Public relations has come a long way from the days when it involved little more than product placement. Rhona Blake, new managing director of Ireland's largest PR company, tells Arminta Wallace how, these days, it's all about telling the truth. Honestly
It's a long time since "public relations" meant uncles and aunts who made a nuisance of themselves at weddings. But, even since it became "PR", PR ain't what it used to be. Once upon a time, the average PR person operated out of a cupboard under the stairs and earned a crust by placing the odd product photo in a magazine.
Now? Well, Rhona Blake is hardly "average". She has recently been appointed managing director of Fleishman-Hillard, Ireland's largest PR company, which employs 40 people, numbers among its clients O2, BT Ireland, Proctor & Gamble and Musgraves, wins awards on a regular basis and, among other high-profile successes, masterminded the campaign for the Special Olympics in 2003. But that's not even the half of it. As an "international communications" company, Fleishman-Hillard has offices just about everywhere, from New York and Paris, to Johannesburg and Guangzhou. PR has expanded to safeguard reputations, create images and foresee trends
Dressed in sleek black, enlivened by an eye-catching piece of chunky jewellery and impressively casual shoulder-length blonde hair, Blake talks effortlessly about changes in the way in which the industry is perceived from outside and the way it perceives itself; changes in the kind of people who work in PR, and the kind of campaigns they undertake. In Ireland, where the PR business currently clocks in at about €52 million a year, these changes have been somewhat spectacular.
Until quite recently, the Fleishman-Hillards of the world didn't bother with markets as small as Ireland. The fact that they (and a fistful of similarly globally-minded PR outfits) are here at all is a sign that the new Ireland is here to stay - and their presence will almost certainly be a driving force behind further change.
"In the past," recalls Blake, "people went into PR because they couldn't think of anything else to do." This applies to Blake as well - sort of. "I did economics at UCD, then, in the mid-1980s, a course in PR at the College of Commerce in Rathmines. Like a lot of people at the time, I fell into it." Unlike many of her peers, who were "bitterly disappointed" by the reality of the business, Blake realised she had found her true calling. "I was always interested in current affairs. I was fascinated by retailing and marketing. I loved to know what was happening before I read about it - nosiness, basically," she concludes with a grin. It's not, as it turns out, a bad definition of what it takes to make a good PR person.
"You need to have energy," says Blake. "You need to have passion. You need to be interested, and be out and about, and know what's going on - because if you don't know what's going on, you couldn't possibly be in a position to advise clients." She is, she confesses with obvious relish, a news junkie. "I'd be tuned into something or other all day. I wouldn't be able to rest on a Monday night without knowing who's on the panel for Questions and Answers. I love radio and I love newspapers and magazines. I'm sorry to say I hardly ever read a book now, because there are so many journals to catch up with - magazines about trends, consumer behaviour, patterns. I love all that stuff."
In the high-stakes world of high-end PR, this magpie instinct for collecting information, storing it and retrieving it at the drop of a hat, becomes a valuable trading commodity. Fleishman-Hillard is a "full service" agency working in four quite distinct areas: consumer and brands; business communications; corporate and public affairs; and healthcare. Clients get everything from a steer through the jungle of planning legislation - major involvement in property development being one of those much-vaunted changes in the PR industry - to advice on how to nudge a change in public policy issues, or how to keep their own corporate houses in order.
Would it be accurate to say that high-end PR nowadays is not so much a matter of putting the icing on the cake as of actually baking it? "Absolutely," says Blake. "There has always been a difficulty in measuring the impact of PR, but at this stage, the chief executives of the top companies in corporate Ireland are very clear about its value. At a typical boardroom table, you'll have a corporate affairs or communications person advising - and they will be listened to by financial and legal people, as well as product and marketing people."
At the other end of the scale, she cheerfully admits that many business people in Ireland are hiring PR consultants just because everybody else is doing it. "We get clients coming in who have been told they need a PR company working for them, but aren't really sure why." Half an hour in Blake's company doubtless sorts them out.
