The Tight-Rope of PR

Risk = Walking a tight-rope.

Issues = A lack of balance.

Crisis = Falling fifty feet to your doom.

Recovery = Accepting medical help.

At least this is what these terms refer to if my brother, the semi-professional, adrenalin addicted; teenage wrestler ever gets the stupid idea to try tight-rope walking without any safety harnesses. In public relations the effects are somewhat less extravagant but no less important to understand.

Risk is essentially being put into a situation where the outcome is unknown; therefore, in this case the public relations practitioner must be able to make an informed guess as to what the outcome may be. This is managing the risk.

Management skills are also needed when dealing with a crisis, after all, no matter how well a campaign is planned its almost guaranteed that something unplanned will happen. According to this week’s readings, the ten steps to good crisis management are:

1. Tell the truth.
2. Tell it quickly, consistently and fully.
3. If blame is deserved admit it and apologise.
4. Explain what is being done to overcome the crisis.
5. Contact effected families, employees and other important stakeholders.
6. Provide email addresses, fax and phone numbers for media queries.
7. Keep the media and important stakeholders informed of progress.
8. Do not speculate.
9. Keep a log of media queries and return calls promptly.
10. Be alert to rumours and correct misapprehensions as quickly as possible.

Readings: Chapter 11 ‘Risk, issues, crisis and recovery’ in J. Johnston & C. Zawawi (Eds.), Public Relations: Theory and Practice (pp. 298-327). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Pamphlets / Brochures: Use them wisely or leave them at home!

Upon reading the title of this week’s article the creative side of my brain had a complete and utter freak out. Typical?! What happened to innovative, original, colourful and inspirational public relation?! As with al of my reactions to this course I have been promptly settled by the fact that although I have outrageously exciting ideas of public relations, the practice of it also requires hard work and more knowledge than how to update a Facebook status or how to retweet on Twitter.

This week’s reading opens with what I believe should be stuck to the desk of every public relations practitioner in Australia, if not the world. It reminded me of a hospital waiting room I was in recently. I took notice of the pamphlet section of the wall which was overflowing with health warnings and parenting how-to’s then I noticed that everyone was either reading a hundred year old issue of National Geographic or Women’s Day or watching the muted television in the corner. I find myself unable to elaborate on or paraphrase what the author has written so I have included the series of questions that one should have an answer to before designing any pamphlet or brochure.

Set objectives:

Why are we producing it?

Who will receive/read it?

What do they think now?

What do we want them to think/do?

Plan and budget:

How often should it be produced?

What should it look like: how big, how think, how glossy?

What will it cost? Steps involved and timings.

Implement program:

Who will produce it?

Who will provide material for it?

How will we distribute it?

Evaluate:

How will we measure the readers’ response?

How often will we check progress?

Reading: Article from" The new Australlian and New Zealand public relations manual, Tymson & Lazar", 5th rev. and updated ed., Chapter 4, 2006, pp. 74-116

Research and Evaluation: Boring but Necessary

Research and evaluation…sounds awfully strict, obsessive and uninviting if you ask me. In fact on first impressions it reminded me of the PR equivalent to some torturous task that would have been set by Captain Harris of the Police Academy films. Not a fantastic start to the readings this week. However, like all industries Public Relations can not simply be all glamour and Hollywood-esque events. The reality is that research and evaluation are on-going processes throughout any communications campaign. The reasoning behind this is that it allows for accountability, which is a major focus of management in this day and age. This need for accountability is displayed prominently in the fact that most research focuses on the environment in which the organization operates. The importance of research and evaluation can not be stressed enough.

As glamourous and Hollywood-esque events sound, it must be remembered how crucial the evaluation is also. This week’s reading suggests the use of three evaluation tools: the debriefing meeting; the event assessment; and the business activity assessment. A debriefing meeting is defined as being useful to “review each aspect of the event planning management and marketing, examine any problems and identify ways that future events can be improved” (p. 278). It is important to note here that everything that is evaluated should be measured against the campaign goals. The event assessment is the financial side of the evaluation and deals with things like ticket sales and so forth. Finally, the business activity assessment looks at how the event helped raise business for both affiliated and non-affiliated industries.

Readings: Chapter 6 ‘Research and Evaluation’ and Chapter 10 'Sponsorship and event Management' in J. Johnston & C. Zawawi (Eds.), Public Relations: Theory and Practice (pp. 139-170 and 268-297). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Tactics and business: What does PR have in common with the military?

