“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”
After reading the definition of PRSA, you may still have questions about PR: How can an organization leverage its positive relationship with the public and turn it into good press? Are you really praying for something, as the old saying goes, when you use a strategic process to get results?
let’s break it down.
The positive, storytelling side of PR.
A PR professional works with an organization, company, government or individual to cultivate a story that portrays that client’s reputation, idea, product, position or performance in a positive light. In some ways, you can think of PR professionals as storytellers. Unlike advertisers who tell stories through paid methods, PR pros tell their stories through unpaid or earned media.
These unpaid or earned avenues include traditional media, social media or speaking engagements-which are particularly effective ways to reach the general public. Remember, a PR professional is not just trying to reach one paying client … she’s trying to reach everyone.
Hopefully, this is a digestible definition of PR. If you’re still not sure what PR looks like in the real world, let’s explore some examples.
Let’s say you work for a small interior design firm and your company just won an award, “Best Interior Design Company in Chicago. “A PR specialist might ask a reporter to write a story about this accomplishment to get the news out to the public.
In addition to building a credible reputation for your interior design business, the PR professional also helps the public get relevant information about this award. If I’m a consumer looking for an interior designer, this announcement might help me, too.
Public relations also extends to government. PR professionals can run political campaigns or explain a government’s new policies to the public. In this case, you can see how PR pros work to maintain a healthy and productive relationship between their client (the government) and the public, who have the right to hear about new policies.
The negative, damage-control side of PR.
PR is not just used for positive storytelling. It is also used to mitigate damage that might weaken a client’s reputation.
In the early 1980s, numerous bottles of Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol product were laced with cyanide by an unknown person, killing seven people. This caused widespread panic and could have led to the end of Tylenol products.
Johnson & Johnson took aggressive PR measures to mitigate the damage: First, the company pulled all of its Tylenol products off the shelves and issued a national statement warning consumers not to buy or use Tylenol. Then Johnson & Johnson created a new tamper-evident seal and directed 2,000 sales associates to deliver presentations to the medical community to reintroduce these new, safer Tylenol bottles.
This effective PR strategy saved Johnson & Johnson’s reputation as well as their product – in fact, Tylenol shares climbed back up to 24 percent just six weeks after the cyanide crisis.
In Johnson & Johnson’s case, a simple advertising campaign would not have worked. Instead, PR was necessary: PR pros were able to spread a story that portrayed Johnson & Johnson as a company that puts consumers before profits. Along with weakening Johnson & Johnson’s reputation, PR was used to prevent more people from consuming cyanide-laced Tylenol, and then used to inform the public that Tylenol was safe again. A win-win-win.
In these examples, you can see that PR professionals must navigate a variety of good and bad circumstances and address these events so the public and client can maintain a beneficial relationship. PR specialists also play a role in advising management on the best policy decisions or actions and in conducting programs such as fundraising or networking events to help the public understand the organization’s goals.
PR is not only used to influence a story after it happens – it is also used to write that story in the first place.