Looking At the Past and Into the Future: A Message From David Finn

I once described PR as "an old method of advocacy and salesmanship updated to meet the conditions of a mass society," but that description now seems too simplistic. Now I feel we need a new and more mature description of what PR is all about.

After almost sixty years in the business, it seems to me that the practice of PR is not simply a form of advocacy and salesmanship, but rather an effort to help people get along with each other in a complicated world. We practitioners also try to help enrich people's lives with meaningful insights and valuable information about matters that can be important to them.

Now that PR has established itself as a valuable resource for so many different kinds of people, organizations, institutions, governments, our goal should be to train our successors to be as knowledgeable, sensitive, thoughtful, imaginative and creative as they can possibly be.

I believe there will be an increasingly significant role for PR in the future. With the sound advice PR people may give, and the effective means of communications they are good at, they should have resources to help make a better world.

In the year 2000, Kofi Annan, the great Secretary General of the United Nations and a dear friend of mine, pointed out that the 20th century was the most devastating century in history, and he hoped the 21st century would be much different. It would be a significant contribution if the people in the PR business could play a significant role in achieving that goal.