Public Relations Has Successfully Distanced

¶ … public relations has successfully distanced itself from an era of deceit and manipulation to become a credible and ethical profession

The purpose of the present paper is to evaluate the following statement: Contemporary public relations has successfully distanced itself from an era of deceit ad manipulation to become a credible and ethical profession. Throughout the paper we will try to analyze the development of this profession in all of its aspects in order to demonstrate the value of truth of the statement under evaluation.

The first thing that we need to establish is what PR actually is. Public relations deal with establishing, maintaining and managing the relations between any type of organisation and the publics it comes into contact with. There is a huge amount of book written about this argument and there are numerous scholars who have attempted to define this activity in all of its complexity.

Perhaps one of the most suitable definitions is the one provided by Wilcox, Philip and Warren, according to which: Public Relations is a distinctive management function which helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communication, understanding, acceptance, and cooperation between an organisation and its publics; involves the management of problems or issues; helps management to keep informed on and responsive to public opinion; defines and emphasises the responsibility of management to serve the public interest; helps management to keep abreast of and effectively utilise change, serving as an early warning system to help anticipate trends; and uses research and sound ethical communication techniques as its principal tools. (http://www.pria.com.au/aboutus/cid/32/t/aboutus)

Therefore, PR is a management function, it acts as the active link between an organization and all of the publics which influence it or are influenced by it, it supports change and it has a strong ethical dimension. These are the main aspects that all the facets of this profession have in common.

The fact that PR is a function which can be applied in almost every business area led to a division and specialization of roles, ranging from corporate communications, public affairs management, media liaison, publicity management, promotions and community relations management. The deep complexity of the profession may cause confusion among the people who do not have a lot of information about it. And this is how we arrive to a very important aspect, that is the manner in which people perceive PR.

In a world in which image is almost more important than substance the manner in which a profession is perceived by the general public may have a strong impact upon its very efficiency. Since the areas in which PR can operate benefit from a large variety people tend to associate it with something which is either superficial ( A PR is a party organiser) if not dishonest ("Public relations is full of con artists trying to convince us that their organisation is superb").

The general public tends to overlook the real purpose of the PR profession, that is, establishing and managing an open relationship between an organization and its publics in a manner which is profitable for all the involved parties, while focusing on the superficial dimension ('Public Relations is just media hype designed to get the organisation's name in the news.')

It is more than obvious that the PR practitioners are dealing with a problem of perception. In the following paragraphs we will try to explain why people have this idea and what PR professionals have been doing in order to change things and improve the situation. Just like all the professions in the world, PR has emerged in order to respond to the needs of the organizations. Companies of all sorts needed to become more efficient and this efficiency at a certain point became strictly connected to the needs of the customers, potential customers, but also of the very employees.

At the beginning the job of the PR practitioners was to conceive and release internal publications such as the magazines for the staff. It is important to underline the fact that they were called technicians and not professionals, meaning that their job was not really a profession but a sort of appendix. Some people still think in terms as such which makes it difficult for them to respect the PR area and have trust in it.

Since the PR profession focuses mainly on the process of communication and deals with information some people make confusions between the PR practitioners and the people working in the area of journalism. It is true that the practitioners in both areas gather facts and information and that the PR officers try to have as many contacts as possible with the journalists, but their tasks are completely different.

While the journalist wishes to provide the general public with relevant information, the PR professional wishes to influence the public' behavior through the process of communication. This influence is translated in terms of behavior which support the organization's goals and objectives. The general public knows that the intention of the Pr activities is to influence their manner of thinking and lead them to perform certain actions and this scares them.

While the figure of the journalist is generally perceived as being an honest one, the PR officer is suspected of being dishonest. What people do not realize is that a PR campaign needs to be coherent with an organisation's actions in order to be efficient. Therefore, all the beautiful talk done by the PR needs to be supported by factual evidence. Lying to the people would be an extremely negative decision from a marketing point-of-view, not to mention the ethical one. So, what has been done in order to modify the general impression that the PR professional is nothing more than a cunning journalist who more than communicating is trying to sell something?

The truth is that the people working in the PR area have realized that the bad reputation of their profession was a high risk factor from a long-term perspective. It was not only that the public did not fully understand what PR was all about and how the PR mechanisms function, but there were a lot of individuals in this profession who were under qualified.

The situation had to be solved starting with the inside problems. In order to avoid having underskilled people passing themselves for PR practitioners and ruining the reputation for everybody working in the field, certain standards of professionalism have been established. Naturally one is not born being a PR, some of the skills need to be learned. For this purpose universities specialized in PR have been created.

Since PR is a not only a very complex profession, but also a complex discipline which feeds itself with knowledge from a variety of other fields such as journalism, sociology, anthropology, marketing, social marketing, a lot of research was done in order to improve it. this research helped the very profession to evolve and it also helped create a better prepared PR figure.

The important research done in the field as well as the very existence of top quality universities teaching PR had another important consequence -- that of modifying the perception of the very profession ( as it was mentioned above at the beginning the PR practitioners were mere technicians while today they are considered to be professionals with a solid cultural background and a great talent in creating and managing interpersonal relations).

Naturally the research in the field helped improve the professional standard and also its perception by the general public. But was that enough in order to change people's minds and turn PR into an honest business (assuming that there is such thing as an honest business)? A code of ethics became necessary and in fact the associations of PR practitioners throughout the world came up with a set of universally valid rules of behavior. These are based on an universal moral code of behavior and they make sure that the PR practitioner respects people's rights and behaves in a manner which is respectful as far as his target is concerned.

What was in fact the era of deceit and manipulation? It is most likely for this period to be associated with the period of P.T. Barnum and his tricks. At that time PR was not even a technical part of the work process. Barnum was smart enough to understand the power that the press has upon people, their tastes and actions and so he decided to use publicity in order to increase his sales.

His courageous actions such as having an elephant plowing his lands, having a bad play on the balcony of the museum seem funny today but he actually invented the idea of PR. People might feel somewhat tricked in when somebody uses stunts like these on them, but PR has evolved a lot and its contemporary ethical dimension is very strong.

Society has evolved and with it people's needs and understanding of the surrounding environment. PR nowadays is a strategic component in social marketing and also in branding, concepts which did not even exist before. In creating a brand it is impossible for Pr campaigns to lie. People however tend to divide PR in good and bad. A PR campaign trying to convince people to wear the seatbelt fastened while driving is considered good, a PR campaign trying to discredit a political candidate's opponents is considered bad. If the former case is pretty clear, the latter one makes s wonder where the border between ethics and efficiency is. We must always keep in mind the fact PR has become and ethical profession therefore regardless of its final purpose it must respect a code of ethics which is universally valid (doing otherwise would compromise it, its very success depends on this).

One example of an extremely efficient PR campaign is the one initiated by the candidate to be president Barack Obama. The campaign included all the possible media, press, TV, radio, advertising and the internet. Through a good concept based on key words such as "change" and "hope" he succeeded in transforming himself into a sort of super hero inspiring people to believe that "yes, we can." The use of social networks from facebook to youtube allowed for a direct contact with the people and also a clear division which allowed him to reach everyone in a more personal and personalized manner.