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Public relations (PR) is the actions of a corporation, store, government,
individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community,
employees, customers, etc.
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. Common activities include speaking
at conferences, working with the media, crisis communications, 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 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. The increasing use of the mentioned
technologies give the media a democratisation power and thus, aid to the demystification
of subjects.
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. Most of them include the aspect of peer review to get liability.
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
Status of the industry
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 works 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 United States, 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 [1]. Top earners bring home around $89,220 annually, while entry-level public
relations specialists earn around $28,080. Corporate, or in-house communications
is generally more profitable, and communications executives can earn salaries in
the mid six-figures, though this only applies to a fraction of the sector's workforce.[8]
The role of public relations professionals is changing because of the shift from
traditional to online media. Many PR professionals are finding it necessary to learn
new skills and to examine how social media can impact a brand's reputation.
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.
Tools
There are various tools that can be used in the practice of public relations. Traditional
tools include press releases and media kits which are sent out to generate positive
press on behalf of the organization. Other widely used tools include brochures,
newsletters and annual reports. Increasingly, companies are utilizing interactive
social media outlets, such as
• Blogs
• Social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, foursquare (social network), etc.)
as tools in their public relations campaigns. Unlike the traditional tools which
allowed for only one-way communication, social media outlets allow the organization
to engage in two-way communication, and receive immediate feedback from their various
stakeholders and public. Furthermore companies can join discussions with multiple
user identities to create a positive image of the company (e.g. quantity of positive
statements from different users
One of the most popular and traditional tools used by public relations professionals
is a press kit, also known as a media kit. A press kit is usually a folder that
consists of promotional materials that give information about an event, organization,
business, or even a person. What are included would be backgrounders or biographies,
fact sheets, press releases (or media releases), media alerts, brochures, newsletters,
photographs with captions, copies of any media clips, and social mediums. With the
way that the industry has changed, many organizations may have a website with a
link, "Press Room" which would have online versions of these documents.
The art of public relations is more than simply press kits and social media. 'PR'
is synonymous in many people's minds with "Press Release", but the tools of the
PR industry are actually many and varied as well as sophisticated and subtle. They
include media relations kits containing video and audio news releases, referred
to in the industry as VNRs and ANRs, which are often carefully produced to emulate
the signature style of a particular network news or current affairs program. These
products are then delivered to networks and run as regular program content, with
or without source acknowledgment, thereby saving the network tens of thousands of
dollars in production costs and delivering for the client of the PR firm an extremely
effective and subtle method of managing public opinion. Crisis and issues management
campaigns often utilize VNRs and ANRs in their efforts to manage information pertaining
to threats to client reputation or profit. Astroturfing, or creating front groups
designed to appear as genuine grass roots movements, (hence astroturf or fake grass)
has proven to be a very effective method of opinion management because people are
less suspicious and critical of "ordinary people voicing their concerns" than they
are of representatives of corporations or governments. Buzz generation, or buzz
marketing is another powerful and subversive form of PR in which people are paid
to create a "buzz" amongst their peers by exposing them to products or opinions
in a manner that appears not to be deliberate marketing or opinion management. Most
PR campaigns use many or all of these "communication" techniques and a great many
more in creative ways that deliver practical results in marketing or public opinion
management.
Targeting publics
A fundamental technique used in public relations is to identify the target audience,
and to tailor every message to appeal to that audience. It can be a general, nationwide
or worldwide audience, but it is more often a segment of a population. A good elevator
pitch can help tailor messaging to each target audience. Marketers often refer to
socio-economically driven "demographics", such as "black males 18-49". However,
in public relations an audience is more fluid, being whoever someone wants to reach.
Or, in the new paradigm of value based networked social groups, the values based
social segment could be a trending audience. For example, recent political audiences
seduce such buzzword monikers as "soccer moms" and "NASCAR dads."
An alternative and less flexible, more simplistic, approach uses stakeholders theory
to identify people who have a stake in a given institution or issue. All audiences
are stakeholders (or presumptive stakeholders), but not all stakeholders are audiences.
For example, if a charity commissions a public relations agency to create an advertising
campaign to raise money to find a cure for a disease, the charity and the people
with the disease are stakeholders, but the audience is anyone who is likely to donate
money. Sometimes the interests of differing audiences and stakeholders common to
a public relations effort necessitate the creation of several distinct but complementary
messages. This is not always easy to do, and sometimes, especially in politics,
a spokesperson or client says something to one audience that creates dissonance
with another audience or group of stakeholders.
Lobby groups
Lobby groups are established to influence government policy, corporate policy, or
public opinion. An example of this is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), which influences American foreign policy. Such groups claim to represent
a particular interest and in fact are dedicated to doing so. When a lobby group
hides its true purpose and support base, it is known as a front group. Moreover,
governments may also lobby public relations firms in order to sway public opinion.
A well illustrated example of this is the way civil war in Yugoslavia was portrayed.
Governments of the newly seceded republics of Croatia and Bosnia, as well as Serbia
invested heavily with UK and American public relations firms, so that they would
give them a positive image in the USA.
Spin
In public relations, spin is sometimes a pejorative term signifying a heavily biased
portrayal in specific favor of an event or situation. While traditional public relations
may also rely on creative presentation of the facts, spin often, though not always,
implies disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics. Politicians
are often accused of spin by commentators and political opponents when they produce
a counterargument or position.
