BUS 402

PUBLIC RELATIONS
LECTURE 2
INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC
RELATIONS

SELECTED MATERIALS

Lecturer
Dr. Amal Aly, Ph.D
 LEARNING OUTCOMES

• After studying Chapter 1 you should be able to:

• 1. Define public relations as the management function that builds and
maintains relationships between organizations and their publics.
• 2. Distinguish between public relations and marketing, identifying the
exchange between provider and customer as the distinguishing
characteristic of marketing relationships.
• 3. Describe and differentiate among related concepts—publicity,
advertising, press agentry, employee relations, community relations,
public affairs, issues management, crisis communication, lobbying,
investor relations, and development.
• 4. Outline how public relations helps improve organizations and
society.
 DISTINCTIONS
• PR draws on expertise from many fields, it
overlaps with other disciplines; it tends to
integrate rather than exclude – this is its
strength as a practice, but a weakness when it
comes to descriptions and definitions.
• Many confuse public relations with another
management function
 CONFUSION WITH MARKETING
• Marketing is a business activity that aims at
promoting, advertising and selling company’s
products and services. On the other
hand, public relations or commonly called
as PR is a communication process; wherein the
company seeks to build such a relationship
between the company and the general public,
which is mutually beneficial for them.
 CONFUSION WITH MARKETING
• Due to the emergence of social media, which
filled the gap amongst these two. However, they
are two different concepts, people find it hard
to distinguish marketing from public relation
(PR),
• While marketing is mainly concerned with the
promotion and sales of the product, Public
Relations (PR) is intended to create and
manage a favorable image of the company
amongst the public.
 CONFUSION WITH MARKETING
Key Differences Between Public Relation and Marketing
The following points are noteworthy so far as the difference
between Public Relations (PR) and Marketing is concerned:
• The process of maintaining a positive relationship and
managing the flow of information amongst the company
and society at large is called Public Relations (PR). The
range of activities that includes creation, communication
and delivering products and services of value to the
customers, is called marketing.
• Public relation involves the promotion of the organization
and the brand. Although, in the case of marketing,
promotion of products and services offered by the
company to its customers, is done.
 CONFUSION WITH MARKETING
Key Differences Between Public Relation and Marketing
• Both marketing and public relations are management functions,
wherein marketing is a line function, whose contribution to the
company’s bottom line is direct. On the other hand, public relations is
staff function which assists organization indirectly in achieving its goals
and objective.
• Public relation is earned media, i.e. free media whereby the
organization gains publicity through third-party endorsements such as
word-of-mouth, press conferences, news releases, speeches, etc. As
opposed to marketing, whose foundation is paid media, which includes
radio, television and print advertising.
 CONFUSION WITH MARKETING
Key Differences Between Public Relation and
Marketing
• Public Relation covers general public as a whole
whereas marketing activities are oriented towards a
target audience.
• Marketing aims at converting shoppers into buyers, i.e.
to create sales. On the contrary, public relation aims at
building trust and maintaining company’s reputation.
• Public relation is a two way communication. As against
this, marketing is a monologue activity, which involves
only one way communication.
DIFFERENTIATE AMONG RELATED
CONCEPTS
 PARTS OF THE FUNCTION

The contemporary concept and practice of

public relations includes all the following
activities and specialties:
 EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION
• Critical to the success of any organization, of course, are its
employees.
• CEOs in organizations talk about employees as their
“number one public” or as “the organization’s most
important asset,” and they try to create an “organizational
culture” that attracts and retains productive workers
• Internal relations is the specialized part of public
relations that builds and maintains a mutually
beneficial relationship between managers and the
employees on whom an organization’s success
depends.
 EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION
• Internal relations specialists work in departments
called “employee communication,” “employee
relations,” or “internal relations.”
• They plan and implement communication programs to
keep employees informed and motivated and to
promote the organization’s culture.
 PUBLICITY
• Much of the news and information in the media
originates from public relations sources.
• Public relations sources provide what they judge to be
newsworthy information—publicity —with the
expectation that editors and reporters will use the
information.
• Publicity is information provided by an outside source
that is used by media because the information has
news value. This is an uncontrolled method of placing
messages in the media because the source does not
pay media outlets for placement.
 PUBLICITY

• Ex. of publicity include a story in a newspaper’s

financial section about a corporation’s increased
earnings
• To generate publicity, public relations practitioners
must know what information will attract media
attention, identify a newsworthy angle and lead, and
write and package the information appropriately for
each medium. It also helps if journalists and targeted
bloggers trust the news source.
 PUBLICITY

