Public Relations, Branding and Authenticity

2 Public relations history re-imagined

Aligning corporate and activist perspectives

Public relations historiography

This chapter investigates a number of perspectives of public relations historiography and in doing so attempts to look at the development of corporate and brand-led communications, alongside the active promotion of ideas and actions by social and non-for-profit groups. The central focus here is the notion that public relations is always purposeful, and that it has the ideas and objectives of the entity it represents at the heart of its practice, but this may not necessarily be corporatist in nature. The chapter seeks to underpin an activist understanding of public relations as a driver of change activity, both within and outside ...