Elementary Writing

This is the first article in our online course series on the theory, practice, trends and secrets of New Age Public Relations. Other topics that we cover are:

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If I was down to the last dollar of my marketing budget
I’d spend it on PR!

Kevin Johnson
group vice president Microsoft
sales and marketing

What is Public Relations

It seems difficult to believe at the dawn of the 21st Century, that there exists a major discipline with so many diverse, partial, incomplete and limited interpretations of its mission. Here, just a sampling of professional opinion on what public relations is all about:

• talking to the media on behalf of a client.
• selling a product, service or idea.
• reputation management.
• engineering of perception
• attracting credit to an organization for doing good.
• limiting the downside when it does bad.

By definition, public relations is the art and science of establishing relationships between an organization and its key audiences. Public relations plays a key role in helping business industries create strong relationships with customers.

There are different types of public relations, some companies call it investor relations and yet others will call it financial public relations, but what companies do not realize is the fact that public relations is an extremely essential and integral marketing tool.

Basically, the general idea of public relations is advertising, branding and marketing. Anything that involves the media is the responsibility of the public relations officer. He encourages magazines, newspapers, radio and TV to print or air good things about the services and the products. This promotion will reach their targeted customers therefore generating an increase on sales and patronage.

People act on their perception of the facts; those perceptions lead to certain behaviors; and something can be done about those perceptions and behaviors that leads to achieving an organization’s objectives.

That leads us directly to the core strength of public relations.

When public relations creates, changes or reinforces the general opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action those people whose behaviors affect the organization, the public relations mission is accomplished.

Brief History of PR

Public relations arrived with the development of mass media. At the turn of the 20th century, “muckraking” journalists were stirring up public dissent against the powerful monopolies and wealthy industrialists who ruled the day. Early public relations firms combated the bad press by placing positive stories about their clients in newspapers.

Former journalists, such as Ivy Lee (considered by some to be the founder of modern public relations), used the first press releases to feed newspapers “the facts” about his misunderstood clients, namely the railroad and tobacco industries, and J.D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. The term Public Relations is to be found for the first time in the 1897 Yearbook of Railway Literature.

Lee and company became so good at whitewashing even the darkest corporate sins that PR professionals earned a reputation as “spin doctors.”

Edward Bernays was the profession’s first theorist. He drew many of his ideas from Sigmund Freud’s theories about the irrational, unconscious motives that shape human behavior. Bernays authored several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and The Engineering of Consent (1947). He saw public relations as an “applied social science” that uses insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manage and manipulate the thinking and behavior of an irrational and “herdlike” public.

In 1950 PRSA enacts the first “Professional Standards for the Practice of Public Relations,” a forerunner to the current Code of Ethics, last revised in 2000 to include six core values and six code provisions. The six core values are “Advocacy, Honesty, Expertise, Independence, Loyalty, and Fairness.” The six code provisions consulted with are “Free Flow of Information, Competition, Disclosure of Information, Safeguarding Confidences, Conflicts of Interest, and Enhancing the Profession.”

Much time has passed since the days of Ivy Lee, and to label today’s PR professionals as dishonest would be to ignore how pervasive and important their work has become to people and organizations of all shapes and sizes — small businesses, authors, activists, universities, and non-profit organizations — not just big business and big government.

Public Relations, Marketing and Advertising ?

You will often find that many people confuse public relations with marketing and/or advertising or vice versa. The most apparent reason for this is that the clear-cut distinctions are disappearing as each strategy’s different awareness building efforts become more and more integrated. While all those components are important they are very different.

Marketing

Marketing encompasses every tool used to help your target audience buy your product and make you money. You can do this through advertising on billboards, TV, radio, in magazines and newspapers, online with Google ads, on banner ads on other people’s websites, on Facebook, etc.

A company’s marketing department could be subdivided into several smaller sections that are responsible for: public relations, advertising, customer service, market share research as well as pricing, distribution and product placement. They all work toward the same ultimate goal – which is the success and growth of the company

Advertising

Advertising, in plain word: putting your product or service where the public can see it. Advertising lets the consumer know:

• What it is that you have to offer
• Why exactly they need it

The cost of advertising is expensive. The most effective advertising campaign also requires that you have several different advertisements in different areas of any one location.

Public Relations

There are two vehicles for having your company’s information show up in a media: pay to advertise or let the press do it for you. The latter occurs as a direct result of public relations (PR) efforts – actively seeking publicity as a form of marketing communications.

