Planning and Management of Public Relations Campaigns - Essay Example

This essay presents some of the definitions of public relations. First, a public relations, as a practice, refers to the “development and management of ethical strategies using communication to build relationships with stakeholders or publics” The definition ensures that PR follows ethical principles in managing organization-stakeholders/public relationships. Second, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) defined “public relations [as] about reputation” and “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics”.

This definition is essential in emphasizing the essence of protecting the organization’s reputation in attaining inter-stakeholder interests. These definitions promote the philosophy that PR seeks for win-win solutions when designing PR campaigns so that organizations can maximize gains from the latter. The roles of public relations practitioners1 are diverse, depending on the size, nature, and aims of their organizations. Larger organizations that deal with services, for instance, can have a PR department that has numerous PR functions and that is separate from advertising and marketing, while smaller organizations may integrate PR and other marketing and communications functions.

PR roles can include, but are not limited to, the following: (1) cause or relationship marketing- create and preserve relationships to build customer loyalty; (2) communication- share ideas, messages, or opinions through verbal/nonverbal/symbolic expressions; (3) community relations- build relationships between/among organizations that impact one another; (4) crisis management- respond to different kinds of crises and maximize potentially positive outcomes; (5) integrated marketing communication (IMC)- merge PR, marketing, and advertising to attain a uniform marketing approach; (6) issues management- identify organizational issues and appropriately and strategically respond to them; and (7) media relations- create relationships between the media and the organization.

Some of these roles overlap or can be described as marketing roles, which is why some organizations use their marketers as PR staff personnel too.  With diverse roles and responsibilities, public relations practitioners can use different approaches to designing PR campaigns.