I read in Rock Star PR about the some argument we had in class: Is a PR degree necessary or not? As a graduate Journalism student and a current PR student I would like to think yes but in reality I believe it depends on each person. For example some of my Indian classmates argued that a PR degree is necessary because their industry it is still growing. However in the UK the PR industry is mature and most PR practitioners in junior position do not come from a PR degree.
A believe a degree in PR is the some as a degree in Journalism, Arts and Humanities they are general topic where student acquire general knowledge but it is working where they gain experience. Also I share the opinion of the Rock Star PR's author that to become a good PR practitioner you need to have a certain personality and that cannot be thought in any higher education college. You can come from any graduate degree and all the PR technicalities can be learned throughout work but you are born with a personality.
I believe PR should be a postgraduate degree and not undergraduate because people need to learn other skills and know how to do a good research, have excellent writing skills and be able to argue and have their own opinions.
I am studying a postgraduate PR degree because I come from Spain and I wanted to understand the UK PR industry, develop my English and learn new skills. At the end of the day I think it depends on where you are and where you want to go and if a PR degree is going to take you there, I say go for it!
One day in Corporate PR an expert in social media asked who likes blogs and most of my classmates said yes, apart from some classmate and me. I have always felt that blogs, and social media in general, are overwhelming and crowded with so much information. I thought that a was never going to love this “social media” phenomenon but without realising that I was really a big fun of some social media sites such as Youtube, Wikipedia and Facebook.
While studying Journalism we analysed the social media phenomenon and we learned how to search, write and create blogs, podcasts and web pages. Anybody can create and write a blog or a podcast and anybody can upload a video in Youtube. That is the magic! However there is so much information that it is really difficult to select the ones that you are interested.
From the point of view of a PR practitioner I think it is important to find where your target audience goes so you can build a two-way dialogue, get to know their opinions of your client or organisation. Organisation and companies need to have a proactive approach. Though, it is essential PR or marketing practitioner know that the social media has it own rules and that it belongs to the people. People feel this media is theirs and that it is an alternative to official information coming from governments and organisations.
The following Youtube video is about PR and Social media and the changes in the PR practice due to this phenomenon.
We have to be honest where are we coming from and I think official sources have the right to defend their point of view with arguments and respect. We need to be able to share information, create interesting dialogues and find interesting and odd facts from places around the world. It is now that two-way symmetric communication truly exists.
The added value of SMEs and multimillion pound businesses lies less and less on their products or services instated it is their intangible assets (corporate image and reputation) that are gaining more importance. During a crisis a company has to pay special attention to their intangible assets and protect the organisation, their employees, shareholders and general public.
Experts have identified many types of crisis but all of them have common elements: it is a threat the company, it has the element of surprise and the employees have a short period of time to make decisions. However, it is important that the company affected by the crisis understands the nature of the crisis so their can tackle the problem appropriately and implement the necessary strategies to succeed from the crisis.
Scholars have created several models and theoretical bases for crisis management. In theory most companies should have a crisis management plan establishing basic procedures to follow during a crisis. Getting ready a contingency plans in advance will help the crisis management team and the organisation to be prepare in case of a crisis. It is important that the crisis management team understands all possible crisis that their company or organisation could undergo. The clue is to be calm and prepared.
However, the advances in communication and new media could be an allied or an enemy for an organisation during a crisis management. The major inconveniences are the capacity to magnify a minor problem into something much bigger among the general public. Also the sources of many (not all of course) crises are the rumours created by people in the web through web pages, emails and blogs. The advantages are that the company’s spokesperson or team can communicate in real time how the situation is developing and also they can reach a bigger audience.
The Windsor Tower fire in Madrid in February 2005 turned one of the capital’s skyscrapers into ashes. The international consulting group Deloitte and tree departments of the Garrigues law firm had their offices within the Windsor Tower. They lost important documents and database files that they will never recover. This fire produced an enormous financial lost only within the clients but also the companies and its employees. In this case each company had a contingency plan and back-up centres that help them to start operation in a matter of hours. These companies implemented the crisis management plan successfully however authorities could never determine the cause of the fire.
Also this case is an example of what modern communication can do. This incident happened during Saturday night and lost of pedestrians had the opportunity to take pictures and videos with their mobile phone and home cameras. The Spanish newspaper El Pais gather together the images taken by the general public. The photo gallery is El Incendio del Edificio Windsor visto por los Lectores.
