Public Relations

Public Relations

"Public relations is the management function that identifies, establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and the various publics on whom its success or failure depends" - Scott Cutlip

Public relations, byname PR, is an aspect of communications involving the relations between an entity subject, to, or seeking public attention of the various publics that are, or may be interested in it. The entity seeking attention may be a business corporation, an individual politician, a performer or author, a government or government agency, a charitable organisation, a religious body, or almost any other person or organisation. The publics may include segments as narrow as female voters of a particular political party who are between 35 and 50 years of age or the shareholders in a particular corporation; or the publics may be as broad as any national population or the world at large. The concerns of public relations operate both ways between the subject entity, which may be thought of as the client, and the publics involved. The important elements of public relations are to acquaint the client with the public conceptions of the client and to affect these perceptions by focusing, curtailing, amplifying, or augmenting information about the client as it is conveyed to the publics.

Public relations encompasses a variety of marketing activities that strengthen organisations credibility, enhance organisations image and develop goodwill. These are usually targeted directly at an audience, such as speeches, special events, newsletters, and annual reports. A public relation involves communicating who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how you make a difference.

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...y and disseminating information to trade and industrial groups. It further includes publicising praiseworthy activities by company personnel. Financial public relations involves relations with a company's own stockholders (stockholder relations) as well as with the investment community.

To a large extent, the job of public relations is to optimise good news and to forestall bad news. But when disaster strikes, the public relations practitioner's task, in consultation with legal counsel, is to assess the situation and the damage, to assemble the facts, together with necessary background information, and to offer these to the news media, along with answers to their questions of fact. When a client is under attack, it is a public relations responsibility to organise the client's response, usually involving several complicated issues to be both lucid and persuasive.