PUBLIC RELATIONS LECTURE 2 INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC RELATIONS
SELECTED MATERIALS
Lecturer Dr. Amal Aly, Ph.D LEARNING OUTCOMES
• After studying Chapter 1 you should be able to:
• 1. Define public relations as the management function that builds and maintains relationships between organizations and their publics. • 2. Distinguish between public relations and marketing, identifying the exchange between provider and customer as the distinguishing characteristic of marketing relationships. • 3. Describe and differentiate among related concepts—publicity, advertising, press agentry, employee relations, community relations, public affairs, issues management, crisis communication, lobbying, investor relations, and development. • 4. Outline how public relations helps improve organizations and society. DISTINCTIONS • PR draws on expertise from many fields, it overlaps with other disciplines; it tends to integrate rather than exclude – this is its strength as a practice, but a weakness when it comes to descriptions and definitions. • Many confuse public relations with another management function CONFUSION WITH MARKETING • Marketing is a business activity that aims at promoting, advertising and selling company’s products and services. On the other hand, public relations or commonly called as PR is a communication process; wherein the company seeks to build such a relationship between the company and the general public, which is mutually beneficial for them. CONFUSION WITH MARKETING • Due to the emergence of social media, which filled the gap amongst these two. However, they are two different concepts, people find it hard to distinguish marketing from public relation (PR), • While marketing is mainly concerned with the promotion and sales of the product, Public Relations (PR) is intended to create and manage a favorable image of the company amongst the public. CONFUSION WITH MARKETING Key Differences Between Public Relation and Marketing The following points are noteworthy so far as the difference between Public Relations (PR) and Marketing is concerned: • The process of maintaining a positive relationship and managing the flow of information amongst the company and society at large is called Public Relations (PR). The range of activities that includes creation, communication and delivering products and services of value to the customers, is called marketing. • Public relation involves the promotion of the organization and the brand. Although, in the case of marketing, promotion of products and services offered by the company to its customers, is done. CONFUSION WITH MARKETING Key Differences Between Public Relation and Marketing • Both marketing and public relations are management functions, wherein marketing is a line function, whose contribution to the company’s bottom line is direct. On the other hand, public relations is staff function which assists organization indirectly in achieving its goals and objective. • Public relation is earned media, i.e. free media whereby the organization gains publicity through third-party endorsements such as word-of-mouth, press conferences, news releases, speeches, etc. As opposed to marketing, whose foundation is paid media, which includes radio, television and print advertising. CONFUSION WITH MARKETING Key Differences Between Public Relation and Marketing • Public Relation covers general public as a whole whereas marketing activities are oriented towards a target audience. • Marketing aims at converting shoppers into buyers, i.e. to create sales. On the contrary, public relation aims at building trust and maintaining company’s reputation. • Public relation is a two way communication. As against this, marketing is a monologue activity, which involves only one way communication. DIFFERENTIATE AMONG RELATED CONCEPTS PARTS OF THE FUNCTION
The contemporary concept and practice of
public relations includes all the following activities and specialties: EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION • Critical to the success of any organization, of course, are its employees. • CEOs in organizations talk about employees as their “number one public” or as “the organization’s most important asset,” and they try to create an “organizational culture” that attracts and retains productive workers • Internal relations is the specialized part of public relations that builds and maintains a mutually beneficial relationship between managers and the employees on whom an organization’s success depends. EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION • Internal relations specialists work in departments called “employee communication,” “employee relations,” or “internal relations.” • They plan and implement communication programs to keep employees informed and motivated and to promote the organization’s culture. PUBLICITY • Much of the news and information in the media originates from public relations sources. • Public relations sources provide what they judge to be newsworthy information—publicity —with the expectation that editors and reporters will use the information. • Publicity is information provided by an outside source that is used by media because the information has news value. This is an uncontrolled method of placing messages in the media because the source does not pay media outlets for placement. PUBLICITY
• Ex. of publicity include a story in a newspaper’s
financial section about a corporation’s increased earnings • To generate publicity, public relations practitioners must know what information will attract media attention, identify a newsworthy angle and lead, and write and package the information appropriately for each medium. It also helps if journalists and targeted bloggers trust the news source. PUBLICITY
• The publicity model of practice often operates under
the “public information” title. • In its infancy, public relations practice consisted of former journalists producing publicity, so it is not surprising that some still confuse publicity with the broader concept of public relations. ADVERTISING The distinction between advertising and PR is more easily made: • Advertising involves paying a medium (TV, radio, newspaper or magazine, for example) for airtime or column inches in which to put across a promotional message. • The content of an ad is always controlled by the advertiser, unlike the content of editorial pages or programs, which are controlled by journalists. • Public relations practitioners try to persuade journalists to cover their products and services on the grounds of newsworthiness. ADVERTISING The distinction between advertising and PR is more easily made: • “Advertising is information placed in the media by an identified sponsor that pays for the time or space. It is a controlled method of placing messages in the media” • “Advertising presents the most persuasive possible selling message to the right prospects for the product or service at the lowest possible cost” (The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising ) • Here, the phrase ‘selling message’ distinguishes