Please, can we stop making sense?

Businesses still like to lead by function. Creative in this corner, publicity in that corner for example. But at the same time these days, it’s fashionable to be integrated.
Too often I see that all of this just leads to greater dysfunction. Within the integration, each sector concentrates on their expertise and the metrics they use to state their value. This serves only to create more distinction between every other role. Sounded like a good idea at the time? In reality, it seems to make very little sense at all! Perhaps integration would be better described as “time saving”, though the opposite is often true in the end.

Creativity has always been at the heart of every successful brand or business or campaign. Unfettered thinking and an open mind gets great results but its never been the top of the agenda. Yet story and creativity is essential to great leadership, to getting a business started and then made sustainable down the line.

But here’s the thing. Creativity is too often deemed as unmanageable, too intangible to describe or add up. By definition, real creativity takes time and payoff isn’t always visible, so it demands less immediate attention than other things that can be more easily quantified as value.

Integration relies on being willing and open and knowing the context each function operates within. Moreover, it is reliant on everyone ensuring their part fits seamlessly with the next part. It can’t afford one function taking precedent over any other.

That’s a long way round to get to the point.

I am rather tired of explaining what PR is and the value it has. I am jaded by treading in the footsteps of advertising. Advertising tends to cost more so it sits higher up an agenda, but since when was value only calculated by money? The truth is that PR allows brands to communicate more adventurously, tell the truth, move people and change things.

Advertising sells. PR creates a desire to be bought. Only one of these things holds real power…