Practice affirmative PR to experience growth, CMC Connect Boss charges practitioners
Public Relations practitioners in Nigeria have been charged to practice affirmative Public Relations as that was the only way the profession would gain recognition and experience growth.
Managing Director of CMC Connect, Mr. Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, made the call during the Fireside Chat organized by the Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN) with the theme: “Macro-Economic Factors That Will Impact the Nigerian Marketing Communications Industry in 2018” at The Civic Centre Victoria Island, Lagos.
Badejo-Okusanya said it was high time PR practitioners began to show the values that are inherent in Public Relations, stressing that that was the whole essence of affirmative Public Relations.
He pointed out that showing the values which PR brings to the table on crisis management or reputation building for various brands demonstrates how important the profession is in the Integrated Marketing Communications industry.
In his words, “There is something called Affirmative Public Relations which I have been championing for a while now. As PR practitioners, we must borrow from the women. We must borrow from the gay movement.”
“How did they come from the back to be accorded so much respect; how do they accept themselves in a world that was not ready to accept them? So, we must do PR for PR and I call that affirmative PR.”
According to him, PR needs to be administered properly by way of storytelling emphasizing that one of the major challenges bedeviling the sector was the inability of its practitioners to tell a compelling story.
“Public Relations is about telling a compelling story. The challenge is that we have not told a compelling story about ourselves or we are yet to tell a compelling story about ourselves; that story should highlight our values, what we bring to the table and until we do that we will not be regarded as relevant in the society.”
“We must re-assert ourselves, we must re-appraise our values, what values are we brining to the table? We must sell those values; we must communicate those values that we are bringing to the table.”
“That way more people will give us more respect, we must do a lot more in the area of integrating Public Relations into other aspects of economic growth – be it finance, FMCGs, Oil & Gas, whatever; so you must integrate PR.
“Affirmative PR, to me, is applying and administering PR to the various areas of our social-economic life; and in that way we will attract the needed respect to the profession”, Badejo-Okusanya concluded.
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