Have you ever thought of using PR to solve issues or crisis in your organization? Do you believe PR can help in your organizational growth by making you achieve more? If your answer is either yes or no, then let's see what PR is all about through its definition. What is PR? ''It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain good will and mutual understanding between an individual, organization and its customers/public''. A company might survive without PR, but with a planned PR program, the company can expect better results and an enhanced reputation.
Though, we can't restrain from the truth, no amount of goodwill portrayed by the PR personnel can hide a bad product or protect an unethical company. For public relations to succeed, the organization must be persuasively convincing. PR alone cannot cure a rotten or internally sick organization. It will only help in carrying the public along by creating more positive image for you.
Why PR Offers Controlled Message To The Public
If you are not managing the information by which people form their opinions, their view of your company will be based solely on what they hear from various uncontrolled sources. In short, if you do not manage your reputation, others will do it for you. “Short words are the best, and old words when short are the best of all.” —Winston Churchill
Why Should You Use PR As A Tool In Your Organization?
“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” —Theodore Roosevelt
Because PR is a top management position, it is expedient to note that, PR renders the following top management services: It renders better staff recruitment and retention, greater market share, customer recognition and loyalty, motivated sales force and shareholders' satisfaction.
It is good to use PR before taking management decision because;
- It creates a goodwill/image
- It makes you people's number one choice in business
- It makes you stand out in your market
- It gives the power to employ and still retain better workers
- It gives you an edge in the media
- It grants you total control over internal and public messages
- It helps you to design a better image for your company
- It grants you the opportunity to be diversified on your work
- It can help you to minimize the damage when things go wrong.
How Important Is Corporate Image?
The fact remains that, a good corporate image will guarantee your company or organization to move forward instead of remaining stagnant in the market.Customers will come back to you time after time if you gain their loyalty. It builds the ego and the corporate image of your organization.
A good image can take years to build, but it can be quickly tarnished by negative publicity. Great care, and effort, is needed to foster and protect an organization's reputation.
Is Public Relations A Top Management Function?
Due to the effort of PR at restoring peace by creating a mutual understanding through its carefully planned programmes, it is important to state 4 reasons why public relations is a top management function.
1. PR Personnel As A Communication Expert
He is in-charge of communications (inflow and outflow of communication activities). He controls all sources of communications, in order to safeguard the image of the individual or organization in the eyes of the public.
2. PR Personnel As An Expert Decision Maker
As part of management board, the PR personnel should be the decision maker in an organization. Before an organization can actually move forward, it must encourage the planned PR campaign program.
3. PR Personnel As Communication Facilitator
He endeavors to listen to the organization's goals and the public perspective about them, and tries to draw observation from points of suggested solutions that will foster growth between them.
4. PR Personnel As A Problem Solving Facilitator
As a PR personnel, he is the issue manager and also the crisis manager. He understands the situation, controls the situation and predicts the consequences in the organization.
How Can PR Solve Top Management Problems?
In case it is still not clear to you after all the above illustrations, then you must understand at this point that public relations helps in creating awareness for you and your product/services, builds more good image for yourself through the public eyes, foreseeing the consequences of reported and non reported issues, doing feasibility study on the company brand and its effect on the target customer, helping an organization to manage its brand and maintaining a good will.
PR helps you get noticed, makes lost customers comes back, makes you increase both online and offline traffic etc. Professionally speaking, public relations campaign will help in building a high brand or company for you, thereby making you visible and relevant to the world.
Evaluation of PR Campaign At Proffering Creative Solutions To Business Related Issues
After series of attempt in campaigning about that particular brand, it is expedient to critically evaluate your yourself through the eyes of your client and the public. Likely questions could be; did you use the right message? what concrete research was done about the subject matter (the brief)? Are you able to meet up with your checklist ( checklist is the outline of your campaign plan)? Did you achieve your aim at calming situation down or rebranding the organization's image?
More so, we should ask; did the campaign meet the needs of your client or the management? What was your media choice and the target/preferred media coverage? If the overall campaign should be rated as per the effects on the public, what will be the percentage?
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