Public Relations: A Practical Approach

By Ellen Gunning

Presents & positions the strategic roles and functions of Public Relations within general Marketing and Business objectivesIllustrates new examples, case studies, quotations, and current trends from established practices in IrelandIntroduces all specialist areas of PR such as sponsorship, corporate image, crisis management, financial PR, etc. concluding with a future industry analysis for each areaDelivers a balanced presentation between practical advice and current practice Introduces both Irish and international best practicesWritten for students taking the following courses:Diploma in Public Relations (Public Relations Institute of Ireland)Introduction to Public Relations (Irish Academy of Public Relations)Distance Learning Programmes (Irish Academy of Public Relations)Also suitable for students studying PR as part of a Communications or Marketing course at third level. Includes sample PR projects and suggested approaches to answering past papers both for the Introduction to PR and the Diploma course

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gill Books
• Release date: Aug 21, 2007
• ISBN: 9780717155293

Ellen Gunning

Ellen Gunning is the director of the Irish Academy of Public Relations, which she established in 1992. She has been training students and corporate agencies ever since. She has lectured at UCC, UCD and GMIT, and she is an annual guest lecturer on the MA Programme in public relations at DIT. She has provided corporate training to some of Ireland best-known bodies including County Enterprise Boards, An Garda Síochána, BNP Paribas, Cork City Council, ESB, IDA, ICSA and the Small Firms Association. Ellen is the author of 'Public Relations - A Practical Approach', which is the core text on all PR courses in Ireland. She is also chairman of the board of directors of Dublin City FM radio station where she presents a weekly programme – 'Mediascope'.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Preface

SECTION 1: PR Foundations

1: AN APPRECIATION OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

History of PR

Public Relations Confused

What is Public Relations?

Misconceptions Surrounding PR Practitioners

The Professional PR Practitioner

The Power of Brands

Attitudes and Opinions

Converting Negative Opinions to Positive Attitudes

Dealing with Images

2: ETHICS

Ethics and Brands

Investors and Consumers

Ethical PR

Codes of Ethics

3: OBJECTIVES, PUBLICS AND TECHNIQUES

Objectives Should Be SMART

Defining ‘Publics’

PR Techniques

Importance of Monitoring Lifestyle and Societal Changes

Thinking Creatively

Think-Tanks

SECTION 2: PR & Media

4: PR AND THE MEDIA

Multi-Media Society

Working with the Media

Deadlines

Merits and Demerits of Various Media

Categories of Readers and Viewers

Opportunities to See (OTSs)

Media Interviews

Preparation for Interviews

5: WRITING NEWS RELEASES

What is a News Release?

What is News?

What is the Difference between Hard News and Soft News?

Understanding the Media

Selecting the Relevant Journalist

Newspaper Practice

Words

Use of Language

Newspaper Style

Readers

Identify the ‘Angle’

News Release Format

Inverted Pyramid

How to Title a News Release

Presentation of News Releases

Use of Embargoes

Coverage

6: PR PHOTOGRAPHY

Creating Visual Images

Photo Shoot

Photo Call

Types of Photography

Monitoring PR Photographs

The Picture Editor

Working with Photographers

The Photo Caption

Cost of Photographers

Educate your Client

Briefing Media Photographers

7: PRINT, DVD AND INTERNET

Information Overload

Created Print Material

The PR DVD

Internet

SECTION 3: Event Management

8: ORGANISING FUNCTIONS

Step 1: Preparation

Step 2: The Function

Step 3: Follow-up

9: EXHIBITIONS, WORKSHOPS, SEMINARS AND CONFERENCES

Exhibitions

Workshops

Seminars

Conferences

SECTION 4: Structures, Roles and Approaches

10: STRUCTURE AND MANAGEMENT OF A PR CONSULTANCY

Quality Control in Consultancies

Management Areas

Typical Structure of PR Consultancies

11: PREPARING AND DELIVERING A PR PROPOSAL

Presentation of Credentials

Charging for Proposals

Knowing Your PR Competitors

Taking a Brief

Research for PR

The Proposals

Presentation of the Proposals

12: ROLE OF THE IN-HOUSE PRESS/MEDIA OFFICER

Function

Skills Needed to Perform the Job

Infrastructure

Created Back-up Systems

Tools of the Trade

Created Media Opportunities

SECTION 5: Specialist Areas

13: SPONSORSHIP

What is Sponsorship?

Patronage

Charity

Purposes of Sponsorship

Types of Sponsorship

Ethical, Moral, Societal and Identity Issues

Seeking a Sponsorship Opportunity

Seeking a Sponsor

14: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

Defining Corporate Social Responsibility

Reputation Management

Chambers Ireland CSR Awards 2006

Conclusion

15: CORPORATE IMAGE AND CORPORATE IDENTITY

Corporate Image

Corporate Identity

Key Steps Involved in Identity Change

16: PR FOR CHARITIES AND VOLUNTARY ORGANISATIONS

Competitive Market

Voluntary Nature

Professionalism

Key Publics for Charities

Building Awareness

The Charity Brand 265

Promoting the Brand — Creativity

17: CRISIS PR

Handling Crises

Anticipation

Homework

Activity

Aftermath

18: ENVIRONMENTAL PR

Environmental Initiatives

Environmental Activist Groups

Credibility

PR Guidance in the Twenty-First Century

Corporate Response

The Future

19: FINANCIAL PR/INVESTOR RELATIONS

Irish and International Stock Exchanges

What is the Stock Exchange?

Flow of Communications

Power of Rumour

Financial Publics

PR Tools

Conclusion

20: POLITICAL PR

PR for Political Parties

PR for Government

PR for Government Departments

Political Lobbying

21: INTERNAL PR

Role of Internal PR

Changing Employee Profile

Unstructured Employee Communications

Structured Employee Communications

Generating Good Company Spirit

Internal PR Media and Techniques (Tools)

Applying the Tools

Benefits to Employees

Benefits to Management

22: PUBLIC CONSULTATION

Public Consultation Comparisons

Why Should Proposers Consult?

What Can Consultation Achieve?

