Couple of days ago Emma Jacobs published an interesting research specially for the Russian outlet - the Vedomosti. It seems that today there are no businesses that exist without the PR practitioners. But apparently some of the companies, even the giants of their industry, can perfectly live without those employees and be successful from the PR perspective.

For example Warren Buffett loathes PR managers, and all his media events and meetings are organised by his assistant Debbie Bosanek. He talks to investors himself and presents the financial annual reports.

And British investor John Moulton insists that PR agencies are the bunch of people, who were not able to pursue their own business careers and therefore teach the others.

I don’t quite agree with those statements, though Mr. Buffett definitely has a point. But what will happen if we get rid of all the industry practitioners? Say, we’ll sack the accountant and suggest that the office manager will take care of the taxes and payrolls. We’ll ask our assistant to manage the Facebook page and project manager to answer the constant phone calls. We’ll persuade our CEO to lead the strategic planning along with taking care of the media inquires.

These questions are really debatable. The only statement that was always not a debatable one for me is the attitude of PR practitioners. I firmly believe that the PR function in the company is a supportive one. It provides the activities that can support business itself, the sales and promotion, but cannot exist by itself and for itself. PR managers are not those creative and constantly suffering delinquents, who are not appreciated by management and society itself - it is a supportive function that should provide decisions and a professional advice. And those PR activities can and should be measured along with the sales and marketing impact. It’s not about playing in creativity only, it is about the business.