Stop misusing these PR terms

We’ve got bad news.

Few people in the PR industry can agree on the definitions of even basic terms, including “PR” itself.

We asked the community on LinkedIn to chime in with their most mangled, misused and misunderstood terms in PR and comms.

These were a handful of their answers, lightly edited for style and brevity.

The basics of PR

Strategy — and not understanding what strategy truly is — can kill a PR program before it has even begun. In PR, the channel is too often seen as the strategy. But ‘earned media,’ ‘executive LinkedIn’ and so on are distribution, not strategy. Even ‘thought leadership’ as a strategy is a bit thin. Strategy is directional and specific to insights on your audience’s values, issues and behaviors; how — not where — you want to be known and perceived by your intended audience. Without that, all the execution is just a set of disjointed tactics that are unlikely to achieve an objective.

Sarah Babbitt, vice president, agency marketing at SHIFT Communications

‘Strategy/strategic.’ It has become a synonym for ‘I thought about this really, really hard, I swear.’ The person in a meeting who uses that word like a comma is typically that meeting’s least strategic participant and can be safely ignored about 10% of the time. The most strategic thinkers I’ve ever worked with rarely used that term. It’s more pervasive in agency environments than in-house.

Phil Gomes, head of marketing & communications at Fedi

“Success,” I think. Many agency relationships die before they even begin because the client and agency have very different definitions of success, or each side has assumptions that ultimately undermine the relationship. It’s important to define success clearly and early, before you begin.

Chris Harihar, EVP, PR at Mod Op

PR doesn’t — I repeat, does not — stand for “press release.” Why do people think that? For that, I have no answer. If you find out, let me know.

David Eckstein, communications consultant

I’ll take “public relations” for $1,000, Alex. We’re an industry that still can’t agree on what our own name means. Is there another industry with that kind of existential issue? Depending on who you ask, PR might mean earned media, media relations, social media, corporate communications, reputation management or some combination of all of them. Don’t get me started on trying to define things like “traditional PR.” And the definition changes even more depending on the industry. In education, for example, you can still find disagreement over whether “PR” and “communications” are even the same discipline. If we can’t clearly define the work, it becomes much harder to explain its value, measure its impact or push our profession forward.

Travis Claytor, chief integration officer at Spin Sucks

Media relations

Off the record vs. background vs. on the record. It’s kind of the whole ballgame in some situations, and yet not fully understood outside of media relations and journalism circles.

Usher Lieberman, vice president of corporate communications at Oportun

Newsworthy. If you eat, sleep and breathe your brand, you may really think a story is newsworthy, but you have to think from the point of view of the reader, journalist, publication, etc. Is it really newsworthy? Or as “groundbreaking” as the press release claims to be? Probably not, and that’s OK. Take a moment to assess what is newsworthy and really work to understand the true meaning of the word.

Bri Godwin Huyke, senior manager, PR at Journey Further

Placement. We use it constantly in PR, but it implies we’re placing something somewhere. We’re not. We’re identifying a story with genuine editorial value and making the case for why it matters to a particular journalist and their audience. Ultimately, the journalist decides whether it’s worth covering. They control any such placement, not us. That independence is exactly why earned media can’t be bought or guaranteed, and why it has value.

Suki Mulberg Altamirano, founder of Lexington PR

These are also terms for journalists, but very important considering the industry we’re in: on the record, off the record, and on background. It’s very common to use off the record and on background interchangeably, although they are two distinctly separate things that can land clients in a lot of trouble if we don’t explain the distinction properly. Off the record means nothing the client says can be used in the story at all, while on background means the information can be used for context but cannot be attributed back to the client by name.

Infiniti S. Bowie, senior PR manager at 160over90

Embargoed. So many people in PR don’t understand that sending an embargoed release before the reporter agrees to the embargo means it’s not actually embargoed. I’ve had to tell agencies I work with that they need to send a vague pitch that offers an embargo for it to mean anything. The way they use it, it’s like Michael Scott shouting, ‘I declare bankruptcy.’

Bob Friedland is a communications consultant

Measurement and metrics

Engagement. It’s constantly thrown around and almost always a KPI, but often clients and the teams supporting them mean completely different things by it. Sure, a “like” is engagement — but what about a journalist asking for an interview, a prominent scientist joining the conversation, or a prospective partner reaching out? Those actions are not remotely equivalent, yet they often slip through the cracks during reporting. We’ve turned “engagement” into a metric before defining the behavior we actually want. The problem then becomes that we’re just measuring activity.

Caitlin Vander Weele is CEO at Stellate Communications

Engagement. We use it to describe everything from opening an email to changing a behavior. Those are very different outcomes. Before we say we want more engagement, we should be clear about what we actually want people to think, feel or do.

Heather Neisworth-Izquierdo is executive, enterprise and strategic communications, CareSource

Metrics and/or analytics. Rarely is the complexity of either explained. Too often they are associated with vanity measures: likes, shares and similar. Or they are too vague: reach, engagement. And those measures are rarely tied to measurable organizational goals and priorities.

