Public relations does more than draft press releases, measure ‘hits’ in the media and build relationships with key media representatives.
The core base for beneficial communication is to be familiar with the attitudes and concerns of consumers, employees, public interest groups to establish and maintain cooperative working relationships.
In addition to fulfilling their traditional role of getting a company’s message out, PR also develops ways to bridge the lines of communication open between consumers and brands.
PR is a more sophisticated and moulded approach that begins with a grass roots method, but assures a more prolific way to reach out to the masses. At its core, it orbits around a universal reality — people act based upon their perception of facts.
By managing or influencing people’s perceptions, PR hopes to start a sequence of behaviours that will lead to the achievement of an organisation’s objectives. When those in public relations successfully create, change, or reinforce opinion through persuasion, their primary objective is accomplished.
A better-educated consumer will scrap slogans and salesmanship. They won’t want to be sold. They will want to be told. They will have the tools to seek out information that will help them make best choices which the PR industry provides.
Let’s analyse the principles:
Helps build up credibility of the brand: PR enhances an organisation’s credibility, because it’ll operate through numerous trusted intermediaries. Plus, these intermediaries communicate to a certain audience which looks to them to filter out all unnecessary information.
Messages chosen for communication will gain credibility due to the intermediaries’ credibility.
Public relations is precise and detailed: Public relations is less predictable due to you having to get the intermediary to comprehend your important points and reiterate them in his/her messages. It means cautiously aligning them with an intermediary’s messages.
It’ll mean knowing his needs and your audience’s needs and where your business and its messages fit within that environment.
Public relations is based on lasting relationships with key influencers: Great public relations means setting up ongoing relationships with many important influencers. And knowing how your business may become an exceptional data source for the influential.
Public relations is not advertising: It is a time consuming and labour intensive effort. It’ll mean opportunistically thinking and evaluating ‘what is news worthy’ regarding your business with a keen eye. If your business is able to do this, PR may help it look more influential and more important.
In the end, brands have a constant concern — how to cement their relations with existing audiences and tap into potential new ones. Whether you’re a huge fast-moving consumer goods corporation or a stand-alone business, the question always is: “How can I grow my business?”
Integrated marketing communications is a strategic process that boosts the blending of all the elements under the marketing mix. PR forms a vital part of this campaign, and proven to be the most credible source in consumers’ mind.
Understanding how message strategies evolve and intertwine can make PR ideas more relevant and impactful. With integrated marketing campaigns constantly evolving, it has developed its own approach to holistic communication.
It is not just marketing communication with warmed over PR concepts like relationships and stakeholders. Something novel and different is growing from the amalgamation of public relations, social media, crisis management, advertising and promotion.
This new pyramid is becoming recognisable as a distinct species with its own theories and practices.
The writer is the CEO of Venture Communications.
