Public relations
Public relations (PR) is a field concerned with maintaining public image for businesses, non-profit organizations or high-profile people, such as celebrities and politicians.
An earlier definition of public relations, by The first World Assembly of Public Relations Associations held in Mexico City in August 1978, was "the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organizational leaders, and implementing planned programs of action, which will serve both the organization and the public interest."
Others define it as the practice of managing communication between an organization and its publics. Public relations provides an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that provide a third-party endorsement and do not direct payment. Once common activities include speaking at conferences, working with the media, crisis communications and social media engagement, and employee communication.
The European view of public relations notes that besides a relational form of interactivity there is also a reflective paradigm that is concerned with publics and the public sphere; not only with relational, which can in principle be private, but also with public consequences of organizational behaviour. A much broader view of neo-ubiquitous interactive communication using the Internet, as outlined by Phillips and Young in Online Public Relations Second Edition (2009), describes the form and nature of Internet-mediated public relations. It encompasses social media and other channels for communication and many platforms for communication such as personal computers (PCs), mobile phones and video game consoles with Internet access.
Public relations is used to build rapport with employees, customers, investors, voters, or the general public. Almost any organization that has a stake in how it is portrayed in the public arena employs some level of public relations. There are a number of public relations disciplines falling under the banner of corporate communications, such as analyst relations, media relations, investor relations, internal communications and labor relations.
Other public relations disciplines include:
- Financial public relations - providing information mainly to business reporters
- Consumer/lifestyle public relations - gaining publicity for a particular product or service, rather than using advertising
- Crisis public relations - responding to negative accusations or information
- Industry relations - providing information to trade bodies
- Government relations - engaging government departments to influence policymaking
History
In the United States of America, Edward L. Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, is widely recognized as the father of public relations. In Europe and in antiquity there are many more contenders as the founders of the practice. Most notably, according to Bournemouth academic, Dr Kevin Moloney, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire with her political activism, use of printed news outlets, events management and social gatherings in the late 18th century in favour of her, predominantly, political clients, has a claim to be an early practitioner.
Two hundred years after the death of the Duchess, Bernays graduated from Cornell University in 1912 and opened the first recognized public-relations firm with Doris Fleischman in 1919. As Harold Lasswell explained in 1928, "public relations" was a term used as a way of shielding the profession from the ill repute increasingly associated with the word "propaganda": "Propaganda has become an epithet of contempt and hate, and the propagandists have sought protective coloration in such names 'public relations council,' 'specialist in public education,' 'public relations adviser.' "
Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management
Globally, the profession is represented by The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, which is the umbrella organisation linking public relations professional associations worldwide. At its World Public Relations Forum in 2010, the Alliance accepted the Stockholm Accord for public relations. These accords present the practice of public relations in the following terms:
The communicative organisation
The concept of the communicative organisation was conceived as a result of the five-year research programme “Business Effective Communication” a collaboration between the Swedish Public Relations Association, Mälardalen University and the Stockholm School of Economics. During the project a number of cases were studied to define how information and communication can be used in the leadership of organisations in order to achieve a higher
The value-creation networks
The world is no longer a straight line from company to consumer. The organization holds a position in a network full of different stakeholders, and the network decides if you are valuable enough to keep your position. You can be replaced anytime. Your organization needs to find the perfect position where it is so valuable that the network cannot do without you. The key to this is to develop the organisation's communicative skills. This is where the communicator comes in to save the day.
The contextual leadership
The communicator needs to take on leadership in the communicative organization. It is his or her task to put the ideological leadership (i.e. the business idea or purpose) into the correct context. However the saying goes, perhaps selling sand in Sahara is not the best of ideas. The leadership can take different forms; as system building, mediation, coaching or influencing. The important thing is, communication is an organizational quality, rather than a function.
The industry today
The need for public relations personnel is growing at a fast pace. The types of clients for whom public relations people work include the government, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, specific industries, corporations, athletic teams, entertainment companies, and even countries. The title public relations is a broad description of the field because careers that one can have in the public relations field include a publicist, media specialist, analyst, and communications specialist.
The practice of public relations is spread widely. On the professional level, there is an organization called Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the world's largest public relations organization. PRSA is a community of more than 21,000 professionals that work to advance the skill set of public relations. PRSA also fosters a national student organization called Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA).
In the USA, public relations professionals earn an average annual salary of $49,800 which compares with £40,000 for a practitioner with a similar job in the UK. Top earners bring home around $89,220 annually, while entry-level public relations specialists earn around $28,080.
In the industry today, it is very critical for public relations professionals to learn and know the importance of new media outlets. New media outlets include blogs, social networking sites, as well as Internet radio. Public relations professionals must know that using these new media outlets are ways to directly send messages to their key publicians, also known as target audiences.
Methods, tools and tactics
Public relations and publicity are not synonymous, but many public relations campaigns include provisions for publicity. Publicity is the spreading of information to gain public awareness for a product, person, service, cause or organization, and can be seen as a result of effective public relations planning. More recently in public relations, professionals are using technology as their main tool to get their messages to target audiences. With the creation of social networks, blogs, and even Internet radio public relations professionals are able to send direct messages through these mediums that attract the target audiences. Methods used to find out what is appealing to target audiences include the use of surveys, conducting research or even focus groups. Tactics are the ways to attract target audiences by using the information gathered about that audience and directing a message to them using tools such as social mediums or other technology. Another emerging theme is the application of psychological theories of impression management.