Public relations is kind of like advertising’s less obtrusive brother. At the same time it is more effective and cost-saving than traditional advertising methods because it places exposure in credible third-party outlets, thus offering a third-party legitimacy that advertising does not have. In other words if you get someone else to talk about how great your company is then you are much more likely to gain public trust and have an easier time selling your products to them.

Off course to do this you need to make media wants to tell your story. That is the principal task of efficient PR. As media expert Peter Hannaford, reminds us:

“Reporters want stories to be about what is out of the ordinary,” Hannaford said. “Dog bites man is not a story because it happens frequently – ask any mailman. But man bites dog almost never happens and is news.

If (reporters) didn’t write stories about what was out of the ordinary, if they didn’t write about controversies … then there wouldn’t be an audience,”"

The Role of Public Relations in Branding

Branding is the idea that a particular set of attributes will encourage the public to have positive thoughts about a particular company, product, service, or individual. The job of public relations is to encourage the public to have positive thoughts about a particular company, product, service, or individual. It’s a subtle distinction, but an essential one.

When products are assigned personality traits or attributes by the public-”friendly,” “environmentally aware … concerned with quality … accessible”-it means that public relations, in conjunction with advertising and marketing, has done its job. But because the public is naturally wary of advertising and marketing, and because those disciplines are considerably more visible than public relations, it is possible that PR makes the most honest, and deepest, impact on the public’s psyche.

Public relations practitioners are particularly well suited to the Branding concept, since they are well versed in the techniques and practices that create a public identity very close to the central idea of a brand. And many experts on Branding espouse the opinion that public relations are a vital part-if not the most vital part-of the Branding process.

PR Management of Corporate Reputation

Corporate reputation is the sum of the values that stakeholders attribute to a company, based on their perception and interpretation of the image the company communicates and its behavior over time.

For business leaders, it is important to listen to what is being said, especially if messages are negative. More and more companies are suffering because they are not listing to the consumer.
Public Relations is developing slowly into a more strategic and holistic discipline termed reputation management. Unlike traditional approaches to Public Relations, the reputation management approach does not just seek to offer promises, but actively and strategically guides a brand in such a way that delivers on the promise.

The hub of the reputation wheel is brand, as it is around this construct that most reputations are lost and made. A positive brand reputation brings trust, confidence, and sales, which are ultimately reflected in revenue growth and profitability.

Brands make promises; reputation is about the delivery on such promises.

Public Relations and Crisis Management Planning

In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing world, business is news. Plant closings, mergers and acquisitions, unemployment, strikes, labor negotiations, company expansions, building projects, construction-related accidents and catastrophes are often the lead story on the front page or the six o’clock news.

Yet many organizations are totally unprepared or at least ill-prepared to handle the public relations and crisis management aspects of these events. This unpreparedness can lead to many negative and undesirable results for you, your employees, your clients and customers, your company and your business and industry sector.

Custom PR Executed Steps in Order to Properly Manage a Crisis

• Address the public immediately following the discovery of the crisis.
• Maintain honesty – the public is more willing to forgive an honest mistake than a calculated lie.
• Be informative – the media as well as the public will create their own rumors if no information is given to them by the corporation in crisis. Rumors can cause significantly more damage to the corporation than the truth.
• Be concerned – show the public you care because people will be more forgiving if it is clear that the corporation cares about the victims of the crisis.
• Maintain two-way relationships – the corporation can learn a lot about the status of public opinion by listening.

In House PR vs Outsourcing

Executives must determine how much of the PR effort should be outsourced, which functions should be retained in-house and which agency is the best fit. Making the decision to use an outside agency to handle all or a part of a company’s communications can be a complex process, but it’s one that offers the chance for adding considerable expertise, professional skills and activity to the company’s PR function.

In examining the value of inside vs. out-of-house public relations staffing, your should consider the following advantages of each alternative and reach a blend of outsourcing and inside capabilities that works best for you.