Among students there is often the assumption that the terms ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ are interchangeable. This week’s readings point out that this is not the case. A strategy is the “over-arching approach or ‘game-plan’” (p. 207, Ch. 8). Where as tactics are smaller campaigns that relate directly back to achieving the strategic outcome. Tactics should be chosen carefully while keeping in mind that society is becoming more complex and multicultural. This complexity has led to the fact that target groups in Western society are now blurred and people suffer, what the reading terms, ‘information overload’, meaning that due to an excess amount of advertising people tend to ‘switch off’. When choosing tactics PR professional have the choice of controlled tactics (advertising, annual reports, brochures, etc.) and uncontrolled tactics (media relations).

The second half of the readings this week focused on PR and business. As the reading notes, this topic is key for recent graduates and a “sound knowledge and understanding of business is…a valuable asset” (p.408, ch. 14). This means that there is a need for the PR professional to have a working knowledge of management, promotions, media and finance. The PR role is crucial to business as the practice of ethical PR helps businesses to “remain socially responsible… [and] maintain public confidence” (p. 408, ch. 14).



Readings: Chapter 8 ‘ Tactics’ and Chapter 14 'Public relations in business' in J. Johnston & C. Zawawi (Eds.), Public Relations: Theory and Practice (pp. 206-237 and 389-413). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

PR & Communities: Establishing a bond, not just talking at each other!

In PR today there is an ethical responsibility to have at least a little bit of two-way communication going on. This need for PR practitioners to engage more with publics and stakeholder groups has led to greater levels of transparency and accountability for organizations involved, however, to engage with communities one must first know what they are.

The reading this week cites the Oxford English Dictionary definition which is “a fellowship, or a community of relations or feelings” (p. 363). This sounds a little cold and flat if you ask me. Communities are important to just about every facet of PR and working and communicating with communities should be every practitioner’s passion.

The reading talks about six basic characteristics which could apply to a community. These are: commitment to, and quality of, relationships; sense of interconnectedness and social cohesion; commitment to core values and beliefs; balancing of rights with responsibilities; sense of empowerment in decision-making; broadening of one’s social world. However, it must be remembered that ‘community’ is not always a positive thing as it “can have negative or anti-social consequences” in the form of the shutting down of debate and the exclusion of voices thus favouring the views and opinions of those with the power to broadcast. ‘Community’ can also over-simplify complex groups and relationships; here the reading uses the example of the ‘Aboriginal community’.

Once a practitioner knows what a community is they must then communicate with its members. An impossible task to complete without an understanding of it. This is where the need for diversity comes into the picture. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) discovered that PR is mainly a ‘white’ profession which means that practitioners must work with what is available (community leaders, peak organisations, and advisory bodies) to understand minority communities.

Dealing with communities must ever be thought of as an easy job but it is a necessary one. I believe that it is in everybody’s best interests that the days of communities and PR professionals talking AT each other are long gone and now its common practice to collaborate and come up with a solution which works for everyone.

Reading: Chapter 13 ‘Communities and Public Relations’ in J. Johnston & C. Zawawi (Eds.), Public Relations: Theory and Practice (pp. 361-388). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Ethical Spin-Doctors? Yeah, Right!

“A code of ethics for those evil figures known as Public Relations professionals? I’d like to see that!”

Well, that would have been my ignorant, cynical view five weeks ago. In actual fact the Public Relations industry has been struggling to compile a universal code of ethics since its birth. In 1906 Ivy Lee made one of the earliest attempts and due to the nature of the industry Public Relations is not all that much closer to consensus. However, with that said, there is a theory which places a broad outline to ethical behaviour and how to identify unethical behaviour.

To define ethics, the reading states that ethics are “personal values or deeply held belief systems that underpin the behaviour and moral choices made by an individual in response to a specific situation” (p. 111). Due to this idea of individual circumstances impacting upon what ethics can be defined as it is important that Public Relations practitioners utilise Immanuel Kant’s three-step process of solving ethical dilemmas which is summarised in the readings as follows:
When in doubt as to whether an act is moral or not, apply the categorical imperative, which is to ask the question: ‘What if everyone did this deed?’
Always treat all people as ends in themselves and never exploit other humans.
Always respect the dignity of human beings.

