public relations

Public Relations.

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The History of Public Relations.

PUBLIC RELATIONS: "The engineering of public support" is an essential part of any large and middle-sized corporation or public figure. These practices will only increase in importance as the speed of social media can make a

   small problem much bigger, much more quickly than before. Today we look at the evolution of public relations, it's essential methods, and most common uses today.

 

I.    The History of Public Relations is that of a system that grew in parallel to civilized ways of dealing with controversy.

A. Prior to public relations there were simple systems that used force to get cooperation. 

1. With increased media coverage the use of force by corporations often resulted in highly negative publicity for the company.

2. Media, starting in the late 1800's, focused on investigative journalism to press corporations to "do the right thing".

B. Public relations before professional offices used techniques of passive persuasion to get cooperation, instead of force.

1. The founder of modern PR, Edward Bernays, considered this approach to be "synonymous with civilization."

2. These early PR techniques were used in a range of approaches from simple to more complex.

a. Simple PR techniques were simply to present views in an attractive way to the people. Note how this technique is demonstrated in the following images. The Catholic church has St. Peter's Basilica looking attractive to new recruits, the music group Daft Punk looks more responsible with their condom giveaways, and the neo-nazi group Golden Dawn, in Greece, looks nicer as they give away free lunches to citizens.

 b. More advanced PR techniques were to actively filter what information was presented to the public so that only the most positive and attractive were shown. This is the most common technique still used today.

 

 

 

C. Formal Public Relations professions used these techniques to develop formal handbooks of how to engineer public support.

1. Their starting incentive was to limit public pressure to seek laws and government regulation of industry. By presenting corporations as responsible there was less pressure for legal controls.

a. Railroads in the 1800's had numerous deaths and injuries caused by poor maintenance and safety records. Newspapers fully covered this type of news in sensational ways for the public.

b. PR professionals had railroads change public impressions by presenting themselves as caring.

i. After a train wreck the company publicized their medical aid and donations to hospitals.

ii. Investments in safety equipment were highly publicized to make the companies look more responsible.

iii. Speed records and new train routes were publicized with "free fare" days to garner positive publicity.

2. The success of these simple approaches has steadily increased the use of PR offices in the US.

a. Individuals use PR to counter negative publicity against them. John D. Rockefeller, for example, was photographed giving away dimes to poor children to counter the negative publicity of his Standard Oil company.

b. The US government used PR to promote the first world war to the public using a variety of positive portrayals of war to get support, such as posters and songs.   

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 c. Foreign governments use these techniques to promote their own views to their public. This one from North Korea filters the reality of America enough to be funny.

How americans live today - Shocking! North Korea describe USA society as hell in their documentary

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 Public Relations.

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How Public Relations Works.

II.  How Public Relations Works.  The techniques of PR range from passive to more active, but all involve the positive portrayal of an individual, company or event.

A. Attractive information is crafted that will appeal to audiences.

1. Full packages, such as this Boeing 787 dreamliner page, include highly attractive pictures, videos, flight-trackers and information you can use at your own schedule and interest. 

2. Public events, such as this Red Robin burger contest, are entirely positive and usually get local newspapers to cover the event as "news" for further impact of the information.

3. Multiple mediums are used to get a variety of audiences exposed to the positive images that are created. These include print, videos, public contests, custom cars and more.

B. Information is presented more passively than advertising. The audience doesn't need to pay to see it, and can even argue against it. The idea is that it is "honest information" as the public sees it.

     PR campaigns know that most people are uncritical enough to simply follow the positive messages presented.

1. Good Works are the publicizing good actions by individuals or corporations in order to establish a "base approval level" in the public mind. Later negative events then would have less impact on public evaluations.

2. Sponsorships, such as of fairs and races, get this positive feel and usually free publicity from local news coverage.

3. Films, videos and tv programs the public can view and, hopefully, accept that viewpoint. Here is one famous documentary commissioned by the US government in the 1930's to promote changing agricultural practices.

 

 

The Plow That Broke the Plains, ca. 1937

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C. Crisis Management makes sure that information is presented easily, and early, to the public. Avoiding bad events simply lets the media focus on the worst, most sensational aspects of a problem.