Consultative Approaches

Elements of Public Participation

Public Consultation — Approaches

Dublin Transportation Initiative (DTI)

23: INTERNATIONAL PR

Role of PR

Practising PR

International PR

Public Relations Media

SECTION 6: PR in the Twenty-First Century

24: THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

Product PR/Branding

Mission Statements

Corporate Social Responsibility

Public Consultation

Multicultural Communications

PR Accountability

European Union

National Initiatives

Pacific Rim/Asian Countries

Emerging Nations

Changes in Broadcasting

E-mail

Intranet and Xtranet

Consultancy Changes

US Predictions

PR Education and Recruitment

Education v. Consultancy

PR for the Public Relations Industry

European and International Associations

The Twenty-First Century

SECTION 7: Analysis of Past Examination Papers

25: INTRODUCTION TO PR

26: DIPLOMA IN PR

27: HIGHER DIPLOMA IN ARTS IN PR

APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Code of Athens: International Code of Ethics for Public Relations

Appendix 2: Code of Lisbon

Appendix 3: Institute of Public Relations (UK) Code of Professional Conduct

Appendix 4: National Union of Journalists Code of Conduct

Appendix 5: PRII Diploma in PR: Sample Year One Project

Appendix 6: PRII Diploma in PR: Sample Year Two Project

Appendix 7: Higher Diploma in Arts in PR: Sample Fundraising Proposal

Appendix 8: Higher Diploma in Arts in PR: Sample Strategy Proposal

Appendix 9: Higher Diploma in Arts in PR: Sample Media Log (Abridged)

Appendix 10: Higher Diploma in Arts in PR: Sample Media Monitoring Essay

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Permission Acknowledgments

Copyright Page

About the Author

About Gill & Macmillan

Preface

This book is a practical guide for public relations students and practitioners. Its contents have been developed over years of practising and teaching public relations and of constantly striving to find better, more cost-effective, quantifiable, creative and professional ways of doing everything that I have done.

The landscape of public relations is constantly evolving, and this can be seen in the number of changes to this text since it was first published five years ago.

In those five short years, video has declined greatly; internet streaming has increased; and Sky+ has revolutionised the way we view live, paused and ‘recorded’ programmes. Internet blogs (web logs), unheard of at the time of the first edition, are now commonplace; media releases are now issued by email; and online newspapers are a popular way of keeping abreast of news developments.

Two new Dublin morning freesheets have been introduced, digital television is expanding rapidly and commercial and local stations are making sizeable inroads into national radio listenership figures. Reality television is everywhere (from cooking to job opportunities to Big Brother) and now spans ‘entertainment’ and ‘hard news’. Media — ever expanding — is continuing to increase in importance.

Photographs are no longer always black and white, JPEGs (relatively new five years ago) are commonplace and digital technology is used by everyone. Brands and branding have become even more important and event management has developed into a separate discipline in its own right.

Regulations and legislation which impact on the environment continue to expand and change the way in which companies respond to environmental challenges. The political landscape has changed with a new PD leader and historic developments in Northern Ireland politics.

The chapter on sponsorship has been substantially re-written. A new chapter on corporate social responsibility has been added to reflect the growing importance of this area which has taken centre stage for progressive companies and their PR advisers.

Additional sample projects in the appendices reflect the introduction of the new HETAC-approved, postgraduate Higher Diploma in Arts in Public Relations course. Hundreds of references to individuals and companies have changed — the well known of five years ago are, in some cases, now unknown.

Of all the subjects you could possibly study, public relations cannot be studied in isolation. To practise PR you need an understanding of the business, political, cultural, social and moral climates within which you practise. Although each of the chapters in this book is written as a stand-alone chapter, you will gain much more from the book if you cross reference.

I have been — and remain — an enthusiastic student of public relations, an enthusiastic practitioner and, I hope, an enthusiastic teacher. The world of public relations is utterly fascinating — you never stop learning. I hope that some of my enthusiasm for my subject communicates itself to the reader. Public relations practice has never been dull; I hope that you will not find studying public relations to be dull either!

CHAPTER 1

An Appreciation of Public Relations

HISTORY OF PR

There are some who say that Public Relations (PR) has always existed. They will point to cave drawings as an attempt to educate and inform future generations. The Bible, the Koran and the Book of Kells are cited as early examples of written communication. The Vikings, because they painted the sails of their ships, are credited with the invention of the corporate logo.

As a profession, however, public relations is quite new. The person generally credited with founding modern-day public relations is Ivy Ledbetter Lee (1877–1934). Lee was retained as a press officer by the coal industry in the United States in 1906, at a time when the industry was attracting a huge amount of bad publicity. He was expected to be the ‘mouthpiece’ of the industry. A front man was needed and he was chosen.

However, as soon as he got the job, Lee issued a declaration of principles. The declaration really said that:

•  He would deal only with the most senior level of management in the company

•  He must be told all of the facts (not just the version of the facts that the company wanted to issue)

•  He alone would have the power to decide which facts, if any, were to be issued to the public

and, most importantly, he declared that:

•  The public could not be ignored, or fooled, or put off by lies.

This statement of principles was revolutionary at the time. No one before had ever insisted that they would deal only with top management — after all, if you were only the mouthpiece of the company, it did not matter who gave you your instructions. It was also extraordinary that he insisted on being told all of the facts. Up to that time, there had been a belief that the press officer was there to tell a story to the public — not necessarily a true story.

By insisting on the facts, he was making sure that he never found himself in a position of having told lies to the public — a huge step. He was the first person to put respect for the public on the agenda. He insisted that he was not there to fool the public, to cover up or to tell lies that sounded plausible. He was firmly of the opinion that the public had a right to be told the truth. He also believed that the public could not be ignored. No company could put its head down and pretend that a disaster had not happened. The public had a right to be told what was going on — the bad news as well as the good.

Lee was the first person actually to bring journalists to the site of a rail crash — a revolutionary move in those days. He believed that, instead of telling journalists a story, he should bring them, show them, tell them and let them take photographs and write the facts as they saw them. In the early days of his career, he was well regarded for his approach (in later years, he was known as Poison Ivy — but that’s another story). After working with the coal industry, Lee went on to work for the railroad industry and became an adviser to John D. Rockefeller Jnr.

