When I tell people I work in public relations I usually get four different reactions. One is a loud guffaw followed by “Oh you mean wild parties with Bollinger, like Edwina from Absolutely Fabulous”. Others smirk and refer to the ‘Dark Arts’. Some people think it’s just about getting stories into the media. Finally, there are those who respond with an open-mouthed “Errr”, indicating that they haven’t a clue what PR is unless it means dealing with the public in some form, which could mean anything from working in a call centre to managing crowd control at a football match.
The public relations profession is frequently misunderstood and maligned. Whilst ‘marketing’ more or less says what it does on the tin – gets goods or services into the marketplace – PR covers anything from investor relations and advising government ministers about communications, to handling media relations for a campaigning charity, dealing with reputation management for a large corporation or trying to get more people to buy crunchy chocolate bars without paying for advertising. Life would be much simpler if we had a tangible product and could say “We make egg boxes”. Alas life in the world of PR is never that simple – although it’s lots of fun.
Here is a simple way of explaining the difference between marketing, advertising, sales promotion and public relations. Let’s suppose you’re setting up a yoga studio. You pay for adverts in local media and Facebook. (Advertising). You offer two for the price of one for your first month and distribute leaflets. (Sales promotion). You set up an interview with a radio station and get your friends to talk about how great your classes are. (Public relations). You carry out research into customer needs, set your prices, create a brand, draw up a promotional plan and put it all into practice. (Marketing).
Of course, that is an over-simplistic way of trying to explain each discipline and I can hear people throwing up their hands in horror at my crude attempts at comparisons. Furthermore, the distinction between all these disciplines has become blurred following the growth of social media and digital communications. Is a promotional video on YouTube or Facebook advertising (paid for) or public relations (free)? Is SEO (search engine optimisation) part of the skillset within public relations or marketing?
The standard definition of PR used by The Chartered Institute of Public Relations‘ (CIPR) 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.”
If you’re not convinced that this is important the words of American billionaire Warren Buffet should convince you. He said: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and only five minutes to destroy it, and if you understand that you will do things differently”. Recent research by global PR company Weber Shandwick revealed that global executives, on average, attribute 63 percent of their company’s market value to their company’s overall reputation. This isn’t just confined to the private sector. How many times have you heard a student saying they want to go to a particular university or a parent choosing a school for their child because it has “a good reputation”?
In short, public relations is essentially about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and, most significantly, what others say about you. How reputations are built and maintained is what makes public relations such a fascinating and complex profession. Managing the reputation of an organisation (or an individual) requires a mishmash of skills, many of them ‘soft’ ones, such as persuasion, empathy and a knack for trend spotting. All this is a world away from occupations such as accountancy and database management where the skillset is more clearly defined.
Looking at job descriptions within the broad area of communications (often used as a substitute for PR) at both strategic and tactical levels helps to throw a light on exactly what PR is all about.
A job description at senior management level for a director of communications or external relations would probably include some generic competencies such as team leadership, strategic communications, budget management, horizon scanning, crisis planning and stakeholder engagement – not dissimilar to many other management roles. But if we drill down into the tactical level then the role of a PR becomes clearer. This is a list of the kind of competencies that a PR/communications manager or officer might be expected to master.
- Media relations. Writing press releases and opinion pieces. Getting positive media coverage and dealing with negative stories.
- Social media management. Covering the main channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
- Writing and editing. Producing leaflets, reports and publicity materials for online and offline platforms.
- Creating e-newsletters and other digital communications.
- Multi-media. Producing or commissioning photography, videos and podcasts.
- Content creation for the website.
- Event management. (When social distancing is relaxed.)
- Community relations.
- Internal communications.
- Monitoring and evaluation of communications.
- Add to that list personal qualities such as flexibility, agility, interpersonal skills, creativity and insight which are all important. Shared values are becoming increasingly significant as well.
In large organisations these functions will be allocated to different people. Typically there will be a website manager, social media manager, press officer and content creator at the very least. In a university communications teams can be as large as 35, although they are likely to include student recruitment and marketing. In smaller organisations, particularly those with tiny budgets, one person may be expected to be a strategist and a tactician, able to turn their hand to planning and budgeting as easily as running social media channels, writing newsletters and dealing with journalists. That’s the likely situation in schools (other than those within large academy trusts) where the focus will be on recruitment and reputation.
Until a few years ago, most PRs spent a fair chunk of their time on media relations. It is still an important task, but we are a world away from the days when taking journalists out for lunch and holding press conferences was an important function of press officers. Now any media relations expert needs to be adept at creating content across different platforms and building relationships with journalists (possibly influencers as well) remotely by providing them with a complete package of words, images, videos, case studies and more. The skillset needed now by PRs is much more diverse, focused on building and maintaining relationships rather than issuing one-way promotional messages.
One thing is clear. PR professionals need to be resilient, agile and creative. You might need to switch one minute from dealing with a persistent journalist over the phone, to calming employee relations during threatened redundancies whilst meeting print deadlines for a prospectus and running a last-minute social media campaign.
Right now during the coronavirus crisis PR professionals need to delve into their skills toolbox in a way that is unprecedented. (Apologies for that overused word.) They have had to tear up their existing crisis communication plans and rewrite them. Even when there is no clear message they have had to keep the communication channels open. In the education sector instead of simply announcing closures, schools, colleges and universities have stressed continuity by telling parents, pupils and students that although the buildings may be closed, learning is continuing remotely. Being reassuring is critical. In the commercial sector organisations have changed their messages. Instead of “buy buy buy” they are showing what staff are doing to help the community and keeping customers safe. All organisations have had to tread carefully to ensure their communications hit the right tone. Never before has being able to communicate with sensitivity and clarity been so important.
Summing up, public relations is essentially about managing reputation and cultivating relationships. This requires a mishmash of interlocking skills and personal attributes. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sums it up neatly. He says: “If I was down to my last dollar I would spend it on public relations.” If you need proof to convince sceptics of the value of public relations that nails it.
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