In many years PR has been working in credibility of brands, names, companies and also personal images. Public relation includes ongoing activities to ensure the overall company has a strong public image. Based on the definition that public relations links the company and public, with all the professionalism and above many things, ethical.
The purpose is to create understanding with public and product, place, idea and so on. To do that public relations practitioners must involve their precious time with marketing people to create and guide a campaign directing the importance and the information that the public will need to believe in it. The objective need to be understandable and very confident, to fulfil the trust that public is looking for. Because it is not a matter of selling campaign, the role is more structural to bring confidence from the reader to the informer. As Alison Theaker explains in his book (the Public Relations handbook) “Public Relations is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and understanding between an organisation and its publics.”[1] He refers the key words planned and sustained suggests not an automatic or effortless relationships but to have those words meant in the practice, it need to be maintained and well planned to reach the understanding and goodwill.
Public Relations cannot be defined in one sentence and most of the sources that I looked could not give me a definitions of it purposes, stead they explained the relation between role and response. Independent of the group of people that practitioner PR will interact with, Public Relation do not need to have popularity or approval. Groups have different information needs and the vital key of Pr purposes is to give the right information to the right people and understanding the difference is a important skill in this area.
Communication has different levels like thoughts, conversations, lecture and even oneself, and one of the biggest challenges in our days are to get to it, for that are many ways that a practitioner can use, and for this publicity is essential. Public Relations can use publicity to cope their needs but is not just that, griffin that PR is not a sales occupation or just a part of marketing, PR works those tools in publicity not to sell but to build firstly the understanding, their trust in that company, person or whatever requires Public Relations services. There is an enormous difference of responsibility, effort and objectives. To develop a good relationship in media is important a mutual respect and integrity, [2]“Public relations have this importance to growth a reputation and the most difficult thing to keep it”, as Nick Propper (Ketchum/PR) said.
Edward L. Bernays was best known in the birth of Public Relations, actually he was considered the father of spin, and he collected and created strategies that are still used in nowadays. In that time around 1910’s, Bernays strategy was to grown their trust in political ambient, and many of their clients as an American president O’Dyer had his chance to prove that Bernays knowledge was essential to make him win the election a year after his campaign, because Bernays could construct such a good reputation to voters and public. After O’Dyer campaign many political references called his services as practitioner. Of course Bernays couldn’t be successful in all his works, but it called the attention they wanted, his tactics was so strong and many of them involved important figures of the media as Hitchcock and many others that he used their images as a too.
It is not easy to define spin and to understand even more, Fairclough (The Public Relations handbook) state that [3]“Part of the art of spin is calculating what additional emphases and foregrounding newspapers…will predictably add, which may be an effective way for the Government to convey implicitly messages it may not wish to convey explicit”. Depending on it, as a explanation of spin doctors can be based on, actions could describe it much more than a just a paragraph.
Spin in a simple and understandable language is most described as a manipulative tactics to support with evidences one’s position, to be so clear in its supports spin can bring a lack of trust and with it a dangerous situation, finding facts and working in a transparency to the public or those who PR relates with can bring a doubt for “spinning” the PR practitioner or the company. But this is part of the practitioner job, it can saves or can damage.
Public Relation has its excellences to bring a name up, or to build a base to continue a good name for a long term, even though there are risks that many times is needed to take or “spin”, this is where we find the ability and the professionalism of a practitioner and how serious it can be. There’s no less value in that profession because is proved more than we could read. To realise those purposes in Public Relations is an extremely hard work and it can involve a high expectation of results.
Bibliography
Theaker, Allison (2001), ‘The public relations handbook’, 2nd edition
Tye, Larry (1998), ‘The father of spin’
Ewen, Stuart (1996), ‘A social history of Spin’
Heath, Robert L. (2001), ‘Handbook of Public Relations’
http://marketing.about.com/b/2008/09/22/public-relations-understand-the-purpose-and-benefits.htm
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