Pr's Role In Public Relations

Public relations (PR) is a function of leadership and management that helps to achieve organizational objectives. PR practitioners communicate and develop positive relationships with the organisation’s internal and external publics (Lattimore, 2013). Public relations is defined in many different ways which involve changing roles and technological advances in the field. In earlier times, the definition of public relations involved press-agentry and publicity; whereas modern definition incorporates concepts like ‘engagement’ and ‘relationship building’ (PRSA, 2015). Public relations helps an organization and its key publics adapt to each other effectively and efficiently. The key to achieving a successful career in public relations

They are also expected to think critically and understand the dynamics of the business world, and at the same time, focus on integrated marketing communications. It is also crucial for PR practitioners to adapt to the media’s continuously changing needs. Thus, a person related to public relations will need to wear many different hats (Guenther, 2012). A mature understanding of what public relations might be is that of creativity and working in an ever-changing environment. From social media, to crisis management, to reputation management, every day in this field will bring to you something different. Furthermore, it is essential for each and every company to incorporate the roles, functions and programmes of public relations in their management. As we analyse the different aspects of public relations, it is clear that our perspective of public relations is far from the reality of it. It is not what most people think, nor does it only deal with being a “social butterfly” or “planning events”. There is a lot more to public relations than just that, which we will be talking about

Large organisations usually employ numerous public relations specialists to handle these duties but in small organisations, one person is usually assigned to handle all these tasks (Lattimore, 2013). There are many different perspectives and perceptions on what a PR practitioner does. We too share many of the same general ideas as everyone else, not knowing what really goes on in the life of a PR practitioner. The first function that we had discussed was on information dissemination. We thought that PR practitioners only deal with large crises, but the reality is that every misinformation should be clarified and not looked over, even if you never predicted people to believe it or thought it would not become a big issue (Wynne, 2011). A good example to illustrate this point is an incident that happened to the Chicago Bears, a professional American football team. In 2011, Jay Culter, a quarterback, suffered an injury and was put to the side-lines during the NFC championship. Other players then took to Twitter to accuse Cutler of being a coward, and the PR staff for the Chicago Bears chose to say nothing instead of replying with medical report explaining his injury. This in turn made Cutler and his team look extremely guilty. Another function would be relationships. Although we understood that building ties with an organisation’s