In the twenty-first century, image and perception matters!
Stakeholders of leading organizations in today’s world, irrespective of their sizes, lay a lot of emphasis on the image the general public holds, for the organization and its offerings. With the objective of catering to these growing needs, the division of Public Relations emerged, whose primary role was to work on the brand perception and building the goodwill for the organization.
APPROACH
The Public Relation (PR) business in the world is extremely dynamic and is changing with every single day. This change can be majorly attributed to the fundamental and the irreversible technological, societal and audience-related shift. Some of the prominent changes are seen in media fragmentation, surge in consumer interaction and empowerment, the growth of communities and shift in trust from institutions to peers.
Most Public Relations (PR) firms have developed an approach and consulting methodology, to enable its clients to communicate successfully. The communication approach focuses on five important aspects to meet the PR objectives:
- Innovation
- Strategy
- Execution
- Delivery
- Impact
The above mentioned aspects form the framework for consulting and service offerings. With the growth of new age media (social media), they have progressed to extend their services to Social Media Marketing as well.
Most Public Relations firms are guided by the below-mentioned beliefs.
- They ensure that the campaign is aligned completely with the clients’ business objective.
- The PR objective is always guided by the 5A’s framework –
- Accurate
- Achievable
- Assessable
- Applicable
- Apt
- Most PR firms lay emphasis on having a transparent process with absolute ownership, responsibility and accountability across all activities using an effective campaign management and measurement techniques.
DIVISIONS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
- Digital Media Promotion:
Organizations are being forced to re-assess how they connect and converse with their stakeholders. They need to find new channels of communicating, with their audiences, and ways that are authentic , reliable and credible.
PR firms help organizations comprehend and adapt to the constant changes in communication dynamics and contribute such a dynamic communications environment. The teams devise and deploy communications strategies, typically as part of a broader integrated communications campaigns.
- Crisis Communications:
It takes years to build a positive repute and even lesser to destroy it.
During a crisis, the challenge is to protect one of the most important aspects of a company, institution or organization – the long-term reputation (image) of brands and products.
There are three stages that are followed: Pre Crisis; Crisis and Post Crisis. They work to build a crisis drill for their clients to abet them to react fittingly in times of crisis. Their team is skilled and well qualified to take care of crisis and thus, successfully protecting their client’s repute.
- Media Relations:
The PR firm’s strategy towards communication is to recognize the target audience and the media space, and then trying to customize the communication to devise a winning approach for the clients. The media strategists help identify the target media and audiences, and develop stories that ignite thought rather than push paper. They often coordinate with the international press offices to make certain that the messaging being distributed in the local markets (target market) is in accord with the universal messaging & timing.
CONCLUSION
We feel, Public Relations have been, a long due positive change brought about, that have redefined the way the organizations and management function. It has helped firms break out from the mere capital intensive and the capitalist regime, they were earlier functioning in.
Reports and articles published state that, since organizations are prepared to use extra resources to see the improvement in their images, there has also been a significant rise in the CSR activities initiated by them. So, it has certainly compelled organizations to go an extra mile to promote the societal interests as well.
It is thus, wise to state that because of the dynamic nature and rigors of this industry, it makes up for one of the most handsomely paid jobs, thus, providing an added impetus to young professionals to try their luck at it.