Glad to see that there are quite a few people on this board that understand that PR isn't just an evil, dirty industry. As someone who has studied PR for both my Degree and Masters (and now works in advertising) I can honestly say it is simply a category of communication. The actual official definition of PR is "the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and it's publics"
Putting it in practical terms it can cover task such as website communication e.g. content, corporate reports and press releases / news releases. Every time you see video content on Sky Sports news or local news channels this would fall under the remit of PR. We are going into a really exciting era for SFC and it we are putting an infrastructure in place to compete long term then this is a great move.
If we as a club, want to be competing in the premiership in the next 3 - 5 years we need to ensure we maximising revenue from all streams which means investing into marketing, advertising and PR to deliver a return on our investment e.g. if we are paying agencies 1million make sure that outlay brings back 3 million in revenue and profit. A 3 to 1 return on investment should be the target.
I work for an agency, and it's one that has effected Saints in the past (we do all coke's football promotions in the UK and came up with and run the coke football win a player promotion in the UK, unfortunately we bought BWP) however I can confirm that when we get paid, we deliver and that means ensuring the client who is paying us make more money back in profit.
I honestly believe this moves just goes to show how serious our new owners are about sorting out all areas of the club with the team obviously being the most important but secondly address the business side of the FC.
Exciting times guys. Exciting times.