It’s Groundhog Day in the Public Relations Industry

David Olijade (00:01):

Every industry wants to seem new, but sometimes change is just a new label on the same old suit, and sometimes you can walk a runway without ever leaving the showroom. Take a listen.

Farzana Baduel (00:22):

In fashion, nothing is more valuable than the next big thing. The next silhouette, the next color trend, the next material you've never even heard of until it's on every rack. Designers promise to break the mold, to disrupt the industry and usher in a new season of bold originality. But here's the trick. It's the same mold. Hemlines rise and then they fall. Shoulder pads return every decade like clockwork. Even radical trends, grunge norm called quite luxury. They're just ghosts of style. Past everything is recycled, repurposed and rebranded. It has to be. Otherwise, there'd never be a next season. The industry even has a name for it. The fashion treadmill. You run faster and faster to keep up, but you never really go anywhere. Designers know it, editors know it. Even the most loyal fashionistas know it, but the show must go on and what keeps it all running?

(01:20):

Words, catchphrases, themes, campaigns that whisper, forget what you wore last year. This is who you are now with just the right message, the familiar becomes fresh. Repetition becomes reinvention. Now shift your gaze. Imagine another industry that sells influence instead of fabric. One that also is obsessed with staying relevant that launches trends, chases headlines and lives for the next panel, platform or product that promises this time it will be different. Today on stories and strategies we ask if PR is caught on its own fashion treadmill, always changing outfits, but never quite changing direction because if we don't stop walking in circles, we may end up wildly dressed and going nowhere fast. My name is Farzana Baduel

Doug Downs (02:26):

And my name is Doug Downs, our guest this week. David Gallagher, joining today from London, sunny old London today. Hey David.

David Gallagher (02:35):

Hey guys. Sunny warm London on a Friday afternoon,

David Olijade (02:38):

Hot and humid. You've had a few days like that. So what part of London are you in? Because it is a rather big city, west side, east side, north side where you at?

David Gallagher (02:47):

North side, but central, pretty central near Regions Park. If people know London, absolutely

Doug Downs (02:53):

David, you're a veteran communication strategist who's led global agencies advise governments now runs Folgate Advisors to help the industry find its future, and that's what we're talking about here today. You've served as a voice of accountability inside boardrooms and across trade bodies. Never afraid to challenge an echo chamber when it gets too loud. And that's what we're doing today with decades of perspective and a bias for action. You bring both credibility and a well aimed nudge to a profession that's overdue for some reflection.

Farzana Baduel (03:28):

Many people say that Edward Bernays is the founding father, the godfather of PR. I'd say you're our modern day godfather of public relations. You have this incredible WhatsApp group of a thousand prs, and everyone in the industry seems to know you and you've probably seen that the PR industry rapidly transform and change. And on one hand, people consider the PR industry quite dynamic because it's always changing. The channels are always changing. The way that we approach PR is always shifting. People don't even know half the time what PR is versus marketing and so forth. So it's this really sort of quite dynamic industry on one hand. But on the other hand, the conversations that the PR industry have within the industry seems to always be the same. When are we going to get a seat at the table? Why do advertising agencies always collect our awards? And it's always we're the poor cousins of our advertising brethren, or it's sort of like, why don't the CEOs listen to us? Why aren't we sort on the board and advising as our marketing people? We always seem to have slight envy with marketing and ad people. And then there's always that conversation about diversity, the importance of diversity. Why are we having the same conversations year in year out? Are we not getting our own message? Are we not drinking our own Kool-Aid? What is happening with our industry? Why are we stuck?

David Gallagher (04:58):

I don't know why we're stuck. I have a couple of theories, but I kind of want to come back to one thing you mentioned early on. I don't know that we're that dynamic. I think we like to call ourselves dynamic,

(05:08):

But we are having the same conversations. I was having this conversation with someone the other day. I kind of came of age professionally in the nineties in Washington and New York, and I remember very well going to my first conference the first time, I was kind of allowed to go out on my own and hear what the grownups were talking about. And at that time I remember thinking, these are really interesting questions. How do you measure pr? What is the value of a reputation? What is the difference between advertising, pr, marketing, and what is integrated communications? I remember even having some clumsy, not very well worded conversations about diversity. I remember I was a conference in a majority black city in Atlanta and everybody in the auditorium was white. So we were having these conversations back in the nineties and they struck me as interesting. Then I think they're still interesting. I think they're still valid, but for some reason they haven't really been answered. We're still having the same conversation and I'm beginning to suspect that we have these conversations because we don't want to have the harder conversations, the bigger, we don't want to address the bigger questions of what we're doing, why we're doing it, and maybe how we can continue to do it better.

