Public relations noted

Public Relations
Our activities help organizations build intellectual capital. We help differentiate brands, improve customer loyalty, and motivate employees. We help win the support of key stakeholders by developing informed opinion about products, issues and corporate activities. And to safeguard those assets, no one’s better at helping you prepare for, and resolve a crisis.
The term ‘‘perception management’’ has been popular in the last two decades. But can you really expect to ‘‘manage perceptions’’ through public relations? It misses the essential point— that public relations can generate understanding and potentially sway opinion and behavior, but cannot ever ‘‘manage’’ how people see and perceive reality either now or at some point in the future, as this is individually determined.
The simple fact is that no amount of communication will change a problem or an issue— you cannot ‘‘spin’’ a problem. The only way to do this is to take correct and ethical action and demonstrate this in full view. What public relations can do, however, is tell people about an organization’s positive actions and achievements. Advertising agency, McCann Erickson, said it well 80 years ago, when it coined its slogan, ‘‘Truth Well Told.’’ So, public relations, in reality, is all about an organization doing good things and getting the credit for it— when credit is due, of course. You cannot just talk the talk: it is not enough to say that you are an environmentally sustainable company— you have to demonstrate this with real proof and communicate this in real terms to your audience consistently and repeatedly using a range of communication channels.
PR = Propaganda
To label public relations as propaganda in the original sense of the word is, in fact, quite accurate as it referred to the neutral promotion of a belief system or doctrine. The Western view of propaganda is, of course, a negative one. The same word in China, however, means almost the opposite and is viewed as simply another term for publicity or public relations. Historically, the word became tainted with negative meaning as a way of labeling the sinister political agendas of 20th century wartime governments and the hidden commercial agendas of capitalist governments. The Oxford Dictionary defines propaganda as, ‘‘information that is often biased or misleading used to promote a political cause or point of view.’’ So, propaganda in this sense came to refer to a one-way communication, conveyed from the organization to the public. And its use in the earlier part of the 20th century and by some of today’s non-democratic governments is clearly different from an ideal 21st century view of public relations.
However, unlike the propagandist, what companies say about themselves should match our experience of what they do. Using public relations activities as a tool of engagement, an organization tries to gain our attention as a way of enhancing our understanding of an issue so that we might respond more favorably to it. Dialogue is the buzzword of the early 21st century. So, while propaganda is simply one-way communication, public relations is focused on two-way or multi-level dialogue.
PR = Publicity
Publicity is solely focused on gaining editorial coverage across a range of media channels— be it on TV, radio, in newspapers, or via blog sites— and by eliciting an instant reaction from activity in a public venue. Publicity is just one element of the public relations role and it is also a recognized component activity of the marketing mix. Clearly, PR now offers a much wider range of communication techniques in the bid to gain positive recognition on behalf of an organization.
PR = Same as advertising
While advertising and public relations are integral parts of the 360 degree marketing mix from the promotional perspective, they are separate disciplines; the key difference being the audience— advertising goes direct, while PR uses third parties, and, of course, advertising space is paid for by the organization, while PR coverage in the form of newspaper stories and interviews, for example, is not. This means that advertising is a controlled form of communication, as the sponsor pays for the space in which the advertising message is placed, and has control over the content of the message and the location and timing of the message release. In PR terms, the message is potentially uncontrolled in the sense that once the media release is sent out or the media interview is given, we cannot guarantee the outcome of the storyline or the story content. Yet, by using public relations approaches, an organization has an opportunity to influence how others view its activities for the better.
PR = The mouthpiece of corporate power
This critique suggests that PR fosters unequal power relations in society as it helps the powerful and wealthy impose their views on a naıve population, manipulating their mindsets. But public relations exists to foster mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its stakeholders in the public interest. Of course, most organizations exist to make a profit, but that does not mean that the competitive edge is won at the expense of ethical practices as public support is critical for the survival of all corporate entities, as many companies, including Enron and Andersen Consulting, have found to their cost.
