SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL

PR is the profession of the decade. But, says Jenny McCartney, the industry may be on

the point of self-destruction

IN EVERY decade, one profession emerges to lay claim to represent the pre- vailing zeitgeist. In the Seventies it was the teacher, earnestly wrapped in woolly knits and world-improving ideologies. In the Eighties it was the braying City dealer, cash-rich and mortgage-happy. In the Nineties it must be the ubiquitous 'PR per- son'.

What does a PR person do? Most of us, unless we are in PR ourselves, have only a hazy idea. The lines between the press offi- cer, the spin doctor, and the pub- licist are blurred. What does PR itself really stand for: Public Rela- tions, Press Relations, Partial Representation, or Perception Revolution?

School-leavers might not know quite what 'PR' means, but like wild pigs scenting a truffle they know they would like to break into it. It is one of the three most popular career choices for gradu- ates. For those eager to begin even earlier, there are 16 differ- ent PR degrees on offer across Britain. For every student who joins a course, nine other hope- fuls are turned away.

The business is roaring. The income of the top 150 UK con- sultancies rose by 21 per cent in 1996, says the industry's magazine, PR Week. The figures for last year are expected to be even more glorious. In companies, PR people are rapidly swelling in stature, breaking free from the small fry of the marketing department and talking turkey with the big bosses.

Over 65 per cent of PR people now report directly to the chief executive or managing director, rather than the market- ing department. Many will have a strong push in shaping company decisions — just as Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson are busily building 'perception' into the very heart of the government's policy-mak- ing for Cool Britannia.

In other markets, boom eventually turns to bust, but the PR industry is a diffuse and slippery one. It trades in intangibles — images, reputations, responses, dreams. Like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, it exists for as long as we believe in it. Yet the prevalence of PR, and the reach of its tentacles into the mechanics of government, have begun to unsettle even some veterans of the trade. If we go on believing in it, what will happen to us — and what will happen to PR if we stop?

Twenty years ago, PR people navigated a smaller, straighter profession, steered by common sense, charm and guile. The basic brief was 'promotion and protection' of a client's name. Now, the fresh new gradu- ates are all busy theorising about power structures and competitive groupings.

One agency owner said wearily, 'I inter- view some of these and they haven't got a clue. They know all the verbiage but they don't know how to make it happen. They talk about mission statements. I've never written one of those in my life. I don't believe PR people can be trained. I think they're born.'

Kevin Moloney, a tutor in PR at Bournemouth University, thinks otherwise: `PR is about "the pluralistic competition of interests in society". In other words, a fight for advantage.' Students limber up by argu- ing how one would help Greenpeace tackle Shell, or Shell counter Greenpeace. What can be done with companies who pour money into PR, rather than improving their dismal performances? 'It's for the PR of the anti-companies groups to challenge the companies. You don't need much money: look at Swampy.'

Indeed. Swampy, with his inane, beatific grin and shambolic knits, simply appealed to journalists. Swampy fever raged: photogra- phers tailed his every stunt, and even the crustier broadsheets exuded a paternal toler- ance. Swampy was a PR dream, because by some happy accident of personality — he was a magnet for 'good media'.

`Good media' is the Holy Grail of PR. 'A good editorial is worth a thousand advertisements,' journos- turned-PRs will say, yearningly. Perhaps it is worth reflecting why. The public still perceives newspa- per articles and editorials — as opposed to advertisements — as independent opinions. Sniffing that the territory is still fertile in credi- bility, PR pushes forward to con- quer it. But if the PR industry were ever allowed to trample all over the news pages, a jaded public would quickly move elsewhere.

The flashiest forms of PR, fashion PR and 'people' publicity, are also the most honest. High fashion has never pretended to sell us reality: it wants to sell us teetering heels and a wisp of chiffon cut on the bias for hundreds of pounds. It feeds on free- bies, hype, glamour, bitchiness and charm. How else could it operate?

Was the public deluded when Max Clif- ford steered a succession of steely-eyed faux naves to confront Tory MPs? Not at all. The press gorged upon the stories, and the public gawked. The sex 'sleaze' story simply became a form of theatre, and the plot was revenge, shame and money. When any wounded siren, her frosted lips trem- bling, finally spoke the standard words, 'I feel I have been used,' the readers never once doubted that any usage had been entirely mutual.

All PR people, however, have their per- sonal limits, negotiated from within a morally fluid world. 'I have never lied to a journalist, but I have been economical with the truth. But if you lie, and you're caught, your credibility is over,' said one PR woman of 20 years' standing. Max Clifford admitted, with deadpan candour, 'An important part of PR is lies and deceit. The basis of PR is getting the image that is most beneficial to your client across, and much of that is propaganda.'

A publicist needs to be able to kill a neg- ative story as quickly as he can create a good one, sometimes by laying a false scent to send the baying press pack racing off after something else. When they finally limp back to the real, dangerous story, the publicist has made sure the scent is cold.

