![\"\"](\"https:\/\/prowly.com\/magazine\/app\/uploads\/2016\/03\/07\/kola-07.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nMagda Wosi\u0144ska, Prowly Magazine: First of all, I\u2019d like to congratulate you on your appointment as Vice-President of the ICCO. It is the first time a Polish national has played such an important role in the structures of this organization. What kind of message does it send to our market?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Grzegorz Szczepa\u0144ski, President of Hill and Knowlton Strategies Poland, Vice-President of ICCO: <\/strong>The appointment of a Pole is proof of the fact that we\u2019re not a second-rate market, but a mainstream one. This can be seen in our presence in international competitions where we win a large number of awards every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M.W.: In an interview for polish vortal PRoto.pl you mentioned that PR specialists have much more to offer to the world than effective communication. You said that the industry deserves a permanent place at corporate tables for decision-makers, governments and major international organizations. \u201cFor this to happen, we should restore PR to public relations,\u201d you added. So the point is to move away from positioning on the communications side of PR?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n G.Sz:<\/strong> Yes, I think the time has come to restore PR to the essence of\npublic relations, that is to managing relations. For several decades PR has\nbeen dangerously flirting with communication, which I see as only as means to an\nend for PR, not the end itself. We are in the ocean of professional\ncommunication industries. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve been put into one bag with\nadvertising and marketing and lost what was our unique value and in summarized\nby the word \u201crelations\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M.W.: Then\nhow would you define PR?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n G.Sz.:<\/strong> I\nunderstand PR as the art of shaping mutually beneficial relations between\ndifferent entities of the same socio-economic ecosystem. Permanent relations, meaning\nnot only for the time of launching a product on the market or an election\ncampaign. With this assumption, the debate about the role of our profession is\ntaken to a whole new level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For\nyears, the ambition of our industry has been to occupy a permanent place at the\ndesks of decision-makers, from company boards to supervisory boards and\ninternational organizations such as the United Nations. There is no chance of\nthat in a scenario in which we position ourselves only as specialists in\ncommunication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve\nturned to my colleagues from ICCO with a manifesto in which I made a strong\nplea for us to start talking about the work of a PR specialist more ambitiously\u2014keeping\nin mind that this profession is best predisposed to shape our new future based\non lasting and positive relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M.W.: I\nremember my conversation with the owner of one of the oldest PR agencies in\nPoland, who advised Boeing in the past. His services came down to participating\nin Board meetings. I understand that it is still not a common practice in\nPoland?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n G.Sz.<\/strong>: No, not in Poland. Arthur Page, one of the founding fathers of PR, instilled an approach that no corporate strategy could be implemented without considering its impact on society. This approach has become popular on foreign markets, but unfortunately not yet with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nregret that in Poland we are very strong in terms of competence, but still tiny\nin terms of business. Just look at the figures. The public relations market in\nGreat Britain today is worth GPB 15 billion compared to only EUR 100 million in\nPoland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M.W.: Adam\n\u0141aszyn, CEO of Alert Media Communications, shared an interesting thought. In\none of his interviews, he pointed out that the role of PR will be to try to\ncontain hate speech and fake news on the internet. It\u2019s a real advisory tour\nthe force, and something digital agencies lack. It is, however, present in the\nPR industry, which always gets called in when crises appear.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n G.Sz.:\nI\u2019m so glad Adam\u2019s talking about this. Please pay attention to the fact that\nmisinformation or finally fake news are also communication techniques. If we\ncontinue to talk about the fact that we are specialists in communication, we\nwill never break away from the abuse, which is comparing PR to propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M.W.: At this year\u2019s Cannes Lions, PR\nspecialists at the round table talked about the measures of the effectiveness\nof PR campaigns. In Poland, a similar discussion was held on the occasion of\nthe Effie Awards. The new category \u201cPositive Change: PR-Led and Employer\nBranding\u201d carries hope that in the case of PR we will talk about the real\nimpact on business. The question remains: how and what to measure? And can PR\nspecialists really establish this?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n G.Sz.:<\/strong> We\nhave three main measures in PR and for thirty years nothing has changed here.\nThese are, of course, output, outcome and impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Output\nis the simplest measure. We understand it as the number of mentions of a brand,\na product, a number of journalists present at a press briefing. So, in the case\nof the simplest order, we are able to set ourselves a goal, the so-called KPI.\nThe most common \u201coutput-based\u201d way of measuring effectiveness is e.g.\nbenchmarking. Here, the data is provided by media monitoring companies, for instance.\nContrary to appearances, this way of measuring effectiveness does not apply\nonly to small players. One of the large American tech companies measured its\nglobal performance only two years ago exclusively in terms of output.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most PR specialists like the outcome-based approach\nthe most, meaning measuring the extent to which campaigns implemented through\nthem have translated into a change in attitudes, preferences, or even the\nclients\u2019 business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M.W.: An\nexamples?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n G.Sz.:<\/strong> Let\nus assume that our performance indicator will be to attract more vaccine\nsupporters and that this will be the most important parameter from our client\u2019s\nbusiness perspective of the client. We start with an analysis of how many\npeople are in favor and how many are against and where the room for discussion\nbegins. The agency and the client determine to what extent they want to improve\nany of these parameters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then we have a third indicator, namely impact. The\nmost difficult to achieve, but the easiest to enforce because of the zero-one\napproach to the previously defined expected result. Here you can find all kinds\nof lobbying projects. We agree, for example, that our actions will result in\nthe adoption of specific legislation in Parliament. Regardless of the choice of\nmetric, at the end it is about increasing the number of protagonists of our\nsolution and reducing the number of its antagonists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n M.W.: And\nwhat are your most important tasks in the near future?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n G.Sz.: <\/strong>I would like there to be more real PR in Poland and in the world at the institutional level. I\u2019m very worried about the current domination of propaganda in almost every corner of the globe. Together with my colleagues from ICCO, we plan to initiate a round of meetings at the level of international institutions, from the Council of Europe to the UN. We want these bodies to become a permanent place for real PR, and our perspective to be included in the most important discussions concerning the global perspective. If the Amazonian forests are burning and we do not know how the audience gets information on this subject, here we see a place for industry organizations such as ICCO, which will organize this dialogue and create a space for professional conversation for all interested parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n\n