What-is-Public-Relations

What is Public Relations?

August 5, 2015/Rachel Hargrave
So what is Public Relations? Public Relations (or PR) has been defined by many. Here is one official definition for you from the Chartered Institute of PR (CIPR) which can be found at www.cipr.co.uk;

What is Public Relations

“Public Relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you”.

“Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”

Here at RDZ PR we often interchange the word ‘reputation’ for the phrase ‘raising your profile’. That’s not because we disagree with the above definition at all; we absolutely agree with it one hundred percent. It’s because for many of our clients, they see their first priority as raising their profile rather than enhancing or protecting their reputation. Why? Because by raising their profile their audience(s) (potential customers, clients and existing customers) can:

  • Find them easily
  • Understand what they do / offer in the way of products and services
  • Understand how they are different from the competition and their current supplier

Your new audience will then be able to make quick and clear decisions as to whether to work with you as our client or not.

Or not?

It can sound brutal but knowing where you stand saves everyone time and money and means that you can move onto other prospects and opportunities. For micro and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) that’s crucial. You see for many of our clients, PR is all about profile-raising in order to grow sales; it’s about the growth of their business.

But that’s not the only reason to run a PR campaign but it does help define what PR is for some of our clients. That said, if we refer back to the definition above it says: “Public Relations is … the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics” and it’s those last few words that we’d just like to look at in a little bit more detail.

“Its various publics” – what does that refer to? Well in PR ‘publics’ or audiences (a word that again seems to sit far more comfortably with most of our clients) includes: employees, customers, investors, the local community, or all/some/any of those stakeholder groups. PR is not just about sales growth and growing your business it can equally be about;

  1. An internal communications campaign
  2. A community engagement campaign
  3. An investor relations campaign

In short PR is a very broad church indeed; but it is here as a discipline to fundamentally support and strengthen your business. The strength of PR is in its flexibility and its ability to support your business in a way that makes sense to you and your business.

If you would like a Free Guide to Public Relations contact our agency director Rachel on 01509 43 43 52 or complete the form below

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Rachel Hargrave

Rachel has over 30 years of local, regional, national and international communications experience and expertise across a wide variety of clients including FTSE 100 companies, SMEs, micro businesses and start-ups. She also has extensive charity, Not-For-Profit and Community Interest Company experience and happily offers clients working in these areas a 50% discount on all RDZ PR rates.

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