Understanding Public Relations is mandatory, not only for PR professionals, but for other organisational decision makers as well. If we want to improve our reputation or run any communication campaign, we have to understand the underlying principles. Even when we employ an expert agency to run the show.
Understanding Public Relations begins with the definition of the topic. Namely, by explaining how does it differ from advertising, publicity, propaganda and other forms of communication. Because, at their core, these all aim to persuade and inform in some form. Within the hundreds of the proposed definitions, there are some characteristics that always shape the forms Public Relations can take.
- PR is planned communication and/or relationship building activity with strategic or deliberate intent. It emphasises the management of communications, the management of relationships and the creation and maintenance of reputation.
- It seeks to create awareness among specific groups, often referred to as the ‘public’ and ‘stakeholders’, and engage their interest.
- The interest of the public should result in a mutually beneficial relationship or response, possibly as a dialogue. Thus, it is different from publicity, which only seeks to disseminate messages.
- In its most common form, PR worked through the media, the latter which has been the gatekeeper of communication. This is an important difference compared to advertising, which spreads messages through purchased advertisement spaces and airtime (radio, television and online). With the rise of social media, PR activity has increasingly became a form of direct communication, bypassing media scrutiny.
The History of Public Relations
The formation of PR as a practice can be traced back to its earliest indications in the ancient world two millennia ago. Precursors of the trade have existed up to the end of the twentieth century. There were many antecedents of Public Relations, most of which were methods of promotion and of disseminating information. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the term ‘Public Relations’ first appeared. Even though practices that resemble public relations were evident long before that.
Organised communication practices, that really were public relations, came to be in the latter part of the nineteenth century. First in Germany, the United States, then in the United Kingdom. Public relations became prominent from the mid-1920s onward, primarily at a governmental level. Professionalisation in the form of university-level education and practitioner associations mainly appeared after the Second World War.
From the 1950s onwards, the practices of PR as promotion (or marketing PR) and PR as communication management continued to expand across countries in the Western world. But until the early 1990s they failed to spread in countries related to the Soviet bloc and China. By the 1980s, PR theory and practice was evolving in more sophisticated forms that focused on the formation of mutually beneficial relationships and as a support for organisations’ reputation.
In this and following decade, it expanded internationally. PR gradually became a planned, strategic practice with a purpose to communicate and build relationships in a mutually beneficial and ethical manner. As it evolved, PR benefited from technologies such as print and, later, mass media. It became an important element in empire and nation building, and formed worldwide practices with increasing employment and economic importance.