a) public relations is intended to build good relations with the company's various publics by obtaining favorable publicity. building up a good "corporate image," and handing or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, and events.
Public Relations offers serveral unique qualities. It is very believable - news, stories, features, and events seem more real to readerss than ads do. Public relations can also reach many prospects who avoid salespeople and advertisements; the message get to ty buyer as" news" rather then a sales directed communication. Like advetising, public relations can dramatize a company or product.
The “news” quality of public relations has also served to blur the distinction between “advertising” and information posted on the Internet. Although some initial postings resulted in the company in question being “spammed,” a great many initial “information- only” postings about products on the Internet were nothing more than public relation pieces. Once the door was open, it wasn’t long before unabashed advertising took hold.
b) The Institute of Public Relations
“The planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics”
What is meant by the term “public” in the above definition?
A business may have many “publics” with which it needs to maintain good relations and build goodwill. For example, consider the relevant “publics” for a publicity-quoted business engaged in medical research.
* Employees
* Shareholders
* Trade unions
* Members of the “general public”
* Customers (past and present)
* Pressure groups
* The medical profession
* Charities funding medical research
* Professional research bodies and policy-forming organizations
* The media
* Government and politicians
The role of public relations is to:
• Identify the relevant publics
• Influence the opinions of those publics by:
- reinforcing favorable opinions
- transforming perhaps neutral opinions into positive ones
- changing or neutralizing hostile opinions
Public relation techniques:
There are many techniques available to influence public opinion, some of which are more appropriate in certain circumstances than others:
Consumer communication
Customer press releases
Trade press releases
Promotional videos
Consumer exhibitions
Competitions and prizes
Product launch events
Celebrity endorsements
Web sites
Business communication
Corporate identity design
Company and product video
Direct mailings
Trade exhibitions
Internal / employee communication
In-house newsletters and magazines
Intranet
Notice boards
Employee conferences
E- mail
External corporate communication
Company literature (brochures, video etc.)
Community involvement programs
Trade, local, national and international media relations
Financial communication
Financial media relations
Annual report and accounts
Meetings with stock market analysts, fund manager etc.
Shareholder meetings (including the annual general meeting)
Given the wide range of techniques used in public relations, how is it possible to measure the effectiveness of public relations? It is actually quite difficult to measure whether the key messages have been communicated to the target public. In any event, this could be quite costly since it would involve a large amount of regular research. Instead, the main measures of effectiveness concentrate on the process of public relations, and include:
• Monitoring the amount of media coverage obtained (press cuttings agencies play a role in keeping businesses informed of this).
• Measuring attendance at meetings, conferences.
• Measuring the number of enquiries or orders received in response to specific public relations efforts
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