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Advertising agencies are known as the hot houses of big ideas and creativity. What few realise is that the same can be said about public relations firms.

Time and again, public relations agencies don’t promote the creative work they do. In fact, PR firms are often so busy working to raise awareness for clients that they seldom remember to generate the same level of awareness for themselves.

The public relations industry needs to promote itself as a big-picture creative strategist, the engine-room of lateral thinking.

Innovative ideas are at the core of the most successful media campaigns. Creativity in PR may not have the same visibility as Clemenger BBDO’s acclaimed NAB Break-up ad campaign, but nonetheless the impact of a creatively-driven PR campaign has incredible power and reach.

This was demonstrated in The Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD) campaign that Porter Novelli launched last year. The objective was to attract more visitors to the museum. Based on this broad brief, Porter Novelli put its creative hat on.

The vision was to create an environment where people could come together and share their experiences of democracy. From this, the idea of a series of speaker events – Uncensored Conversations – came to life.

By pushing traditional boundaries with the choice of speakers, Porter Novelli extended the appeal of MoAD and helped more Australians understand what democracy means in today’s society.

The strength of this campaign was in the seamless integration of social media, audio and video multimedia to drive awareness and ultimately traffic to the museum.

We need to get past the generalisation that a great PR person is someone who has such great relationships with journalists that they can position any story.

PR is so much more than this. It’s a perception issue the public relations industry has to address in order to extend its role in the future.