Reflection Of Public Relations

In our first class with a speaker, Kelly Rossman discussed about while the social media and writing is a key aspect of Public Relations you must also look at the business part of Public Relations. The business aspect you should have includes partner agreements, no competition contracts, confidentiality agreements and more. All of these things help your business run smoothly and ensure that your customers are protected. When dealing with people you never know what is going to happen because they are so unpredictable. Having the safety guard to protect you is not only important for your business but for yourself also. It gives you peace at mind knowing that if you were to wake up the next morning to bad news at least you have something to fall back on. This will help you focus on being the best Public Relations specialist you can be and take away unnecessary worry. Going forward I will make sure that

: The Public Relations game is fast changing. The industry has been found to be intimidating in its approach, especially for those who do not practice it. PR is no more cut and dry it used to be in the past. In the current scenario, the domain is all about maintaining focus on the art and science of creating and promoting favourable relationship with the public.

I do not know much about public relations (PR), but if I can attempt to put it in a single definition it would be the communication or process in connecting to the mass media. The mass media is any consumer, voter or supporter of that particular company or person. When I envision what a person might do in a career in public relations I immediately think of Olivia Pope from ABC’s popular show Scandal. Public relations is involved with creating press releases, curating charities and essentially anything that will helps improve that business’ brand or that party’s’ image significantly. Unlike a management position, public relations comes in and consults during a crisis or scandal that affects the public and leaves when the situation is resolved.

Public Relations is the art and social science of studying trends, forecasting their impacts, analysis organisation leaders and applying planned sequencers of action which will assist both the organisation’s and the public attentiveness (Danny Moss, Dejan Vercic, Gary Warnaby, 2002).

Public Relations in New Zealand is widely useful, practised and builds up an organisation’s relationships with its publics. PR in short, is essentially about communication and relationship building. PRINZ [Public Relations Institute of New Zealand] (2009) defines PR as “The deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.” This essay will deconstruct and critically examine this definition of public relations in relation to PR theories. These theories being Systems Theory, Relationship Management and Excellence Theory will be examined and applied to campaign examples. This will give a comprehensive understanding of the theory’s meanings as well as relationships with aspects of the PRINZ definition of PR. To understand PR theories however, the term publics must first be addressed.

When the term public relations are heard, there is not an immediate understanding of the career, let alone its writings. The lines of the responsibilities of a public relations professional are often blurred and confused. However, the Public Relations Society of America composed a specific definition to help with the confusion: “public relations are a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics” (“About Public Relations”). Breaking down the definition a bit shows exactly what public relations is about – “mutually beneficial relationships” (“About Public Relations”). Professionals work to create and maintain various relationships, whether it be with journalists or clients, that will yield positive results for all parties involved. In an interview, Vallerie, who works in public relations, revealed she interacts “with upwards of 20 different people” daily (Mackillop). Publics are generally thought of as the general public population; this is true to an extent for public relations. A public is “anyone who ever has or ever will form an opinion about the client” (Roost). This means that it is possible to have more than one public that a professional is dealing with for their work.

The most recent definition of public relations, according to the Public Relations Society of America (2012), states that “Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Through the rapid advancement of modern media and technology, there have never been more outlets and opportunities available for accomplishing the goals of public relations. Believing the development of social media has not created serious changes in the way public relations practitioners go about their duties would be foolish and a fast track to falling behind in this rapid world of communication. The main goals of public relations are “to

The negative portrayal of public relations in media has created a bias for those entering the field and working in the field. This impacts society by giving them a negative view when they’re really just uneducated on the profession. My grandmother, being 85 when explaining to her what I was planning to do with my life I made sure that public relations sounded exciting and useful and that stuck with her and that is what she will tell her friends, and our relatives. But for example when someone researches on it and finds only negative things, they will spread that, they will repeat the negative things they read and the key terms like “ manipulator, schemer, controller” will be used and thought of pertaining to the profession. Media has an extreme influence on everyone these days, especially the newer generations to come. Why when looking for a future job would someone follow a path of something people view as negative? As a joke, As a wedding planner with no jobs? Media is ruining the reputation of public relations with its harsh assumptions, its movie characters with their easy, boring, unchallenging careers, and just uneducated people writing stories on how they’ve been “manipulated” by someone in the public relations profession.

