Public relations practitioners around the globe are gearing up to celebrate the first-ever World Public Relations Day, a day set aside to appreciate the public relations profession and its impact on the world.
The global celebration, which was first announced last year, is set to hold on July 16, 2021, with an array of physical events, online interactions and other activities.
In August 2020, Ayeni Adekunle, Founder and CEO of BlackHouse Media (BHM), had communicated the need for an agenda towards making the world understand and utilise PR better and more proficiently.
In his words, “PR is more than a terribly misunderstood practice, but a strategic aspect of business and governance, invaluable in building relationships, achieving business objectives, and preventing crises and the kind of confusion that could ruin a company or lead nations to war.”
Over the years, the business of communication has continued to evolve to match new digital trends and changes around the world.
This evolution has seen a lot of new tools, strategies and channels being utilized by organizations to share their ideas, but with each form of communication maintaining its core and for PR, that core has remained storytelling, in an honest and trustworthy manner.
With the World PR Day celebrations, public relations practitioners are hoping to strengthen this message about what they stand for while educating stakeholders across various institutions and the general public on ways they can better harness the benefits of PR, and even innovate around it.
Sharing more insights into the celebrations, Ayeni expressed confidence that this was what was best for the PR practice, stating that the World PR Day presents an opportunity to clearly articulate the role public relations plays and to show everyone its importance.
“Several challenges exist in the public relations practice, but right now the most crucial is the representation of what PR is and what we as practitioners stand for,” he says.
“The July 16th celebrations are the beginning of a process of correcting the misconceptions and defining further how we can utilize PR better,” he added.
The July 16 date was chosen as a way of paying homage to Ivy Lee who was born on that day and is regarded as one of the forefathers of the public relations profession.
The hope is that each year, this celebration will provide a huge platform to make the PR profession better understood and help it stake its claim to trustworthy communication, honesty and reputation management.
Key activities for the celebration are expected to be announced in the coming days to officially set the agenda for this premier celebration.
