Relationship between the Company and the Public - Essay Example

What is Public Relation? Course Name and Code Institution Name Department Name Insert Your Name Insert Your No Instructors Name 22 March 2009 The public views many organizations differently; one organization is favoured while the other is faced by criticism. In most cases, the organization should be favoured and most of the customers/public should embrace policies and plans of the organization. To achieve this, the relationship between the company and the public, investors and other people who are interested with company should be good1. This can only be achieved through understanding public relations. Thus, the aim of this paper is to define and discuss what is meant by public relations. Public relations engage cultivation of favourable relations for the products and organizations utilizing important figures in the public with the help of a variety of tools and communications channels. In the past years, or traditionally, the relation was build by working together with members of media by publicizing the product or organization through favourable stories in broadcast media and print. However, recently, the strategy of public relations as expanded through building awareness and a good image for a client or a company through articles and stories that are within relevant media outlets2. The approach extends to monitoring media channels for public comment regarding the organization or the product. The improvement of public relations extends to controlling crises that may impact negatively to the product image or company. Another strategy is through building goodwill through activities such as special programs, community development, events and philanthropic activities3. Generally, public relations can be viewed as a group of supervisory, management and technical functions that improves the organization’s ability to listen, appreciate and respond to the people who are beneficial or with beneficial relationships to increase the capability of the organization or products to achieve its values and missions. Hence, it is a managerial strategy that aims in specializing on two-way communication, which then fosters mutually beneficial relationships that will exist between an organization and its relevant publics4. In most organizations, there is the public relations department that tries to improve the organization’s reputation bringing into play skilled publicists. This department has the ability to show and highlight the positive attributes of the product, business or person. This is attributed to the fact that the business world is extremely competitive, and thus improving the view of the organization swings the competitive edge towards the organization. Hence, for a company to remain competitive, the company needs to stand out from the crowd and sale their difference or appeal to both the media and public5. The public are the people who utilize the organizations products or services while the media sells the company image. This department plays a paramount role in ensuring that the customers are assisted and the company is informed in the perceptions of the company in relation to the public. Many tools, methods and tactics can be used to improve the view of the organization revolving within the public relations. Public relations are determined to champion publicity; publicity is the spread of information to improve the awareness of the organization. Some common approaches towards the improvement of public relations requirements is through public targeting, lobby groups, spin, meet and greet and spin doctor. Public targeting is the identification of specific audience and ensures that the message that is tailored appeals to the audience. Marketers usually utilize this approach in segmenting markets to improve their selling approaches. Lobby groups are used to influence corporate policy, government policy or public opinion. A nice example of public relation is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Spin, a pejorative term, is the portrayal of a given circumstance in favouring one’s aim in terms of situation and event. However, the term spin does not mean that the activities that take place are deceptive, disingenuous or manipulative tactics6. Politicians in responding to counter argument or stating a position usually utilize this approach. Spin-doctor tries to improve the position of a given situations. Media houses that are run by the governments engage in spin, thus the government becomes the spin-doctor in ensuring that news stories and other public activities should be favourable to the government. Another approach that promotes public relations is Meet and Greet, in most cases; two parties are introduced to each other. This approach usually utilizes incentives like coming together in the restaurant encouraging relevant bodies to participate7. Public relations is a strategy that ensures that the reputation of the company is high, this approach is different from others promotional options. Public relations have unique powers when compared to other options. The public relations involves establishment of credibility for a person, company or even services/product in the segmented minds of customers and consumers by maximizing the influence of a third party, which is the media. Most audiences and consumers view the media outlets as independent party thus providing unbiased decision when including the views of organizations in their programs since they base their analysis on the judgement of the company8. This can be seen when a piece of information concerning a certain new product is in a section of a newspaper has more impact compared to a full-page advertisement since the media is perceived as providing impartial perspective of the given product9. Moreover, a structured public relations campaign and specifying their views on specific segment of market exposes more details than those that are exposed by other promotional strategies. This is, utilization of media houses ensures that the given product or service is critically analyzed and gives more space to deliberate on the aspect on hand10. Nevertheless, public relations balance between the varied media sources ensures that the message or impression that is created is improved through re-broadcasting or spreading a single story to varied locations. The aim of most public relations is to ensure that certain aspect is introduced or improved in a large scene and view. This brings into consideration the cost that will be required to send the message to the public. The objectives of the public relations can easily be achieved through utilization of minimal financial or cost expenditure. This is when compared to other types of promotional approaches such as advertising that requires exceptional high expenditure11. However, the success of public relations is impaired by varied shortcomings or disadvantages. For a public relation service to succeed, it should constantly manoeuvre and engage the benefits of media houses. However, the success of this approach depends on the capability of the media to publish the story. For example, a marketer may spend a lot of time taking with a magazine writer, who is writing an industry story, at the end of the day, the marketer’s story may not be published or even mentioned anywhere in the article. Thus, results in wasting of time. Moreover, if the message that should be send out as been carefully written and it has been pre-determined placed and given to a news media e.g. through a reporter. The reporter may re-craft the story/message and at the end of the feature or story, the message may be different from the way the marketer had planned12. In other instances, when the message or feature is been shown, there may be other features that may impact negatively the importance of the messages. For example, certain messages may be received in a bad perspective such as wars, flood or hunger. Thus, the success of utilization of media houses is inhibited by strategic and time factors13. Conclusively, public relations play an important role in improving the view and status of an organization, person or product/service. Many people are involved in ensuring that the audience, public and consumers receive information concerning a given industry positively. Some common strategies that are used include employment of spin-doctors, spin, Meet and Greet, lobby groups and public targeting. Utilization of public relations has various benefits, which includes low cost and large audience. Nevertheless, then disadvantages includes distortion of message and untimely manner of the message. References Botha, Dawid, and Chaka, Michael. Public Relations: Fresh Perspectives. Cape Town: Pearson South Africa, 2007. Franklin, Bob and Murphy, David. Making the Local News: Local Journalism Context. London: Routledge, 1998 Gomes, Roger and Knowles, Patricia. Non-profit Marketing: Marketing Management for Charitable and Nongovernmental Organizations, New York: Sage Publishers, 2006. 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