So what do they do at Fleishman Hillard? "We spend a lot of time researching who's reading what, who's listening to what, who's watching what," she says. "Audiences have become much more fragmented, and there's no point in trying to communicate your message if you're speaking to the wrong people. Teenagers, for instance, aren't going to read broadsheet newspapers. They're much more likely to listen to a funky radio station, or be on the internet - or get information from their peers."
In Ireland, she adds, the good old grapevine is one of the most powerful PR tools of all. "If you can put accurate information out on the grapevine, you can hugely influence things. It's incredible how powerful a group of women can be in the sales of something such as, say, childcare products. Young mothers can determine what brand of nappies people will choose."
One topic which almost everybody is interested in, at the moment, is healthcare. "We run campaigns on medical issues, on new treatments and so forth. We work for companies which have new solutions for asthma, diabetes, erectile dysfunction, osteoporosis. Everybody knows somebody with a health issue. It's a massive growth area."
In a society in which shopping has become a major leisure activity, the philosophy of retailing is also a central preoccupation - and a subject which engages Blake at a personal as well as on a professional level. "I'm a great old shopper myself," she says, "and I find the whole business of how you can influence consumers fascinating."
Brandignite is the name of Fleishman-Hillard's new consumer division, launched this year. "It's all about brand marketing and experiential PR," Blake explains. The latter - in case you didn't know - has to do with your actual experience of shopping and how it impacts on what you buy. Remember the folks who used to pump baking smells into supermarkets? We may have all cottoned on to that trick, but the experiential PR people are way ahead of us. You can bet your bottom dollar that even now they're working on ways to turn the "rip-off Republic" ethos to somebody's advantage. What is heartening from a consumer point of view, however, is that for all their expertise and sophistication, the retail professionals occasionally get it totally wrong. "It may seem like an exact science, but it's not simple at all," says Blake.
As a keen shopper herself, what does she regard as retail heresy? "Well, one thing I don't understand is - why do department stores have so many concession shops, when there are usually bigger and better versions of those shops just outside the door? What's that about?"
An interesting trend at the moment, she says, is the runaway success of low-cost retailing. In an affluent society, you'd expect it to disappear: in fact it has done quite the opposite. "People are tired of paying a huge amount of money for clothes," says Blake. "Young people don't want the same coat next year. They don't want the same coat next month. Good communications on behalf of the low-cost retailers have persuaded people that the savvy shopper is king -it's cool to have your expensive boots when the rest of your outfit cost you 20 quid, tops."
But suppose it all goes pear-shaped. What kind of advice would she, as a top-notch PR person, give to her clients? "At the end of the day, the only thing you can do is tell the truth," she says. "Put your hands up, and say what you're going to do to rectify the problem, and to make sure that it doesn't happen again. PR is about communicating the truth. That, perhaps, is the biggest change in the past number of years. The damage that's done when it turns out that companies weren't truthful is so evident all over the place - whether it's in the banking sector or in terms of technology problems - means that the truth has to be number one."
Honestly? The real truth, or just another layer of spin? "I think that it is now the truth," she says. "People have realised the value of dealing in the truth, and the value of a reputation which is earned by dealing in the truth. First-class reputations work. It comes back to that, again and again."
Blake appears to be quite sincere when she says this - but then she would, wouldn't she? Does PR not make cynics of us all, especially those who work in the industry? She leans back in her chair and bursts out laughing. "Not me," she says. "When I read something, or hear something, I might wonder - more than most people - about how it got there. But if I read something on the beauty pages of a magazine, I'm just as likely to rush out and buy the product as anybody else. I mean, some of the products are fantastic.
"And on top of that, I know, more than most people, that the media won't print stuff that doesn't make sense. You can't fool a top beauty journalist with a dodgy product. If you give them one to try, they'll ring up and tell you if it doesn't work. The people in good publications know their stuff; they see through that sort of thing very quickly. No - I'm not cynical. Yet. But give me another 10 years . . ."