by Peter Holt

Introduction

If we were building a new professional membership body for the PR industry from scratch, as society learns to live with COVID-19, what might it look like and how might it work?

#FuturePRoof challenged me to tackle some of the thorniest issues related to the relevance and value of membership organisations:

Is having a crowded market of different, adjacent membership bodies a good thing?
Should a membership body in our profession have a high threshold to entry and continuation in terms of Continuous Professional Development (CPD)?
How best do we strike the balance between self-regulation – holding our members to high ethical and professional standards – and support to our paying members – to help them in their career development without judgment?

This essay draws on previous research into membership bodies, and interviews I conducted with colleagues who worked at the Law Society, the Chartered Institute of Physiotherapy, a think tank, and also the Labour Party, as well as desk research I undertook on a range of UK membership bodies.

Strategic purpose

Pulling aside articles of incorporation and Royal Charters, my guess is that a discussion about the strategic purpose for a new membership body for the communication profession would end up with a three-pronged focus:

The need to come together to proactively shape our industry and our profession, and its place in the world, including addressing ESG (environmental, social and governance) challenges such as sustainability and diversity
Public relations is not a heavily statutorily regulated profession, so for the good of society generally and our customers, and ultimately also for us as proper professionals, we need to self-regulate effectively. More than that though, we need to sort the wheat from the chaff, so that those of us who uphold proper ethics and professional standards can be told apart from the snake-oil salesmen
We need to support our members, reflect their views, and support them throughout their careers.

Scope – where to draw the line around our profession?

Would we consider public relations so closely associated with marketing that the idea of having separate bodies would be laughable? What about internal communications? What about advertising or digital media or sales? What about public affairs? What about content creation and journalism? Just where would we draw the line?

Would we be better off operating in our new body across in-house and agency teams in different branches, or just exclude one group altogether, and let them go and form their own body? Would we split across public, voluntary/community, and private sectors, or would we come together in a big family?

Then there’s the issue of business models. Would we settle on an individual membership body, perhaps with a corporate membership option, or would we start with corporate memberships and tack on individual joining rights?

I for one hope that the scope of our new PR body would be broad – going at least as far as including the disciplines of marketing, internal communications, public affairs and digital media.

In deference to the marketing colleagues I’d probably be happy enough to stretch out and include advertising and sales. I think I’d argue more strongly against including journalism, but wouldn’t die in a ditch over it. Broad reach, federal structure, umbrella, big tent and so on.

What wins: competition or cooperation?

I value commercial competition amongst supermarkets and telecom providers, but I am firmly of the view that the benefits of competition in membership bodies for the PR sector are grossly outweighed by the wasted opportunities.

If one could successfully take egos out of the equation, then why would we ever invent a fragmented set of representative bodies, cooperating only at the margins?

As we’d certainly not want to lose around a fifth of members annually.

The wisdom of a former head of membership for the Labour Party rings loudly in my ears – to the effect that the biggest challenge in membership retention was to demonstrate the value of membership at the 11 month mark, just before the first year’s subscription renewal – from then on, drop-out levels plummeted.

If we’re serious about sorting the wheat from the chaff, then what’s the right balance to strike in admitting new members in terms of ethics and professional standards, and expecting all members to maintain career-long Continuous Professional Development (CPD), on a path to some form of recognised ‘senior practitioner’ status?

Once all that detail is worked through – this new member-led, membership body of ours – what say we start the long, hard road towards having it granted a Royal Charter, as an official recognition of our standards, ethics and effective self-regulating practice.

Now please take a hard look at the CIPR and my manifesto for President.

Peter Holt FCIPR, Chart. PR, FRSA is the Assistant Chief Executive of South Northants Council, and is a candidate for President in the current CIPR election. He blogs at www.peterholt99.wordpress.com which contains interviews with colleagues during their time at the Law Society (touching on the importance of member insight) and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (touching on their localism, diversity and braveness approach), as well as desk-based research articles that have informed this thought piece on barriers to entry to membership, and on student pathways into membership, on age discrimination in the PR profession, on race in public relations and on better supporting new entrants to the profession.