The Advantages of Handling PR with In-house Staff

• Convenience
  Having someone nearby can mean the difference between getting it done today and waiting for a phone call tomorrow. This also allows for immediate follow-up and quick response time in crisis situations.
• Understanding the client
  In-house PR departments are directly affected by their actions. Aspects ranging from managing their overhead to understanding their organization’s needs are factors that an outside PR firm often cannot provide. The more familiar people are with their client, the more likely they are to aim for greater results.
• Responsiveness to opportunities
  An in-house PR professional is on site when developments occur. A trained PR specialist who participates in company meetings to discuss future programs will be able to point out possible opportunities that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

Outsourcing PR to an Agency-The Advantages

• A team of professionals
  By outsourcing to these specialists, businesses need not worry about compromising their message for the sake of publicity; because they have well-respected, well-established professionals on their side.
• Media and vendor relationships
  Agencies through their many employees can put a client in touch with a wide universe of media and provide a breadth of media contacts that an in-house PR department cannot.
• The outsider’s perspective
  It’s easier to ask an independent party to sum up the image of the company than to ask an internal PR person, who may paint a picture stamped with bias. Moreover, an outside professional works with a number of clients, generating a wider perspective on an industry and a deeper understanding of the issues confronting it.

What is Media Kit and Why you Need it

A media kit is a folder of information that will help reporters write an accurate story. It should include whatever facts you want them to know about.

Media kits also show that you’re media-savvy and understand how the news game is played, as it help reporters save time and improve accuracy because everything is there in black and white. They don’t have to spend time calling the source to ask for more information, or double-check numerous facts.

Regardless of what your business offers, at the very least your media kit should include:

• A history of your company
• Professional profiles of key executives or officers
• A basic press release detailing the company objective
• A copy of the annual report – tucked neatly into a professionally printed folder
• Press releases on upcoming company endeavors
• Information on the latest product or servise releases
• Black and white or color photos
• A business card

Some companies that want to make big impressions with their media kit will go far above and beyond the minimal. They could trade in the professional, but conservative folder for some bigger, brighter packaging and include things like audio CDs or DVDs along with brightly colored flyers and product samples.

Media kits can be used for far more than just the media. Use them as marketing materials to share with potential clients. Take them to trade shows. Give them to your sales people to use on sales calls.

Public Relations Professionals – PR as Career Opportunity

According to the forecast of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the United States , the field of public relations will continue to reap thousands of job openings in the next few years. With so many fields requiring the expertise of public relation officers, such as medicine, science, finance, etc., many people consider taking public relations careers to gain profits and recognition.

Bachelors’ degree in any discipline preferably with social sciences, liberal arts and humanities is required to take up a course in this field. Apart from this there are also short term certificate courses. Most training programs in Advertising also include public relations. Some institutes have entrance exams while others prefer admission on merit basis.

Most public relations practitioners are recruited from the ranks of journalism. Public relations officers are highly trained professionals with expertise and knowledge in many areas, for example shareholder management during a crisis, in-house public relations, account management, financial public relations, consumer public relations, public relations software etc.

Good public relations professionals network well and have media contacts the rest of us don’t!

He must be skilled in many tactical disciplines. To name just a few:

• media relations
• public speaking
• writing
• financial communications
• organizing special events
• issue tracking
• crisis management
• campaign consulting

What PR professionals usually do for their clients?:

• PR people read and watch and listen to the news, always on the lookout for stories that may dovetail with your message. Then they call the writers, editors or producers responsible for that news with a story angle, suggesting you, your product or your service as a focus point. They answer the question the media always wants answered: “Why you? Why now?”
• PR specialists also push “perennial” or “timeless” stories, those not dependent on an event or particular news story. These feature stories can be invaluable when added to your corporate marketing materials and sent to clients and prospects.
• PR professionals may act as “spin doctors,” – There are times when bad things happen and you need to manage the crisis somehow. With persistent, consistent public relations. “Tell the truth, tell it all, tell it fast” PR professionals may practice the most effective recipe for crisis management.

The Bottom Line

Public relations, usually known as just PR, sounds like such a small thing but is really the cornerstone of any business. Whether your business has its own PR department or contracts that work out, it’s important to have a method of getting information about your company, products, and services to your target market.

On a more personal note, we all have public relations – what opinion people have about us as individuals; what our friends, family, employers and employees think about us…

“It’s in times of uncertainty and ambiguity that good PR becomes ever more critical, doesn’t it? CEO’s have seen the studies that show outreach cuts (e.g., PR, marketing, ads) can cost much more than they save. The large PR shops seem to be about as busy as ever, there doesn’t appear to be a catastrophic drop in PR job openings. Sure, the online sector has taken a hit. But considering the statistical take along with the practical realities, it’s looking like PR overall will weather the current storm well.”

Ryan D. May
Public Relations Society of America