Lee’s entry into public relations was followed by that of another of the key influencers in the industry, Edward Bernays (1891–1995). Bernays was a PR practitioner, well known for his use of propaganda and persuasion. He also taught the first course ever in public relations at New York University (1923) and wrote Crystallizing Public Opinion, the first book on public relations.

The practice of appointing press officers, and later public relations officers, spread. In Britain, after the Second World War, the government appointed a network of information officers — communications experts who would explain new concepts such as pensions.

The first public relations post in a public company in Ireland was held by Ned Lawler. He was appointed public relations officer (PRO) of the ESB (Electricity Supply Board) in the year of its foundation — 1927. He later went on to become the first president of the professional body, the Public Relations Institute of Ireland. The second PR person to be appointed to a similar position in Europe was Sir Stephen Tallents, who became public relations officer to the Empire Marketing Board in the United Kingdom (UK).¹

The practice of national governments appointing PR people has continued to this day. Kuwait employed a PR firm to help it communicate with the world when Iraq invaded that country on 2 August 1990. More recently, every member state of the European Union (EU) employed communications experts to explain the euro prior to its introduction in January 2002.

PUBLIC RELATIONS CONFUSED

Before we look at definitions of public relations, we should first examine what it is not. Public relations is most often confused in the minds of the public with either propaganda or publicity.

Propaganda

Propaganda is a deliberate effort to gain support for an opinion, creed or belief. Propaganda denies, or fails to recognise, the existence of, or merits in, alternative opinions. Propaganda makes an emotional appeal to the heart: ‘Believe because I believe’. It is, by its very nature, biased. Propagandists are prejudiced in favour of their topic, and therefore their concentration is on winning your support — not necessarily on being totally truthful with you.

We are all at the receiving end of propaganda during general elections. Think about it. Political party members go out knocking on doors, in the middle of winter, on cold, wet nights, and ask for your vote for their particular party or candidate. If you respond that you have never supported that party, for whatever reason, they will try desperately to convince you that you are wrong. They will not argue that the party of your choice has valuable policies as well, or that the candidate you have chosen to support is, indeed, a very worthy candidate. Rather, they will try to convince you of the error of your ways. This, in its simplest form, is propaganda.

Government press officers are often accused of acting as propagandists because they give only positive, pro-government answers to all questions. The Irish government promoted only a Yes vote in referenda until the McKenna judgment of 1995 (Patricia McKenna, then MEP), which found the use of taxpayers’ money for propaganda purposes in referendum campaigns to be unconstitutional.

The greatest despot will try to propagandise the world into believing that he is a caring and sincere leader. Hitler and Goebbels are well-known examples of highly skilled propagandists.

Public relations, by contrast, concentrates on truth. Where propaganda appeals to the heart, public relations is information — truth — which can be assessed by the mind. With any public relations activity, you are not trying to win people over to your cause blindly. You are trying to give them truthful information which they may assess, and about which they may develop their own opinions. You are also trying to listen to what they have to tell you — as will be discussed later.

Publicity

Publicity is the other area most confused with public relations. What is publicity? Publicity is drawing attention to something by highlighting the issue, event or occasion in the media. You see it in newspapers and magazines and on television; you hear it on radio; you notice it in bus shelters and on poster sites.

Publicity can be secured by buying advertising. It can also be secured by public relations techniques — by issuing a press release, pitching an idea for a feature article, calling a press conference or organising a photo call. Publicists, as a result, are often also referred to as press agents.

There are PR people who specialise as publicists. Max Clifford in the UK is probably one of the best known, and he is extraordinarily good. In Ireland, Gerry Lundberg would undoubtedly be the best-known publicist. He has worked with all of the major theatre and film productions in Ireland, including Riverdance, My Left Foot, The Field, In the Name of the Father, Some Mother’s Son, Dancing at Lughnasa and Widow’s Peak.² Arts events in particular — film, theatre, poetry, visual arts — would not survive without the valuable work that publicists do. And it is hard to imagine an actor, actress or performer of note who does not have their own publicist. Louis Walsh, manager of Westlife and Shayne Ward (amongst others), is also recognised as a great publicist, and is admiringly referred to by the media as ‘the spin king’.³

The difference between a publicist and a public relations consultant is best explained using a story about Ben Sonnenberg, an early press agent in New York City. Ben was hired by an antique-store owner to get more customers for his store. In the back of the store, Ben found an oil painting of an almost nude lady. He put this painting in an ornate frame and placed it in the front window. This was shocking stuff a century ago! Next, Ben paid a little boy and a little girl 25 cents each to stand and stare at the painting. Then, Ben raced across the street and grabbed a news reporter to take a photo of the children looking at the naughty painting. The result was headlines in the paper. Crowds soon swamped the store. The store owner sold hundreds of printed copies of the painting but not one antique! The moral of the story? Publicity sold copies of the painting, but public relations would have created an awareness of the antiques.⁴

Publicity can be secured by public relations means, but it is not the sole object of any public relations activity. It may be an end result (which is achieved from giving information), or it may be a selected tool used to reach a particular audience, but it is never the primary aim of any public relations campaign.

WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS?

Colleagues tell me that there are in excess of 2,000 definitions of public relations. Here are a few of my favourites:

Public relations practice is the art and social science of analysing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organisation leaders, and implementing planned programmes of action which will serve both the organisation’s and the public interest.

International Conference of PR Organisations — Mexico City, 1978

More and more, the role of the consultant, in particular, has become one of adviser, analyst and counsellor. In the future, we might see a division in the roles of PR people — some will be employed for their skills (writing the releases, organising the venues for conferences, etc.), while others will be retained for their breadth of vision (giving strategic advice and counsel).

Public Relations is a combination of philosophy, sociology, economics, language, psychology, journalism, communication and other knowledge into a system of human understanding.

Herbert M. Baus

This definition is one that every PR student should learn and use as a put-down for pub bores! All of the elements of the definition are true, and corporations, organisations and individuals are indeed seeking human understanding. PR, however, encompasses more, and the problem with this definition is that, having read it, you are no closer to developing an understanding of what public relations actually is.

Public Relations is the attempt by information, persuasion and adjustment to engineer public support for an activity, cause, movement or institution.