1. Early Frameworks establish how the public will think about a message. Failure here makes later efforts in PR much less effective.

a. Successful early frameworks let companies avoid larger problems by admitting to issues and then promoting solutions they were using. Disasters, such as Fast Food with bad ingredients, are handled with instant responses and then publicizing of customer fraud if found.

b. Failure to have an early framework, usually by ignoring a problem, can make issues much worse for a company as the public focuses only on the negatives of an "uncaring" company.

I Made A Mistake I Bought A Lemon Jeep song by Teggy – Jeep Grand Cherokee, what a lemon!

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D. Symmetrical public relations is a long-term approach to achieve positive public evaluation of a company, individual or product. This involves actively changing in order to better meet public needs.

1. Research is done into what the public needs/wants, and how the current system does not fully match that. This usually takes place once sales are down or problems have occurred.

a. In Oregon the practice of burning grass seed fields was a problem that peaked when it killed people.

b. Fast food had a crisis when the public started to become informed, and outraged, over what was in their hamburger.

2. Changes are made, and then publicized, to show the organization cares about the public good.

a. Grass seed growers in Oregon announced plans to phase out field burning entirely, with additional rules about fire trucks always on call when burning was done.

b. McDonalds announced their stopping of using "pink slime" for hamburgers, and emphasized their new salad and fruit offerings.

 

 Public Relations.

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Current trends in public relations.

III.    Trends in Public Relations. As the focus of most of the audience has moved to digital media, such as the internet, so has PR moved in that direction. Some approaches are more advanced than others in allowing the public to interact with the information.

A. Video News Releases are a popular approach that mostly works with Television. This is sending information, or actual ads, to news stations in the hope that they will use them: giving free publicity to the company ideas.

Video News Release - Walmart Announces "Great For You" food labeling initiative

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1. An addition to this is public-made news releases, such as this video blog, that serve as promotions of a company's products.

What's Up In Makeup - Makeup NEWS - Week of March 15, 2015 * Jen Luv's Reviews *

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2. Sponsored reviews are gaining popularity as companies provide money or products to reviews. They can have print or video reviews that are spread completely outside the PR firm controls.

3. Youtube videos can provide information the public seeks on their own, and then help direct them towards a specific organization or company for more involvement.

Step 7: Humility - Holly’s Story about Drug Addiction Recovery

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B. Internet sites are critical as more of the public depends upon this for information about every subject. Positive information in attractive sites will set the foundation for how many people see a corporation or event.

1. Interactive sites that are easy to use build simple positive evaluation for a company. This is a supplement to the earlier "good works" strategies.

a. Nike.   

b. General Motors site also includes information that makes them appear more open and honest, after recent problems.

2. Social Media in PR plans allows for more user interaction. This can serve as viral promotion of company views.

C. Modern Ethical concerns. PR works by telling the truth, with the expectation that any lying will eventually be exposed and damage the company or organization telling it. Problems in PR occur when they look only at engineering public evaluations in the short-term.

1. Propaganda can damage long-term support for organization viewpoints. 

a. The 1990's Persion Gulf war was "sold" to the public with a manipulative PR campaign.

b. The later Iraq war also had short-term PR campaigns such as the Jessica Lynch story designed to get public approval for military actions.

c. Later exposure of these manipulations resulted in decreased public trust in government, media and support for the military.

2. Manipulation of the public can be as bad as lying. Eventually information will surface that disagrees with a simplistic PR campaign. This creates a permanent distrust of the offending organization by the public.

a. The war on drugs overemphasized negatives and left out positives so that many people do not believe negative effects are significant.

 b. Internet sites that depend on positive public evaluations will permanently damage themselves by manipulating information to look better.

CONCLUSION: PR is a widespread industry. Many companies, such as WOU, have their own PR groups. It is simply the attempt to engineer public support for a product, service or institution that is positive. Information and images should be released, not controlled as are advertisements, and  attempt to be truthful. The main concern for PR is the issue of ethical responsibility for presenting misleading images when they know they are able to bypass media filtering or investigation of their messages.

Watch the following video and then answer these questions:

1. Define this as an advertisement, propaganda or a PR campaign.

2. Explain what specifically makes this video the sort that you chose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=QK_83cnHbE4