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Vocus White Paper
The Expanding Role of the PR ProfessionalVocus White Paper 1The Expanding Role of the PR Professional
The Expanding Role of the PR Professional
Defining Public Relations:
Public relations helps our complex, pluralistic society to reach decisions and function more effectively by contributing to mutual understanding among groups and institutions. It serves to bring private and public policies into harmony. Public relations serves a wide variety of institutions in society such as businesses, trade unions, government agencies, voluntary associations, foundations, hospitals, schools, colleges and religious institutions. To achieve their goals, these institutions must develop effective relationships with many different audiences or publics such as employees, members, customers, local communities, shareholders, and other institutions, and with society at large.
The managements of institutions need to understand the attitudes and values of their publics in order to achieve institutional goals. The goals themselves are shaped by the external environment. The public relations practitioner acts as a counselor to management and as a mediator, helping to translate private aims into reasonable, publicly acceptable policy and action.-Official Statement of PRSA
Tasked with building and maintaining brand reputation, complementing marketing initiatives and even driving sales, public relations now extends far beyond its traditional role. While the foundation of the profession is still rooted in building relationships with the media, it now lends itself to a wide variety of other aspects in today's business environment.
As companies recognize the potential of PR in key areas of their growth strategy, more and more public relations professionals today find themselves reporting to the C-suite, taking part in strategic planning for the organization and supporting its growth.
How has the role of public relations changed over the past few years and where is it headed? How can you prepare for and take advantage of new opportunities? The public relations function has expanded to help align and lead other company initiatives and will continue to grow, moving forward.
This whitepaper will analyze the new role of the public relations professional and offer tips and techniques to professionals that they can apply to successfully support the company's growth.
Proponents of Change
"The public has its own standards and demands and habits. You may modify them but you dare not run counter to them. . The public is not an amorphous mass which can be molded at will, or dictated to." - Edward Bernays, Propaganda.
In recent years, the role of public relations has begun to make a significant shift away from its intense focus on the media, thanks in large part to the Internet and the rise of the new media. Once dedicated solely to the media, in today's world public relations is part of a more integrated company strategy.
The Internet has significantly changed the structure of communications. Comprising an audience of an estimated 178 million people or nearly four out of five US adults (2007, Harris Interactive Study) and consisting of consumers, media, investors and more, the Internet has greatly enhanced the exchange of information. With mass audiences now consuming information previously unavailable on such a wide-scale level, it has increased the need for stronger and more defined company messages.Vocus White Paper 2The Expanding Role of the PR Professional
Not only are more audiences going online to research, new media has provided an outlet for immediate sharing of that information. It is now possible for everyone from seasoned journalists to the average Internet user to publish opinions and content on a company. With all these messages converging on the Internet and thus becoming public facing, it falls to public relations professionals to monitor and manage these messages.
Another major shift in the industry has been brought on by public relations own successes. As public relations has continued to provide measureable results, and in many cases a greater ROI than other company functions, the profession has grown in estimation among companies. In a study to determine the ROI of public relations, Procter & Gamble employed statistical modeling across the marketing mix of six b... [download for more]
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