Chapter 1 Introduction to public relation

What is public relations Public relations is a leadership and management function that helps achieve organizational objectives, define philosophy, and facilitate organizational change. Public relations practitioners communicate with all relevant internal and external publics to develop positive relationships and to create consistency between organizational goals and societal expectations. Public relations practitioners develop, execute, and evaluate organizational programs that promote the exchange of influence and understanding among an organization's constituent parts and publics. Public relations practitioners' work One reason is that public relations practitioners bring such a diversity of skills and programmatic capabilities to their jobs. You can appreciate the broad nature of the discipline when you realize it can include any of the following: Research Counseling advising Government affairs Investor relations Development or fund-raising Multicultural affairs Media relations Public affairs Community relations Employee relations Publicity Marketing communication

Issues management

promotion

Public relations serves a wide variety of institutions in society, such as businesses, trade unions, government agencies, voluntary associations, foundations, hospitals, and educational and religious institutions. The leadership of institutions needs to understand the attitudes and values of their publics in order to achieve institutional goals. The public relations practitioner acts as a counselor to management and as a mediator, helping to translate private aims into reasonable, publicly acceptable policy and action. As a management function public relations encompasses the following:
1.

Anticipating, analyzing, attitudes, and issues that might

impact, for good or ill, the operations and plans of the organization. 2. counseling management at all levels in the organization

with regard to policy decisions, courses of action, and communication taking into account their public ramifications and the organization's social or citizenship responsibilities.
3.

researching, conducting, and evaluating, on a continuing

basis, programs of action and communication to achieve informed public understanding necessary to the success of an organization's aims. 4. planning and implementing the organization's efforts to

influence or change public policy.

5.

setting objectives, planning, budgeting, recruiting and

training staff, developing facilities- in short managing the resources needed to per form all of the above. Examples of the knowledge that may be required in the professional practice of public relations include communication arts, psychology, social psychology, sociology, political science, economics, and the .principles of management and ethics Public relations work is all about developing effective relationships between organizations and groups that are important to them, including the media, customers, employees, investors, community leaders and members. These relationships should benefit both parties. Creating that kind of lasting win-win situation requires a great deal of give- and- take based on a mutual understanding of each other's interests. Social marketing is a special form of public relations that tries to change public attitudes and behaviors on behalf of a social cause whose work benefits society as a whole, rather than on behalf of the sponsoring organization. Groups that are almost always important to organizations are called publics, and we generally define them in terms of their organizational relationships to us, including the media, employees, governmental officials, community leaders, and financial analysts, for example.

In other instances, we define publics as categories of people who become important to our organization because it has purposely or even inadvertently galvanized them. In many respects the heart of public relations work- at least for entry- level positions- is the ability to write, design, and produce material for all media; public relations practitioners must also possess public speaking, group leadership, and event planning skills. The words communication and corporate communication are now more commonly used to label the public relations function in many corporate and nonprofit settings. Government agencies often use the terms public information or public affairs to delineate the public relations and communication functions, even though public affairs generally refers to relationships between organizations and governments. Other terms are corporate relations and marketing communications. The labeling issue is further complicated by the fact that public relations practitioners are sometimes assigned to various departments throughout an organization rather than being housed together in a common public relations or communication department. The terms public relations and advertising are often confused as well. Advertising refers to paid space and time in the media, whereas public relations describes publicity or stories that run without charge in the news columns of the media. Paid ads and commercials run

almost exclusively in major mass media, including televisions, newspapers, radio, magazines, and the Internet. Marketing is a sales and distribution function whose principal publics are customers, retailers, and distributors. In contrast, public relations with many publics, whose interests sometimes collide with customer interests. In addition to customers, important public relations publics include the media, employees, community leaders, government regulations, investment analysts, activist groups, and more. Finally, journalism is distinct from public relations in two ways. Journalists do not represent the organizations about which they write, but public relations practitioners do, and this may influence their objectivity and the way they frame ideas and present facts, journalists are trained to write for news media. Public relations practitioners must master the basic writing, graphic design, and journalistic conventions of all mass media along with more specialized media whose content they control, such as direct mail, pamphlets, posters, newsletters, trade publications, and their organization's Web site. Public relations work is organized either through departments or agencies. Public relations departments in business, nonprofits, and government account for about three- fourths of all those employed in public relations. The other one- fourth of public relations professionals work in agencies or as independent consultants.

This great diversity in the duties of public relations practitioners in clear in the list of public relations functions published in PRSA's booklet Careers in Public Relations: 1. Programming. Programming means analyzing problems

and opportunities; defining goals and the public (or groups of people whose support or understanding is needed); and recommending and planning activities.
2.

relationships. Successful public relations people develop

skill in gathering information from management, from colleagues in their organizations, and from external sources.
3.