PR as a One-Stop Communication Shop
Over the past decade, PR has been seen as one of the most increasingly significant components of the promotional marketing mix, distinguishing itself as good value, sustainable communication, in contrast to potentially expensive and one-way communication advertising. The strategic integrated communication role assumed by PR beyond the more traditional media management role is now established as having a wider brief to fulfill. The wider value of PR is now to be found in alerting, creating, and managing trends, and influencing and impacting public opinion through finely tuned messages directed at a universe of stakeholders who are encouraged to engage in critical dialogue. So, although a significant amount of time is devoted to tactical communications, increasingly, public relations managers operate at more strategic levels, directing research into stakeholder perceptions and counseling management about the implementation of communication campaigns or prompting them to prepare for crises or audit their ethical practices, which clearly represents a move away from old perceptions of a predominantly publicity-oriented profession. Not only has PR raised its head above the line and is no longer content to be the sidekick of above-the-line advertising, it has actually dispensed with the line altogether. We can go further to suggest that within an organization and in its external relationships with stakeholders, every element of communication has a PR aspect. The competitive survival of all organizations now depends on communicating with stakeholders— getting the right messages across to the right audience at the right time in the most appropriate and meaningful way.
PR on the job: What do PR professionals do?
Two of the main roles for the public relations professional focus on the communication technician and the communication manager. The former highly-skilled role involves communications programs and activities such as writing media releases, editing newsletters, developing websites and generally is not involved in organizational decision-making. The second role of the public relations professional positions him as an integral part of the senior team which plans, manages, and facilitates the communications program, counsels management, and makes policy decisions as an intermediary between senior management and the workforce, organization and competitor, and organization and customer. In this sense, most public relations professionals play both manager and technician roles as part of their job.
How to tell the PR story
We are all inveterate storytellers as it is one of the time-honoured ways that human beings across cultures and generations have made sense of their world and their immediate surroundings. In fact, every time we choose to communicate in spoken or written form, we are telling a story from our own viewpoint. At the start of every memo, proposal, speech, leaflet, flyer, brochure, web page, and newsletter article, we are in essence saying, ‘‘I want to tell you an important thing that will be of great interest to you, the reader or listener, and it may even change your life for the better…’’ In this sense, public relations is all about telling stories, or framing narratives on behalf of organizations and their employees so that their stakeholders will understand them better and most importantly, enable them to understand what is in the organization’s activities for them alone that will impact on their lives in some way for the better.
So what exactly is public relations?
Public relations exists in every aspect of life— whether we like it or not— and is continuously practiced by many people on a daily basis. We all intensify our good points and downplay our shortcomings. A child trying to please its mother; an employee trying to impress the boss; a sales executive trying to make a customer purchase something— they are all attempting to show themselves and their chosen topic in the best light. And collectively, countries, governments, companies, pressure groups, communities, and trade associations all do the same thing. It is a rare circumstance, indeed, when someone wants to put forward a bad impression.
Organizations are no different, of course. They all want to put their best foot forward, which is why public relations has become a fundamental building block of business, politics, and philanthropy. The public relations function is present in every organization, whether or not it is clearly defined, whether implemented internally or by a consulting firm. Overall, there are three ways that public relations works:
It can try to create an opinion or attitude where none exists
It can seek to reinforce an existing opinion about an issue, person, or organization
It can attempt to change an existing opinion
And the way it works is all about getting someone else to talk about you in the public domain across a range of communication channels— through third parties— who become your credible advocates.
Or what about another everyday situation— in a job interview John tells the prospective employer that he has good people skills and is a good communicator in most situations— that is advertising. But no savvy interviewer would take personal opinion on face value and would turn to a third party for an objective opinion before making a decision to either accept or reject John as a viable candidate for the job. And that, in a nutshell, is what public relations can do. It aims to generate positive communication about your organization through credible advocates, to create, reinforce, or change opinions about a subject or an organization’s raison d’e ˆtre over time.