Doug Downs (06:22):

How do you start those and what are those big things?

David Gallagher (06:26):

I think you got to rattle a few cages in your kind intro. Doug, you talked about giving a nudge. I do want to give a nudge. We set up F gate to give a nudge, not a kick, not a shove, but hopefully some positive encouragement to think really clearly and intentionally about why we're here, why we're here as a, I don't know if we're a profession, but a community, a set of practitioners. What's the higher purpose that we serve and then how do we make that work for us as business owners or business supporters? So I think we just got to start having those types of conversations and not revert back to, I keep hearing, I understand it. Why are we talking about advertising value equivalents? Oh God, as a metaphor, or sorry, as a replacement for PR value. And for your listeners who don't know what that is, that's just literally looking at the value of editorial placement and seeing what its advertising value be. I get it. Those are questions that we should be beyond, but I think we have them because we don't want to get to the harder stuff.

Farzana Baduel (07:37):

Is it also sustainable? When you look at a lot of the big agencies, you're seeing a lot of redundancies. You are seeing a lot of investment in ai. You are seeing a lot of drop in job adverts for graduates. So it may be that we've been quite as an industry, not as dynamic as we like to think we are, but actually now perhaps we'll be forced and hauled over the coals of change because AI may end up driving that. Are you optimistic that AI could shake things up and get us to actually start thinking a little bit deeper about our industry and what we do rather than just the surface level conversations that we seem to be having? On repeat,

David Gallagher (08:29):

I'm neutral on ai. I'll tackle the AI part first, then I'll come back to the industry. I'm not a doomsayer, but I'm also not convinced that it's going to solve all of our problems. I'm somewhere in between and there are a lot of people who know way more about it than I do. If it helps us prompt more serious conversations about what we're doing, again, as a profession or as a community, then I think it's worthwhile. And in some cases I have heard conversations sparked by AI worries. How can it make us more efficient? That still seems like another version of a conversation we had back when we first started talking about email or social media. Some people think it could make us more creative or unleashing things maybe. So I'm cautiously optimistic but neutral about this. I think the biggest constraint on the lack of progress, I'll put it that way. We do not invest as a community as resident. We do not invest in innovation. There is no real r and d budget in any PR comms related organization. I'm sure I'm probably overstating it, somebody's going to give me an example where that happens, but it doesn't really happen. Not the way any other

(09:41):

Profession, business industry invests. I would say nothing truly transformational has been invented in PR since the press release. I can't think of anything in the last 80 or 90 years that we have led that we have introduced for our industry and are in service to others that were PR led. We've tried to grab a little bit of good thinking from other people. We've tried to latch onto technologies, but we really haven't invented anything new.

Farzana Baduel (10:11):

What about floating something down the Thames?

David Gallagher (10:13):

Yeah, the photo, the Tims related. There's two things we, and again, s

(10:22):

I'm overstating the case to make a point, and I think the reasons we don't innovate is because we're not structured that way. Big agencies that are owned by publicly held companies, they exist quarter by quarter. So there's no margin really for investment. Independents I think are more flexible and can operate differently, but they probably don't have the cash available and are risk averse, and then individuals probably just don't have the collective mass to really invent something significant. And none of this, as far as I can tell, take advantage of what could be a deep pool of innovation expertise with academia. And far, I know you're active in your programs. I support programs, but no agency or group that I can see really invest in a relationship with academia, at least in terms of producing new ideas, new thinking, new intellectual property. So I think we've, we've dug our own pit in terms of why we're not moving forward. We don't have the resources to innovate and I think we revert to more comfortable conversations.

Farzana Baduel (11:34):

I wanted to ask why for instance, I came into the industry 15 years ago. It was just blind and I started over years learning about the history and I started learning about obviously Edward Bernas and I started learning about how psychology underpinned a lot of his early campaigns and it was quite science led behavioral science before it was a thing. At what point did we lose our way? When did we stop that co-creation with science to come up with a campaign and just be rule takers and knock out press releases and annoy journalists by sending it to the wrong ones?