Writing and Editing. Because the public relations worker

is often trying to reach large groups of people, the printed word is an important tool for creating reports, new releases, booklets, speeches, film scripts, trade magazine articles, product in formation and technical material, employee publications, newsletters, shareholder reports and other management communications directed to both organizational personnel and external groups. 4. information. An important public relations task is

sharing information with appropriate newspaper, broadcast, and general and trade publication editors to enlist their interest in publishing an organization's news and features.

5.

production. Various publications, special reports, films,

and multimedia programs are important ways of communicating.

6.

special Events. News conferences, convention exhibits

and special showings, new facility and anniversary celebrations, contests and award programs, and tours and special meetings are only a few of the special events used to gain attention and acceptance. 7. speaking. Public relations work often requires face-to-

face communications- finding appropriate platforms, delivering speeches, and preparing speeches for others.
8.

research and Evaluation. All public relations work is

underpinned by research- research on issues, organizations, publics, competitions, opportunities, threats, and so on. Public relations in the 21st century faces continual challenges, including: 1. The increasing need for effective strategies for crisis communication. 2. The increasing avenues of interaction with stakeholders through the new social media. Crisis communication involves using all the public relations tools available to preserve and strengthen an organization's long-term reputation whenever it's threatened. Organizations deal with problems every day. Late shipments, unhappy customers, unfilled

job vacancies, rising prices, and disrupted services are some of the challenges of being in business- but they don't necessarily constitute a crisis. Crises are different than everyday problems in that they attract public scrutiny through news coverage. Crises can be anticipated or even prevented when organizations build and maintain ongoing relationships with key stakeholders, including employees, customers government, and general and trade media. Regular, two- way communication with these groups is the glue that translates into credibility and positive expectations should an unpredictable crisis hit. Thus, the more consistently an organization does what it tells its stake holders it will do, the better its reputation. New communication technologies have always influenced public relations practice, but perhaps none so profoundly as the Internet, email, and the social media. Budgets have been reallocated to make optimal use of digital technology. An array of new practices capitalizes on the immediacy and audience involvement to keep key constituencies aware of current development. The Internet and its use with social media have fundamentally changed how journalists and businesses operate. Grasping this involves knowing a few basic. First, the Internet alters the way people get information from organizations. Communicating through the Internet means that the general public or members of an organization's constituencies are pulling information off the Net

about the organization rather than the organization pushing information onto them. Second, communication is not just top-down and one-to-many. The social uses of the Internet through Face book, Twitter, and blogs have allowed the constituencies to get involved in a two-way communication not only with the organization, but also with each. New communication technologies speed up every dimension of the practice of public relations as well as encourage new and uncharted relationship building with established and emergent constituencies. The capital that's been required to finance and shape the global economy into a more or less single market system places enormous pressures on short-term profits, on cutting planning cycles from years to months to weeks, not to mention the rush to adapt public relations procedures and practices to fit the cultural prerequisites of countries and regions of the world that businesses enter. Today, public relations and corporate communication work is being integrated into broader communication processes to integrate organization operations as never before. By redefining themselves as communication experts and consultants- rather than more narrowly defined technical specialists in public relations. The work and structure of public relations firms or agencies and corporate or organizational departments are changing relatively quickly as well and largely in response to technology, globalization,

and the new publics whose interests have been previously shortsighted or overlooked. In recent years, for example, corporations have willingly parceled out traditional public relations functions such that the investor or financial relations component reports through either the financial or the legal department, the employee and news letter work reports through the HR department, which also takes on all sorts of communication training, the product publicity and consumer relations work gets assigned to the marketing division, and the public affairs and government relations work is directed to the legal department. Some believe that these varied reporting relationships represent encroachment on the public relations function, whereas others argue that such placement reflects the decentralized nature of communication work in organizations. Typically, the communications or public relations department handles the core strategic planning functions in-house while subcontracting specific program planning, execution, and communication support services to firms and independents. In fact, during periods of economic recession corporate communicators are likely to bring more of the planning work back in-house, thereby casting the firm in more supportive and implementing roles. In healthier economic periods, though, what's left for the corporate communication department are developing media relations, managing issues and crises, and consulting with top management on
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long-tem reputation management issues. Work that is typically outsourced includes routine media relations, some product publicity, events management, and selected community relations functions. A few corporations have adopted an in- house creative services model under which corporate communication specialists are assigned to various divisions or brands, where they act like account executives for a firm or agency. More than at any time in the past, today's public relations practitioner is better educated, better paid, and more prepared to take on a range of strategic planning and communication functions for organizations of all kinds.

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