Communications and PR are like Siamese twins- they both disseminate information to the public via a synchronised messaging format. However, just like twins, both activities have their own unique identities.
Communications is the broad field of messaging- inclusive of Public Relations- which is concerned with the gathering and dissemination of information or news to the public. It also dwells on the methods by which the message is delivered to its target audience. Public Relations, however, goes beyond just providing information to people.
Public Relations is an organisation’s management of its perceptions by the publics through communicative and organised actions in a bid to serve its best interests and that of the public. Simply put, PR is one of the avenues of communications. It typically focuses on external audiences but also provides a means to communicate with the internal publics.
The methods or techniques of Public Relations are quite broad. They include analysing trends, envisaging outcomes and significances of action, employing counselling and implementing a planned set of programmes. Unlike communication that is mostly a one-way function, Public Relations must serve the interest of both the organisation and the publics.
While communications basically serve as a journalistic function, PR is a management function because it strictly manages the interest of an organisation. PR serves to bring the public perceptions and an organisation’s policies into harmony. In the age of “the customer is king”, PR aims to advocate a cause and influence the public in favour of the organisation and it is essential to do so because an organisation cannot achieve its aim without public approval.
To achieve this, Public Relations specialists are trained in the style of journalism and also utilise the skills and modes of journalism to disseminate the message of an organisation (also known as a client) to its target audience. PR specialists engage with members of the press to maximize free publicity obtainable for a newsworthy event in order to create public awareness about their client’s activities. This is also known as Media Relations.
Main Functions of Public Relations
As aforementioned, Public Relations and communication have many similarities, especially in terms of operations. However, such tasks are carried out to serve different purposes. These broad tasks are essential and must be implemented in order to ensure an organisation’s PR objective. They are:
- Research
This involves conducting surveys of the publics by PR specialists to envisage, understand or analyse what the public perceives about an organisation.
- Counselling
This concerns the interpretation of the research findings by PR specialists in order to advise the management of its client about the impact of policy implications and proffering a probable alternative course of action to either get public support or avoid public backlash.
- Planning
Public Relations specialists must be able to understand and determine basic PR policies, understand, and if possible, establish objectives and preferred means of communication as well as coordinate all PR activities for an organisation.
- Communication
This entails providing information about an organisation’s history, programmes and policies and ensuring the provision of an informed public understanding, which is essential of an organisation as well as the PR specialists.
Related Article: The basics of Public Relations
Modern Public Relations
The practice of Public Relations today can be classified in three classes:
- Press Agency
This is an organisation’s arrangement of special events that would attract public attention through the news media. Tools used to achieve this include press conference and trade shows.
- Publicity
This involves the use of publicists to place an organisation’s information about its activities in the public domain. Majority of the data is written or produced (for television and radio) in a journalistic style. Tools used to achieve this include press releases, features, and editorial opinions. They are placed in either newspapers, magazines, radio or television.
- Counselling
This is the use of professional PR practitioners to advise an organisation’s management about public perception of such an organisation, actions to take and providing managerial advice on how to mitigate issues. Here, PR specialists engage mainly in crisis management communication to either create an information embargo, centralise an organisation’s communication activities or establish an information centre for media contacts.
