Your public image: what is it really? Do you care?

• Author: McCorkle, Vern C.
• Position: From the Publisher - Public Relations Society of America's formalized accreditation program for public relations counselors

It is arguable, but had there been a public relations vice president at the top management level of Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom and countless other good businesses gone bad, they might not have failed as miserably as they did.

And if those PR VPs had the personal power and prestige to influence their peers but neglected to do so (they may have been cut from the same cloth as their fellow scoundrels) then the time-honored practice of "ethical public relations" went out the window.

DOING A GOOD JOB AND GETTING CREDIT FOR IT

Too many people equate public relations with the practice of entertaining visiting firemen with dinner and drinks. For more than a quarter century, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has been promoting the thesis that professional public relations experts can help ethically and favorably improve a company's profit potential.

Just because there is no public relations function diagrammed on your organization chart, it doesn't mean that you don't have public relations. Everybody has public relations-they are either good public relations or bad public relations.

While publicity and advertising are examples of tools employed by public relations experts, a big mistake would be to think that because an overworked clerk...