21 things PR is not

As a profession, it is incumbent upon us to educate people on what we can do for organizations. Specifically, this means explaining how our work benefits bottom line goals.

Part of this is showing and telling people what PR is and isn’t.

I’ll begin today with a quick checklist of what PR is NOT:

1. The department whose sole purpose is to write, edit and hawk press releases.
2. The biz function whose only raison d’etre is publicity.
3. A business function that deals with the media and/or bloggers and NOTHING else.
4. A way to get free advertising – pure and simple.
5. Ever guaranteed to generate coverage.
6. Ever 100% controllable.
7. A profession filled entirely with unctuous jackasses.
8. Journalism’s bitch.
9. A highly scientific discipline.
10. A craft that has figured out – with any sort of consensus – how its true organzational value should be measured.
11. A business function that many CEOs emerge from.
12. A profession whose practitioners have sound knowledge of business fundamentals.
13. The vocation that idiots who could not make it as journalists go into.
14. Always best carried out by former journalists.
15. THE ONLY PLACE to house social media.
16. Very well done – at least today – by people with NO grasp of social media.
17. A complex voodoo priesthood that can only be carried out by geniuses with tonnes of experience.
18. Capable of whitewashing all sins.
19. A profession whose practitioners are all adept at speaking ‘human’.
20. Necessarily or invariably the adversary of media.
21. A synonym for spin.

You likely have more ideas about what PR is not. Add them in the comments please.