David Gallagher (12:16):

It's a great question. In my own way, I've been trying to dig into that a little bit myself. I've reread a lot of the early Edward Bernay's books. It's kind of frightening to read some of it. I mean, it's insightful, pretty

Farzana Baduel (12:28):

Dark

David Gallagher (12:30):

Is a lot more resonant than you would expect even though it was written a hundred years ago. It foreshadows things that we're dealing with now, like disinformation and misinformation. Critics have associated it with literal nation state propaganda. So it's an interesting read, instructive, but also kind of a little bit scary too. I've also been reading Walter Lipman in Public Opinion and he writes about this more from a journalistic perspective, but he talks about the same types of issues but from a different angle. And there is a real rich intellectual body of knowledge that we can draw from. But I would argue it's not required. There are no, as a profession, we lack a lot of the kind of markers features of that. There are no qualifications that are required to practice pr. There's no regulatory oversight. There's no way to measure what we are doing as an industry.

(13:34):

And I think some, and I know this isn't popular, but I think we suffer for that in some ways. Of course, I know there are bodies that will accredit and will educate and that's a good thing, but it's not required. And there's a big difference for that. And I think it undermines at some level our confidence, our belief in what we do, or even just our grasp of the underlying theory, whether it's behavioral science or communications theory business. Most of us don't have much of an educational background in that. And I do think it comes back to bias. It makes us a little bit insecure about our right to exist and even more reluctant to explore what sort of purpose we might be here to serve.

Doug Downs (14:17):

For me, that new pathway for comms is really the human brain and probably behaviour. And there have been firms, I can think of two top of mind in the uk, I won't name them, that have focused on behavioural science and setting up connections with academia to try to support projects that way. From where I sat, that was a bold frontier. Throughout North America, there are different shops that focus on neuroscience. We take a neuroscience approach, which really I think what they're saying is behavioral science. And personally my interest is in biological cognitive neuroscience. So not just the behavior, but physically how the brain reacts to things. Just overall, is that a potential pathway to create something new in this industry? And if it's been tried and hasn't flourished at least yet, is that just proof the market doesn't want it?

David Gallagher (15:13):

I'm aware of probably the firms you're speaking of and definitely kind of that line of thinking. And I think it's valid and I think it should be a source of wider inspiration for us. I kind of think that in our world there are the things that go on in our heads and that's either behavioral or neuro. There's the way our heads connect with each other, and that's probably psychology and sociology and then really driving this right now is technology. And then there's kind of the business models, whether that's pr, advertising, journalism, social media, those are kind of just the business mechanisms. And I think we focus way too much on the business mechanisms and probably not enough on the flesh and spirit and wiring that the other domains kind of represent. And I think if we can come together with more holistic thinking across all of those domains, we would do something better.

Farzana Baduel (16:14):

I was just astounded that when I came into the industry, it was just events, a few award submissions and pitching to journalists who ignore you. And when I started looking at the history, I thought, God, that was really fascinating back then how they approached it. I thought, why are we approaching it in this way that is just not as fun? Back then it was God, it was just a different age. When I approached the public relations industry, I was shocked that we would give so much of our thinking for free at the business development stage that we would literally write out strategies for free. And the tactics is what we charged and that was post-contract, but we would give all our strategy away, our research, our strategy, our planning, all for free. And I thought, what an odd industry that they give their strategic thinking for free, which is arguably high value, high margin work. And they would give their tactics, low margin sort of chargeable. And I realized that they don't have confidence in their own strategic thinking otherwise. Why on earth would an industry give their most valuable high level thinking for free?

David Gallagher (17:31):

Yeah, that's a huge question for us. And to be fair, that is one of those questions that comes up at every conference as well. And I don't know what the answer is, but I have been curious about

Farzana Baduel (17:42):

Charge for it.

David Gallagher (17:43):

Well, you see some firms are doing that now. And I'd be curious to know what the actual of this, I don't know when this happened, but at some point we started following advertising agency models and we started using replicating a practice that I think was common in the ad world. And maybe this is Mad Men Don Draper days, but for whatever reason, we would take a creative brief and come in with, here's how we would answer your question. And that is the actual value. What you do to activate that is kind of the lower value proposition in some cases. So at some point we started acting like ad agencies and now what I'm seeing is that the higher value firms, the ones that are getting investment now aren't going down that road. They do look more like and sound more like management consultants and they propose a framework for answering a question.

