PR needs PR

While there's a lot of interesting tidbits in the results of Edelman and Technorati's survey of Bloggers, what immediately stuck out for me were the results for questions 9 and 10.

Question nine asks, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to trust a message if it is sent to you from a PR firm? The average response was 4.6 out of 10. Question ten asks the same question, but instead the message is directly from a company. The average response was 5.5 out of 10.

Less people trust the Public Relations message than any other voice in a company. The voice of a guy on the line, or the front desk receptionist, or Ted in the mailroom all hold more water than the voice of the PR department. Am I alone in thinking this is a serious, serious issue for the profession?