Edward L. Bernays

This definition, in my opinion, comes closer to propaganda than to public relations. A propagandist would seek to ‘persuade’ (rather than educate). A propagandist would seek to ‘engineer’ support (rather than earn it).

Professional public relations evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of the organisation, and executes a programme of action to earn public understanding and acceptance. Professional public relations is strategic and goal driven — it works to pre-defined objectives. It gets results.

Public Relations Institute of Ireland

This is a good definition, but it lacks the word ‘influence’. PR certainly identifies policies and procedures within an organisation, but it also seeks to influence those areas for the good of the organisation, its publics and society in general. This definition focuses on public understanding and acceptance — two of the cornerstones of PR. And it also, as you would expect of a definition drawn up by practitioners, manages to incorporate an ad for their own services — ‘it gets results’, and it undoubtedly does.

Public Relations is the conscious organisation of communication. PR is a management function. The task of PR is: to achieve mutual understanding and to establish beneficial relationships, between the organisation and its publics and environment, through two-way communication.

CERP Terminology Working Group, Berlin Conference, 1999

This definition highlights the conscious decision by the organisation to engage in a process of communications, with the ultimate aim of building strong, lasting relationships. It also tries to outline the tasks of PR. Note the inclusion of the ‘environment’ — something which would not have been present a decade earlier.

Public Relations is the strategic management discipline that identifies, establishes and maintains relationships with the publics whose behavior can help or impede an organization’s efforts to achieve its goals.

Moshe Dayan⁵

This definition focuses on the close relationship and interdependency between an organisation and those publics critical to its success.

PR is strategically planned (systematic, continuous and consistent) and based on the interactive communication effort of an organization or a professional (individual), to establish and maintain relations of mutual understanding (good will) and confidence with their (respective) publics, aiming at a sound (healthy) image, which will help them to achieve their goals.

Thalis P. Coutoupis⁶

Thalis Coutoupis suggests that one definition is not sufficient. There must be two: one (above) an academic definition for students of the profession, and another, shorter, definition for our clients.

My favourite definition, despite its age, and the one that is most often quoted by PR professionals, remains the following:

Public Relations is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.

The British Institute of Public Relations, 1969 (revised)

A select committee of the House of Commons accepted the original definition in 1969 when it was considering the declaration of members’ interests.

Let us look at the definition in some detail. Public relations is planned and sustained. It is not something that any company, organisation, charity, voluntary group or individual does on a whim. You do not decide that you will have public relations this year, or this month, but you will not have any public relations next month or next year. It is a deliberate decision, which requires planning and sustained effort over a fixed period of time, working to a pre-planned programme to achieve specific objectives.

It is an effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding. Again, the emphasis is on the long term. You are not only trying to establish a relationship with your publics, you are also seeking to maintain the relationship once it has been established.

And what exactly are you trying to establish and maintain? Mutual understanding. No hint of propaganda. You want to be understood. You want your company and its objectives, policies and plans for the future to be understood by the various publics. But the understanding is mutual. You are also seeking to understand those publics, to listen to what they have to tell you, to react to it, to improve because of it, to communicate the responsive change to them. And, like every relationship, the communication and the understanding continue to grow, develop and change over time.

Finally, you are seeking to do all of this with ‘an organisation and its publics’. ‘Publics’ is a word peculiar to public relations. It does not mean the general public — the general public is made up of many different types of people, all of whom need to be reached in a different way. Every company has several publics or audiences. There are numerous publics that any company would deal with — employees, shareholders, retailers, customers, to name but a few. All have different needs, so all must be treated differently.

There are also short definitions of PR which, while not defining the skill, serve to highlight some of the functions of PR.

PR is the craft which projects the personality of an organisation.

Organisations need an appealing corporate personality. The personality associated with Microsoft, for example, is young, technically literate, workaholic-types who dress casually. The personality of the Body Shop is of a caring organisation, almost a family, which wants to help the weaker members of society to find their feet; which is kind to the environment; and which seeks to develop a new business style for a new millennium.

Public Relations is about companies making friends and influencing people.

To paraphrase Dale Carnegie⁷ — companies, like individuals, need friends. They need someone to defend them in times of crisis. They need key influencers to understand what they are about. They need access to government to explain the impact of proposed legislation on their industry. They need to be respected among their peers as good, sound, ethical organisations.

PR is organised two-way communication.

As individuals, we speak with people all the time. We listen to what they have to say, we respond, we react, we communicate again to make our point of view more clearly understood. Organisations do exactly the same with their publics. They use PR tools to develop a two-way communication flow with their publics — speaking to them, listening to their response and reacting.

PR is a top management responsibility.

Lee insisted that he had access to top management, but nowadays the public relations professional sits on the board of the company, influencing its decisions, counselling on an ongoing basis, being both proactive and reactive. PR is an essential part of business life — it is not an optional extra. Every company needs public relations.

The vital ingredient in good PR is credibility.

Never were truer words written. What you say must be believed. Credibility needs to be earned and, once lost, is hard to regain. We will look at credibility in more detail when we study ethics in the industry.

PR has 3 roles: monitor, communicator, conscience.

Harold Burson⁸

Harold Burson’s words are a description of what PR does rather than what it is, but this is a good definition nonetheless. The role of PR includes monitoring and evaluating trends and societal changes, communicating between the organisation and its publics and, crucially, acting as the conscience of the business.

PR is ‘Managing Your Business Reputation.’

Alison Tipping⁹

This definition/slogan is used on all stationery and emails issued by the Comm-Direct Consultancy in the UK.

PR = IGM: Inform, Guide and Motivate.

Gavin Bennett¹⁰

Gavin Bennett would prefer that we lose the term PR altogether and entirely replace it with the initials IGM. Inform people by giving them the facts, guide them by offering optional courses and consequences and motivate them by giving them good reasons to choose the right options. By way of expansion on the above definition, he says that ‘Our integrity rests in getting the facts right. Our professionalism rests in assessing/expressing the all-sides options. Our ethics rest in espousing choices of moral merit’.

PR is the building and management of the image.

This definition from Thalis P. Coutoupis is one he recommends should be used for the market — our clients and media — as a simple definition of PR. His use of the word ‘image’ reflects his belief that we are image builders, not image makers. However, I have a difficulty with the word image being used in any definition as I think it leads to confusion rather than clarity.