It is incredibly important that practitioners can identify what is ethical and what is not as the codes available to them are far too broad and generalised to apply to all fields of the industry. The professional associations that do provide codes simply ensure that there is a bottom line of standards to meet. An example of a code of ethics can be found on the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) website. One of the biggest setbacks to a larger structure of ethics is that professional associations, such as PRIA, are voluntary leading to the fact that behaviours cannot be enforced outside of the membership group.

Senebti,

Kobe.

Media Relations: The Reality Behind the Glamour

Journalists, reporters, and the anchorman. That has always been the direction of my thoughts when ‘the media’ was mentioned. However, this Hollywood, glamour paparazzi is not as glitzy in reality. In the real world some hard-working PR practitioner has spent hours planning out the press conference for that sports team on the television or stressing over whether or not those press kits they spent weeks working on will gain positive coverage for their client. In many instances PR can also fall victim to this process of glamorisation. Media relations are the most well-known activity of the PR practitioner, after all who doesn’t think of C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) in the West Wing standing in front of all those journalists in the White House? This is the image we see everyday, however, this weeks readings show that there is more to media relations than publicity and press agentry.

The media environment has changed drastically since PR’s humble beginnings. The media now consists of television, newspapers, magazines, movies, radio, blogging, podcasting, SMS, mobile phone advertising and more! Its important to remember that no matter what aspect of the media you deal with – journalists to bloggers – “effective media relations still requires efficient, informed and ethical professional behaviour” (Johnston & Zawawi, p.239).

The reading this week stressed the need for PR practitioners to be up-to-date. Today’s media is slowly moving towards an online, almost constantly streaming industry with many of the major print media making the leap to online. Through this shift to cyber-news the public is also gaining the ability to take part in the broadcasting process as the media calls on its audiences to contribute by way of polls, comments, and websites such as ireport.com. With news moving this quickly PR practitioners need to know what’s going on.

With all of this growth happening in the media it is often easy to forget about the ‘alternative’ media. These media target specific groups of people, for example gay radio stations target the gay and lesbian community. Such media should not be overlooked and can come in handy when trying to reach a targeted group.

No matter what media you are aiming to gain coverage in one must always remember the nine values that make news. They are:

1. Impact

2. Conflict

3. Timeliness

4. Proximity

5. Prominence

6. Currency

7. Human interest

8. Unusual

9. Underdog/Fair Go

Although all these aspects of PR can be planned to a degree, you always need to be prepared for disaster. This week’s second reading demonstrates this in the exceptional way that Singapore’s health authorities dealt with the SARS epidemic. The entire strategy rested upon the public’s trust in health officials. In a situation like this one trust is imperative because, as the reading states, “when people cannot understand they have to believe. And whether they believe or not is a matter of trust” (Chong, p. 7). Gaining the public’s trust is down to the PR practitioner and their strategy.

Valete,

Kobe.

Readings: 

Chapter 9 ‘Media Relations’ in J. Johnston & C. Zawawi (Eds.), Public Relations: Theory and Practice (pp. 238-267). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Chong, M. (2006) A crisis of epidemic proportions: What communications lessons can
practitioners learn from the SARS crisis in Singapore. Public Relations Quarterly; Spring
2006; 51, 1; ABI/INFORM Global; pg. 6.

Strategy & Planning: The back bone of PR

I found the readings this week some what challenging in that they did not follow directly on from last week’s chapter, however, they have been no less useful in explaining how the practice of the mysterious Public Relations industry operates.

One of the most obvious points made by the readings in my opinion was one of reputation. Since PR is such a heavily reputation-driven industry when the readings mentioned that you must be willing to bet your own reputation on your client I made immediate note. As if PR practitioners don’t have a bad enough name already they also have to watch where they place their reputations. If a business fails in its attempts to repair its reputation or fails to disclose or change practices that have led to a negative reputation the PR practitioner involved may also lose their reputation and good name as a result.

The readings centered on strategy and planning. Two concepts that are different in themselves but go hand-in-hand. One cannot be performed without the other, a kind of a double act if you will. Strategy is, according to the readings, “about formulating a guiding idea and considered intent that responds to the needs of an organization” (p. 171). Where as the readings defines planning as being about “developing a carefully sequenced series of actions to progress and assess the strategy” (p.171).

