Kwame Senou, Executive Director at THOP, says before we rally against Sir Martin Sorrell’s recent claim that ‘PR no longer exists; it has morphed into social media’, we should pause and ask an uncomfortable question: Why was his comment even possible?
When An Industry Loses Its Shape, Others Redefine It
The uproar surrounding Sorrell’s claim reveals less about Sorrell and more about a long-standing identity crisis within our profession. If a global business leader can so casually reduce decades of theory, practice, and institutional knowledge to a platform-driven caricature, we must ask why our field has made such a simplification plausible.
Public relations remain one of the few professional disciplines unable to describe itself with the clarity that law, audit, or financial advisory fields have institutionalised. Lawyers do not debate what constitutes legal work. Auditors do not rebrand themselves each time technology evolves. Yet in communications, our boundaries fray with every new channel, trend, or attempt at ‘integration,’ allowing the loudest, most visible expressions of our work, often social-first content, to stand in for the entire discipline.
The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) defines public relations as ‘a decision-making management practice tasked with building relationships and interests between organisations and their publics based on the delivery of information through trusted and ethical communication methods’. But instead of embracing this managerial anchor, the industry has allowed its identity to be shaped by execution rather than intent. We have let tools eclipse counsel and visibility eclipse legitimacy.
When You Perform Tactically, You Will Be Perceived Tactically
Sorrell’s remark resonates not because it captures the essence of PR, but because it reflects the posture the industry has projected. Over the past decade, PR has gravitated towards marketing, content production, and digital management not through a strategic lens, but through commercial pressure and a fear of losing relevance.
As a result, the discipline has been flattened in the public imagination to its most tactical expressions. Yet the foundational scholars of our field have always been unequivocal: public relations is a management discipline. James Grunig’s work on the two-way symmetrical model in his 1992 published book positioned PR at the core of organisational decision-making, not as a collection of outputs.
Robert Heath’s research on issues management situates PR as an organisational conscience engaged in shaping legitimacy and long-term societal expectations. W. Timothy Coombs’ life’s work scholarship shows that PR is central to risk, responsibility, and behaviour during crises not content scheduling. When we neglect this intellectual infrastructure, we invite misunderstanding.
In Africa, this erosion has even deeper consequences. Our context is defined by political complexity, institutional fluidity, and cultural nuance, an environment where stakeholder intelligence, legitimacy-building, and what I call corporate diplomacy are not optional but indispensable. Organisations operating in Africa do not fail because of weak social media; they fail because they misunderstand power, misread culture, or undermine trust. When PR is misinterpreted as content production, leaders handicap their own ability to navigate the continent’s realities. The practice loses its authority, and Africa loses one of its most powerful instruments for aligning business, government, and society.
This Is Our Inflection Point, Not A Moment For Outrage
The controversy around Sorrell’s comment should not provoke defensiveness; it should provoke clarity. His claim that PR has ‘morphed into social media’ is not an attack on our field. It reflects what we have allowed to become our public face. We can either respond emotionally or treat this as the inflection point it is.
Reclaiming the discipline requires returning PR to its rightful place: as a strategic management function grounded in ethics, behavioural insight, and relationship stewardship. It demands that we reassert the distinction between communication that shapes decisions and communication that merely occupies feeds.
The future of PR, particularly in Africa, lies in articulating a broader and more strategic practice. Corporate diplomacy, as articulated by thinkers like Witold Henisz at Wharton, offers a far more accurate reflection of the work senior advisors perform: navigating perception, policy, culture, and power in environments where trust is as influential as regulation.
If we redefine PR around this core, anchored in management, amplified by Joseph Nye in his book about Soft Power, and responsive to Africa’s socio-political dynamics, we will not only correct the misconception behind Sorrell’s statement; we will restore PR to its rightful place in the architecture of leadership.
The question is not whether PR still exists. The real question is whether we have the courage to practise it at the level the moment demands.
