What is Public Relation (PR)? Nowadays, public relations is playing an important role in every organization. It is a fastest-growing fields of professional employment in worldwide. Some of the people will be confuse that public relation which its a kind of activities. For example, many think that "publicity" is equal to the meaning of public relations. Broom (2009, p.21) noted that public relation is the management function that establish and maintain mutually beneficial relationships between an organization or corporation and the publics on whom its success or failure depends. I agree with the point of Broom that PR is represent an organization to communicate with the public. Additionally, as a PR practitioners have the responsibility to shape the organization responsive to public opinion and serve the public interest. Through research, feedback and evaluation, the practitioner need to find out the concerns and expectations of a company's publics and explain them to its management. A responsible and effective public relations program is based on the understanding and support of its publics (PRSA, 2006). The relationship management is obligatory.
The request of public opinion has certainly growth the strength around the world as mass communication has become a global phenomenon. Mass communication can affect public opinion by increase the prominent of concern and situation taken by publics in the news. For example, like Lippmann's theory of agenda- setting and the theory of media effects. When a public relations practitioners facing an issue, media agenda will be a very useful theory for them. Being conscious of the effectiveness of media agenda setting is a way to the strategic management of public relations communication. Regard to the media agenda, public relation can easier come through the extraordinary of concertante or strategically to the strength of the organization. Besides that, public relation have a responsible to help the organization or client to save the money or resource before project a issue onto media agenda. McCombs and Shaw (1993) have stated that media not only tell us what to think about about, but we have to understand that how to think about it and following what to think. In the addition, McCombs (2005, p.159) mention that:
The agenda-setting influence of the press result in large measure from the repetition of the major issues in the news day after day. The public learns about the issues on the press agenda with little effort on their part, and considering the incidental nature of this leaning, issues move rather quickly from the press agenda to the public agenda.
Public opinion have been defined as the thinking from different people’s opinions. These is a way to found out among the publics who have the common interest. Based on the lecture's note, there are two different type of public opinion. First, the public opinion can be used by the collected view by a particular category which present through the clear conclusion in reach the society. For example, a group of phycology emphasized the seriousness of depression of children and the damage. That had a persuasive point of view on consumer preference for an option on how to overcome this problem. Yet, cumulative view of public opinion total up of the individual opinions within a population. Besides that, there are 4 group for the principle for the practitioners to reach to the survey of public opinion more easier. They are measuring quantitative opinion allocation; investigating and comparing the relationship between the individual agreement and the public opinion ; analyzing the public role of public opinion; and studying the communication media (Tymson, C, 1996).
As a PR practitioners, they have to overcome the problem which influences by the public opinions. The use of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and social learning theory, different publics (latent public, aware public and active public) can be disguised by the opinions at the same time. Social learning theory are states that the society are actuality impact by the ideas, opinions and behaviour of others. The public's personality like gender, ages, culture and language are addressed. To deliver the right messages and influencing behaviors, the practitioners must understanding the differences. Also, situational theory highlighted the level of crisis, problem consciousness and overcome the constraints (Tymson 1996). PR partitioners can divided the public in to two group, which is target publics or strategy publics. It is more easier to establish the program objectives and deliver message selectively with the specific definitions from the public opinion. According to the philosopher and educator John Dewey (1954) defined that public is an active social group be contained in the affected which recognize a problem for people who seek a solution. Without communication, it will remain the shadowy and formless.
One of the tasks for the public relations practitioners is to organized a campaigns. There are four step problem solving problem before running an event, which is defining the problem, planning and programming, taking action and communicating and evaluating the program. Taking part in a campaign is exciting and challenging. Planning (research and objective setting) is a part that very important for a campaign. Information gathered is used to contribute to the objectives, setting of goals and communication strategy. Public Relations practitioners must clarify and understand their target audiences. Other then that, deliver messages tactically is one of the key point to success as well. The program is being implemented and based on the evaluation research done. The case study of Ronald McDonald House campaign demonstrates that the best public relations can serve both of the client and the publics and well-planned a campaign designed to simplify interaction between an organization and the publics. The importance of background research, goals and objectives, organization and strategies is the key of success for a PR campaign.
For increased the understanding of the organization or sponsor, PR practitioners usually will apply SWOT analysis when researching. Researching their communication way and media preferences help the practitioners get a faster way the select the most efficient media strategy while deliver the messages. Lacking of information will cause the practitioners facing the risk of overpromise program failure. Broom (2009, p.296) stated that research is simply an attempt to reduce uncertainly, or as one executive put it.
