Is PRCA’s PR Redefine a Necessary Update or a Solution in Search of a Problem?
The London-headquartered PRCA has this week released what it calls “a new definition of public relations,” produced following a member-only consultation process:
“Public relations is the strategic management discipline that builds trust, enhances reputation and helps leaders interpret complexity and manage volatility – delivering measurable outcomes including stakeholder confidence, long-term value creation and commercial growth.”
The effort, led by PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington, expands into an extended definition and ten underpinning principles. The principles span relationship-centredness, earned credibility, strategic counsel, stakeholder engagement, and the role of PR in shaping the information ecosystem. The initiative appears prompted, at least in part, by a BBC Radio 4 exchange between Waddington and former WPP chief Martin Sorrell, where Sorrell pronounced the “death of Public Relations.”.
My own reaction to the definition and the process was “this seems rather anodyne, and a bit presumptuous for PRCA to ‘define’ this.” But PRCA’s effort is not unprecedented, and I wanted to get a variety of industry views before launching into my own critique. (NOTE: There is a caveat following PRCA’s extended definition saying “While this has been developed for and by the PRCA community, other PR practitioners and bodies are welcome to use our definition with appropriate attribution.”)
The responses – from a mix of industry leaders and practitioners – provided a more rounded view, with some sharp criticism, but also some support for the exercise and the positioning it produced.
The Sausage-Making Problem
Gerard Corbett, who oversaw a similar exercise for PRSA in 2012, recognized the difficulty immediately. “Having overseen the same exercise on behalf of PRSA back in 2012, I can tell you it was no easy undertaking,” he noted. “As I noted then and is abundantly clear now, it was like making sausage.”
But Corbett’s concern was with the outcome. While the core definition “encompasses the main strategic activities,” he argued it “misses one of the essential functions of public relations, which in my view is ‘Managing Relationships,’ new or old, large or small in all of its forms.”
After half a century in the profession, Corbett advocated for radical simplicity: “The much simpler definition of Public Relations easily understood by everyone is ‘building and managing relationships.’ That’s it, short and sweet.”
An Irrelevance Problem?
US-based earned media pro Dustin Siggins raised a different concern: broadening the definition of PR risks eroding PR’s distinctiveness precisely when the field should be sharpening its value proposition.
“Public relations is the practice of building narratives and stories that will secure media coverage,” Siggins argued. “There’s a lot of work that goes into doing that, but laying out the sausage-making in the definition risks creating confusion as to the core practice of PR and risks confusing the distinct practice of PR with other communications disciplines.”
The timing, Siggins suggested, is particularly problematic: “Ironically, the PRCA is considering broadening the definition just as LLMs are turning the discipline from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have.’ When earned media is the source of some of the most authoritative digital reputation, confusing what we do with other disciplines could make it harder for clients and employers to distinguish us.”
Ethics and Skepticism
Mary Beth West delivered the sharpest critique, questioning both substance and process. “When I learned about this ‘new definition of PR’ undertaking, I viewed it with skepticism,” she wrote. “This whole thing has seemed contrived and ready-fire-aim.”
Her central concern focused on ethics—or rather, its absence from the core definition. “‘Ethics’ and the critical element of PR working in balance to the public good is, at best, an afterthought to the PRCA’s latest stab at a definition. That’s incredibly sad and bewildering to me.”
”In PR, ethics are central and core to how organizations commit to treat people. Ethics provide the critical differentiator of true ‘public relations’ from all the rejected models of comms long proven not to work in fostering meaningful trust.”
Credibility and Contradictions
Gulf-based PR agency chief Sean Trainor identified a more fundamental issue: the credibility of the core definition that claims that PR helps leaders interpret complexity and manage volatility. A bold claim considering no leader has ever said that.
His critique extended to the claimed comprehensiveness. The principle of “earned credibility as the primary currency” claims that “audiences process paid messages through a filter of scepticism” seems at odds with the principle of “grounded in Insight and evidence”. The principle of “platform-agnostic storytelling” describes PR as operating “across owned, shared and earned channels” while conspicuously omitting paid media. Trainor’s response: “Completely dismissing paid content as credible is hardly agnostic or evidence-based and completely ignores the modern media mix.”
The Competing Definition Problem
Massimo Moriconi, representing ICCO, took a more diplomatic stance while offering a competing vision.
He presented ICCO’s own definition from their November 2025 Mumbai Summit: “PR is the discipline enabling organizations to create, strengthen, or restore conversations and relationships with their key stakeholders. Our capabilities span Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media. In a world where trust can vanish in seconds and reputation is the true currency of enterprise value, our role has never been more vital.”
His framing makes explicit what the PRCA process revealed: professional associations may be free to pursue definitional exercises, but a diverse industry can tend to have other ideas.
What This Reveals
The responses illuminate several fault lines: comprehensiveness versus clarity; professional versus public audiences; ethics as foundation versus principle; outcomes versus relationships; member versus industry authority; defensive versus offensive framing.
Even with PRCA attempting to create a definitive definition, the field remains productively unsettled about its core identity, its ethical foundations, and who gets to speak for it.
Whether it’s produced a useful definition remains an open question – one that will ultimately be answered by whether practitioners, clients, employers, and the public find it clarifying or confusing.
Editor’s Note: Reprinted with permission from Strategic Magazine.