(18:39):

They have good credentials and having handled similar situations before. But the actual answering of the question is what's paid for? And I really think it's not just better for the firms that are doing it, it's better for the clients that are paying for it as well. But I don't know if that will, that's the tail of the dog. I don't know if the whole dog will start doing that anytime soon. I suspect not. But I think that's kind of the way forward is how do we come up with better frameworks. And maybe it goes back to what you were saying, Doug, frameworks that are tied back to some other areas of knowledge and expertise domains that they give a greater sense of confidence that they'll be successful if utilized.

Doug Downs (19:25):

Something to think about. Really appreciate your time today, David. Did we cover what you want to cover? Got it.

Farzana Baduel (19:30):

Well almost I've got one question for you. I've got a question that's been left behind by our previous guest and he is a gentleman who is from Illa, is that the right pronunciation I hope? And he is called Gohan gel. And he's left the following question,

Gokhan Purcel (19:50):

Will you be ready for yesterday?

Doug Downs (19:52):

So I had to ask him afterward what he meant by this question. What he was drilling down to was that sometimes we wish we could go back in time and redo that thing, redo that moment, do something different. And his point is you don't get to do that today. Whatever you do, you get one chance, one opportunity, and five years from now, don't be wishing you could go back to this day and redo it. So are you ready to live today like it was yesterday?

David Gallagher (20:21):

It's a great question and it's kind of one that's resonant with me where I am in my life right now. I live here in the UK and my family's back. My parents are back in the US So I think a lot about how many days literally do they have left? How many days do I have left? And I can't say I do this every morning, but I try to think about the fact that there's not a lot of time for regrets. I could do the 3:00 AM wish I'd done something differently, worry wagon. But I actually really try not to do that and I try really hard to just look forward. So is the question, am I ready for yesterday? Yeah, I think I've made peace with yesterday and I'm much more interested in tomorrow.

Doug Downs (21:04):

Your turn. David, what question do you want to leave behind for the next guest? Make it really hard. MENSA level. Mensa.

David Gallagher (21:10):

Well, I'll make it really simple. If you could change one thing about communication to move forward, what would it be?

Doug Downs (21:17):

Yeah, for me it's more brain study more because that's what I'm into. I'm more cognitive neuroscience right now. If MRI is leading the path for that, but that's just oxygenated blood flow to parts of the brain. It's not perfect. More real brain study on how the brain works for me.

David Gallagher (21:37):

I love it. I'll think of some guests that suggest for you in that space too.

Doug Downs (21:41):

Nice. What about you Farzana, what would you change?

Farzana Baduel (21:44):

I think it's actually an idea that David sparked because I never actually thought about how companies in the comms industry, we don't really invest that level of r and d that others do. Often you have these industry averages between five to 15% depend upon which sector. And it just struck me that we don't, and it's really interesting and I think now people are more inclined to do it because they're investing in chat GT and AI driven tools. But a lot of people are just using tools rather than actually coming up with their own ideas. And I think that's kind of reserved as just the big agencies, I suspect David.

David Gallagher (22:23):

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, the big agencies don't have much r and d

Farzana Baduel (22:27):

Budget considering their turnover. I think that's the one thing I would change is actually what David made me think about in this conversation is actually taking a mindset that you invest five, 10, 15% into r and d, and gosh, that would make things completely different.

David Gallagher (22:45):

How do you feel about literally certifying as a requirement professional certification? Isn't that interesting?

Doug Downs (22:53):

Yeah,

David Gallagher (22:54):

I've seen you guys debate this before on the episode of Came In. I

Doug Downs (22:58):

Think. So for me, the problem is it doesn't feel democratic. Somebody's version of how I'm supposed to communicate. And quite frankly, communication inherently must be democratic. Therefore, if I don't fall under your guidelines for certification, I don't qualify. And that's not for me. I know especially in some African nations, it's working. It's working. But that's fine.

Farzana Baduel (23:27):

Yeah, I mean I think Doug, you are very rebellious, maybe a bit anti authoritarian. I'm, I'm a bit command control, so I kind of like the idea of having guardrails parameters for the profession. It could be a bias coming from an accounting background that it just feels natural to me. I like the fact that when as an accountant, it was a very structured path. You had to be overseen by a chartered practitioner for a number of years. It was very rigorous. You had to take a certain number of qualifications and then you were penalized financially if you were not chartered. And you'd have different pay rates for qualified part qualified or unqualified. And I would love to see that where actually people can choose to remain unqualified, but the market react to it.

