Functions of Public Relations Public

Functions of Public Relations

Public relations' (PR) many initiatives, strategies, and programs are invaluable for accomplishing both organizational and societal communication goals. The intent of this paper is to use four different public relations functions, two illustrating the organizational aspect of PR, and the other two showing the societal aspect. PR is a critical part of any communications and marketing mix, and is often used to inform and persuade.

Organizational Functions of PR

Any for-profit organization to survive needs to have a continual stream of information going to all its significant stakeholders. These stakeholders include industry and financial analysts, journalists, customers, suppliers, shareholders, employees, and prospects for the company's products and services. Public relations strategies vary by each of these stakeholder groups. All strategies however share a common goal of informing, persuading and ultimately increasing the credibility and position of a company in an industry within each of these key stakeholder groups. Industry analysts get the majority of their information from public relations professionals and this has a direct bearing on the reviews products and services get in reports, articles and interviews, Columbus (2005).

Two PR functions that illustrate the organizational functions of PR include investor relations and marketing communications. These are two very critical functions in any organization, especially if the company is publicly traded on any of the U.S. stock exchanges. Investor relations is a comprehensive series of strategies used by companies to educate, inform, and persuade industry and financial analysts regarding the organizations' health, direction, and future. For companies who are publicly traded on U.S. stock exchanges, investor relations became much more challenging with the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) which details financial reporting requirements and the need to report significant financial events within 72 hours of their occurrence. Investor relations senior managers work closely with the CEO, CFO, and COO to clarify and present financial performance figures to both the Securities and Exchange Commission and financial analysts, many of which work for Wall Street brokerage companies who advise institutional investors what companies to invest in. The bottom line is that investor relations is the most critical link any company has to its present and future opportunities for investment by both Wall Street brokerage companies and the institutional investors they represent.

Marketing Communications is a second function that illustrates PR's organizational role. For any company regardless of size, this is a key strategy to staying connected with their many types of stakeholders. Marketing communications spans the tasks of keeping the company's latest news in front of journalists and the general public, working with key suppliers on promotional programs and strategies to promote both brands, creating strategies that maximize specific events the organization may be sponsoring, working with marketing and business development organizations to create lead generation programs, and many more other strategies to maximize the value of the company to stakeholders. The function of marketing communications is also the integral part of any new product introduction process in a company as well. In fact, Toshiba America, known for their laptop computers, has the product launch and introduction managed as a project inside marketing communications to provide for greater coordination and synchronizing with other departments. Marketing communications acts in many companies as the activity hub for all strategies, as this department is often serving the sales force, product management, product marketing, service, finance, and very often the executive managers who are the spokespeople for strategies and products.

Societal functions of Public Relations

In a sense government agencies and their constituents, the citizens of a given region or nation, are "customers" of the services of the societal institutions and governments. The only difference is of course that to shop between governments is to have to move, while consumers can choose between organizations by going to a different website or taking a few steps down the isle in their local supermarket. Despite their captive audiences societal institutions have the duty to serve their constituents as best they can. For these societal institutions the stakeholders are even more pervasive and varied, and can include many other branches of the governments they are members of.

Two functions that define the societal role of public relations are consumer relations and community relations.