Steve Ryan is program director of public relations at Temple University

I’ll have to say “GEO,” or generative engine optimization, as it is also called. The confusion is understandable, but GEO is a clever spin on SEO, and the name may be doing our industry more harm than good. It suggests a level of control over AI answers that simply does not exist. But the word seems to have stuck, regrettably, and now has given rise to a level of snake oil salesmanship in the industry we have not seen for quite a while.

Jesper Andersen is founder of Quantum Public Relations

Storytelling, trust and thought leadership

Can’t let the opportunity slip by without expressing my frustration with the word “storytelling” (or ‘storyteller’ when referring to an individual). It’s overused. It’s misunderstood. And it glosses over the importance of investing in relationships with stakeholders and knowledge of the business (or organization) that help communicators be impactful and successful.

Chris Chiames is a communications executive

Narrative. Narrative is not a story about your company or product at a moment in time — it’s the story that knits together the ethos, personalities and milestones that got you to this moment, and conveying that in a way that resonates with your community. It’s more wide-lens creative storytelling than narrow-lens messaging workshop.

Amanda Guisbond is head of communications at Iambic

Trust. One of the biggest reputational risks organizations now face is the financialization of trust, where it’s prescribed as a directive, goal or metric. In reality, trust is built when organizations adhere to their values and ethical frameworks in different contexts over time.

Stephanie Hart is vice president of communications at Aviso

Transparency has somehow become shorthand for “tell everyone everything.” Good communication isn’t radical disclosure. It’s giving people the information they need, when they need it, with enough context to understand what it means.

Colleen Herndon Penhall is founder of TrueNorth Strategy Group

I think it’s “authentic.” PR people have absolutely beaten that word into submission. Every brand wants to ‘show up authentically.’ Every executive wants an ‘authentic voice.’ Every campaign promises “authentic storytelling.” And yet half the time what they actually mean is: “Please make this sound human, but also make sure legal, HR, the CEO, the board and six vice presidents approve it.” The misunderstanding is that authenticity means being open, casual, vulnerable or telling everyone everything. It doesn’t.

Andrea Walker-Leidy is a PR consultant

Thought leadership. Many PR and marketing people sloppily use it for a wide range of content, most of which isn’t actual thought leadership but promotional content. Instead, think of thought leadership as ‘advocacy for change on behalf of your audience.’ Such content is about the audience and their challenges, not about you or your company. Thought leadership is about the changes you are pushing for — either on an individual basis, industry-wide or in government policies — that will help your audience. It’s not about your new product or feature.

Dan Sytman is executive communications manager, SAP Business AI, at Lions & Tigers

Thought leadership. It’s very rare to see a company doing true thought leadership, rather than just having thoughts and regurgitating headlines that are already in the cultural conversation. Today, 90% of what passes for thought leadership is just reactive echo-chamber commentary, with brands jumping on a trending topic to say the exact same thing as everyone else. True thought leadership requires friction: proprietary insight, a willingness to challenge the status quo, and the courage to take a non-obvious stance that differentiates your executive or brand from the competition.

Emily Schwarz Salvador, head of internal communications, North America at Randstad

Internal communications and buzzwords

Alignment. Most executive teams use it to mean agreement, so heads nod in the room and the organization gets a memo. Alignment is when every leader can explain the decision in their own words, defend it to their own team, and answer the question that wasn’t in the FAQ. Agreement happens in the meeting. Alignment shows up two levels down in the organization.

Erin Abbey, senior communications advisor and consultant at Abbey Communications Group

“Cascade.” To some business leaders, this can mean forwarding an email about significant change to people leaders 10 minutes before an all-company email goes out and ends with ‘if you have questions, connect with your leader.’ To internal comms pros, it means equipping leaders with context and support — i.e., building a leader toolkit and hosting a people leader meeting to review the coming changes, timelines and expectations, as well as answering their questions — all with enough time for leaders to process the information before employees are coming to them with questions.

Cate Freeman, founder and principal consultant at Carbon Communications

This won’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the word is “innovative.” It shows up in nearly every press release or pitch, whether or not anything was actually invented. Is it a minor feature update, a repackaged service or a new color option? They all get slapped with the same adjective as a real, deal-breaking breakthrough. The word no longer does its intended descriptive work because it’s become punctuation. Delete “innovative” from the sentence and see if the story still makes its case.

Andrew Noyes is a communications consultant

Influencer! We all have influence in some way, but people attribute it to a large following online only, and not to the direct impact of getting a person or group of people to do something based on what you’ve shared or said.

Karen Freberg, professor of strategic communication, University of Louisville

Content creator. On the surface it’s self-explanatory, but in practice there is a lot of variation, from blog or other social writer to graphic designer to multimedia and plenty of other types in between. It makes it difficult, when sourcing talent you need, to have to more thoroughly research candidates’ specific expertise. And no one is an expert at all of it.

Noreen Pratscher is a communications consultant