The Marketer's Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business

PUBLIC RELATIONS (PR)

Application: Reputation Management, Marketing Communications, Perceived Value, Thought Leadership

The Concept

PR is a generic term for a range of specialist and sophisticated skills involved in communication with publics through, primarily, broadcast, published media. “Media relations”, for example, is the process of managing a firm’s relationship with public media like newspapers and news channels. This will involve regular contact with journalists and editors, fielding a range of enquiries on new business ventures, the chief executive’s press programme and handling embarrassing aberrations or professional errors. It is rare to find a company that does not have at least a “press officer”, dealing with these enquires. As specialists, they develop their own skills and their own professional networks to handle the media. In fact, their expertise is often better judged by what they keep out of the press than what appears in it.

It is in the field of proactive media relations that many firms fall down. Some press officers, particularly in smaller firms, find it difficult to get time away from the demands of ad hoc events and enquiries to take any initiative. When they do, it is often to issue press releases that go out to general circulation lists. Unfortunately, journalists receive so many press releases that they rarely give these much attention. It is better ...