I like this framing, particularly the intuition about being infinitely vulnerable.
I have an entirely different frame, which seems to pull in the opposite direction somehow: PR is a set of actions; reputation is a set of relationships.
The most quintessential PR thing is a press release; a nonspecific one-to-many communication. Pile up all the press releases, interviews, and ad campaigns and you have PR.
The most quintessential reputation thing is one party in a relationship telling a third party about it. Pile up all the things people you have done business with think about how you do business, and you have a reputation.
Reading what I just wrote suggests to me that my intuition is almost opposite of yours, where concern about reputation is much more about outcomes (I want everyone I do business with to feel like I did right by them) and PR is mostly sort of an organizational reflex that gets deployed whenever anyone says anything negative (issue a press release).
This framing strongly suggests that PR is largely inescapable, because third parties are going to talk about and form an opinion with or without information about our relationships, and responding to that situation is a challenge.
I like this framing, particularly the intuition about being infinitely vulnerable.
I have an entirely different frame, which seems to pull in the opposite direction somehow: PR is a set of actions; reputation is a set of relationships.
The most quintessential PR thing is a press release; a nonspecific one-to-many communication. Pile up all the press releases, interviews, and ad campaigns and you have PR.
The most quintessential reputation thing is one party in a relationship telling a third party about it. Pile up all the things people you have done business with think about how you do business, and you have a reputation.
Reading what I just wrote suggests to me that my intuition is almost opposite of yours, where concern about reputation is much more about outcomes (I want everyone I do business with to feel like I did right by them) and PR is mostly sort of an organizational reflex that gets deployed whenever anyone says anything negative (issue a press release).
This framing strongly suggests that PR is largely inescapable, because third parties are going to talk about and form an opinion with or without information about our relationships, and responding to that situation is a challenge.