My guide to public relations so far…week 6 of my degree
Before you read any further, I am sure you’re either thinking ‘What is PR?’ or ‘Isn’t PR the same as advertising?’. I am 6 weeks into studying this brand new subject at degree level, and thought I would explore my opinion so far.
Even though PR has been going on behind the scenes for many many years, the general public seem to have a lack of knowledge of the PR industry and what role it has in the media. It is easy to explain PR quickly by saying it’s just advertising or similar to marketing, but I want to explain further and show the difference, because even though the goals are similar, the jobs are not the same.
How is PR defined?
PR is officially defined by the CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) as:
“Public Relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.”
“Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”
What is the difference between Public Relations and marketing/advertising?
To differentiate PR from advertising/marketing, I believe that Public Relations earns the reputation and relationship it creates with a brand, organisation or the media. It is a positive way of representing a brand/organisation in the public eye and influences the understanding and opinion from the public. This can be through campaigns, ways of making the client more well known, tackling negativity towards the client and working with the media in general.
Marketing and advertising, in comparison, is the promotion of brands, products or organisations. This tends to be paid, to increase sales or revenue.
To simplify this, marketing/advertising is promotion, whereas PR is representation.
What jobs are there to do within PR?
PR is defined by the Public Relations Society of America as “anticipating, analysing and interpreting public opinion, attitudes and issues that might impact for good or ill, the operations of the organization”. This means that companies should hire PR practitioners when they want to protect and enhance their reputation with the public and the media.
A PR practitioner can have a huge range of different roles and responsibilities within a company:
Writing press releases
Writing blog posts
Working with the press
Responses to negative opinions
Writing social media content
Designing campaigns
Social media promotions
Creating brand awareness
Why has PR changed?
In the new and upcoming generations, the use of old media like newspapers and radio is massively declining, with many newspapers now online, and many companies now using online services and social media instead of brochures and leaflets.
Public relations is now influenced by the new technology. PR practitioners use the social media sites Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to promote brands, and the increase of ‘influencers’ on social media can alter opinion and the brand’s reputation in the public eye. Campaigns are hugely successful when on social media too, and can reach out to masses of their target audience. Campaigns are different to how advertising and marketing practitioners would just simply show off their product in an appealing way on an advert so people will use or buy it.
I don’t believe that there are specific rights or wrongs in the way people interpret public relations. I have recently studied how public relations can be perceived in 6 different ways: relationship management, marketing communications, persuasion, corporate communication, reputation management and communication management and these are all true to an extend and can all be argued for or against.
However, Public Relations is not a different way of saying advertising or marketing. It is about creating a positive reputation and relationship between the brand/organisation and the public/media.
Thanks for reading! Keep smiling and have a great day! Liv xxx