Acknowledgment of Achievement This is the ‘‘Biggie’’—the way we like to define the public relations process is as ‘‘Acknowledgment of Achievement.’’ It is not just an acknowledgment of a corporate action— but rather of an action that has made a difference in a given community, such as a fuel company sponsoring a beach clean-up day or the launch of a company’s successful share offering. Companies use public relations to get the message across to their relevant communities that they are doing good things in the best interests of all concerned and are consequently gaining favorable recognition for that. In essence, PR is all about good performance and justifiable acknowledgment in the public domain.
The legendary The legendary Harold Burson, founder of global PR consultancy Burson-Marsteller, talks about the way in which the industry has developed over the last 50 years— how it has moved from the question of ‘‘How do I say it?’’ to ‘‘What do I say?’’ and now, thank goodness, to, ‘‘What do I do?’’.
We know that talking is not enough; you have to prove you can take action and have a history of taking the right action, in the right place, at the right time, with the right people in order to create the right impact. Whether we are a politician, celebrity, opinion leader, employee, charity worker, CEO, or a green group, we use public relations to inform and educate our stakeholders through effective engagement using various communication channels to outline what we are doing, what we represent, and why, in the hope that, for better or for worse, we will receive significant feedback on this. PR is based on interactive dialogue and is not a unidirectional form of communication. We enter into a conversation with many individuals and groups interested in the organization and not in an attempt to persuade them that they need us— but rather to invite them to enter into a conversation about what more we can do for them to fulfill needs and expectations.
As professional communicators, PR practitioners are in the business of crafting messages to present a winning argument to their stakeholders, and they have many communications tools at their disposal to assist in achieving this. As public relations is a relative newcomer both in the professional world and on the university syllabus, it has borrowed concepts from sociology, management, marketing, psychology, and mass communications to build up a solid public relations theoretical toolkit as a way of informing and guiding practice to some degree.
In this sense, applied communication models such as Harold Lasswell’s ‘‘who says what to whom and with what effect?’’ are a valid starting point, yet only present a linear view of PR, rooted in (Lasswell, 1958) 1 other simple one-way or basic sender/receiver communication models. The actual effect of mediated messages on receivers is still a matter of debate; But, as PR practitioners are in the business of communicating professionally, and as communication is not a one-way street— they must be audience-focused at all stages of planning and preparing the message.
The received wisdom in understanding how audiences decode messages depending on their ideological viewpoint and cultural expectations is useful for public relations practitioners, as this knowledge can avoid miscommunication or misunderstanding. The uses and gratifications that motivate media audiences, such as entertainment values and informationseeking behaviors, also provide useful insights for the public relations practitioner when choosing effective communication channels to ensure that their messages actually reach the right stakeholders, and in making sure that the message output causes the desired outcome, whether cognitive, affective, or behavioural— by impacting the mindset, emotions, and actions of our specifically targeted audience.
Equally useful for public relations are theoretical models such as the ‘‘Diffusion of Innovations’’ theory (Rogers, 2003) 2 outlining how people process data and adopt new ideas across time, cultures and social systems by following a staged path of awareness, interest, trial, evaluation, and adoption. Every public relations effort— every brochure, annual report, web page, news release, product launch, and lobbying effort— is trying to grab the attention of, and engage the receiver. In the simplest terms, public relations is the persuasive communicative process of guiding people to accept an idea, attitude, or action using both reasoning and creative expression. This relationship is based on establishing agreement and acceptance predicated on common ground and trust.
Essentially, we are all searching to fulfil goals, dreams, and desires. Depending on our stage of social and economic development according to sociologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model on a sliding scale of needs we go from craving physiological survival based needs, through the desire for safety, social acceptance, and self-esteem to the ultimate level of being— self-actualization or the ‘‘I did it my way’’ principle. Basically it’s a way of saying the more we have, the more we desire, which is the consumer manifesto writ large. We can build on this notion of motivators that drive our stakeholder’s lives by reworking Maslow’s model. In this way, we can develop a more useful understanding of Asian stakeholders for public relations purposes and develop the content of our key communications messages accordingly by focusing on values more pertinent to the local culture, as shown in our diagrammatic representation. Here, progression up the needs pyramid is reworked to reflect more authentic, localized cultural motivators.

-Akash Raychand Shinde (Assistant Director)