• The publicity model of practice often operates under

the “public information” title.
• In its infancy, public relations practice consisted of
former journalists producing publicity, so it is not
surprising that some still confuse publicity with the
broader concept of public relations.
 ADVERTISING
The distinction between advertising and PR is more
easily made:
• Advertising involves paying a medium (TV, radio,
newspaper or magazine, for example) for airtime or
column inches in which to put across a promotional
message.
• The content of an ad is always controlled by the
advertiser, unlike the content of editorial pages or
programs, which are controlled by journalists.
• Public relations practitioners try to persuade
journalists to cover their products and services on the
grounds of newsworthiness.
 ADVERTISING
The distinction between advertising and PR is more easily made:
• “Advertising is information placed in the media by an identified
sponsor that pays for the time or space. It is a controlled method
of placing messages in the media”
• “Advertising presents the most persuasive possible selling
message to the right prospects for the product or service at the
lowest possible cost” (The Institute of Practitioners in
Advertising )
• Here, the phrase ‘selling message’ distinguishes the two
disciplines – PR aims not to increase sales, but to increase
understanding. Sometimes, of course, understanding a product or
service improves sales, but PR does not claim a direct causal
link.
 PRESS AGENTRY
• Press agentry is creating newsworthy stories and
events to attract media attention in order to gain public
notice.
• Press agents attract public notice more than build
public understanding. Publicity is their major strategy.
• The goal of press agentry is to create the perception
that the subject of the publicity is newsworthy and
deserves public attention.
• Confusion with PR results when press agents describe
what they do as “public relations” or use that term to
give their agencies more prestigious, but less
accurate, titles.
 PUBLIC AFFAIRS
• The armed services, many governmental agencies,
and some corporations use the title “public affairs”
as a substitute for public relations. The actual
meaning varies across different types of
organizations, but in general the concept of public
affairs is as follows:
• “Public affairs is the specialized part of public
relations that builds and maintains organizational
relationships with governmental agencies and
community stakeholder groups to influence public
policy. “
 LOBBYING
• Lobbying is the specialized part of public relations
that builds and maintains relations with
government, primarily to influence legislation and
regulation.
• In practice, lobbying must be closely coordinated
with other public relations efforts directed toward
nongovernmental publics.
• In its primary roles as credible advocate and
reliable source of information, however, lobbying
takes the form of information designed to educate
and persuade
 ISSUES MANAGEMENT
• Issues management is the process of anticipating, identifying,
evaluating, and responding to issues and trends that potentially
affect an organization’s relationships with its publics.
• Two points capture the essence of issues management :
(1) early identification of issues with potential impact on an
organization and,
(2) a strategic response designed to mitigate or capitalize on their
consequences.
• For example, in the context of public opinion, issues management
“attempts to discern trends in public opinion so that an
organization can respond to them before they amplify into
serious conflict.”28
 CRISIS MANAGEMENT
• Crisis management is the public relations specialty that helps
organizations strategically respond to negative situations and to
dialog with stakeholders affected by perceived and actual
consequences of crises.
• Many public relations consultancies (both firms and solo
practitioners) claim expertise in helping organizations respond
to unexpected, negative events that threaten their relationships
with stakeholders.
• Crisis management has become an increasingly important part
of public relations practice
 INVESTOR RELATIONS
• Investor relations is the specialized part of corporate
public relations that builds and maintains mutually
beneficial relationships with shareholders and others
in the financial community to maximize market value.
• Investor relations referred to as “IR” and “financial
relations,” investor relations is another specialized
part of public relations in publicly held corporations.
Investor relations specialists work to enhance the
value of a company’s stock. This reduces the cost of
capital by increasing shareholder confidence and by
making the stock attractive to individual investors,
financial analysts, and institutional investors.
 DEVELOPMENT
• Development is the specialized part of public relations in
nonprofit organizations that builds and maintains relationships
with donors, volunteers, and members to secure financial and
volunteer support.
• Just as investor relations helps finance publicly held
corporations, fundraising and membership drives provide the
financial support needed to operate charitable and nonprofit
organizations. These organizations typically use the title
“development ” or “advancement” for this aspect of public
relations. Nonprofit hospitals, social welfare groups, disease
research foundations, service charities, and universities have
directors of development.
 WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS?
• Public relations serves not only the organization but
most important the public(s)’ interest(s)
• Public relations practitioners must constantly
communicate with many different publics, each
having each own special needs and requiring different
types of communications.
• Public relations practitioners’ role is to identify with
critical publics with whom the organization must
communicate on a frequent and direct basis.
 WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS
• Public relations serves not only the organization but
most important the public(s)’ interest(s)
• Under the quittance of public relations, organizations
learn of how to get more sensitive to the self interests,
desires, and concerns of each public.
• They understand that self interest groups today are
themselves more complex and with more power than
ever before.
• They harmonizing actions necessary to win and
maintain support among each groups.
• Emphasizing and achieving a win- win arrangement.
 WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS
• Excellent public relations departments must use research techniques
as its principal tools for developing decisions .
• The three primary forms of public relations research, as they have
been suggested are methods, mostly indirect, of observing human
behavior
• surveys to reveal attitudes and opinions,
• communication audits to evaluate how an organization is doing
with respect to particular public(s), and
• unobtrusive measures such as fact finding, content analysis, and
readability studies.
• As a result helps management to stay familiar with environmental
changes; to predict trends
 WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS
Organizations with good public relations departments
are always using two ways symmetrical systems of
communication.
• Under an asymmetrical communication system,
organizations are striving to convince their
practitioners that the organization knows best and
that publics benefit from cooperating with the
organizations decisions. Thus, the role of the
practitioners to persuade publics to follow decisions
made by the organization.
 WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS

• On the other hand, organizations that basing their communication

systems on symmetrical models recognize that they cannot isolate
themselves from their environment.
• Acknowledging that publics and other organizations operating in
the same external and/or internal environment interrelated with
the organization, and freely exchanging information with those
organizations and publics, establishing an equilibrium state that
constantly move as the environment changes.
• Symmetrical models of communication are conflict resolution
oriented rather than persuasion. Conflicts are resolved through
negotiation, communication, and compromise and not through force,
manipulation, coercion, or violence.