IPR China

According to a 2004 survey, China has more than 1,500 public relations firms, and public relations is one of the top five professions in the country. The growth of the profession in China has caused a shortage of qualified public relations professionals.

Many scholars have pointed out the historical association between public relations and propaganda. That link is still fresh in Asian countries including China and the Philippines. In these countries, public relations practice is not a wholly separate concept from that of propaganda. Reforming communication from the negative of propaganda to the accepted area of traditional public relations is a slow process.

Please read this interesting report that wrote Weber & Shandwick about The Challenges of Public Relations in China.

This shift arguably created the need for public relations and redefined it. No longer was the emphasis on government communication and one-way messages pounded into powerless publics through propaganda. Now it could be used in new ways by private organisations. The contested definition of public relations changed as the political paradigm shifted in China, making it more varied, open, and flexible than ever before, but still far away from the idea of PR we have in the UK.

CNN report of the Olympic PR in China

China is still one of the most prosperous for the development, not only of public relations, but every economic or business market. Nevertheless, the article of Weber & Shandwick says that “consultants who are growing up with the industry are becoming experts in balancing creative campaigns with a deep understanding of the unique media environment. In recent years the Chinese media has had more flexibility and editorial control, but the regulation of media outlets by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) can still be a challenge. It is important to keep in mind that the government has tight control over all media outlets, and media are required to cover important government events.”

Structures of International PR

Each organisation can choose if they want their international PR department to follow a centralised (control) communicational policy or decentralised. The first one would be a model where the parent company’s PR team is responsible for planning campaigns and for the development of communicational policies, procedures and strategies, and the PR departments of the local offices have to follow. The decentralisation, the local PR departments have partial or full autonomy of policy making and planning.

 There is another debate in IPR and in many communication disciplines, these are: Standardisation against Adaptation. Standardisation is a uniform approach in the different countries, for example McDonald’s. If you go to a McDonalds in Paris, Japan or Chile you would see the same corporate colours, logo and possible menu, specially the Big Mac. On the other hand, adaptation is a culture-specific approach.

This McDonald’s advert show the diversity of consumers they have and proves you can find the same burger in different countries.

The structure of IPR will depend on the company or organisation, usually smaller multinationals tent to centralise their decision-making.

General Principles in IPR

Many scholars have been interested in whether PR principles are universal and also which factors have to change of an international PR campaign into each country. Most of the theoretical background of PR evolved in the US and in the UK, so the question is if these theories are applicable in other nations and if other theories have been created in other regions of the world.

Dr George Yip, President & Director of Research and Innovation, talk about Global Account Management (GAM) framework that multinational telecom, media and Internet players can leverage to grow revenues and customer satisfaction within key accounts.

Culbertson in his book (International Public Relations, A Comparative Analysis) says there are nine generic principles of PR practice:

1.     Involvement of PR in strategic management

2.     Empowerment of PR in the dominant coalition or a direct relationship to senior management.

3.     Integrated PR function.

4.     PR as a management function separated from other functions.

5.     Role of the PR practitioner

6.     Two-way symmetrical model of PR.

7.     A symmetrical system of internal communication.

8.     Knowledge potential for managerial role and symmetrical PR.

9.     Diversity embodied in all roles.

This shows that public relations have generic components that will work normally in most cultures and political systems. However, the specifics applications, such as strategies, techniques, and PR practice, will differ in each location, organisation or country.

For example, a study conducted in Greece, India and Taiwan identified two models. First the ‘personal influence’ model, where PR practitioners have to develop relationships with key opinion leaders. Then, the ‘cultural interpreter’ model, the PR practitioner interpret local cultures and practices to a multinational company or organisation.

Nevertheless, it is essential that PR practitioner know that the application of the general principles cannot be applied if there is no extent research and strategy research so they are adjusted to each different culture and political system in each country.

PR agency with an international network

International public relations consultancies have offices in many different countries. Most of the top 10 IPR agencies were originally created in the US or in the UK. For an international campaign, a company, organisation or government can hire an international public relations consultant that has several offices around the world. These local offices’ knowledge, expertise and their relations with the media give more credibility to communication actions as well as strengthening the legitimacy of the campaigns.

This original and fun video is a global showcase of all the offices that Lewis has around the world.

Currently there are several options to the purchaser of public relations agencies services across national boundaries:
- In the parent client's country, they can commission the PR services of a local branch of an international PR agency, which has an office in the target country.
- The client can also hire a local PR agency in the host country to work on its behalf.
- If the client has an office in the host country, its in-house practitioners can also engage in the public relations.
- Also, an organisation can directly target the public in the host nation.
- Another approach is to bring some of the ´key public´ of the target countries to the parent country. For example, a government can hire a PR agency to improve the image or reputation of a region of the country. A strategy could be to bring key journalist of the different target countries to show them the region and its beauty, and when they go back they can write in their country about the place they were invited.

We can see then that international PR becomes domestic.

There is a large list of international PR agencies, but these are some of the top ones:
Burson-Marsteller
Fleishman-Hillard
Hill & Knowlton
Golin/Harris International
Citigate Cunningham
Ketchum Communications
Edelman Public Relations
Weber & Shandwick
Porter Novelli
Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

This video is a collection of Skagen's international public relations events, advertisements, magazine features, and appearances in film and television. Skagen is a Danish company that designs accessories and jewelry.

