Does PR really need a definition?

Lately, the industry was shaked up in its roots with a great debate on the definition of PR. 

The Public Relations Society of America’s attempt to define what is PR almost got the whole industry confused.  After a research phase, PR professionals were asked to choose amongst three final propositions, the official definition of PR. Problem: no one seemed to agree with any of these definitions. The debate went viral and a bunch of meanings were found to PR. However, people has spoken and PRSA’s definition of PR is:still  were creating it everydayanche et de la nuit ainsi quee.cte le public avec l'rte une touche le dimanche et la nuit, nous  

“ (…) a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

I find this definition quite vague.  I’m not sure it would be meaningful to “non-professionals “, my mum for instance. I understand the initiative of PRSA since we want the public - and the clients -  to understand what we do as a profession, we want to have an all-ready answer when our family and friends ask what we do exactly for a living but I don’t think this definition reached the target.

PR is not easy to define and thinking about it, I’ve come to wonder if PR can be defined and if PR even needs a definition for three reasons:

1-    PR was shaped by itself along the years. I don’t think Edward Bernays and his fellows ever sat down to put into words what their job was going to be about, simply because they didn’t know it yet. They were still creating it, with every new challenge.

2-  PR is everchanging. Trying to put PR in a box, to determine what exactly makes it different from marketing or advertising or any other discipline related to brand and media is useless. We don’t know what our profession is going to look like in ten years. The clients’ demands are incessantly evolving and it doesn’t matter if the tools we used to satisfy them are the ones of marketing, journalism or advertising.

3-    We do a lot of different things. No one masters the art of multitasking like a PR pros. We have to continuously expand our skills to remain efficient.

 

PR is about communication, media, public, reputation, conversation, promotion, protection, relationship, (fill the blanks). Any pro can arrange these words as he likes to come up with his very own definition of PR.