Pubic Relations

Public Relations

The role in public relations is diverse and frequently misunderstood. In today's environment it can mean different thing to different people. In general, the purpose of this specialized field is to help create and communicate an image for an individual or organization. The audience is the public, which is representative of employees, governing bodies, other organizations, consumers, and citizens. With competition constantly endangering the viability of organizations, a great deal of money and resources is leveraged to market in such a way that one can position themselves to draws attention to their strengths and differences. Market positioning and strategy place importance on organization ability to develop a mission statement and vision that emphasizes the overall goals and objectives. However, no marketing activities have the ability to develop an organizations reputation quite the way public relations can. This paper will compare and contrast my personal definition of public relations against definitions from three other sources. In addition, an attempt will also be made to determine and explain why there are so many different definitions in the industry at this time.

Public relations aims to present information and interests to a target audience in a positive light. The objective of public relations is to communicate to the public in order to gain acceptance, understanding, and visibility. It allows organizations to expose information regarding what an organization or individual has planned or accomplished. Public relations representatives have diverse roles and responsibilities, which appear to unique based on the needs of the client, industry, and society. The ultimate goal is to influence and direct the public. Public relations activities may include sponsoring in community events, participating in charitable events, and overseeing all communication channels. Communication channels can include media, marketing materials, brochures, commercials, the Internet, newspaper, magazines, and trade journals. Public relations differ from marketing in the fact that most publicity obtained through PR does not directly cost a company. In addition, it has other benefits such as communicating a message has greater credibility with the public and a greater potential to reach a broader audience.

Though the public relations field is quickly growing and continually diversifying, an explanation has yet to be explicitly defined. As a past employee of External Affairs and Corporate Communications at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of NJ, my personal views of public relations activities were a focus on effective, persuasive, and factual communications. The communications staff spent a great deal of time choosing the words of internal and external communications carefully and performing their promise to "give back to New Jersey citizens". A great deal of time and money was invested in community events, sponsorships, and goodwill donations. As in any company, bad press is at one time or another inevitable, but our performance and consistent actions helped us recover and sustain the relationship we had with the public. Personally, I considered public relations the face of the organization and a tool to make a personal connection with our key publics'. However, other industries and organization has different views of what public relations means.

The first definition of public relations comes from The Public Relations Society of America. "Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other" (Public Relations Society of America, 2006, 1). This definition is broad and leaves a lot of room for individual interpretation. The important words are "adapt" and "mutually", which establishes the importance of recognizing the constant change inherent in relationships as well as the importance in insuring the relationship is mutual. Wikipedia (2006) defines public relations as "the art and science of building relationships between an organization and its key publics". This definition focuses on the importance of establishing the relationship between the organization and its key publics and implies that public relations are a specialized talent. The final definition defines public relations "as the planned process to influence public opinion through sound character and proper performance based on mutually satisfactory two-way communication" (Seitel, 2004, 3). This definition is a more explanatory and brings in the importance of character, ethics, and performance. In addition, it directly places the importance of two-way communication. These factors are important aspects in perception and building relationships. All three definitions are unique, but all three depict the value of establishing a connection with the public.

It is important to understand the approach public relations