The Significance of Public Relations
It’s about noon, you just got out of class, or perhaps you are on lunch break, and you are absolutely starving. While your stomach is churning all you can think about is a juicy double cheeseburger from McDonald’s. Finally, you see the golden arches and your mouth begins to water as you wait in line for your overdue meal. As you grow increasingly impatient for your number nine extra value meal you’re dying to see if you’ll have the final piece to the ever so famous McDonald’s Monopoly game. You’re convinced there are no real winners in this game, and you leave the restaurant with your fifteenth free small fries “prize” in two weeks. Well, it has recently been discovered that their may
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By understanding the history, functions, and tools of public relations, it becomes possible to fully understand the true value behind the significance of this department. The significance of public relations dates back to many centuries before the emergence of any golden arches. The presence of public relations originated during the time of Caesar’s rule. According to the third edition of Media Now 2001, Caesar published a daily paper called Acta Diurna (“daily acts” or “daily records”) in 52 B.C., which was published for 400 years. This daily paper marked the beginning of public relations because Caesar’s primary focus was to mold the opinion of his people through the readings of his paper.
Caesar planted the seed for the idea of public relations, but the surfacing for modern public relations can be found within the Catholic Church. Also noted by Media Now, the Catholic Church is known for the origination of propaganda. In the 17th Century, the church set up its Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the “congregation for propagating faith.” This congregation recognized that their needed to be a third party to help facilitate the communication between the government and people. This eventually created the means for public opinion, linking the 17th Century ideal of public relations to our present day.
Although the church began the evolution of public opinion, the “father of public relations” undoubtedly
By the early 1900s, some journalists began investigating and reporting on the questionable promotional practices businesses were using. Their efforts helped increase awareness of these tactics among the public. Public relations began to reinvent itself along journalistic lines: the new field of public relations attracted to journalists, who were more comfortable with objectivity and the dissemination of information.
Early PR practices were deemed "press agentry" and were thought of a group that fell into a comparison with propaganda. This was because of the use of hype and manipulation of information. For the most part during development of the practice, there was little to no ethical boundaries. In the early 1900's however, there was a major focus on using factual information and labeling it public information, though somewhat manipulation, in order to help gain the public's interest or trust. This factual information however, was based solely around one-way communication, where the information was published simply for the knowledge of others, and not necessarily with the expectation that any action would come of the information. Of course the name of the game in public relations was always to convince someone to change or solidify their opinion on a topic or issue, in the
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 include the cancer ribbon awareness, support the troops, and those tear jerking commercials about animals and people in need. In the novel, Media Control The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Noam Chomsky writes “ It's not even a question. It doesn't mean anything. That's the point. The point of public relations
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
Public relations (PR) is essentially the practice of managing the flow of information that goes on between the people and a particular organization. Public relations in some situations provides organization or individual trying to gain exposure to people involving topics of public interests, issues and news items that do not require direct payment. The main purpose and aim of public relations done by a company or an organization mostly is to persuade the public, investors, partners, and other stakeholders to maintain a proper image and goodwill about it.. Some of the frequent and common activities that come under Public Relations are speaking at conferences, industry awards functions, press confrences, and employee communication.
Public relations is the contrary of marketing. In marketing, one pays to have their communication positioned in a tabloid, television or broadcasting. In public relations, the editorial that landscapes one’s business is not funded. The journalist, whether radio or newspaper, composes about or movies one’s business as an end result of data he or she established and investigated.
Contemporary public relations is a twentieth-century phenomenon that evolved from the press gentry of the 1800s. These old-time press agents played upon the credulity of the public in its desire to be entertained, whether or not they were deceived. Advertisements and press releases were often exaggerated to the point of being complete falsifications. In promoting an attraction, press agents dropped multitudes of tickets on the newspaper editors desk along with the releases. Voluminous publicity for the attraction usually resulted, and reporters, editors, and their families flocked to the free entertainment with scant regard for any ethical constraints (Wilcox, Ault, & Agee
"Public Relations is the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends." (Effective Public Relations, 2005, p.1)
The nephew of psychoanalysis giant Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays applied his uncle’s research to modern society. Written on his tombstone is “the father of public relations”, as his campaigns transformed how companies interact with society. Bernays expresses his justification for public relations in his book Propaganda. In the opening chapter, Organizing Chaos, Bernays asserts “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society” (9). He specifies “economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents… through propaganda of all
Governmental public relations have been inspired by Grunig’s models of PR and, particularly, by the concept of symmetrical communication between organizations and publics (Gregory, 2006; Fisher & Horsley, 2007), a concept which, with its relationships with the notion of excellence (Grunig & Hunt, 1984; J.E. Grunig & L. Grunig, 1992; Grunig, 2001), has constituted the major framework that has guided public relations scholarship for the past 30 years (Botan & Hazleton, 2006). Mutual benefit, mutual understanding, win-win mixed motivated communication, are concepts used to denominate purposes of organizational public relations.
Public Relations target a range of different publics and goals that jointly support an organ-ization's objectives because PR concerned with the views of a broad audience includes, general public and important stakeholders, such as the media, investors, customers, employees, suppliers, the com-munity, political leaders and many more so that they can achieve their objective which is to have a good relationship and strong bond between one another to enhance the company’s image and reputa-tion. However, marketing targeting on both existing and potential customers and consumers by meet-ing their demands, moving the goods and services from producers to distributors and to them and exceeding their expectation towards the company’s products and services (Pinkerton, 2014). So, the overall process of marketing is to boost public awareness of a certain product or service to increase loyalty and keep their customers and consumers with them (TARGETjobs,
Edward Bernay’s “Crystallizing Public Opinion” gives readers an insight on public relations and public opinions on its history and how it came about. The text was broken up into four different parts: scope and functions, the group and herd, technique and method, and lastly ethical relations. Each parts has certain chapter topics leads to the next which leads to the next parts of the book. The text is very helpful for those who are in public relations, I would not say the book was easy nor difficult, it was more in between. There are some chapters that are pretty lengthy compared to others and there will be names mentioned in a few chapters that can be a little confusing. Overall, it is best for people to know about the history of PR and
The tenets of the public relations industry have been studied and practiced throughout history. Alan Leahigh
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.