PR: information decision action.

Professor W. R. Spence¹¹

More suited to a description of the supportive role of product PR, this definition nonetheless highlights a sequence of responses from the targeted public — namely: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and acceptance. It also reinforces the idea that image alone will not sell a product — trial and acceptance, and, most importantly, delivery of what you promised, are crucial ingredients.

PR is like car maintenance.

Public relations costs time and money when you don’t seem to need it, but saves the expense and embarrassment of major breakdowns!

PR has three ingredients: truth, concern for the public interest and dialogue.

Tim Traverse-Healy¹²

Tim Traverse-Healy’s description is hard to fault.

•  Truth. You must be truthful in every piece of information that you convey to the public. You are not obliged to divulge all of the information in your possession, and will not always tell all of the truth (few companies — or, for that matter, individuals — ever do) but you must never deliberately mislead or lie.

•  Concern for the public interest. You must respect Lee’s dictum that the public has a right to know — and everything that you do must at all times be in the public interest. Behaving in the public interest is also, by extension, behaving in the company’s interest.

Do not confuse public interest with items of interest to the public (an error that journalists regularly make). In 1994, Imelda Riney, her 3-year-old son Liam, and Fr Joseph Walsh were killed by shotgun by an (at that time) unknown assailant at Cregg Wood near Lough Derg.¹³ The story broke in the media, and was followed closely on radio — a medium that is ideally suited to fast-breaking stories. As the story unfolded, it emerged that the person who had committed these heinous crimes had actually filed the bullets before shooting them, thus making forensic identification virtually impossible. This, in my opinion, is a classic example of confusion about the public interest. It was not in the public interest that this information should be broadcast — it gave valuable insider knowledge to the killer. It was certainly of interest to the public, who wanted to know every detail of the crime. But the public would have survived without this extra piece of information and would not have been misled or lied to or lulled into a false sense of security by its omission. The simple fact that the crimes had been committed, and that news of them had been publicly broadcast, was sufficient to satisfy the public-interest requirement. The additional information was of interest to the public but should not, in my opinion, have been broadcast or published.

•  Dialogue. In public relations, there must always be dialogue — a two-way flow of information, feedback, ideas, suggestions and reactions, from which the company and the public benefit.

Finally, as you may now be realising, PR is not something that can be done by instinct — it is too complex a field. PR requires thought, planning, organisation and communication skills to implement and evaluate a successful plan.

An old Chinese proverb says: ‘Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand’. The ultimate aim of public relations is the creation of understanding.

MISCONCEPTIONS SURROUNDING PR PRACTITIONERS

The chapter thus far has attempted to clarify what public relations is all about. We will now deal with the other great misconception — that people actually understand the kind of work we do. They do not.

How many times have you heard someone say that their son or daughter is ‘good with people’ and should, therefore, go into public relations? Being good with people is an essential element of working for any company or industry, in any field. It is very difficult to work with people if you don’t make an effort. If you make an effort, you become good with people. Why this should be especially important in public relations is utterly beyond me!

There is also a belief that public relations people are generally young, female, blonde, charming, good-looking and often quite vacuous, and that they spend their days at press receptions, sipping champagne, talking to people and, naturally, looking beautiful. Who on earth is going to employ you, and pay you money, to look beautiful while sipping champagne? No one that I know of in public relations.

There are many good-looking people in public relations. There are also many very ordinary-looking people, and some downright ugly-looking people. There are men and women, old and young, charming and narky, communicative and non-communicative (it’s true), drinkers and pioneers. The same is true of any industry.

The misconceptions have probably developed for four reasons:

1. No one really knows what we do, so people think they are working in PR, even when they are not. People working in customer care, product sampling, product demonstration or customer hospitality will all tell you that they are ‘in PR’. It is an industry which people want to be in, so they assign themselves the title.

2. When PR people are photographed at client functions, it is usually the young, good-looking, female ones who are photographed (but this is true of most media functions if the photographer is shooting for society pages or evening newspapers).

3. Utterances by some of the people in the PR industry do not help! Lynn Franks’ Californian PR company starts the working day ‘by meeting around the kitchen table, lighting a candle, and holding hands for a blessing for the day, and sharing of what’s going on for us individually’.¹⁴ Please!

4. The final reason for the misconception of our role is the way in which the press and media sometimes report PR people. We are either trivialised or stereotyped as baddies.

•  The trivialisation of PR. In an interview with Mary Finan, one of the most highly respected PR practitioners in Ireland, the media subheading read: ‘Her childhood was drenched with sweetness; at university she socialised, debated and acted, and still got an honours degree, and she has a seemingly idyllic career as the top public relations executive in Ireland’.¹⁵

•  The stereotypical ‘baddie’ PR. ‘He is one of those smarmy PR types who makes the skin of some journalists crawl. He likes to pretend he is your friend. He wants you to know he is there to help.’¹⁶

What matters in public relations is not how a person looks, but how well they can do their job. And on the champagne scene, all of the best PR people I know have strict rules about not drinking when they are working. If you are dealing with clients and journalists, the last thing they want to do is talk to you about a company when you are nicely merry. PR practitioners may well have a drink when the function is over, but they have too much work to do during any function to be knocking back the champagne.

THE PROFESSIONAL PR PRACTITIONER

If all of these commonly held misconceptions add up to a definition of what a PR person is not, let us turn to look at what a PR person actually is. A good public relations practitioner needs several qualities. At its broadest level, PR people need the following:

•  An understanding of communication processes. They need to understand how messages are sent and received. They must be able to evaluate the response to a message, and to change and adapt their strategies so that messages are more clearly received and understood.

•  An understanding of the way the media works. The media is often used as a means of conveying messages to the public. PR people need to understand the deadlines that different media work to, the formats in which information is most acceptable, the needs of print and broadcast journalists. They must understand the influence of the internet, the power of newsletters and magazines, and the value of oramedia (storytelling).

•  A keen understanding of the world of business. Clients are very often drawn from the world of business. PR people need to understand the demands of business, the profit-making drive, the international repercussions of decisions, the value of trade unions, the implications of industrial relations disasters, the impact of decisions on share prices and the power of shareholders.