If you want to know more about Crisis Management and read about successful and not so successful crisis management cases you can click of Crisis Management and it will send you to Wikipedia. There you can find a clear explanation of all basic things you need to know of a crisis, theories and real cases.
Global PR is a fantasy dreamed by International PR companies to generate business? I believe that global public relations is a reality because in today’s world, multinational organisations have the need to communicate with an enormous amount of audiences.
International PR agencies can offer this type of service. Not only to generate business but also, and most importantly to make good use of the money and time of their clients.
International PR agencies can develop and implement an effective PR campaign for an organisation that operates and targets audiences situated in different countries.
How can they do that? International PR agencies have an international network with local offices in different countries. These local branches have a deeper knowledge, including language, culture and values, also having already gained experience and built contact networks and relations. Therefore, an international PR agency can tailor the messages to the needs of a specific public.
An organisation and its PR agency will create objectives that are global, but some strategies and tactics will be local and tailored to audiences.
This idea can be understood in four simple words “THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.”
In the last few decades the necessity of communicating with international audiences has created the need for effective global PR campaigns and international PR agencies to implement them. International PR has been shaped by today’s world. Governments, organisations and multinationals should always thinking globally but act locally.
Check out how a Pete Pederson, Edelman Seattle, explains how they did the global PR campaign for the launch of Halo 2:
Corporations are applying Corporate Social Responsibility programmes to show to society that they are more than a company that only cares about providing products or services that produce profits. They want to do contribute to society by improving life and helping the environment. However, many critics believe that some companies apply these programmes only to get good coverage in the press and having a better reputation, and they question their motives of their honest action to help society and the environment. They also question some business’s nature arguing that they will never be credible to the public eye about the application of CSR programme. For example, oil companies by nature will never help the environment or tobacco companies will affect people’s health.
It is important all corporations have a CSR but most importantly are the companies such as British American Tobacco, petrol BP and others implement CSR programmes and not as a distraction to unethical behaviour due to their core operations. I am not saying that all corporations will be ethical and socially responsible for having a CSR programmes. On the contrary, I am saying they need one and they have to implemented ethically and not only to get good press.
Therefore it is important that the PR practitioner in the corporation has the authority to change unethical practices of their company or client. At the end of the day the costumers and the community will know if a companies is doing good through their actions and not their promises.
Most companies announce in their webpage their CSR and if you are interested in a specific company you only have to Google it!
In the Anglo-Saxon countries the debate around the feminisation of public relations is in vogue. Interestingly enough I Google “mujeres y relaciones públicas” and I did not get a single article about this topic. This made me think that this issue (if it is an issue) was only happening in the UK and US.
After reading a few articles, statistics and studies I came to the conclusion that the feminisation of public relations is a really but, also, that they are not promoted into highest positions within the agencies and in-house organisations.
Is this bad or good? Well, I would have to say that I do not know and it is very subjective because each individual is different and maybe particular circumstances have not given the opportunity to women to be in bigger positions. I do believe that women are more than capable to excel in their work and both genders should have equal opportunities and salaries.
Once a person asked me if I was proud that Michelle Bachelet won the Chilean presidential elections. I answer that I did not mind who won as long as he or she was a good leader.
In this century in most countries, women have great opportunities to develop professionally. More and more young girls are going to university and recent graduate girls are eager to work hard. I currently we can see many examples of exceptional women leading in different industries.
That is the main question! Now a day’s is the Banking industry that is in the spotlight due to the economical crisis or credit crunch. Next, probably, it will be the Oil industry…? There is always someone to blame about unethical decisions and practice in each profession. So why mark PR as an industry that maybe will never be ethical?
Public relations department manages the communication flow between the client, shareholders and community. They are the responsible ones to communicate any type of news, from bad to good ones. In some organisation the communication director would work with CEO drafting the company’s mission statement, strategies and vision. The PR stuff is also in charge of managing a crisis. PR is the mediator between client and public. I we cannot forget our dear friends the journalist. So maybe because the PR practitioners are in that unique position they are the targets of all criticism.
I do believe that is come to each individual to blame responsibility when they have worked unethically and not the whole industry.
PR associations have created Professional Codes of Conducts as guidelines for the PR practitioners. Academics have developed and analysed several ethical frameworks to understand the origins of approaches that practitioners could use when a dilemma arises. In an essay I wrote in the first semester I discovered that the decision-making theory was the most accepted in the PR industry. Also, PR practitioners sometimes will find their self in a case of loyalty conflicts and in those cases it is important to remember that practitioners must be responsible to society and above all public interest but without living aside clients, employees and especially oneself.