With the definitions out of the way, the readings get down to the nitty gritty of both sides of the topic starting with strategy. In this section the most valuable thing I came away with was the slightly altered version of Mintzberg’s ‘Five P’s’. These include: Perspective (through research determine the client’s perspective on the world); Position (in relation to al markets and publics); Purpose (includes over-riding goal of PR activity); Process (how you are going to achieve your goals through every PR action) and; Pattern (making sure that everything that is being done is getting you closer to the goal that has been set and adheres to the client’s values).

In the planning section of the readings there are pages and pages of different forms of planning and different charts for different aspects of the planning process but the easiest by far to remember and the part I found to be most important was the except from Time Management for Dummies (Mayer 1995) which shows the importance of basic time management and organisational skills. Without the use of these none of the other fancy charts and systems are useful. As a PR practitioner time management and communication about your time is one of the most crucial aspects of the job.

Ciao,

Kobe.

Readings: Tilley, E. (2009) Strategy and Planning. In J. Johnston & C. Zawawi (Eds.), Public Relations: Theory and Practice (pp. 171-205). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Propaganda and Publicity: The Evils of PR?

Up until recently, I must admit, I thought of Public Relations in much the same way as many other ignorant folk out there. I have, however, come to realise that the myth of the ‘spin-doctor’ is exactly that, a myth. Many people in the world today fail to think beyond the pages of their magazines or the shelves of their supermarkets and therefore never question how a product ends up in their convenient, arms-length reach. A crucial factor in the public buying a product is educating the public that the product exists. This is PR.

The readings this week touched on the issue of terminology that is commonly used to describe Public Relations. Jane Johnston, Clara Zawawi and Jeff Brand noted that “sometimes the phrase ‘public relations’ is avoided in job titles because…the term is synonymous with ‘spin’ or ‘spin-doctoring’, which have negative connotations of putting a slant on a subject or disguising or hiding information in order to have something appear in a favourable light” (Johnston et. al. 2009, p. 4). This view of ‘spin-doctoring’ is, unfortunately, one held by many, however, with the event of PR personnel becoming less mysterious through means of growing technology and social media people are able to see that the role of PR is not to simply make a product appear good but to build a reputation for their client. In today’s tech-savvy, fast-paced world this reputation cannot be based on lies and ‘spin’ as secrets reach the public too fast to cover any tracks.

This conception of ‘spin-doctoring’ links in many ways to the view that PR is propaganda, which is partly true in the fact that the so-called ‘father of modern public relations’ Edward Bernays favoured the propaganda theory of PR. This is shown in his 1928 book, Propaganda, when he states that “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society” (Johnston et. al. 2009, p. 49). However, this analysis of PR quickly became unpopular after the conflict with Germany in World War II due to the use of propaganda by the Nazis. But the question still remains, is PR ‘weak propaganda’ like Kevin Moloney suggests or is propaganda a historical manifestation of PR? The latter would suggest that we have progressed to a more ethical and acceptable practice, but do practitioners today still fall into the ‘evil’ trap of propaganda?

Another point that was made in the readings this week was that PR has a history of publicity stunts beginning with Phineas T. Barnum, an American who used stunts to gain press coverage for his circus. This was followed up in Australia by a man in Roman dress riding a chariot from Sydney to Melbourne to promote the film Ben Hur in the early decades of the 20^th century. This is no longer the only way for products and causes to gain press coverage, however, that does not mean that manifestations of the publicity stunt no longer exist. Many PR practitioners utilize this tool to kick start media coverage, for example, Bark in the Park (a concert and gathering for dogs and dog-lovers in Sydney and Melbourne) is a great example of this. It provides elements such as music, competitions and celebrity hosts in order to attract crowds and press coverage. However, many seen today are slightly more watered down from Edward Bernays’ ‘Torches or Freedom’ used in the 1920s to promote cigarettes to women.

This week’s readings truly show the ways in which PR has changed through the decades and the issues associated with defining it. However, no matter how you look at PR one thing is certain: it is essential to our consumer-driven economies and our want-driven cultures.

Au revoir,

Kobe.

Readings:  Johnston et. al. 2009. Public Relations: Theory and Practice (3rd Edition). Chapters 1-3.

Hey There!

Welcome to my blog for the course CMNS 1290: Introduction to Public Relations.

I am going to be honest here and say that the closest I have ever come to blogging is updating a Facebook status. So, with that taken into account, I endeavour to do my best and deliver some thought-provoking insights into what I see as important in my weekly readings. All I can do now is hope that my tutors and lecturers think they are important also.

Hope you enjoy!

Adios,

Kobe.