Main players in international public relations

In the international system, IPR has to deal with several multinationals, governments, global mass media organisations and nations, to name a few. Furthermore, one PR agency can work simultaneously for a country, a MNO or NGO. But who are these main players? It is important to understand that reputation; nation’s image, understanding and building relations, are main objectives for why companies, governments and organisations will hire and have an IPR service.

Multinational organisation (MNOs) with a variety of global business such as increased global sales or creating global brands and raising brand awareness. Multinational companies have societies of production, sales or distribution in other countries, although the head office is settle in an specific nation, they will make decisions with a global perspective to get the commercial and economic advantage of each country they operate.  

Nation-states and governments:  the images of nations are important to attract investment, to boost tourism or to achieve foreign policy goals. Reputation is one of the most valuable currencies in international politics and governments often compete for credibility. For the nation-state, PR means the planned and continuous distribution of interest-bound information by a country aimed, mostly, at improving the nation’s image abroad.

This news video shows a Chine’s PR campaign against the Tibetan manifestations in China and around the world, and the their intention to mitigates the consequences of this internal issue on the Olympics.

Intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) are those whose members are national states. They can be (inter) regional, such as the European Union, Association of South East Asian Nations, League of Arab States, the European Space Agency or the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) or global, such as the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organisation (WTO), UNESCO and World Health Organisation (WHO). These organisations make collective decisions to manage particular problems on the global agenda.

International non-governmental organisations (NGOs) NGOs represent every facet of political, social and economic activities and their worldwide number is around 30,000. They claim to be the ‘global conscience’ and often mount IPR campaigns against large for-profit organisations or government, ‘naming and shaming’ them. Some of the most well-known are Greenpeace, Red Cross and Amnesty International, the list in big.

Virtual communities are does that develop on the Internet, ignoring the limitations of space and time. Blog are part of the virtual communities, and has become an important tool of communication and people can share information, opinions and build relashionships. There is an interesting website of blogosphere and the importance of virtual communities in Into the Blogosphere by Anita Blanchard, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

In a virtual world of their own is an article in The Guardian about Mohamed El-Fatatry, an Egiptian working in Finland, that created a virtual world aimed to the Muslim community.

Muxlim Pal creator Mohamed El-Fatatry

Also, we cannot forget the media conglomerates (companies that own large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet). The world’s largest conglomerate is News Corporation, then Timer Warner and third in the rank, The Walt Disney Company. Other major corporation are Bertelsman, CBS Corporation, Grupo PRISA, and Vivendi.

Critics point the finger at the media conglomerates accusing them of controlling media, in particular the news, and not making public newsworthy information that go against or can harm their own interests. Also, detractors blame them for being the leading forces contributing in the standardisation of culture, especially Americanisation.

 

Jeff Chester is an executive director of the Centre for Digital Democracy, based in Washington DC. In this youtube video he critics large media conglomerates.

Scholars say International PR is…

Since 1990, the concept of international public relations (IPR) is attracting more and more attention of PR practitioners, scholars, PR associations (International Public Relations Association) ) and international companies and organisations. This growth is extraordinary but also haphazard. An increasing number of countries are adapting American or European public relations principles and they are also making it their own by adjusting these principles to their cultural values and believes. (Wakefield) However, other countries consider public relations practitioners only as communications technicians and usually they do not reach management roles as an expert and responsible of communication, where they are in charge of the PR problems and their solutions, as well as developing programmes for their client or organisation. 

IPR in the twenty-first century is the area of PR practice that has grown most rapidly. Despite its interest, IPR theory and investigation has been poor and most of the existing studies come from other disciplines such as marketing, human resources and management.

Now lets see some of the current definitions:

Dennis L. Wilcox (2001), Agee and Ault defined IPR as “the planned and organised effort of a company, institution or government to establish mutually beneficial relations with the publics of other nations”.

Tench, Ralph (Exploring PR) says “IPR is the planned communication activity of an (multinational) organisation, a supra- or international institution or government to create a positive and receptive environment through interactions in the target country which facilitates the organisation (or government) to achieve its policy or business objectives without harming the interest of the host publics”.

Booth (1986) implied that the only true international practicioners are those who ‘understand how business is done across national borders’ and perform in that context.

However, in all these definitions there is an important aspect, and an essential practice in public relations, that is missing. That is mutual understanding and relationship building between an organisation (global) and its public (local country)

The CIPR has a number of sectoral groups run by members of the Institute and one of this groups in International Public Relations, for members working in-house or in consultancy in an international context, or who wish to develop their careers in an international direction. It is an opportunity for both networking and training.

The New Era of Global PR

I have always been interested in international relations and communication. I have lived in three continents and studied Journalism in Madrid. Currently, I am a PR master student and my obvious topic for this blog is International Public Relations (IPR).

Our world is completely global. Cultures and societies are interrelated and they influence each other. Also, communications and technology have an essential roll in modern society and have shaped the ways in which we share information, where individuals have more power than before thanks to Internet.

In my blog I would like to discuss and understand the current situation of International PR and how practitioners in this discipline have to juggle between global solutions as well as more focused approaches for each country, company or organization. Also, an important topic is the analysis of barriers and factors that affect this discipline and the generic principles in IPR practice. We know that most PR theories have an USA and UK approach, and it is why I will give an overview of how PR practice has developed in different regions of the world. Finally, what will be the future of International Public Relations practice?