Luis Gonzalez
National University
05/09/2013
What Is Public Relations?
As companies are growing into humongous corporations, the communication among stakeholders has been lost. One of the objectives of marketing is to bring communications back. Fortunately, there is Public Relations which helps to open the communication routes among the stakeholders of an organization. Public Relations have become one of the key elements that every organization should have if they want to be successful. It is a difficult part of marketing that needs to be flexible to the constant changes that organizations have. Therefore, in order to know what is Public Relations, it is necessary to dig in Public Relations definition, what they do and, why they do it.
There are two major definitions for Public Relations. The first definition is use in the United States which states, “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics” (PRSA, 2009). It means that is a management function that anticipates, analyzes, and interprets public opinion (Newsom, 2010). Also, it focuses in the strategic communication process and emphasizes “mutually beneficial relationships” (PRSA, 2009). For example, before elections, PR sends surveys to general public. Base on the feedback, the candidates make their proposals. The people obtain what they want, and the candidate that has the best proposal wins the elections. In other words, it is a mutual benefit. The second definition is similar but, it is from the British Institute of Public Relations which states, “Public Relations is about reputation-the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Public Relations Practice is the discipline which looks after reputation with the aim of earning understanding and support, and influencing opinion and behavior” (Newsom, 2010). In many words, it means that the reputation of the
References: Newsom, D., Turk, J. V., Kruckeberg, D.(2010). THIS IS PR THE REALITIES OF PUBLIC RELATIONS(11 edition). Boston, MA. Cengage Learning. PRSA. (2009-2013). What is Public Relations. PRSA. Retrieved from.