Is the Term "Public Relations" Going Away?

If you were to look at the top 10 PR agencies from the past year or two, you would see that the vast majority of them to none of them have the term "public relations" in their name. Look at All Points, we kind of have it in our name but it's just the "PR". It seems that the term public relations is losing ground in PR agency names and even a bit in vocabulary.

There was a time that someone in a Chicago PR agency or any other major city that they would exclusively work with PR directors and executives as part of their client list but today, you will see that there are many franchise PR practitioners who work with companies who don't even have departments labeled "Public Relations", you'll likely see them called "Communications"; even working with people at large companies or small companies typically means working with someone who does not have the term in their title.

Multinational companies like Airbus, American Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, etc. might have PR departments but most of them do not, they have people who do PR work but have titles without PR in them. Another common label for them are things like, "Corporate Communications", "Internal Relations" or "External Relations", things like that.

It seems that companies are switching from using the "public relations" name in favor of the other ones mentioned because they feel it allows them to have more boundaries, despite the fact that those who started as PR agencies still use PR as a main tool. What is popular now is to combine PR efforts with paid advertising to really get the message to all those it needs to reach.

With all that being said, the term still carries a lot of power and is still popular; the business is going nowhere, it might have a different label if the trend continues.