Print Journalism and Comparative Media

Inter-relationship of Media with Advertising and Public Relations

Public Relations

Looks after the reputation

Earning understanding and support

Influence the opinion and behaviour of publics

Establish and maintain goodwill and understanding between and organisation and its public

Public Relations

Definitions

Definitions of Public Relations“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” PRSA (Public Relations Society of America)

‘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.’

CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations)

Definitions of Public Relations

‘Public Relations is the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and its public.’ British Institute of Public Relations

Public relations is communication between an organization and its various stakeholders—both internal and external.

PR focuses on building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building a good corporate image, and handling crisis management issues. Today, a good PR firm must be experts in use of social media.

Publics in Public Relations

Publics in Public Relations

Publics are the interested audiences that are important in some way to an organization including current and potential customers, current and potential employees and management, investors, vendors and suppliers, media, government, and opinion leaders. They can be internal within an organization or external from an organization.

Internal publics are people employed by a firm or members of an organization. External publics are people and organizations that are clients doing business with a firm or agency.

PR Professionals: What do they do?

Media Relations — writing press releases and pitch letters, identifying media that are important in communicating your message and building relationships that ensure your success.

Strategic Planning — creating a communications plan that identifies what public relations opportunities exist for your company and what should be done to ensure maximum benefit.

Sales Communications — providing support for ongoing sales efforts by creating brochures, product information, literature, presentations, etc.

Community Relations — building goodwill with target markets through community, philanthropic and special programs that enhance your public image.

Internal Communications — creating internal public relations initiatives targeted at specific staff and internal constituencies through published materials, special events or electronic communications.

Crisis Management — communications initiatives that are designed to manage internal and external crises that have the potential to negatively impact the future of your business.

Social Media and Marketing — utilizing social media such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate your key messages by developing an online following, writing content and creating advertising.

Public Affairs and Issues Management — enhancing your public awareness by distributing information, holding educational programs and taking leadership on key issues that are affecting your community or industry.

Steps in PR practice

Public Relations activity has four steps:

Analysis, research and defining problems

Drawing up a programme of action

Communicating and implementing the programme

Monitoring the results, evaluation and possible modification

Tools of PR

• Press releases. Information that is communicated as a part of the regular TV or/and radio programme, newspapers, magazines and other types of mainstream media achieves a much bigger impact than advertisements. This is due to the fact that most people consider such information more trustworthy and meaningful than paid adds. Press release is therefore one of the oldest and most effective PR tools.

• Newsletters. Sending newsletters – relevant information about the organisation or/and its products/services - directly to the target audience is also a common method to create and maintain a strong relationship with the public. Newsletters are also a common marketing strategy but PR specialists use it to share news and general information that may be of interest to the target audience rather than merely promoting products/services.

• Blogging. To reach the online audience, PR specialists use the digital forms of press releases and newsletters but they also use a variety of other tools such as blogging and recently, microblogging. It allows them to create and maintain a relationship with the target audience as well as establish a two

-way communication.• Social media marketing. Like its name suggests, it is used primarily by the

marketing industry. Social media networks, however, are also utilised by a growing number of PR specialists to establish a direct communication with the public, consumers, investors and other target groups.

Advertisng vs Public Relations

Paid vs Free

Advertising• Advertising is paid, non-

personal communication through various media by business firms, NGOs and individuals.

• The objective of advertising is to sell products through paid means.

Public Relations• PR is the ,planned and

sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its public.

• Public relations attempts to sell the organization itself.

Message Control

Advertising

• Message in Advertising can be controlled as you buy space for an ad in media, the advertiser can say anything about the product he advertises. However, the audience shall remain skeptical.

Public Relations

• There is not much control over what gets printed in the columns of a newspaper. A PR person should learn to increase a company’s chances of positive publicity.

Duration of Coverage

Advertising

• In advertising you can pay for an advertisement to be shown in the media as many times as your budget allows.

Public Relations

• PR professionals give story idea to journalists. The journalists will then publish the story in different ways. This allows your target audience to see the information differently in many mediums, which may be more effective at reinforcing the message.

Biased Vs Non-biased perception

Advertising

• When customers see the ad, they realize that the objective of the message is to influence their buying behaviour, with the ultimate objective of selling that product.

Public Relations

• PR goes for third-party endorsement that removes bias and lends credibility to your story, product or service.

Advertising and PR

Advertising may or may not be used by an organisation but every organisation has a public perception and public relations. For example, the police may not advertise their services but they do have relations with people at large.

The target audience of advertising is also different both in kind and in number. Advertising is addressed to external audiences, primarily to consumers of goods and services. Public relations, on the other hand, presents its messages to specialised external audiences and internal publics.

While public relations begins very early and then proceeds steadily as a constant factor as apart of organisation’s existence, advertising is intensive at the launch.

Advertising

• ‘Advertising is the dissemination of information concerning an idea, service or product to compel action in accordance with the interest of the advertiser.’

----- Frank Jefkins

• ‘Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.’

---- American Marketing Association

A GOOD ADVERTISEMENT IS ONE WHICH SELLS THE PRODUCT WITHOUT DRAWING ATTENTION TO ITSELF.

IN THE MODERN WORLD OF BUSINESS, IT IS USELESS TO BE A CREATIVE, ORIGINAL THINKER UNLESS YOU CAN ALSO SELL WHAT YOU CREATE.