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Recently a good friend of mine called, inquiring about engaging the services of the ad agency for which I work. This fellow’s a sharp entrepreneur, and one of his start-up businesses had taken off; he was ready to invest in a solid marketing program to sustain his success.

After discussing an online strategy and print campaign, we landed on the topic of his logo. “Oh no, our logo is fine, there’s no way we’re changing it,” he said, “My partner and I created it on a napkin at Starbucks.”

I was silent for a moment, processing those words. Had my friend really just verbalized that cliché – with a hint of pride in his voice? This dear fellow suffers from an unfortunate ailment I’ve been aware of for some time – but was able to attach a name to on that very spot – The Starbucks Napkin Syndrome.

Warning signs of the Starbucks Napkin Syndrome include a belief that conducting marketing and PR strategy is easy – often to be considered as an afterthought – and anyone can do it. “We need a press release,” goes the conventional wisdom, “So have Jim in Finance throw something together. No, better yet – have our intern do it – Jim’s swamped.” As amazing and bewildering as that sounds to the ears of marketing professionals, I’ve seen exactly this scenario acted out – and I’ve seen it in large corporate environments as well as mom and pop operations.

Few other business decisions are made on the fly, or with so little input and expertise, as are key public relations decisions. I’ve yet to see a company treat paying taxes with this devil-may-care attitude: “My Aunt Betsy was good in math during high school; let’s send our quarterly taxes her way.” Not likely; why is it marketing seems the one business discipline assumed to be so devoid of complexity, I wondered.

Mulling all of this over, I now glanced at my office bookshelf, and at the books I was reading about eight years ago when entering the workforce: Books by top PR pros noting the increasing importance of PR and marketing. These books told me how our field was gaining ground, and said soon many CEOs would come from marketing and communications backgrounds – such was the rising power and prominence of our industry.

I winced, still stinging from the actions of a client occurring earlier that same morning. This publicly traded company was dealing with some tough issues including the resignation of a CEO, poor sales, and plummeting stock prices. Upon getting to work I found a press release in my inbox announcing the CEO’s departure. The release broke all the rules, from AP style violations to corporate-speak quotes positioning the company as weak and in peril. And a Google News search a second later let me know the release had gone out to the wires already, without any input from my firm.

This Charlotte public relations client also has a clear case of the Starbucks Napkin Syndrome, so it was with interest my colleagues and I dialed into a conference call, to hear this client tell its employees why, exactly, the CEO had left the firm.

The new CEO got on the phone sounding groggy, as if he’d just awoken from a nap. He then spent 10 minutes blowing a fantastic chance to connect with his employees and bolster morale at a time when they really needed it. I can’t tell you his message, because this critical piece of employee relations was completely devoid of one.

Now later in the day and getting ready to leave for the Thanksgiving holiday, I got a call from a potential client who was launching a business in Cleveland. He told me advertising was too expensive, so he wanted “free ink.” Sure, I’ll just order you some. Did you want Wall Street Journal or Newsweek? I’ll need to educate him that yes, we can probably get your start-up some initial press – but there’s a lot more to good PR and Huntersville public relations identity building than that.

I guess that’s what it still comes down to so many times in our business: Education. There remain throngs of co-workers, clients and management still desperately needing to understand what PR is, and what it can and should actually accomplish for them. To me, education is what good PR is about anyway, so I’m more than happy to hang in there.

To all of you non-marketing people in management roles: Please scoot over a bit – my colleagues need a seat at your strategic meeting tables. Companies refusing us these seats do so at their own peril; firms operating in a communications vacuum will eventually lose complete control over their messages and their brands. Especially in this era where consumers are storming the corporate gates and knocking down the once-sturdy walls constructed from antiquated methods of top-down message control – with the Internet and other new technologies being the consumers’ battering ram of choice.

Well, My coffee’s about gone, and it seems I’ve run out of room on this napkin.

Vince Bank conducts Huntersville public relations for Huntersville and Charlotte North Carolina businesses.

Vince Bank is a teacher, writer and public relations professional living and working in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bank writes on topics ranging from media studies and PR, to martial arts and sports performance athletics.