Let me start off by asking a question, how many of you actually know how public relations came to being? That question is something that is not talked about much in school nor does anyone really think/care about the history of PR if we are being honest. From personal experience, I have not heard any of my professors talk much about the background or the history of PR, so I decided to take a leap and see what I could find.
As I do not want this to sound like a history paper, I still think the history of communications and PR is quite interesting and needs to be recognized. The Museum of Public Relations has a historical timeline of public relations with information dating all the way back to 37000-17000 BC. Starting off there, the first ever forms of communication were cave drawings. These drawings were “hands and animals created by spraying or blowing pigment upon the wall.” These were located in El Castillo cave in northern Spain, southern France and the limestone caves of Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. From there, the printing process was introduced as well as the first start of PR techniques. After the introduction of PR in 1942, the profession took off in the 1960’s and is still booming today.
The Communication Director mentions that the Europeans were the ones who really started PR. There was a lot of pain from the war and they were “seeking a platform for international understanding and promotion of democracy through public relations strategies and practices.” One thing I found interesting that I wanted to point out was that during the rise of PR, women that had university degrees always came in second place to the journalists. They were placed in secretarial and assistant positions.
When researching a bit more, I found a journal article by the Journal of Public Relations Research that explained more about the history behind PR. The first PR agency was opened in 1960 in Barcelona at a time where the economy was growing. PR helped businesses make new contacts with better informed media and public opinion which contributed to an economic development and more teaching on the subject. Joaquin Maestre Morata and Juan Vinas Bona were two businessmen who started one of the first PR agencies. Their first customers were local and national groups from the consumer good industries and from there they had customers in the electrical and automobile industries. Their agency started small but ended up being something so much bigger than they had expected.
As we all know now, public relations is a widely known and appreciated practice today. Most universities offer PR as a career path now and I think that it is important that we recognize and appreciate the history behind it. Edelman, W2O Group and APCO Worldwide are just three names of the biggest PR agencies in the world today. I love what I am studying in school and my dream is to work in a company that large one day, therefore I believe it is important that we give recognition to the history of PR for making our dreams possible.
So now, I ask you the same question I asked before with hopes of a more knowledgeable answer, how many of you actually know how public relations came to being?
Watson, T. (2015). Time Marches On, and So Does the History of Public Relations. Journal of Public Relations Research, 27(3), 193–195. doi: 10.1080/1062726x.2015.1024253
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