Good communication with target audiences is key to every company’s success, and involves three separate areas: journalism, advertising, and public relations. Everybody knows what journalists and advertising professionals do, but do you know what a public relations professional – or “PR” – does?
The mass of information provided by access to the internet also results in significant exposure, especially for companies. Professionals from a public relations agency will strategically determine the best ways to build a strong reputation for an organization or individual.
First of all, we need to understand a few things about brand management:
Brand Management
The consolidation of a brand involves a series of social judgments, so it’s important to manage it with respect and care. Communicating company values to the consumer in a relatable way can be a challenge, which is where the public relations professional comes in.
While managing a brand, PRs work with three critical building blocks of business communication: identity, image, and reputation. The three are often mistaken for one another in everyday life, but each has its own defined role.
Identity
A company identity is the sum of its mission, vision, values, symbols, and everything that makes it unique. It is the corporation’s essence, and it’s the very thing that gives a purpose to the brand… but a well-constructed identity is useless without a reputable image.
Image
The image is the consumer’s impression of the brand and what it stands for. It results directly from the hard work of a specialist team.
How a company communicates with, and presents itself to the public will impact directly on its image and results. As Phillip Kotler, one of the most prominent marketing specialists of our time, once said: “we don’t buy products, but the image we have of them.”
Reputation
Reputation is the result of a well-established identity and a consolidated image, and it’s built slowly through consistent communication, and quality products or services. Unlike image, reputation is hard to change, for better or for worse.
What is “Public Relations”?
Now that you have an idea of the building blocks behind brand management, let’s look at what Public Relations is. The area is responsible for building mutually beneficial relations between organizations and their audiences.
This win-win scenario works as follows: the company gets to transmit its message and generate a positive image of its brand; and the public can view the company with transparency, and gets to demand results, given the close proximity between them.
But what does a public relations professional do?
Determining how people view companies is part of the PR’s job. These specialists can work in a number of different communication sectors, such as:
- Institutional communication
- Client Management
- Events
- Opinion polls
- Strategic planning
- Institutional projects
- Social Media
- Crisis management
- Drawing up corporate communication plans
- Writing Press Releases
- Media and influencer engagement
- Content production
- Governmental relations
Within this vast realm of possibilities, a PR’s core goal is to promote, build, maintain, and realign the images of individuals and institutions – carrying out a corporate CAT scan, and devising strategies to transmit their clients’ messages and image in the best way possible.
PRs are excellent storytellers, and can engage and involve the public to build the desired image, and reduce miscommunication.
The PR professional’s fundamental traits include planning capabilities, knowing how to tell a story, using data, managing digital reputations, and a capacity for innovation.
Reputation is everything
As we have seen above, a company’s reputation is built at a snail’s pace, but a crisis can destroy it in a flash.
As well as building a public image during uneventful times, the PR is responsible for strategizing the best way to protect a company’s image when faced with adversity and crisis.
That can be achieved using traditional or social media, major information spreaders, and opinion-makers.
The important online role of a PR professional
A company’s online reputation is like a big glass wall which everyone can see through, and which can be stained if left unattended. A PR professional works to humanize the business and advocate for transparency, in order to avoid this happening.
If you still have doubts about what a PR professional does, let’s recap: they offer a combined knowledge of communication, economic, and strategic management to make optimized decisions for a company’s image and reputation, which leads to lasting partnerships.
