What is Public Relations?

Public Relations (PR) is an integral part of a company’s marketing strategy. Public Relations
involves a variety of programs designed to maintain or enhance a company's image and its
products and services. An effective marketing strategy was first introduced in 1960 by marketing
professor and author E. Jerome McCarthy- Marketing Mix Four Ps- what is the PRODUCT,
what will be its PRICE, where to PLACE, and what will be its PROMOTION strategies.

Marketing
Mix

Product Price Place Promotion

Product/Service

 What does the customer want from the product /service? What needs does it satisfy?

 What features does it have to meet these needs?

 Are there any features you've missed out?

 Are you including costly features that the customer won't actually use?

 How and where will the customer use it?

 What does it look like? How will customers experience it?

 What size(s), color(s), and so on, should it be?

 What is it to be called?

 How is it branded?
  How is it differentiated versus your competitors?

 What is the most it can cost to provide and still be sold sufficiently profitably? (See also
Price, below.)

Place

 Where do buyers look for your product or service?

 If they look in a store, what kind? A specialist boutique or in a supermarket, or both? Or

online? Or direct, via a catalogue?

 How can you access the right distribution channels?

 Do you need to use a sales force? Or attend trade fairs? Or make online submissions? Or
send samples to catalogue companies?

 What do your competitors do, and how can you learn from that and/or differentiate?

Price

 What is the value of the product or service to the buyer?

 Are there established price points for products or services in this area?

 Is the customer price sensitive? Will a small decrease in price gain you extra market
share? Or will a small increase be indiscernible, and so gain you extra profit margin?

 What discounts should be offered to trade customers, or to other specific segments of

your market?

 How will your price compare with your competitors?

Promotion

 Where and when can you get your marketing messages across to your target market?

 Will you reach your audience by advertising online, in the press, on TV, on radio, or on
billboards? By using direct marketing mailshots? Through PR? On the internet?

 When is the best time to promote? Is there seasonality in the market? Are there any wider
environmental issues that suggest or dictate the timing of your market launch or
subsequent promotions?

 How do your competitors do their promotions? And how does that influence your choice
of promotional activity?
The fourth element of the 4 P’s of Marketing Mix is the Promotion; that focuses on creating the
awareness and persuading the customers to initiate the purchase. The several tools that facilitate
the promotion objective of a firm are collectively known as the Promotion Mix. It includes
Personal Selling, Sales Promotion, Direct Marketing, Advertising, and Public Relations. 

1. Personal selling- It is a face-to-face interaction between the company representative and

the customer with the objective to influence the customer to purchase the product or
services.

2. Sales Promotion- It is a short-term incentive given to the customers to have an increased

sale for a given time period such as Discounts, Coupons, Payback offers, Freebies, etc.

3. Direct marketing- The companies reach customers directly without any intermediaries or
any paid medium such as e-mails, text messages, Fax, newsletters etc. to either inform
customers about new offerings or any sales promotional schemes.

4. Advertising- It is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of goods and
services by the identified sponsor.

5. Public Relations- Refers to different activities conducted by a company to promote and

protect the image of the company, its products and policies in the eyes of the public.

An organization is judged by its goodwill and reputation and its sense of responsibility to the
interest of the public at large. Every well-established company make efforts to maintain its
relationships with its customers. An efficient public relation department implements different
communication activities to build up good reputation in the mind of the public and always
emphasize to eliminate negative publicity.

Communication has bought tremendous changes among the people, particularly in their attitude.
It is because of this the PR is in great demand by public or private companies, individuals,
celebrities, government, educational institutions, hospitals etc. Understanding and coping with
public attitudes is vital for an organization’s growth. PR act as a link between the organizations
and its public.

PR Definition

The term ‘Publics’ refers to any group of people who share a common interest on a particular
subject. For e.g. the employees of the organization is its public (Internal Public) or its
surrounding communities/ consumers (External Public). Each public has their own common
interest called as wants or desire. The public always wants its desire to be fulfilled by the
organization such as:

 Employees want more remuneration and other benefits

 Employers in turn look for more production and increase in sales
 Government expects to collect taxes to meet the state expenditure
 Politician want power to rule the state and so on……..

While on the other hand ‘Relations’ is the outcome of mutual understanding derived from the
process of sharing the common interest. By integration of these two elements we get the term
‘Public Relations’.

EEEe
EXTERNAL PUBLICS

INTERNAL PUBLICS
Co
Shar
m Employees, Management, ehol
mu
ders
niti Board of Directors, Clerks &
,
es,
Peons Inve
etc
stor
.
 Consumers, Government

CONSUMER
OPINION LEADERS
EMPLOYEES

WHOLESALE DEALERS STATE/CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

PUBLIC
RELATIONS
SHAREHOLDERS FINANCIAL BODIES

COMMUNITY ADMINISTRATIVE BODIES

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

The formal practice of what is now commonly referred to as “public relations” dates to the
early 20th century.  The earliest definitions emphasized press agentry and publicity, while more
modern definitions incorporate the concepts of “engagement” and “relationship building.” 