On a personal level, there are certain qualities which undoubtedly help a PR practitioner:

•  A broad interest in the world of media. Good PR practitioners are readers; they have the habit of reading, and are constantly developing their vocabulary. PR people ideally have a love of language, and take pride in how they would explain a concept.

An interest in what is happening in the media world. PR people have a knowledge about which journalists write on certain issues. They have enquiring minds, constantly questioning the angles and perspectives that people take, and a curiosity about how a story was covered. They also have a broad interest in the issues of the day — be they national or foreign.

An interest in television. The PR practitioner wants to know about the latest trends on TV (in particular, the growth of ‘reality’ television with programmes like Big Brother (Channel 4, 2001) and You’re a Star (RTÉ One, 2002)).

Good PR people know the different TV personalities (and can, therefore, select the most appropriate person to act as a product endorser, or chair a meeting or introduce a DVD). They constantly look, enquiringly, at the way in which visuals on television portray a message, and wonder whose message they are receiving.

An interest in radio. Good PR practitioners find it impossible to sit in a car and not listen to talk radio. They constantly study the interviewer and the style of questioning. They wonder why this particular person is being interviewed at this time. They study how well the interview was conducted, and analyse whether or not the interviewee got their message across. They listen to things like the tone of voice used, the style of questions and the anger/remorse in someone’s voice.

Curiosity and enthusiasm about the internet. What is on the net? How is it presented? What messages are being transmitted? Who is using the net? Where are they coming from? Are there cultural differences?

An appreciation of films, theatre, music and the visual arts.

In essence, the good PR practitioner has an interest in all forms of media.

•  An interest in current affairs. A good practitioner is someone who can debate the issues of the day. PR people need to know who are the key players — theTaoiseach, ministers, junior ministers, opposition spokespersons. They should be able to identify the policy differences between political parties. A good practitioner will study the influence of groups like An Taisce, the Trade Union Movement and women’s groups. PR people will have an interest in changes introduced in the budget and will try to analyse the economic and social impact of those changes. They will study demographic changes, societal issues, trends in employment, and will know what is happening in the wider world. A good PR person follows the progress of bills through the Oireachtas; reads all of the pro-and anti-referendum (any referendum) literature; and studies racism, the collapse of rural areas and the spending power of young people.

•  Excellent time-management skills. Public relations involves a lot of organisation — organising your own time so that you can manage a number of clients in the same day, and organising functions like press receptions, press conferences, photo calls, client meetings and sponsorships. Without an ability to manage your time well, you will find that you are constantly busy, but achieving little.

•  Thoroughness. A good PR person will be someone with the dedication to concentrate on the minor and major details of any public relations task, and see them through to fruition. There is no point in organising a function and getting all of the big details right, only to fail because you did not concentrate on the minor details like organised car parking.

•  An ability to think strategically. In addition to the ability to concentrate on the small things, a good PR person also needs to be a strategic thinker — to be capable of seeing the big picture. You need to know how your proposals will impact on the business you are advising, to see the developing trends and know how you might incorporate them into your proposals.

•  An ability to deal with people. This quality is needed in every type of business. You will deal with many people every day — people you work with in the PR office, bank managers, journalists, clients, photographers, etc. You don’t need to like them, but you must be able to deal honestly and effectively with them.

•  Honesty. To work in public relations, you must be honest and trustworthy. You are dealing with sensitive, highly confidential information. You must be trusted both by clients and by the media. You will only be trusted and respected if you are honest.

•  Imagination and creativity. There are many clients who will approach you with a brilliant idea which you are asked to implement — that is the easy end. There are also many clients who will approach you about their companies, which are perfectly ethical, financially sound, good companies — but they lack excitement. You are the person who needs the creativity and imagination to design something — of interest to the company and the general public — that will attract media attention.

Finally, all of these qualities are enhanced and developed by discussion with other practitioners. Opportunities for discussion usually arise through professional bodies. In Ireland, there are two organisations that represent professional public relations practitioners — the Public Relations Institute of Ireland (PRII), which represents all practitioners (and students) in the industry, and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA Ireland under the umbrella of the PRII), which represents consultancies. These bodies provide valuable professional and representative advice and offer opportunities to share information and interests with people of like mind. Globally, there is the International Public Relations Association (IPRA).

THE POWER OF BRANDS

The power of brands is particularly obvious when you look at consumer purchases. People buy brand names they know and trust. A brand is bought for three main reasons — functional benefits (because it will do the job), psychic value (because it says something about the kind of person you are) and investment value.¹⁷

Functional Benefits

Any car with a reasonable engine and four wheels will take you from point A to point B, but no one goes into a garage looking for ‘a car’. We look for the car to fulfil a specific function — it must be a four-door to accommodate the children, or it must be easy on petrol because I do a lot of mileage or it must have big boot space to accommodate my musical instruments. Similarly, a shampoo must actually leave your hair feeling clean — the functional benefit must be present.

Psychic Value

The psychic value is created by the public relations and advertising people. Once we have established the need for a car, and the functions it must have, we then look to the psychic value of the product. We look for a car that says something about us and reflects our personality. We select the car (and often the colour) which best suits our ‘type’ of person — flashy and sporty (I want to be noticed), conservative (I’m a solid, reliable type), executive (I’ve made it), 4-wheel drive (I am a hunting, shooting, fishing guy).

Look at the ways in which shampoos and perfumes/aftershave lotions are promoted. Any shampoo will wash your hair, but L’Oréal believes you should spend more ‘because you’re worth it’. Every bottle of perfume or aftershave is a bottle of smelly water, but you either buy cheap and cheerful, or you invest in seductive, expensive or sporty reflections (to your senses) of the kind of person you are. Psychic value is what PR people are really good at. We will build the lifestyle type to suit the product — the salespeople will then go and sell it to you.

Investment Value

And finally, it must be a good investment — the car must actually hold its value; it must have trade-in value in a few years. The investment value of shampoos and lotions is that the investor believes in the product and therefore believes that a higher price is warranted because they are investing in themselves.

ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS

Creating awareness is one thing, changing attitudes is another. Changing behaviour is the most difficult of all.

