expectations I guess were due to what I have read in some of pr text books and what I was taught at varsity. I have to admit that theory is far different from practical as I experienced quite a lot of things one of them being that though some of you guys would not agree with me but Public relations comes out of marketing and Advertising that is why up to this day there are text books that are still trying to specify the main differences between them. We have authors like Jane Johnston, Clara Zawawi, Edward Bernays, Melanie James and Philip Henslowe who are still faced with that challenge of convincing public relations students on the unique features of public relations differentiating it from advertising and marketing. The truth is they interrelate one needs the other to fully work “advertising is more likely to be more effective if there has been prior PR activity to educate the market (Jefkins 1982, p. 8). The sad part about this interaction is that public relations has now became profit oriented in some PR Agencies therefore losing its originality. Based on what I have experienced, to some public relations Agencies PR is all about having more clients and making more profit out of them.