It is a must know before a PR practitioners organize a campaign. For this semester, we are required to organize a campaign with title "A Cause of Poverty" as our 2nd assignment. Besides that, we have a chance to participate MAA Worldwide 2012 Global Academic Challenge in a group. We are required to create a new form of fund raising to address Poverty in our community , Malaysia or either oversea are allowable. The aim of this is to create a new charity to help address poverty around every corner of the world. We are required to define ‘poverty’ and the cause, for addressing of this challenge. In the addition, we have to create a name for the charity event, example of corporation objectives, an operational & evaluation plan and create a promotion marketing plan with target of US$1 million to reach in the first year. The savvy PR person will have at least a basic understanding of different types of research and the sorts of information the different forms of research can provide (Weiner, 2006). Due to this is a international challenge, our lecture, Ms.Manikam have pay a lot of effort on guide us for this assignment. First, we have to define "poverty" this is because different people have different point of view about poverty. In the addition, we have to start brainstorming of the organization and sponsor. Understand the background information of the organization or sponsor will be more easier for us to guide subsequent steps in the process. After this, we are get started for our program planning. Program Planning is to make the basic strategic decision about what will be done in what order in response to or in anticipation of a problem or opportunity (Broom, 2006). As we are target of US$1 million to reach in the first year of the campaign so strategic thinking is very important for a long run campaign. Strategic thinking contain with establishing the future goal state and formulating a plan for achieving to the future goal. Strategy can be defined as the determination of the basic long-term goals, objectives and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals (Broom, 2006, p314).
On other hand, we have to preparing for the actions plan. Scheduling is a must for a event proposal. This is to establish the time requiring for objectives and the action steps during the campaign. Some people will defined it as "Run-Down". Budgeting is included in action plan too. This is to determine and estimate the and itemize the variable cost for the event, so the PR practitioners can plan the budget for the next upcoming event. After everything done, then we have to prepare a group video presentation and post it up to Youtube. Lecture will be point out our mistake and the part that we have to improvement through the video link. Additionally, we have to submit the proposal with the poster and brochures about our event. For example, Earth Hour Campaign was successful and become a long-run campaign around the world. It have influenced the behaviour of the whole world. The messages have delivered to different publics from different country.
Through this subject, I have learn different type of codes of practice, public relations theories, and environment are important elements of Public Relations practice. Team work must be highlighted because it is important in Public Relations practice. During our group discussion, we have point out different opinion so it might be cause sometime to overcome it and get the group agreement. Based on my own knowledge, Public Relations practitioners were public speakers or as a spokesperson from an organizations and used to speak in front of the public.
I had experienced the feeling of unite from the group assignment. We used a fair drawing to divide the task to each of the member this is because everyone have a fair roles allocation .Due to we are from different timetable so we have set up a small group in Facebook to update the progress of our assignment. To become a good Public Relations team (research and planning group), we must keep updating with each other and have a good communication. Communication may be less effective when the roles are not classified clearly. Another problem is we never analysis the strength of each other before we do a fair drawing. For example, one of my member, Coey, she is well in design but she had been assign to combine our individual proposal to group proposal.
Besides of teamwork, communication strategy, research and problem solving is important for most PR positions. Marketing, product promotion, and advertising on the web are growth faster so as a PR practitioners must have some basic computing skill. Also, it can do the researching through the web. The comparison of PR2 and PR1 are PR1 is just learning about some basic skill however PR2 was teaching more in-depth about the theory and the progress of running for a campaign. Overall, I really appreciate that I have a chance to take part on the global challenging and it is really a great experience for all PR2 student.
My group video presentation :
The poster for our campaign :
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Free gift for everyone who participate for the charity run:
Print screen when we are submit our proposal to the MAA 2012 Global Challenge
References
l Broom, G.M 2006, 'Effective Public Relations', Person Education, New Jerseys.
l McCombs, M.E & Shaw, D.L 1993, 'The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Ideas", Journal of Communication, vol. 43, no.2, pp.65.
l McCombs, M.E 2005, "The Agenda Setting Function of the Press", The Press, pp.159.
l Tymson, C, 1996, The new Australian and New Zealand public relations manual , Rev. ed, Millennium Books , Alexandria, N.S.W.
l Dewey, J 1954, "The Publics and its Problem", Swallow Press, New York, pp.15-17.
l Weiner, M 2006, "Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contratian's Guide to Marketing and Communication", Jossey Bass, San Francisco, pp.50
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