Piotr Czarnowski:
By : Justyna Wrobel
Piotr Czarnowski, 50, is the president of First PR, a company he set up 10 years ago. Considered the father of Polish PR, the former journalist is the co-author of "PR czyli Promocja Reputacji" "(PR Promoting Reputation") and the co-founder of the Polish Public Relations Association. Czarnowski talked to the WBJ's Justyna Wrobel about the evolution of PR in Poland and the ethics of public relations professionals and journalists. The following is a translated, edited version of their conversation.
Q: PR is often confused with advertising. What is PR?
A: PR has hundreds of definitions and each 'expert' has a different one. We inform. We build partnerships through information. Our goal is not only to provide information, but also to make it understandable. This is the best practical definition of public relations. PR is not advertising, propaganda or censorship.
Q: Why is PR confused with advertising?
A: Because of historical reasons. Ten years ago, when communications started developing and new media was created, advertising was the first to arrive with other industries springing up around it. Initially advertising agencies did their own PR because it complemented their operations. But soon a lot of agencies created independent PR companies. Another reason was that the economy was kick-started after years of inertia. Companies suddenly needed advertisers to promote their products, but many couldn't afford them. So companies turned to public relations' firms for their short-term marketing, not really understanding what PR was. As a result, without anyone really knowing what PR is supposed to be, hundreds of companies have sprung up specializing in PR. But they are really advertising companies and there are also special events companies claiming to do public relations. In Poland, there are only a few companies that are real PR companies in the Western sense.
Q: What kind of firms need 'real' PR?
A: At the beginning, only Western companies understood what PR was. Later, large Polish companies caught on to the idea and now there's a significant number of companies, even smaller ones. But at the moment it's far from ideal. I saw the results of a study that said 30% of companies traded on the Warsaw Stock Exchange don't release any information (to the general public).
Q: That sounds worrying.
A: Yes, it's horrible and furthermore not all companies communicate in a crisis. About 5% of traded companies admit that in a crisis they don't tell anyone what happens.
Q: What about PR companies that serve their clients in crises? Do they know enough to act effectively?
A: There are not that many companies that have crisis management and even fewer PR agencies capable of handling crises. Crisis management is probably the most difficult part of public relations. Good crisis management is not allowing the crisis to happen in the first place. In Poland, there's still an attitude that 'the crisis doesn't exist if I don't know about it or react.' This is typical of a Polish company spokesman, who turns the telephone off and doesn't communicate with journalists.
Q: A good example of a crisis you handled was a murder in Warsaw's Marriott Hotel a few years ago. What was this (PR) success based on?
A: First of all, it wasn't my personal success. It was a success of the company because the Marriott has crisis-communication (policy). (They know) what to do and how to do it. So that was the No. 1 element, and it worked out. Actually, this was the first example in the Polish media when a company communicated in such an open way, without any barriers, despite such a tragedy.
Q: What are the most difficult problems for PR professionals?
A: First of all, the lack of understanding about what PR is. The lack of seeing the long-term role of PR, the lack of education. There are no specialists on the market. Even if there are courses, there is no way to educate a PR specialist within three days or three weeks. It's a profession about which you can never say 'you know.' I have been interested in PR for 23 years, and my company has been around for 10 years and there is not a single day I do not learn something new. These two problems result from there being no partnership between the media and journalists. Both sides are guilty. So the most important problems are the lack of responsibility for (verifying) the 'word' within the media and kryptoreklama (hidden advertising). To share really important information with the public is impossible in a lot of media if it is linked with a certain product or person because the media is watching for kryptoreklama everywhere. And that process appeared all over Eastern Europe, in Hungary, the Czech Republic, but it's been disappearing there. However, in Poland there are not that many media that write about the truth in full.
Q: What kind of media do you mean?
A: One media that has never handed itself over to the kryptoreklama paranoia is Twoj Styl (a woman's magazine). Twoj Styl had and may still have a column called "Twoj Styl's Boutique." It was when (a few years ago) everyone was worried about kryptoreklama. For instance, a travel agency went bankrupt stranding thousands of tourists abroad and journalists didn't mention its name because that would've been kryptoreklama. Instead they wrote 'a certain travel agency.' Twoj Styl (on the other hand) present products with pictures, descriptions, addresses and it wasn't advertising. It was just information.
