Walk into any corporate headquarters today and you’ll witness a peculiar theater. Humans pretending they’re not human. Organizations manufacturing perfection like it’s their primary product. Communications departments spinning stories so polished they could be seen from Neptune. So sanitized they’ve lost all trace of the beautiful reality of the people who actually make things happen. An entire industry has been built on a lie: that organizations are flawless machines operated by mysterious beings who never stumble, never doubt, never learn the hard way. The truth? Behind every quarterly report, every product launch, every crisis response, there are humans. Breathing, thinking, feeling, failing, succeeding, trying-again humans. And everyone—employees, customers, investors, communities—knows it. So why pretend?
The Great Pretension
Somewhere along the way, PR forgot its own name. Public Relations became Public Pretensions. And like the other pp, it started spilling sterile waste all over the place. Started believing the job at hand was to build walls instead of bridges, to craft facades instead of facilitating genuine exchange. PR practitioners became invisible hands, distraction-creators, expert intimacy-avoiders. But here’s what we missed: the public isn’t just “out there.” The public includes the person at the desk next to you, the team working late on the project that keeps you up at night, the leader who made the call that saved the company, or catapulted it into a pile of shaving cream, the janitor who knows more about office morale than any engagement survey ever could. The artificial boundary between “internal” and “external” communication has created a schizophrenic approach to human connection. We craft one story for employees, another for customers, another for investors, and hope these humans don’t talk to each other, as if they can’t spot the inconsistencies. As if the plastic in the corporate ocean isn’t visible from space.
What We Have Lost
In our pursuit of perfection, we’ve lost the very thing that creates genuine connection: our humanity. We’ve smothered stories with statistics, assumed invincibility under false pretenses, and diluted purpose with polish. We’ve forgotten that the people who connect with organizations are few and far between. Those who connect with the humans inside organizations and the humans those humans serve are far greater. Consider the last time you truly believed a corporate message. Chances are, it wasn’t because of the careful wordsmithing or the professional photography. It was because somewhere in that message, you sensed real humans grappling with real challenges, pursuing something that mattered, being honest about the journey.
The Human-Centered Revolution
The future of public relations isn’t about better spin. It’s about no spin at all. It’s about recognizing that every stakeholder with a company ID badge, customer loyalty card, or stock certificate, is part of the same ecosystem. They all deserve the same respect, the same honesty, the same genuine engagement. PR should emphasize truthfulness, openness about motives, respect for privacy, and accountability, which foster trust and goodwill over time, prioritize genuine dialogue and mutual understanding, enhance organizational reputation and social responsibility, and make communication more effective and sustainable in the long run. This means, storytelling with substance that breathes. The engineer who failed seventeen times before the breakthrough. The customer service representative who turned a potential disaster into loyalty. The CEO who admitted being wrong and changed course. These aren’t PR problems, they’re PR possibilities, meant to inspire the hire, habitué or shareholder. The best leaders aren’t those who never make mistakes, they’re those who acknowledge their mistakes, learn from them, and share what they’ve learned. Organizations that embrace this principle don’t just build better reputations; they build trust and better cultures. They create spaces where employees can share their perspectives, where customers can contribute to solutions, and communities can participate in progress. It helps people understand why an organization exists beyond profits. And when stakeholders can see how their contributions connect to something meaningful, engagement isn’t synthetic, it’s a natural shared outcome.
Consistency As Integrity.
When your internal culture aligns with your external conversations, you don’t need versions of the truth. You have the truth. Truth compelling enough to attract employees, customers, and investors who share your values. A commitment to transparent and authentic conversations should not be deemed a radical shift. Small businesses, genuine small businesses not those claiming the status for tax benefits, have weathered storms with culture and customers intact because of transparency and authentic conversations. Telling stakeholders what it is, as it is and living the story they tell. Everyone is in the building together. And more importantly, everyone believes in what they are building enough to fight for its future. What could be better? A situation where record profits are reported before mass reductions in “headcount”, the reverberation of which is rarely felt by the c-suite class. Or worst, the benefits of record profits consistently stopping short of the best and brightest toiling tirelessly to create it under the guise of prudent financial management but is dressed to the nines, and sent upward to the penthouse as stock options and compensation to remain competitive for top talent? To add insult to spin, those aggrieved are expected to be ambassadors, team players!?
The Trust Foundation
To be fair there is another c-class who has been instrumental in the communication centrifuge that has separated human from organization. A class of asses and asinine posers calling themselves practitioners, who have painted CEOs as non-human figures with superpowers. Look no further than a contemporary class of Conspicuous Egotistical Overlords, often adorned in black to resemble the terminator as expressionless as data. Enterprise commonality aside, this is not Ql’yaH Star Trek. Quit trying to normalize everything based on the spitballs of soulless pricks with a goddamn homogenization agenda. The human experience should not be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Eff perfect pixels. That is not how trust is built. Trust is built through consistency, honesty, and the courage to be human, at least in public. It’s time to return the corporate high horse and publicly acknowledge that the emperor’s clothes were never as impressive as the emperor’s humanity. Return public relations to its core: purposeful human exchange. Recognize that your best public relations is building authentic interactions with the public. In an age of infinite information, and deep fakes, human interaction isn’t an esoteric act, it’s an essential act.
The Ancient Future
Experiencing is believing. The organizations that build genuine connections win. Those that understand behind every data point is a human story, behind every transaction is a relationship, behind every crisis is an opportunity to demonstrate character. PR, at its best, has always been about human connection. It’s time to stop apologizing for our humanity. It’s time to recognize that our imperfections aren’t bugs, they’re features. They’re what make us real, relatable, and ultimately, trustworthy.
Choices must be made. Continue building walls between humans, or start building bridges. Keep manufacturing distance, or start facilitating genuine discussions. The public—inside and out—is waiting. But they will not wait in vain. Let’s choose story living, supported by substantive storytelling: build tangible bridges and facilitate genuine discussions. NO SPIN. There are ample toilets for entities that enjoy that Sugar Honey Iced Tea.