The techniques of spin include selectively presenting facts and quotes that support
ideal positions (cherry picking), the so-called "non-denial denial", phrasing that
in a way presumes unproven truths, euphemisms for drawing attention away from items
considered distasteful, and ambiguity in public statements. Another spin technique
involves careful choice of timing in the release of certain news so it can take
advantage of prominent events in the news. A famous reference to this practice occurred
when British Government press officer Jo Moore used the phrase "It's now a very
good day to get out anything we want to bury", (widely paraphrased or misquoted
as "It's a good day to bury bad news"), in an email sent on the day of the September
11 attacks in 2001. The furor caused when this email was reported in the press eventually
caused her to resign.
Skilled practitioners of spin are sometimes called "spin doctors", despite the negative
connotation associated with the term. Perhaps the best-known person in the UK often
described as a "spin doctor" is Alastair Campbell, who was involved with Tony Blair's
public relations between 1994 and 2003, and also played a controversial role as
press relations officer to the British and Irish Lions rugby union side during their
2005 tour of New Zealand.
State-run media in many countries also engage in spin by selectively allowing news
stories that are favorable to the government while censoring anything that could
be considered critical. They may also use propaganda to indoctrinate or actively
influence citizens' opinions. Privately run media may also use the same techniques
of "issue" versus "non-issue" to spin its particular political viewpoints
Negative PR
Negative public relations, also called dark public relations (DPR), is a process
of destroying the target's reputation and/or corporate identity. In other words,
instead of concentrating efforts in the maintenance and the creation of a positive
reputation or image of your clients, the objective is to discredit someone else,
usually a business rival. Unlike the regular services in public relations, those
in DPR rely on the development of industries such as IT security, industrial espionage,
social engineering and competitive intelligence. A common technique is finding all
of the dirty secrets of their target and turning them against their very own holder.
The building of a dark PR campaign, also known as a dirty tricks or a smear campaign
is a long and a complex operation. Traditionally it starts with an extensive information
gathering and follows the other needs of a precise competitive research. The gathered
information is being used after that as a part of a greater strategical planning,
aiming to destroy the relationship between the company and its stakeholders.
Other
• Publicity events, pseudo-events, photo ops or publicity stunts
• Talk show circuit: a public relations spokesperson, or the client, "does the circuit"
by being interviewed on television and radio talk shows with audiences that the
client wishes to reach
• Books and other writings
• Blogs
• After a public relations practitioner has been working in the field for a while,
he or she accumulates a list of contacts in the media and elsewhere in the public
affairs sphere. This "Rolodex" becomes a prized asset, and job announcements sometimes
even ask for candidates with an existing Rolodex, especially those in the media
relations area of public relations.
• Direct communication (carrying messages directly to constituents, rather than
through the mass media) with, e.g., newsletters – in print and e-letters
• Collateral literature, traditionally in print and now predominantly as web sites
• Speeches to constituent groups and professional organizations; receptions; seminars,
and other events; personal appearances
• The slang term for a public relations practitioner or publicist is a "flack" (sometimes
spelled "flak")
• A desk visit is where the public relations person literally takes their product
to the desk of the journalist in order to show them emerging promotions
• Astroturfing is the act of public relations agencies placing blog and online forum
messages for their clients, in the guise of a normal "grassroots" user or comment
(an illegal practice across the larger practice areas such as the European Union)
• Online social media and Internet mediated public relations practices
Politics and civil society
Defining the opponent
In the USA, but not in the larger public relations markets, the tactic known as
"defining one's opponent" is used in political campaigns. Opponents can be candidates,
organizations and other groups of people.
In the 2004 US presidential campaign, Howard Dean defined John Kerry as a "flip-flopper,"
which was widely reported and repeated by the media, particularly the conservative
media. Similarly, George H.W. Bush characterized Michael Dukakis as weak on crime
(the Willie Horton ad) and hopelessly liberal ("a card-carrying member of the ACLU").
In 1996, President Bill Clinton seized upon opponent Bob Dole's promise to take
America back to a simpler time, promising in contrast to "build a bridge to the
21st century." This painted Dole as a person who was somehow opposed to progress.
In the debate over abortion, self-titled pro-choice groups, by virtue of their name,
defined their opponents as "anti-choice", while self-titled pro-life groups refer
to their opponents as "pro-abortion" or "anti-life".
Managing language
If, in the USA, a politician or organization can use an apt phrase in relation to
an issue in interviews or news releases, the news media will often repeat it verbatim,
without questioning its aptness. This perpetuates both the message and whatever
preconceptions might underlie it. Often, something that sounds innocuous can stand
in for something greater; a "culture of life" sounds like general goodwill to most
people, but will evoke opposition to abortion for many pro-life advocates. The phrase
"States' rights" was used as a code for anti-civil rights legislation in the United
States in the 1960s, and allegedly in the 1970s and 1980s.
Conveying the message
The means by which a message is communicated can be as important as the message
itself. Direct mail, robocalling, advertising and public speaking are commonly used
depending upon the intended audience and the message that is conveyed. Press releases
are also used, but since many newspapers are folding in the USA, they have become
a less reliable way of communicating for American practitioners, and other methods
have become more popular.
In the USA and India, news organizations have begun to rely more on their own websites
and have developed a variety of unique approaches to publicity and public relations,
on and off the web.
Israel has employed a series of Web 2.0 initiatives which are indicative of how
a small nation can use internet mediated communication. Israel's initiative in 2008
included a blog,MySpace page,YouTube channel, Facebook page and a political blog
to reach different audiences.The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs started the
country's video blog as well as its political blog.[18] The Foreign Ministry held
the first microblogging press conference via Twitter about its war with Hamas, with
Consul David Saranga answering live questions from a worldwide public in common
text-messaging abbreviations. The questions and answers were later posted on IsraelPolitik,
the country's official political blog.
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