A problem with the Professional Codes of Conducts is that each association has their unique approach to make their codes effective and enforce sanctions when their members have committed unethical decisions. Therefore, having o many PR associations it is difficult to who is the conscious voice in the PR industry.
To know more about Professional Codes of Conducts please click on the following associations:
Thanks to our American classmates in yesterday’s class we had an entertaining and interesting presentation of Barack Obama’s campaign. It was his unique massage and innovative ways of reaching people from all spectrum of society that made this last long campaign much more exciting.
Obama’s PR advisor marked a new way of how political candidates should take their campaigns. The most innovative tool was the use of the new media. Facebook, YouTube and MySpace are some examples of how social networks can help you boost your profile among younger people and how they can support your battle.
No longer the old slogans and proposals can be used as the only way to reach voters. Political PR practitioners have new opportunities to create more appealing campaigns.
In the analysis of Obama’s new media campaign we can see different elements that made his campaign a success and something that other PR practitioners can look at.
There are also examples when political PR goes wrong. John Plunkett from The Guardian wrote about, according to PR Week, When political PR stunts go wrong. It is not a long article but it is funny to remember old political stunts that went wide of the mark.
For the public it funny when the stunts do not according to plans, however, political PR also has a dark side, the “spin doctors”. According to Wikipedia, “spin is providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure.” In the UK, the most well-known “spin doctor” is Tony Blair’s Director of Communication and Strategy, Alastair John Campbell(click on name to see his webpage).
Confessions of a Spin Doctorby Eric Sparling is an article published in PR Watch. He talks about lying and manipulating information whilst he was working in a PR agency.
Is the new kind on the block! New media is changing the PR industry in many ways. Even the name of this specific field in PR has change to PR 2.0. If you Google PR 2.0 or PR and new media you will get hundreds of articles related to this topic.
New Media and Education
Everybody in the PR industry is talking and learning about it. It is a must-have for entry-level PR practitioners to develop a deeper knowledge of new media and its tools. The following video is a brief interview with Rick Murray, President of Edelman Digital, at the 2008 New Media Academic Summit. He explains the importance of new media for graduate students that want to get into the PR industry. Also he mentions that it is important that academic courses start incorporating new media as an essential module for communication students.
But why is new media so important?
Public relations has to adapt to the new trends in society so they can reach new audiences in a creative and innovative ways. Not only PR is changing their working methods, even mass media outlets, such as TV news channels and newspapers, created new online version a few years ago. New media has transformed the way organizations, CEO’s and politicians communicate with their public. However, most of them do not understand new media and they are afraid of it. Senior PR practitioners feel obsolete because of new media and even young PR practitioners feel threatened by it. But they should not suffer PR 2.0 stress because new media should be seen as a new opportunity to communicate with your target audience.
Harold Burson, chairman founder of Burson-Marsteller, and Mark Penn, worldwide president and CEO of Burson-Marsteller, talk about some trends and the future of the public relations industry.
How is the source now- the journalist or the public?
The new media allows an easier interaction between sources and publics. The public is no longer anonymous. They have their own voice that can be heard through the blogosphere. The raise of Internet means that the communication between media, journalists and the public is much faster and interactive. The feedback is almost instantaneous and the communicational channels are always open. It is now that PR practitioners need to know its public with a deeper knowledge so the massages can reach the desire individuals through the appropriate channels. Also by understanding their communicational tools, PR practitioners can build relationships based on the two-way symmetrical communicational model.
New media has raised the public to a different level of power in the communication system. Here there is another interesting podcast about the role of PR in the new media. Rob Brown, PR director of Mc Cann Erickson Communications House, did the podcast for PRWeek.
What ever happens in the future, one thing we have to know is that communication evolves and we have to adapt if we want to be successful in any professional industry. Especially PR practitioners have to see this new trend as an opportunity to reach the different audiences. However, it is important for PR practitioners that new media has its own rules created by the public and if they do not respect them, they will be alienated and attacked. In conclusion, new media is part of the future of public relations and no one can stop it.
Click in this link to read an interesting article in The Guardian written by Jack Schofield about What do bloggers want from PR 2.0?on what journalist and bloggers would like from the PR practitioners.
