On a rare day off staring into a pint and reading the papers, I read with interest the unfortunate story of Van the Man and his “PR Guru” John Saunders. The case itself is interesting for all sorts of reasons but what kept jumping back at me was the consistent and persistent use of the term “Guru” to describe the successful PR man involved in the case.
Now, I don’t know John Saunders, but several papers and online hubs referred to him as such and the term pops up again and again when describing senior communications professionals here but also in the UK and US. So, I consulted the most reliable source of information there is on Planet Earth, Wikipedia, to get to the bottom of this conundrum before this serious issue kept me awake any longer.
So, according the bible itself, a Guru is a Sanskrit (Hinduism) term for “teacher” or “master”, particularly in Indian religions. So, I don’t think senior PR people see themselves as masters with an Indian twist? But then why is it so commonly used then?
I delved deeper like an online Detective Colombo. What I further uncovered, was that there was another more sinister and far blacker explanation. The origin of the word Guru was actually from to syllables, Gu and Ru.
*The syllable gu means shadows
*The syllable ru, he who disperses them,
*Because of the power to disperse darkness
*the guru is thus named.
*Therefore, Guru could mean “He/She who disperses shadows/darkness.”
It all began to make sense. However, PR or Communications people, even at the most senior level, are far from “Masters” and even further from “dispellers of darkness”. The perception in certain quarters is that the best PR execs engage in “dark arts”. By and large this isn’t accurate and while the industry does have its fair share of very bright people, it does not, as far as I know, have wizard types with mystic powers.
PR people are, in the main, hardworking middle men between the public/media and the client. They work to enhance or protect reputations and drive business success by communicating correctly with the appropriate target audience. PR heads are somewhere between journalists, marketers, lawyers, management consultants and part time amateur psychologists and the mix varies from person to person. They tend to come from Communications, media, Arts, Business, marketing or journalism backgrounds and tend to be people who are ok with people. Not too many graduates from Hogwarts School of Slytherin where shadow dispelling is part of the TY programme. I envy those at the top of the tree in other professions such as Financial “Whizz kids” and Maths “Geniuses” and of course Chefs who tend to be simply “talented”. You never hear or read about “talented” PR “geniuses”…only gurus. PR high performers will continue to be defined as Gurus and that will be that unless we can find another term. The industry has plumped for “professional” or “practitioner”, working on the P effect but they just don’t work. Maybe it is simply because not enough people actually understand what PR is? Maybe, ironically, PR professionals/gurus don’t communicate it well enough. Maybe they don’t want to? Better people think they are Gurus, dispelling shadows through the use of dark arts that can’t be explained as it is just too complicated, clever and grey for you to understand…..Enough of that, I am off to dispel some shadows.
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