Promotion - public relations

Author: Jim Riley  Last updated: Sunday 23 September, 2012

Introduction

The Institute of Public Relations defines public relations as follows:

“The planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics”

What is meant by the term “publics” in the above definition?

A business may have many “publics” with which it needs to maintain good relations and build goodwill. For example, consider the relevant “publics” for a publicly-quoted business engaged in medical research:

• Employees
• Shareholders
• Trade unions
• Members of the “general public”
• Customers (past and present)
• Pressure groups
• The medical profession
• Charities funding medical research
• Professional research bodies and policy-forming organisations
• The media
• Government and politicians

The role of public relations is to:

• Identify the relevant publics
• Influence the opinions of those publics by:
o Reinforcing favourable opinions
o Transforming perhaps neutral opinions into positive ones
o Changing or neutralising hostile opinions

Public relations techniques

There are many techniques available to influence public opinion, some of which are more appropriate in certain circumstances than others:

Consumer communication

Customer press releases
Trade press releases
Promotional videos
Consumer exhibitions
Competitions and prizes
Product launch events
Celebrity endorsements
Web sites

Business communication

Corporate identity design
Company and product videos
Direct mailings
Web site
Trade exhibitions

Internal / employee communication

In-house newsletters and magazines
Intranet
Notice boards
Employee conferences
Email

External corporate communication

Company literature (brochures, videos etc.)
Community involvement programmes
Trade, local, national and international media relations

Financial communication

Financial media relations
Annual report and accounts
Meetings with stock market analysts, fund managers etc
Shareholder meetings (including the annual general meeting

Given the wide range of techniques used in public relations, how is it possible to measure the effectiveness of public relations?

It is actually quite difficult to measure whether the key messages have been communicated to the target public. In any event, this could be quite costly since it would involve a large amount of regular research. Instead, the main measures of effectiveness concentrate on the process of public relations, and include:

• Monitoring the amount of media coverage obtained (press cuttings agencies play a role in keeping businesses informed of this)

• Measuring attendance at meetings, conferences

• Measuring the number of enquiries or orders received in response to specific public relations efforts.

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