David Olijade (24:18):

That's fine, that's fine. That's not forcing certification on me. That nagging freedom of speech thing that keeps getting in the way of all that.

Farzana Baduel (24:28):

Oh, it's a bit pesky nowadays. Yeah,

David Gallagher (24:30):

I have to think if lawyers and attorneys have to pass the bar, I have to think there's some way we could have some sort of similar qualification process that wouldn't be too constraining. But I do take your point that it does feel counterintuitive. Well, I would welcome it. So if this ends up in the final cut and there's somebody out there who wants to talk about this, I think it would be a good thing. And I say that with no restrictions. I am not looking for a puff piece on pr. Also, you had asked me what sort of kick in the pants is it going to require for the industry to change? And I've been given a little bit of thought since that first came up. And I don't know that PR will ever get the sort of external wake up that the music industry did or the film industry did.

(25:25):

I don't know that there is a Netflix or Spotify version of PR out there in stealth mode right now. There may be, and maybe we'll all be surprised when something thing appears on the news cycle tomorrow, but I think the kicks are going to come a hundred at a time in small doses. And I think we're seeing them now. We're seeing changes in the media ecosystem. We're seeing how media brands are now using influencers, how influencers are presenting themselves as media brands. And this whole disintermediation fragmentation of media that began decades ago is really accelerating. I think we'll struggle to keep up with that. I think we will keep up with it, but we won't really lead it. We don't really have the capability to lead that kind of conversation. So I'm not looking for a single kick in the pants, but I'm hoping conversations like this, and by the way, thank you guys for this show.

(26:22):

I mean this is one of those little nudges, those little helps I think to have conversations and I don't expect any of them to resolve. It'd be amazing if the three of us could solve every question in the PR industry in 30 minutes. We should get paid a lot more if we could do that. But I do think if one conversation that two other people have on the back of this conversation, I consider that a success. And I hope we can do more. And I really commend you guys for this show. I think it gets at the heart of things that we should be talking about.

Doug Downs (26:54):

That's the whole point of the podcast. That's perfect. The

David Gallagher (26:56):

Whole point.

Farzana Baduel (26:58):

Great. Thank you.

David Gallagher (26:59):

Alright, thanks guys.

Farzana Baduel (27:02):

So here are the top three takeaways from David. Number one, we are stuck in old conversations for decades. PR has circled the same debates. Measurement, value, diversity instead of facing the tougher questions about purpose and progress. Number two, innovation is missing. PR lacks real investment in r and d. Nothing truly transformational has come from within the industry since the press release. Other sectors invest in r and d, wiser that we do not as an industry, and that's probably why we are the way that we are. Number three, confidence and risk are key. The industry's risk aversion and lack of confidence keeps it trapped in tactics, giving away strategic thinking for free instead of claiming its true value. What do you think, Doug?

Doug Downs (27:54):

I think investing in research and development, right? We've got some firms that are doing trust barometers and different, that's good stuff. But yeah, we invested uniformly more in r and d that might at least nudge the needle a little bit.

Farzana Baduel (28:13):

And hats soft to Edelman actually, because they're the only ones that I know who have just consistently year in, year out brought that trust brought me to, because you do have other PR agencies and organizations that sort of do these spikes of research, but then the consistency is lacking and you kind of need that consistency, that drumbeat to really start doing pattern recognition to really spur that sort of innovative thinking. So hats off to Edelman, but where are the other agencies? Come on, step up. I do get the feeling, Doug, that they're going to start obviously investing because, not because they really have a love for r and d, but perhaps more because actually they want to invest in AI in order to reduce the salary headcount. So perhaps they're being driven over the hot coals of innovation because they're following their lovely promise of lower salary costs and healthier sort of profits.

Doug Downs (29:09):

Just follow the bouncing coin and you understand the methodology. If you'd like to send a message to our guest, David Gallagher, we've got his contact information in the shout outs, stories and strategies is a co-production of Zen Public Relations, JGR communications and stories and strategies, podcasts. Hey, check out our YouTube channel. We put full episodes up on the YouTube channel. Some of them go on for 30, even 40 minutes. And then for the audio, we chop it down to that 20 21, 22 minute range. Thank you to our producers, David Ade and Emily Page. Lastly, do us a favour forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.