In 1948 the Council of the Institute of Public Relations, UK defined it as:

“Public Relations Practice is the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and
maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its public.”

Which means PR activity is organized as a campaign or a programme and it is a continued

activity. It is designed in a structured way. It aims to make the organization understood by the
publics.

 Deliberate: The PR activities are planned for some purpose. It is designed carefully and
creatively to attain the goal and ultimately achieving the objectives of the institution.
 Planned: PR practitioner is always in control of what is being done so he must work on a
planned basis.
 Sustained: PR practitioner always tries to implement a thought or an idea on the publics
mind. So they must continually keep them reminding.
 Understanding: Meet the desire of the target public. Try to bridge the communication
gap between the organization and its publics.
 Organization: Everybody works for somebody. It is the duty of a PR practitioner to see
that the organization is well appreciated and understood.
 Publics: The people living around the organization or who may be affected by the
organization.

In 1978, at the World Assembly of Public Relations Associations in Mexico City defined it as:

“Public Relations practice is the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their
consequences, counseling organization leaders and implementing planned programmes of
action which will serve both the organizations and the public interest.”

A modern definition according to PRSA, “Public relations is a strategic communication process

that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

According to publisher Denny Griswold- “Public Relations is the management function which
evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or an
organization with the public interest and plans and executes a program of action to earn
public understanding and acceptance.”
 ATTITUDE ACHIEVEMENT

 Enmity  Liking
 Prejudice  Acceptance
 Lack of Concern  Interest
 Lack of Knowledge  Knowledge
 Sympathy  Apathy

A Public Relations Practitioner serves as an intermediary between an organization and its

public. Consequently the PR has responsibilities both to the institution and to its various
publics.

Public relations involves research into all publics- receiving information from them, advising
management of their attitudes and responses, helping to set policies that demonstrate
responsible attention to them and constantly evaluating the effectiveness of all PR
programmes.

Today, the world is constantly growing bigger, becoming more streamlined, faster and more
complicated due to enhancement of Information and Communication Technology. Therefore
the need for self-expression is becoming more difficult and conflicts are arising between
nations, groups, classes and economic strata. The public relations professionals have to simplify
these communications complications to achieve an agreement between the various publics.
Effective public relations involve satisfying the particular interests of the various publics but the
interest of one group conflict with the other.

Public Relations serves a wide variety of institutions in our society such as business, trade
unions, government agencies, voluntary associations, foundations, hospitals, schools, colleges
and religious institutions. To achieve their goals these institutions must develop effective
relationships with many different audiences or publics such as employees, customers,
shareholders, local communities and other institutions.
It can be now deduced from above explanations that public relations is a means for the public
to have its desires felt by the institution and vice versa. It is an essential element in the
communication systems that enable publics to be informed on various aspects that affect their
lives. It is the ways and means to achieve favorable relationship.

Nature and Scope of PR

Since the beginning of public relations, its definition has been evolving alongside its changing
roles and advances in technology. Public relations initially started as publicity, but today its
scope has enlarged. Further, there is use of variety of terms such as corporate communication,
corporate affairs, public affairs, event management etc. The PR department works in
collaboration with all other functional departments such as financial PR, consumer relations,
employee relations, government relations, media relations and so on. PR helps in organizational
policies, marketing strategies and media publicity.

In any kind of human activity may it be in industry, commerce, education, health, local
government or social service, all of them need to understand and use public relations and
communication. The nature of public relations is image building through two-way
communication.

 Anticipating, analyzing and interpreting public opinion, attitudes and issues that might
have an impact, for good or ill, on the operations and plans of the organization.

 Counselling management at all levels in the organization with regard to policy decisions,
courses of action and communications – including crisis communications -- taking into
account their public consequences and the organization’s social or citizenship
responsibilities.

 Protecting the reputation of an organization.

  Researching, conducting and evaluating, on a continuing basis, programs of action and
communications to achieve the informed public understanding necessary to the success
of an organization’s aims. These may include marketing; financial; fundraising;
employee, community or government relations; and other programs.

 Planning and implementing the organization’s efforts to influence or change public

policy.

 Setting objectives, planning, budgeting, recruiting and training staff, developing facilities
— in short, managing the resources needed to perform all of the above.

 Supervise the creation of content to drive customer engagement and generate leads.

An effective public relations is developed to communicate to publics in such a way so that the
message coincides with organizational goals and seeks to benefit mutual interests whenever
possible.