the two disciplines – PR aims not to increase sales, but to increase understanding. Sometimes, of course, understanding a product or service improves sales, but PR does not claim a direct causal link. PRESS AGENTRY • Press agentry is creating newsworthy stories and events to attract media attention in order to gain public notice. • Press agents attract public notice more than build public understanding. Publicity is their major strategy. • The goal of press agentry is to create the perception that the subject of the publicity is newsworthy and deserves public attention. • Confusion with PR results when press agents describe what they do as “public relations” or use that term to give their agencies more prestigious, but less accurate, titles. PUBLIC AFFAIRS • The armed services, many governmental agencies, and some corporations use the title “public affairs” as a substitute for public relations. The actual meaning varies across different types of organizations, but in general the concept of public affairs is as follows: • “Public affairs is the specialized part of public relations that builds and maintains organizational relationships with governmental agencies and community stakeholder groups to influence public policy. “ LOBBYING • Lobbying is the specialized part of public relations that builds and maintains relations with government, primarily to influence legislation and regulation. • In practice, lobbying must be closely coordinated with other public relations efforts directed toward nongovernmental publics. • In its primary roles as credible advocate and reliable source of information, however, lobbying takes the form of information designed to educate and persuade ISSUES MANAGEMENT • Issues management is the process of anticipating, identifying, evaluating, and responding to issues and trends that potentially affect an organization’s relationships with its publics. • Two points capture the essence of issues management : (1) early identification of issues with potential impact on an organization and, (2) a strategic response designed to mitigate or capitalize on their consequences. • For example, in the context of public opinion, issues management “attempts to discern trends in public opinion so that an organization can respond to them before they amplify into serious conflict.”28 CRISIS MANAGEMENT • Crisis management is the public relations specialty that helps organizations strategically respond to negative situations and to dialog with stakeholders affected by perceived and actual consequences of crises. • Many public relations consultancies (both firms and solo practitioners) claim expertise in helping organizations respond to unexpected, negative events that threaten their relationships with stakeholders. • Crisis management has become an increasingly important part of public relations practice INVESTOR RELATIONS • Investor relations is the specialized part of corporate public relations that builds and maintains mutually beneficial relationships with shareholders and others in the financial community to maximize market value. • Investor relations referred to as “IR” and “financial relations,” investor relations is another specialized part of public relations in publicly held corporations. Investor relations specialists work to enhance the value of a company’s stock. This reduces the cost of capital by increasing shareholder confidence and by making the stock attractive to individual investors, financial analysts, and institutional investors. DEVELOPMENT • Development is the specialized part of public relations in nonprofit organizations that builds and maintains relationships with donors, volunteers, and members to secure financial and volunteer support. • Just as investor relations helps finance publicly held corporations, fundraising and membership drives provide the financial support needed to operate charitable and nonprofit organizations. These organizations typically use the title “development ” or “advancement” for this aspect of public relations. Nonprofit hospitals, social welfare groups, disease research foundations, service charities, and universities have directors of development. WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS? • Public relations serves not only the organization but most important the public(s)’ interest(s) • Public relations practitioners must constantly communicate with many different publics, each having each own special needs and requiring different types of communications. • Public relations practitioners’ role is to identify with critical publics with whom the organization must communicate on a frequent and direct basis. WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS • Public relations serves not only the organization but most important the public(s)’ interest(s) • Under the quittance of public relations, organizations learn of how to get more sensitive to the self interests, desires, and concerns of each public. • They understand that self interest groups today are themselves more complex and with more power than ever before. • They harmonizing actions necessary to win and maintain support among each groups. • Emphasizing and achieving a win- win arrangement. WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS • Excellent public relations departments must use research techniques as its principal tools for developing decisions . • The three primary forms of public relations research, as they have been suggested are methods, mostly indirect, of observing human behavior • surveys to reveal attitudes and opinions, • communication audits to evaluate how an organization is doing with respect to particular public(s), and • unobtrusive measures such as fact finding, content analysis, and readability studies. • As a result helps management to stay familiar with environmental changes; to predict trends WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS Organizations with good public relations departments are always using two ways symmetrical systems of communication. • Under an asymmetrical communication system, organizations are striving to convince their practitioners that the organization knows best and that publics benefit from cooperating with the organizations decisions. Thus, the role of the practitioners to persuade publics to follow decisions made by the organization. WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS
• On the other hand, organizations that basing their communication
systems on symmetrical models recognize that they cannot isolate themselves from their environment. • Acknowledging that publics and other organizations operating in the same external and/or internal environment interrelated with the organization, and freely exchanging information with those organizations and publics, establishing an equilibrium state that constantly move as the environment changes. • Symmetrical models of communication are conflict resolution oriented rather than persuasion. Conflicts are resolved through negotiation, communication, and compromise and not through force, manipulation, coercion, or violence.