Strategic public relations approaches and best practices

Strategic Public Relations

Discuss the reasons you wish to pursue a graduate strategic public relations degree and your career goals. In detail, describe what you believe are your strengths, weaknesses, and potential of the profession. Also, discuss an aspect or area of the field that is of particular interest to you. Finally, describe the type of organization in which you would like to work once you graduate from (name of institution) and the type of work you would like to do. This statement should be two to four pages long, typed and double spaced.

Throughout my professional and academic career, my strengths at enabling collaboration across culturally diverse teams, groups and organizations has led to goals being accomplished and made contributes to strategic plans being realized. My strengths of cross-cultural communication, collaboration, and the ability to manage projects to deadlines through coordination and project management are well-suited for a profession in strategic public relations. My weaknesses of being impatient at times for results, having a single-focused intensity to attain objectives, and interest in a wide variety of subjects that makes me continually seeking to learn more can be successfully capitalized on in the strategic public relations profession. I sincerely believe that to be excellent at what you choose as a profession you must be passionate about it. My passion for translating collaboration into trusted teams, and having trusted teams work together to accomplish challenging objectives is an expectation I have as a strategic public relations professional.

Within public relations the areas of managing global brands, public personas and the effective use of social networking and social media to creatively and with authenticity synchronize messaging across an organization has a great deal of interest to me. The potential that exists for creating exceptional levels of public relations performance for brands and public personas when highly collaborative teams across cultural boundaries work together towards a common strategic objective is fascinating. That type of strategic public relations challenge is one I would welcome the opportunity to be entirely and passionately committed to. For strategic public relations professionals to be effective, I also sincerely believe they must elevate all other senior management team members to a level of communications accuracy and performance as well. CEOs especially during these skeptical times need to resonate with authenticity, accuracy and transparency for any company or organization to rise above the norm and have its messaging and direction internalized by stakeholders. Over time I would set successively higher goals and objectives for the organization of which I became a part of so it messaging would resonate with these values of authenticity, accuracy and transparency because I think building trust is good business. it's all about becoming trusted to those you serve, and for the strategic public relations professional, there are multitudes of constituents that need to be served continually with information. From the external stakeholders and if working for a publically-held company, shareholders and the financial analysts on Wall Street and investment centers, to the regulatory agencies evaluating compliance, and most importantly to the customers and employees, the strategic public relations professional must be the catalyst of consistency and accuracy in all external and internal communications. It is a role of extreme service yet one of I am sure exceptional satisfaction when contributions made at a strategic level assist in navigating a company through the turbulent and highly uncertain times we are living in today. I welcome that challenge and can hardly wait to take it on. Making a difference at that level for those many stakeholders while creating highly collaborative working relationships that seek long-term value over short-term results are what I hope to also achieve.

The type of organization I'd like to work for after graduating is one that sees creativity, not just strategy execution, as critically important to defining their identity. Companies that seek to create and then continually add dimension to public personas would be fascinating to work for as well. Ketchum and Google are two firms I specifically am hoping to work for after graduation. At Ketchum I would seek out opportunities to contribute to projects concentrating on clients' brands that needed coordination and collaboration across cultures, yet staying consistent to a common messaging objective. The "Man Living in an IKEA" campaign and the use of humor and unpretentious messaging by Ikea over the last several years also make this account one I would seek to contribute to. At Google, areas of interest include their intensive sustainability commitment to promote eco-friendly buildings and energy efficiency, the company's approach to managing the Chinese government relationship and messaging, and the torrent of new applications they produce. In conclusion, the organizations I'd seek out to work for after graduation would have brands that were global and could use my skill set of globally-based coordination and intercultural collaboration while also being highly creative with a pace that made programs challenging yet attainable.

Upload a 300-500-word persuasive essay that describes what you understand to be the fundamental role of public relations in society. Illustrate your commentary by citing a recent example (good or bad) of strategic public relations at work from an area of the field that is of particular interest to you.

At its most strategic, public relations seeks to unify the messaging and communications across a company while ensuring accuracy, authenticity and transparency to the public and to its own employees. For companies to set the foundation of trust in all their relationships with stakeholders, public relations must be the coordinating catalyst. To accomplish this, strategic public relations must ensure all messaging and communications contribute to the corporate mission, values and strategic objectives. The most exceptional examples of strategic public relations have all of these elements synchronized with each other, each supporting the other, and the result is an exceptional clarity, precision and persuasion in their communications strategies. For public relations at the tactical or strategic level to be effective, there must be a high degree of collaboration between and within departments, awareness of the audiences' and customer segment needs, and knowledge of unmet needs and preferences as well. Studies also indicate the more strategic the public relations, the more critical the role of the CEO is in supporting, even championing their execution and fulfillment. When all of these factors are taken into account and when they are in coordination with each other, strategic public relations can earn what literally billions of dollars spent on advertising and promotion cannot, and that is the trust of customers and stakeholders.

The best performing companies who have strategic public relations strategies delivering exceptional results are those that have very specific, measurable objectives. They also have specific qualitative measures of performance the continually evaluate their efforts against.