Q: When talking about kryptoreklama, are you also referring to bigger media such as Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita and national broadcaster TVP?
A: Kryptoreklama was the brainchild of TVP's Biuro Reklamy (Advertising Bureau), which didn't understand PR. (According to TVP), if a company has any information to give, it's for the company's benefit and therefore that company should pay for it. If it doesn't pay, then the information won't appear. Such absurdities occurred during the Pope's visit, when TVP didn't release information about additional trains, since that would have been advertising for PKP (State Polish Railways). It's nonsense because the media's mission is to inform people. But Parkiet (a financial daily) is free of kryptoreklama. If Parkiet used the kryptoreklama criteria, it would not be able to operate. After all, it can't write about a 'certain' company whose shares went up by a 'certain' percent. And why did Rzeczpospolita's circulation drop? Because it has no solid information.
Q: What about Super Express (a daily tabloid)?
A: Super Express is a very interesting partner in terms of PR because it reaches a great number of people. It reaches a group of people who undoubtedly need educating and who don't get it in any other way.
Q: How do you evaluate the cooperation between journalists and PR specialists?
A: Unfortunately, I don't think much of it. In Poland, a journalist and a PR specialist are not on the same side of the coin, like in the rest of the world, but are opponents. In U.S. PR handbooks, it's written that a journalist is the (PR specialist's) most important partner, and in books for journalists PR specialists are your best partner because they give you the best information. That's natural. However, in Poland there is a lot of mistrust resulting from a lack of professionalism on both sides. Even more, some of the media perceive cooperating with PR specialists as a bad thing. PR specialists are also guilty in this regard, when they give incorrect or false information. There is also another phenomenon that has been harmful but is slowly vanishing: journalists with double roles. Journalists who have a media contract until noon, and in the afternoon are spokesmen for a firm. These people do a lot of damage to both professions. I also think that the mass of journalists flowing into PR is bad for public relations.
Q: Why is that bad?
A: Certain elements you learn as a journalist are helpful when working in PR. But both professions are different. A journalist who comes into PR is like an airplane passenger who later says that 'I'm in a plane, so now I would like to become a pilot.' The same goes with journalists who join PR companies and become PR specialists because they've been 'on board.' Yes, but they have no clue what they're doing, and use stereotypes such as 'I have a friend who'll publish that.' Good information sells itself and doesn't need any tricks or corruption.
Q: What kind of corruption are you talking about?
A: It's a quite common phenomenon in the media that if it has a large advertiser, there is a formal or informal ban on writing in a negative way about that advertiser. However, there is also a rather informal expectation to write in a bad way about the competition. And this is the nastiest kind of corruption. Journalists who take money for articles are rare. But media running a selective policy on what they write about and in what way that is very common.
Q: Has a journalist ever wanted money from you in exchange for an article?
A: There are two things happening. The first is a person who calls himself a journalist and says that he will write something if we will advertise. In good and real media there is a separation between editorial and advertising. Journalists write what they want to and the advertising department gain clients without knowing what the journalists are doing. But there is a small number of such media in Poland. Going back to your question, during the last two years there have been three instances where a man working in the media came to me and said: 'If you pay ...' In these three cases these people were not journalists, but officials, such as a deputy president or director.
Q: Were these representatives from well-known media?
A: Yes.
Q: You were one of several people responsible for creating the PR ethics code.
A: Honestly, maybe it's not a very important achievement. First, it was a U.S. code that was transferred here. Our code is a reflection of it. It was the first achievement of the Polish Association of PR companies. From the perspective of time, it turns out that it was a very important achievement because now you hear about how Polish PR lacks ethics. And it turns out that most PR companies have never heard of this code of ethics. That is why we decided to put the code on our Web site, and let's hope that it will be used. It's for the market's benefit.
