Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The importance of PR continues to grow
There was a time when public relations as a practice suffered from an ‘unfortunate past’ across the world. This had been due to practitioners being perceived as ‘spin doctors’ and ‘fancy accoutrements’ for issues and events.
Expressions such as: ‘It is only a PR exercise’ were often heard and the perception that the activity of public relations is merely a technical function in organisations was rife. In recent times the strategic role of public relations has taken front stage.
Public Relations has arguably never enjoyed a position of greater prominence than it does today. Companies and organisations across every industry and geography recognise the importance of effective communications. Along with the traditional PR strongholds of analyst and media relations, disciplines such as internal communications and social media are now becoming increasingly important as a core requisite for successful business operations.
In a competitive global environment companies are looking for new and more effective ways to communicate with customers, prospects and partners and this is where PR comes in. Having said that, let us look at some points showing the importance of PR.
- PR makes a valuable contribution to reputation management, working hard to sustain and enhance a good reputation and even harder to repair a damaged one.
- PR can change the context of how people react to all of your communications, your brand and to other brand critics and evangelists
- PR is essential as a management function and a vital component of strategic planning at the highest levels of decision-making.
- PR is all about forming relationships, nourishing them and watching them grow whether it's with clients, the media or investors.
According to an in-depth feature on churnalism.com, in the U.S. and U.K. there are now more PR people than journalists. This shows that companies and organisations are starting to properly harness the value of PR. The relationship between PR and journalist has never been more symbiotic than now.
PR practitioners need journalists because the formal media is currently still the largest outlet to inform the public about their clients. With newsroom cuts and the increasing speed of technology, journalists have twice the workload and less time to research and deliver in-depth reporting. Therefore, journalists turn to PR practitioners for story pitches, press releases, and quick answers to their questions.
PR, both as a communications tool on its own – and as part of the overall communications mix – has helped build many of our clients’ brands.
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