Public Relations

What is public relations?

• “Public relations is a management tool for leaders in business, government and other institutions to establish beneficial relationships with other institutions and groups”

Four steps necessary for PR

• First, identify your publics--your existing relationships

• Second, evaluate the relationships using research

• Design policies to improve the relation- ships

• Implement the policies– “enlightened self-

interest”

Role of public relations in a democracy

• A way for public to speak its desires & interests to organizations

• A way to achieve mutual adjustments between institutions and groups

• A safety valve for freedom

• An essential element to keep us informed

• Can help activate social conscience of organizations where we work

Origins of public relations

• Moguls in trouble• Vanderbilt• social Darwinism• Ivy Lee• Rockefeller• Ludlow Massacre• Philanthropy

Public relations on a new scale

• World War I

• George Creel--Creel Committee

• World War II

• Elmer Davis--Office of War Information

• Corporate giving– Minneapolis--5% club– United Way campaigns

Edward Bernays

• Freud’s nephew• WWI Creel Comm.• 1923 Crystallizing

Public Opinion• 1955 “Engineering

of Consent”• Social responsibility

Structure of public relations

• Arthur Page at AT&T

• PR as a management function

• External relations

• Internal relations

• Media relations

• PR agencies

PR services

• Publicity & promotion

• Lobbying• Political

communication• Image consulting• Financial PR

• Fundraising• Contingency

planning• Polling• Events coordination

PR and advertising

• Both persuade through mass media

• PR shapes org policy

• Sells points of view and images

• PR tries to influence media to tell its story a certain way

Integrated marketing communications

• Hot new buzz word.

• IMC--attempts to coordinate advertising as a marketing tool with promotion and publicity of the sort that PR experts can provide.

• Ad agencies move into PR

• Overlap in institutional advertising

Media relations: crisis management

• Open media relations– Tylenol case history

• Proactive media relations– Persian Gulf

Steps in Tylenol case

• Halt Tylenol manufacture & distribution

• Remove Tylenol from stores

• Launch massive ad campaign to exchange Tylenol for safe product

• Staff press center -50 PR experts for media & consumers

• Ordered internal co. investigation

• Full cooperation with gov’t investigators

• Tamper proof pkg.

Proactive media relations

• Crisis management– seize leadership on a

story

• Persian Gulf war– Pentagon

spokesman with Defense Sec’y & Chiefs of Staff

– Lots of news briefings

Adversarial media relations

• General Motors 1954 severed media relations with information boycott

• Mobil oil’s Herb Schmertz attacked media critics– Use of paid advertising, ‘advertorials’– Use corporate reps to tell Mobil’s side– Respond to any media criticism of oil

industry

Professionalization of PR

• Tarnished image– PT Barnum “Huckster”– “whitewashing”– “Flaks”– “public information,” “public affairs,”

“corporate communication” departments

• Standards,certification, accreditation

• Professional associations