Martin Higgins¹⁸

Do not be fooled into thinking that PR people always begin with a blank canvas — they do not. Very often, the job of the PR person is to change attitudes and opinions. This is a very challenging area of PR.

Virtually every decision in life is based on attitudes and opinions. Attitudes and opinions are formed by information, or lack of it. The more you know about a company, the clearer the mental image you develop of it. If the mental image is a good one, you are more inclined to buy the company’s products, or give it the benefit of the doubt in times of crisis.

Banks have been promoting pensions to young people for years. They are trying to change attitudes. People think of pensions as something they will need in their old age. Banks are trying to change this attitude and encourage people to take out a pension when they are young, so that they will be protected and comfortable in their older years. So far, the response has been disappointing.

Governments invest huge amounts of money in campaigns to try to change attitudes and habits. It is difficult to change attitudes to immigrants, foreign workers, members of the Travelling Community or women, and equally difficult to change habits of voting, saving, disposing of rubbish, etc.

In his 2001 budget, then Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy introduced a new savings scheme called a Special Savings Incentive Account (SSIA). The scheme gave a guaranteed extra €1 for every €4 lodged by regular savers. The economic reasoning behind the scheme was clear. The government felt that people were disposing of their income too lightly. As a nation we were impulse buying because there was more cash in the economy (the Celtic Tiger) and because the return on savings, through traditional outlets, was so low that it was almost negligible. In the National Household Survey statistics for the final quarter of 2005 (published 12 July 2006) the extent of investment in the scheme became clear. Over 40 per cent of the population aged 21 years and over in the Dublin and South-East regions had an SSIA account, and just over 70 per cent of them were contributing the maximum allowable. Almost 73 per cent of people classified as ‘professionals’ had an SSIA account. In fact almost 47 per cent of those in employment, a little over 23 per cent of those not economically active and almost 16 per cent of the unemployed had an SSIA account. The spending trends for matured SSIAs were also interesting. Just under one-third of SSIA holders said that they would invest their matured funds in consumer items such as home improvements, foreign holidays or cars; a little over 46 per cent would commit the funds to savings, pensions and investments (a welcome statistic from the government’s perspective); and approximately 10 per cent would repay existing debts.

We grow up with some of our attitudes; we develop others as we go through life. Once those attitudes are ingrained, they are very difficult to change.

CONVERTING NEGATIVE OPINIONS TO POSITIVE ATTITUDES

If you are seeking to convert negative to positive, you should be conscious of what you can realistically achieve.

Frank Jefkins¹⁹ believed that there were four main attitudes:

Hostility

If someone is hostile towards your company, it may be because of something that happened many years ago. The PR job is to try to inform that person of why it happened, how it happened, how the company dealt with the situation and how it has implemented changes which would prevent the same thing from ever happening again. What you are trying to achieve is sympathy. You do not expect that someone who is hostile to your company will suddenly become its biggest supporter, but you can expect them to become less hostile and slightly more sympathetic towards you if they fully understand the background and developments within the company.

Since the 1950s, the National Blood Transfusion Board had enjoyed a positive public profile. Donors at Pelican House (or mobile clinics) were plentiful, and the silver and gold pelican pins were worn by donors with pride.²⁰ All that changed and the board became the object of hostility when the hepatitis C scandal broke in 1994. The eventual outcome was a public tribunal, called to investigate how an organ of the state was responsible for infecting its citizens.

The Blood Transfusion Board tried to change the hostility to sympathy by explaining that improved donor-screening processes had been introduced to ensure that this situation could never happen again. It changed its name to the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) and moved from Pelican House to state-of-the-art headquarters at St James’s Hospital. The Minister for Health appointed a new chairman and the board probably believed that it had at least begun the process of change.²¹

The national television station, RTÉ, broadcast a docu-drama mini-series in January 2002 called ‘No Tears’.²² The impact of the programme was enormous. It reminded the general public of how angry and hostile they had felt towards the blood bank. The reaction was so strong that the blood bank publicly appealed to people, through media interviews and advertisements, to give blood. They feared that the broadcast of the programme would result in a decline in donations of blood. Elective surgery in the country’s hospitals was cancelled. The hostility, which had begun to change to sympathy, had returned to the population.

Prejudice

Prejudice is difficult to overcome because very few people understand why they are prejudiced against a person or a company or a brand. If, by giving people the information they need, you can convert their prejudice to acceptance, you have gone a long way down the road. The consumer who is prejudiced against your brand may never buy it, but, through exposure to public relations techniques, may come to accept that it is a good and reputable brand.

One of the best examples of a conversion from prejudice to acceptance was the Dublin Gas Company. Two people died in an explosion at an apartment complex called Raglan House in Ballsbridge, Dublin, on 1 January 1987. It was several hours before the Dublin Gas Company issued its first public statement. The company was in receivership and the three-person PR department had been made redundant. External PR consultants had to be retained.

People in Dublin were hostile towards a company that did not seem to care. That hostility turned to prejudice and people in vox-pop interviews stated that they would not, under any circumstances, have gas in their homes. There was a prejudice against the product and the company that produced it, with many believing that it was unsafe.

To the company’s credit, Bord Gáis, which had replaced Dublin Gas as the supplier, not only changed its internal systems, but also communicated the change so effectively that it is hard to imagine a home in Dublin that would now be prejudiced against the gas company. In fact, in 1990, by an extensive PR and advertising campaign (remember the gas company bears and the 50-50 cashback?) Bord Gáis succeeded in promoting gas as a lifestyle choice which is environmentally friendly. The company not only regained the confidence of consumers, but increased the sales of natural gas appliances by 50 per cent that year. Who would want to deal with dirty grates and buckets of fuel if they could, instead, flick a switch and have the effect of a ‘real’ fire? It was a brilliant come-back by the company, which had treated seriously the concerns of its customers.²³

Apathy

Apathy, essentially, is when people just don’t care. They have no interest whatsoever in your company. You need to convert that apathy to interest. This is one of the most difficult of all PR tasks. If someone simply doesn’t care what happens to the environment, for example, or doesn’t care who represents them at national or European level, how do you convert that total apathy to at least a mild level of interest?