`It's fascinating, like playing six chess games at once,' said Clifford. 'But the showbiz PR is light relief. It's not that seri- ous. I wouldn't represent a political party, where I might have to stand up and defend something that I believed was wrong.'

Yet Clifford's PR itself is both powerful and political. Before the last election, he announced that he was bent on getting rid of the Tories. Splattered in sleaze, they duly lurched off-stage. Now, he is consider- ing re-branding Nigeria.

`If General Abacha convinces me that he knows he's got to change, then if it works I'll show what really happens. But I've said, "If you want a make-over, forget it."' It has a pleasing circularity: the man hired to improve the perception would be pressur- ing his employer to improve the reality. He has a point: bad reality is usually bad PR.

But PR, which started out in humble promotions, seems staggered by its own success. Nearly every professional I spoke to confessed that although 'Labour did a brilliant job of reinventing themselves' they were now acutely anxious about govern- ment news management. It is as though they have seen their playful monster take on a hideous, authoritarian life of its own.

Powerful people have always used PR, Just as poets wrapped their extravagant praise of Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, around a bald and toothless Elizabeth I. But the present government's naked desire for 'good media' is pursued with more ruthlessness than many feel is healthy.

Lobby journalists glumly acknowledge that it is still 'a seller's market' for Labour stories. The government press chiefs Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell and Charlie Whelan — are struggling to main- tain the high level of image control which Labour finally achieved in opposition.

But government itself is a bigger, leakier vessel. Journalists are punished or reward- ed — fed gobbets of exclusives, or frozen out — depending on how 'positive' their coverage has been in the past. They are torn between being a stooge and sitting in the ice-house. One recalled hearing a col- league being joshed by a Labour press man: `No stories for you for two weeks!' But the joke wasn't all that funny. There weren't.

Then there is the suspicion that Labour `news managers' are not above hastily trail- ing a synthetic story to take the heat off the government in times of embarrassment. When Robin Cook left his wife, a rather odd story suddenly materialised about Chris Patten being prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for giving Jonathan Dimbleby protected information on Hong Kong. It hung around the newspapers for a while — then, strangely, just evaporated.

There is always something unsettling about politicians who have been too vigor- ously PR-ed. Like Stepford wives, they seem to move in a parallel but untouchable world, studiously mimicking popular human beings. The urgent pager message to a Blair aide before the election said it all: 'Do something about the hair', as though it would suddenly tumble off to reveal a gleaming alien's pate.

When necessary, figures such as Peter Mandelson can pretend a folksy disdain for the media. Writing in a Scottish newspaper last summer, he said, 'This game of spin doctors and nurses may titillate a few media obsessives but will be of little inter- est to the ordinary folk of Arbroath and Aberdeen.'

Worthy words, if one did not happen to see Mr Mandelson on the devolution trail in Glasgow, moving like a heat-seeking missile towards a photogenic baby in the crowd. The cameras massed, and shutters clicked at length. But the very moment the cameras moved away, Mr Mandelson moved away too, without a single word of parting pleasantry to the baby's father. It struck me as a little chilling: the sole reality in their meeting had been the photograph of it.

Where there is robust scrutiny of govern- ment, its attempts to ensure an automatic 'good media' will be challenged. But one need not look very far to see where govern- ment PR could easily slip into a somewhat stronger version of 'reality control'. In Northern Ireland, not a single person can vote for the Labour party, because the party simply refuses to organise there.

The party has not been inactive, howev- er. The Northern Ireland Information Ser- vice is now replacing its single director of communications with three separate posts, offered at salaries of £70,000 each. Such a wasteland of democratic accountability, and such flourishing government PR! One does not need to be a student of Orwell to hear the faint ting-a-ling of warning.

But quite separately from becoming PR- sceptic, one can grow PR-immune. I once shared a house with a beauty editor on a woman's magazine who was the constant recipient of free products. Fat packages would regularly plop onto the doormat, filled with scented jars of wrinkle-erasing cream or sheeny body-balms. The rest of us were agog at the sheer profusion of prod- ucts, but the beauty editor had long since developed a disdain for all but the creme de la creme. One day, I watched in mingled anxiety and admiration as she fiercely pitched a large bottle of expensive and cloying perfume straight into the dustbin.

Because she was deluged with products from all the beauty companies, the mere act of being wooed no longer impressed her. She had reverted to the same judg- ments as if she were sent nothing at all: she liked the product if it was good. Exactly the same process could apply to the PR-ing of Britain. When hardly any- one had a PR officer, the few companies who used them cleverly sailed ahead. Now that every company is pouring money into PR, they are all in a PR war of increasing ferocity.

Predictions for 1998: rhetoric will be sub- ject to runaway inflation. Reality will come under severe pressure at times, but will remain largely intact. In a shocking back- lash, the public will warm to ugly politi- cians. And if the PR business gets really big, it might just start eating itself.