Many people view the role of a public relations professional within an organization as one that involves “making the company look good” among other image enhancing functions. Whether they are called PR professionals, PR people, media relations folks, they are the ones typically called on to inform the public of updates or improvements, they are called to help change the perception of the public, help with rebranding efforts and in the event of negative press or other crises, public relations professionals are often called on to “fix things,” to wield that magic wand of words and press releases to make the bad stuff all go away in an effort to preserve or salvage a positive identity. Many would be surprised to learn that the role of a

o Public relations is the practice of managing the spread of information between an organisation (eg a company) and the public. For example; print, online and reputation management campaigns.

Public relation is a management function that helps achieve organizational objectives, define philosophy, and facilitate organizational change. Public relations practitioners communicate with all relevant internal and external publics to develop positive relationships and to create consistency between organizational goals and societal expectations.

Public relations has changed a lot since the Declaration of Principles and the launch of the modern public relations industry 110 years ago, and it’s an industry that is constantly evolving. Modernization has played a huge role in shifting PR and journalism to another level where it’s highly exposed and under constant scrutiny of the public eye. However, as the mistrust in journalism has began to grow and expand, PR is getting its break from the negativity and society’s attitude towards it has improved greatly. As written in PR Week, “the world of PR has changed dramatically, mainly for the better” (Leaf, 2013). However, there are both positive and negative implications of these changes and one cannot turn a blind eye on either. PR has

The perceived ‘cantankerous’ relationship that characterises the exchanges between public relations professionals and media practitioners has been rife since the birth of public relations. The pair are, in its simplest term ‘frenemies’, they do work together, albeit covertly, and are usually hesitant to admit (on the media side) their cooperation. However, there is no absolute trust held between the two for there is a shifting power of control and influence that continually changes, which Fletcher (as cited in Hobsbawn, 2010, p. 64) believes is due to the market value of the particular product that public relations is representing. Media practitioners are often called the ‘watchdogs’ of society, their history of holding the rulers of society accountable and maintaining democracy is a view that is still maintained today. They are, however, in the eyes of public relations practitioners the ‘gate-keeper’, whereby they decide what is accessible to the public, conversely this power has somewhat diminished due to the rise of the internet. Comparatively, public relations practitioners are viewed by the media as “spin doctors” who threaten legitimate news content and act as “...the servants of vested interests who deny the people their right to know...”(Greenslade, 2005, as cited in White & Hobsbawm, 2007, p.284). In discussing the symbiotic relationship that is held between the two with the essay being written from the perspective of a public relations student, it is

The theory explains that the value of public relations in organization and society lies in socially responsible managerial decisions and quality organization to public relations. Organisations must behave in ways that solve the problems and satisfy the goals of the stakeholders as well as the management in order to be effective. Good relationship with organisation’s strategic publics is helpful in developing and achieving goals desired by both the organization and its publics, reducing costs of negative publicity, and increasing revenue by providing products and services needed by stakeholders. Practitioners identify publics who are affected by or affect organizational decisions and communicate symmetrically with them to build high quality long term relations.

The public relations tactics in relation to the corporate context will now be examined. Customer relations can be associated with the monitoring of attitudes of key publics and stakeholders especially in regards to any negative incidents that have the potential to effect the organisation’s reputation and consumer trust (Wilcox, 2013, p.312). For Malaysian Airlines, this is evident given the potential for consumer boycotts with the missing aircraft’s (Crossman Communications, 2015, p2). Having over 12, 000 employees, employee relations are important for the organisation. Employee relations consist of monitoring employees’ attitudes and beliefs towards the organisation (Wilcox, 2013, p316) as there is potential for negative word of mouth by employees essentially damaging the company’s reputation. This is evident as according to Malaysian Airlines, they offer a “dynamic exciting environment that nurtures a diverse talented team that work to make great things happen” (2017). Finally, media relations are vital in a corporate context as “negative coverage can cause a corporation’s reputation to plummet” (Wilcox, 2013, p. 310). Having said that, it is important as public relations professionals to establish positive relationships with those who operate in the media industry. Kimberly Blessing argues the two fields (public relations and journalism) have an important working interrelationship with “60% of PR