Good PR Principles

David Bramley

I saw a piece on TV on Dieter Rams, the ex-head designer at Braun, which as well as showing his amazing products also touched on his ten design principles. I started to think about the many similarities between good design and good PR and so tracked down the design principles on Wikipedia (http://tiny.cc/eOrLG).

Dieter Rams design principles

1/. Good design is innovative.
2/. Good design makes a product useful.
3/. Good design is aesthetic.
4/. Good design makes a product understandable.
5/. Good design is unobtrusive.
6/. Good design is honest.
7/. Good design is long-lasting.
8/. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
9/. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10/. Good design is as little design as possible.

I dropped a couple of principles, adapted others and combined one or two and re-ordered to produce the following ‘magnificent seven’ PR principles.

1/. Organisations should not have 2 sets of messages – PR messages should not differ from ‘non-PR’ messages
2/. Good PR needs good messages – if they don’t exist then they need to be built
3/. Good PR is always honest
4/. Good PR effectively communicates understandable messages that resonate
5/. Good PR should be persuasive not aggressive
6/. Good PR is based on thorough delivery
7/. Good PR should not follow a pre-conceived path: it should be innovative when required and use more standard communication practices when they are most efficient

I think that these principles make a lot of sense. We’re discussing these principles internally at Platform and they may well become the basis of a Platform PR Manifesto. I would also love to hear what the rest of the world thinks, so please get in touch if you have any opinions, whether favourable or not.

David Bramley
Email: david@platformpr.com