A brand’s image plays a crucial role in building customer awareness, which directly impacts whether the customer knows, likes, and trusts the brand. When publicity is out of a brand’s control, public relations (PR) can be an effective strategy.
What is PR?
A communication strategy from an organization to the public aimed at maintaining or cultivating a public image and/or responding to public discourse is known as Public Relations (PR).
The old saying goes: “Advertising costs money; publicity costs hope.” Determining the definition of public relations isn’t easy. In 2012, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) considered more than a thousand submissions before agreeing on the following:
What can an organization do with its beneficial relationship with the public to create good press? Are you really ‘prayin’ for something when you use a strategic approach to get results, as the old saying says?
If public relations is a bridge that connects you to your target audience, then public relations professionals are the bridge builders. Let’s take a closer look at them:
What is a public relations professional?
A public relations professional is responsible for creating and executing a PR strategy, which empowers a business or individual to establish a positive reputation through a variety of unpaid and earned channels, including TV, radio, and social media. Additionally, they help clients defend their reputations during crises which threaten their credibility.
To grasp this, it is necessary to first understand the two sides of public relations: the positive storytelling side and the negative damage-control side.
Positive Public Relations
If an organization is proactive about their image, they may invest in positive public relations, where a public relations professional helps paint a positive picture of the brand’s reputation, idea, product, position, or accomplishments.
PR professionals tell stories through earned media, rather than paid media. Unlike advertisers, who use paid media methods to tell stories, PR professionals use unpaid and earned media.
Some of these unpaid or earned avenues are:
News and press
Media outreach
Social media
Speaking engagements
Remember that a PR professional isn’t only looking to reach paying customers. A PR professional strives to reach everyone.
Example of Positive PR
As an example, you could work for a small interior design business that just won an award for “Best Interior Design Company in Chicago.” A PR specialist might put together a press release and reach out to media outlets to publish a story about this achievement.
Public relations professionals are helping the public gain relevant information about your interior design business along with building a credible reputation for your business. If I’m a consumer looking for an interior designer, this announcement will be helpful to me as well.
The practice of public relations extends to government institutions as well. Public relations professionals can run campaign initiatives or explain the public’s response to a government policy change. In this case, you can see how PR professionals are concerned with maintaining a healthy relationship between their client (the government) and the general public, who is entitled to hear about the government’s new policies.
Damage Control in PR (Negative Public Relations) :
PR isn’t just about positive storytelling. It also helps mitigate any damage that might weaken a client’s reputation.
The job of a PR professional is to advise an organization on how to proceed when the public discourse around a particular brand has a negative sentiment, for example because of negative publicity.
If dialogue is taking place, a company should take part in sharing their perspective. However, how they respond could affect how the public perceives them. If done improperly, it could worsen the situation.
The PR professional will be tasked with:
Crisis communications
Damage control
Response and/or apology messaging
Reputation restoration strategyPR Damage Control Example:
The early 1980s saw the death of seven people after an unknown person laced Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol products with cyanide. This sparked a panic and could have brought an end to the company’s Tylenol products.
Johnson & Johnson introduced aggressive PR measures to mitigate the damage. First, all Tylenol products were pulled from the shelves and the company issued a nationwide statement warning consumers not to purchase or use Tylenol. Johnson & Johnson then created a new, tamper-resistant seal and instructed 2,000 sales representatives to deliver presentations to the medical community to reintroduce these new, safer Tylenol bottles.
Johnson & Johnson’s reputation and product were saved due to this effective PR strategy. Six weeks after the cyanide crisis, Tylenol’s share price jumped back up to 24 percent.
An advertising campaign for Johnson & Johnson wouldn’t have worked. A PR campaign was necessary: PR professionals were able to tell the story of Johnson & Johnson as a company that prioritizes consumers.
Additionally, PR was employed to make Tylenol safe again by spreading the word that the cyanide-laced product has been withdrawn. Johnson & Johnson’s reputation was saved, and it allowed them to inform the public that Tylenol was once again safe.
PR as an Important Marketing Strategy
In these examples, you can see that PR professionals are adept at handling a wide variety of experiences, both good and bad, and must deal with these events in a way that works for the public and for the client.
In addition to their role as a public relations specialist, PR professionals are also able to advise management on the best policy decisions and actions to take, and they conduct events like fundraising programs and networking events to help the public understand the organization’s goals.
PR isn’t just used to influence a story after it’s already published – it’s also used to create it.