Ignorance

Finally, you have to deal with ignorance — people simply may not know anything about your company and, because they know nothing, they cannot form any opinion about you, and are very reluctant to buy anything from you. By converting ignorance to knowledge, you are placing the person in a better position to make a decision. This is probably the easiest of the four attitudes to deal with, and the one on which companies spend large budgets. People are reluctant to buy from a company, or to invest in a brand, that they never heard of. Companies are aware of that and consequently spend a large portion of their marketing budgets on research. As Bernadette Coyne has said: ‘Research is information and information is power…if you don’t know what people think of your brand or they think of the competitor’s brand, you are disadvantaged’.²⁴ As a result, not only marketing budgets but huge levels of PR resources are invested in telling the consumer, the investor and the influencer about the company, its policies, its location and its products.

DEALING WITH IMAGES

You will encounter many different images in your dealings with companies, organisations or charities. There are three, in particular, of which you should be conscious:

•  Mirror image

•  Wish image

•  Multiple image.

The mirror image is what companies or individuals believe to be true of themselves. The mirror image may, or may not, be true. It is not that companies are deliberately trying to mislead you, rather that they are deluding themselves. By research, you can establish if you are dealing with a true or a mirror image. We are all guilty of self-delusion in some way. How often have you seen a man or woman walking down the street, dressed in something ‘hideous’, which they believed was ‘beautiful’? Too often! Yet they looked in the mirror that morning and believed that they looked absolutely wonderful. Companies are guilty of making exactly the same mistakes.

A wish image is what a company would like to be true of itself. It wishes that it could be the biggest in the field, or provide the very best quality service. The wish needs to be identified as such, and moved from being a wish to a goal that the company can attain and is taking steps towards achieving. Your job, as a communications expert, is to harness that goal and ensure that all of your communication strategies work to help the company achieve it.

A multiple image essentially refers to the fact that different publics have different images of the same company. People develop an image of a company based on their dealings with it: employees will have an image of the company based on their work experience; a retailer will have an image of a company based on the frequency of delivery and the billing method, etc. Each of the publics will have a different image of the company. It is your job, as a PR person, to research and identify those images and use them in your communication with each of the groups.

Corporate image is an expression much used today. We will look at corporate image and corporate identity in much greater detail later in this book.

Finally, remember that what you are always trying to achieve, as a PR practitioner, is an accurate image of the company — an image that is a reasonable and accurate impression of an organisation and its products or services; an image that is based, most importantly, on the truth.

KEY DATES IN THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

REFERENCES

1. Michael Colley, The Communicators: The History of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland 1953–1993, Public Relations Institute of Ireland, 1993.

2. Mary O’Sullivan ‘If the room has a view, the man has the vision’, Sunday Independent, 2 April 2000.

3. Jennifer O’Connell, ‘Louis the spin king’, Sunday Business Post, 20 January 2002, Agenda section.

4. Jack Felton, Institute for PR, University of Florida, quoted in IPRA Digest, no. 68, 16 January 2001.

5. Moshe Dayan, Dayan Public Relations, Israel, quoted in IPRA Digest, no. 16, 14 August 2000.

6. Thalis P. Coutoupis, Greece, quoted in IPRA Digest, no. 17, 17 August 2000.

7. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Hutchinson, 1994.

8. Harold Burson, quoted by Alasdair Sutherland in IPRA Digest, no. 62, 12 January 2001.

9. Alison Tipping, CommDirect, UK, quoted in IPRA Digest, no. 18, 18 August 2000.

10. Gavin Bennett, Kenya, IPRA Digest, no. 157, 17 October 2001.

11. Professor W. R. Spence, presentation at Irish Academy of Public Relations course entitled ‘Public Relations Skills for Practitioners’, at Skull Kommunikációs Iskola, Budapest, 1997.

12. Tim Traverse-Healy in Actions Speak Louder than Words, video by PRTV Ltd, 1991.

13. ‘Witness denies garda pulled killer from car’, The Irish Times, 6 April 2001.

14. Patricia Deevy, ‘Franks, my dear, I don’t give a damn’, Sunday Independent, 2 April 2000.

15. Patricia Deevy, ‘It’s a wonderful life’, Sunday Independent, 20 February 2000.

16. Jody Corcoran, ‘Forget about the dead man, let’s talk about Frank’, Sunday Independent, 16 April 2000.

17. Jon White in Actions Speak Louder than Words, video by PRTV Ltd, 1991.

18. Ella Shanahan, ‘Food safety is no laughing matter for entertainer’, The Irish Times, 18 January 2002, Working Life feature.

19. Frank Jefkins, Public Relations Techniques, Butterworth Heinemann, 1994 (second edition).

20. ‘Giving blood’, Opinion/The Irish Times on the Web/ireland.com, 24 April 1998.

21. Paul Anderson, ‘Minister names new blood service chairman’, Breaking News/The Irish Times on the Web/ireland.com, 6 September 2001.

22. RTÉ Drama — ‘No Tears’. Four-part drama series — one-hour-long episodes. Dramatised account of the true story of Ireland’s hepatitis C scandal. Started on Monday 14 January 2002 at 9.30 p.m. Also broadcast on 21 January; 28 January; and 3 February. Producers: Jackie Larkin and Lesley McKimm. Series written by: Brian Phelan. Directed by: Stephen Burke. An independent commission for RTÉ. ‘No Tears’ was produced by Little Bird in association with Comet Films and is supported by the Irish Film Board.

23. www.naturalgas.ie

24. Elaine Larkin, ‘Firms realise information is power’, The Irish Times, 5 February 2001, Finance section.

CHAPTER 2

Ethics

The only way to compel man to speak good of you, is to do good.

Voltaire

Truth and ethical behaviour will be a recurring theme, so it is important, in the early stages of this book, to outline the codes of ethics by which PR professionals are bound.

ETHICS AND BRANDS

Brands have already been referred to briefly. Consumers buy brand names they know and trust. Major corporations with wide product ranges devote huge resources (people, money, PR, advertising) to promoting brands. We may know little about the company itself, but we know and understand something about the brands it produces.

You need only look at teenage spending patterns (or yuppie spending patterns) to see the power of the brand. Teenagers will ‘allow’ their parents to buy only certain brands of trainers and leisure suits; ‘other’ brands