Most people know that during war, the countries involved in it will influence the public opinion to support their cause. The methods they use are sophisticated campaigns and messages aiming to change the behaviours of a target audience, usually a large number of individuals.
There are many and many examples of propaganda, so many that we could go back to Ancient history and find examples of leaders making use of a basic and rudimentary propaganda. But it was in the last two centuries that human’s mastered propaganda. In yesterday’s class we saw how the U.S. and British government were making use of propaganda in the Iraq war. It is a documentary done by the BBC that explains how they manipulated messages and spin information to convince the population that the war was necessary and it was being successful.
The debate around propaganda and war is especially interesting and can become awfully passionate. However there is another topic equally attractive, PR and propaganda. Many critics refer to PR as a synonym of propaganda. In Le Monde Diplomatic, the American writer Noam Chomsky talks about democratic governments manipulating the media and communication and how they also make use of propaganda. He also states that PR “is a major advance on totalitarian rule, as it is much more agreeable to be subjected to advertising than to torture.”
PR can be used as propaganda but it is not the ethical practice of this profession. PR practitioners want to take their massage across but also they want to understand the public and build relations that can benefit both sides. In this industry, like in any other, there will be “bad” PR practitioners that will manipulate the facts or restrict essential information to the media so a pre-design massage will come across to the public.
In this YouTube video the author and co-founder of PR Watch John Stauber also criticizes PR firms as a multibillion-dollar industry that manipulates the media and masses. Also, how they are trying to expose this PR firms that are manipulating public opinion.
I do not know if people can avoid manipulation and propaganda but an important habit that will help individuals to have a bigger perspective of what is happening is to read different media outlets. Now a day, the Internet is an enormous source of information and points of view that we can get information of the current issues in the world and our country. We cannot be naïve that there are authorities, opinion leaders and organization that will attempt to manipulate public opinion. However, I do believe that there are PR practitioners that work hard to give accurate information, build solid relations between shareholders and carry out an ethical PR practice.
Clearly, culture matters in international public relations. Its practice varies greatly around the globe through competing definitions of public relations and semantic nuances that suggest links to propaganda and persuasion. On a larger level, it’s the cultural subtleties that alter not only definitions of public relations but also what it means to do public relations internationally.
Culture represents the layers public relations must contend with to get to shared situations at the core of international public relations, whether building nations, attracting tourism, spurring economic growth, or controlling discord from opposition groups or nations. The layers of culture extend across international lines, from developed to developing countries, from democratic nations to authoritarian regimes.
Although it’s important to define public relations practice, such an endeavour can also limit theoretical scope. Definitions privilege worldviews, establish power relations, and attach names to communicative processes that are constantly in change, shaped by global forces that include economic and cultural waves.
International public relations is an area of the public relations practice that will continue growing with the development of PR in different parts of the world, specially with emerging countries in Asia and South America. They will add value to this profession and possibly develop new theoretical frameworks. The future of public relations, most importantly of international PR, is a global world without limits.
Ketchum Senior Counsel John Paluszek shares his perspectives on the future of public relations in an address to the Florida Public Relations Association at its annual conference in August 2008.
The activities developed by IPR should be done by professional PR practitioners. This type of PR practitioner has to understand what is international public relations and also have a strong knowledge of International Relations. Expert in this field of International PR or Global PR are cultural interpreters of each host country, they have to be able to translate the cultural differences between the client and their audiences, being the last one of enormous dimension and diversity.
PR is emerging as a socially mandated profession in South America just as it is in other parts of the world. Advancements in democracy and communication technology, along with growing economic and environmental interdependence, are the primary globally shared reasons for the profession’s growth and development.
In South America the social role of PR is truly reflected in the special characteristics of the PR practitioners. The social and economic imbalance in the countries in Latin America is a major factor in the development of the PR profession and practice, where PR practitioners are active agents of social and political transformation.
A continuation a will name some of the current characteristics of PR is South America: · Licensing of public relations. · The creation of public relations universities programmes and courses to develop student’s skills. · Growth and development of professional organisations and the arrival of international PR consultants. · The advancements in democracy, particularly in the transparency of government. · There is a holistic concept of public relations. · There is a need to balance relationship of public relations and journalism. In the region they can see difference between the two profession and each other roles. · Development of stockholder owned corporations
The PR industry in some Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Chile or Argentina, is at the same level as some of the European countries. However, there are other countries that the PR industry is synonym of propaganda.
