New Technologies Essay

Public relations is the management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or an organisation with the public interest, and plans and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance. Public relations is the management function that identifies, establishes, and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and the various publics on whom its success or failure depends. Cutlip Scott et al. Effective Public Relations, Prentice Hall 2000 Public Relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Public relations practice is the discipline which looks after reputation – with the aim of earning understanding and support, and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between organisations and its publics. Harrison Shirley, Public Relations – An introduction, Thomson Learning 2000 Public relations practice is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics. Jenkins Frank, Public Relations Techniques, Butterworth Heinemann 2nd edition Public relations consists of all forms of planned communication, outwards and inwards, between an organisation and its publics for the purpose of achieving specific objectives concerning mutual understanding. Jenkins Frank, Public Relations, Pitman 5th edition Comparison of the characteristics of advertising and public relationsUse of media Purchase media space Normally relies on or time gaining media coverage Degree of control over Relatively tight control Relatively little if any the message over the content and control over content and timing of the message timing of the message Message credibility Normally low credibility Normally relatively high credibility Types of target audience Relatively narrow target Often aimed at a audience usually market relatively broad range related of publics/audiences Focus of the activity Relatively short-term Situation oriented Expected time horizons Market/sales oriented Both short and long term for planning and results objectives and impact. objectives and impact. Forms of evaluation Established measurement Relatively limited number Techniques for coverage of evaluation techniques and cost efficiency used, often confined to measures of media coverage Mode of payment for Agencies receive payment Agencies paid on the agency services in the form of commission basis of fees for from the media based on consultant’s time or by the space or time booked annual retainer for the client Black Sam, Public Relation: revision workbook, HTL publications 1992 pg8 Comparison of propaganda and public relations Sender Varying degrees of source Clear identification of the Identification sender Purpose To build a movement or To achieve consent or a following develop dialogue Message One sided, varying degrees May moderate between of accuracy arguments accuracy important Media Similar media may be used in both cases Receiver Similar audiences may be targeted in both cases Black Sam, Public Relation: revision workbook, HTL publications 1992 pg9 â€Å"New Technologies are drastically changing the whole business of Public Relations† Mobile phones, video recorders, DVD players PCs etc, technology that began as business-to-business has steadily developed for use in the home, in the business market, technology is primarily a productivity tool, but in the home it is much more leisure or entertainment, competing for attention against TV or the cinema. Technology is the technical means people use to improve their surroundings. It is also knowledge of using tools and machines to do tasks efficiently. We use technology to control the world in which we live. Technology is people using knowledge, tools, and systems to make their lives easier and better. People use technology to improve their ability to do work. Through technology, people communicate better. Technology allows them to make more and better products. Our buildings are better with the use of technology. We travel in more comfort and speed because of technology. Yes, technology is everywhere and can make life better.www. ask. com According to most of the articles in the reference list, and the interview with Dan Pinch (consultant at PR agency Weber Shandwick), the biggest impact for the world of public relations in the last five years is most certainly the internet. It has overcome time-zone problems in communicating with clients in the United States as well as the Eastern European countries, and it has so much to offer in speed, quality and communication. Along with various interactive software packages (appendix (ii)) that make it easier for consultants to do their job efficiently and swifter than before. Understanding the unique properties of the internet: *it provides a unique medium in which communities and groups can form, reform, transform and dissolve. *It is relatively inexpensive, *users can be anonymous or have different online personality and act differently as a result, *it recognises no geographic boundaries, *once a message is out, the sender loses control, and *there are already many more internet than non-internet channels for communication. â€Å"It is clear that the internet has and is continuing to change the communication model or paradigm. It is changing the very nature of the relationship between an organisation and its publics in terms of process, content, location, speed and power. † The Public Relations e-Commission www. icas. co. uk e-PR @ ICAS, internet information The internet has created new tools and changed objectives; an altered geography of web sites, newsgroups, usenets, chat rooms, and mailing lists, and a revised lexicon with terms like rogue web sites, metatabs, text-crawlers, reciprocal linking, hyper-text-perts, and search engine placement; the names can make the internet sound very complex, however it is a useful communication tool. With information travelling at the velocity of light, communicators discover fresh ways to deliver and monitor news that keeps them two steps ahead of the media and the competition. Do you want to know if your client or company will be front-page news before the scoop is even in print? No problem! With the emergence of new methods of monitoring media, you can be notified before the news hits the stands or makes the airwaves; today public relations practitioners are receiving ‘real-time’ news-breaks. Public relations consultants can distribute information or look at reports of media placements in literally seconds than wait a week or two. Which system to use depends on the user’s needs, budget and equipment available for collecting or broadcasting data; the more exclusive and appropriate the information sent or received, the more expensive it is. Service companies are constantly coming up with new programs and applications to help public relations practitioners reach the media. Clipping services have upgraded their offerings with daily fax delivery and on-line media monitoring to match the client’s clip profile. Source: Public Relations Society of America, Technology transforms media relations work. Public Relations Journal, Nov 1993 v49 n11 p34(1) News distribution companies allow PR agencies to get vital information to the press on a large scale in a short time. Traditionally an agency would have to do their press release, put them in envelopes, and mail them out to all journalists. With news distribution companies like Pr Newswire, Pimms, Expedite all you do is e-mail them the release with a list of contacts and they will e-mail, fax, or post the information out. Pr Newswire also has capabilities of putting information onto a newswire service which can be accessed by large broadcast and press agencies. Contact Management Software are programmes supplied by companies like Media Disk and PR Newswire, they are large databases containing numerous names of journalists, together with respective publications; the systems should be continuously updated to keep data current. These systems allow users to build mailing lists for effective targeting and distribution of messages. Technology has changed many aspects (from speed of receiving documents via e-mail, to message boards and chat rooms where rumours can be heard of first etc. ) in the world of Public Relations. However, the areas in which it has not changed much is the talking to journalists, PR consultants still have to use the phone a great deal and face-to-face communication will always remain an important way of conducting business; clearly shown with the latest British Airways advertisement, with the strap line ‘It’s better to be there’. The advertisement shows that the use of technology is all well and good however making the effort to go and see the client is even better! (appendix (v)). According to Dan Pinch ‘Human contact of the actual daily job will always stay the same, Public Relations is all about human contact; that will never go away’. â€Å"Public relations whether it is offline is and always will be about human relationships! † The Public Relations e-Commission www. icas. co. uk e-PR @ ICAS, internet information To keep with the times it would be obvious to assume that many of the PR firms are or should be using a combination of easy data access and delivery technology to maintain their client base. Clipping services, news wires and informational databases have upgraded their offerings to supply their clientele with information releases. The functions of Public Relations can now be helped along with today’s technology, the creation of publicity for products and services can be done in numerous ways, from the internet to placement in films. Opinion forming on a particular issue can be dealt with by posting an article on the internet and getting feedback from the public. The ability to download photographs from the internet can help media relations. The use of television, cinema, radio, and internet can help with business sponsorship; getting more coverage in a variety of ways. PR on the Internet also includes a new set of assumptions, with response speeds measured in seconds, not hours, and a â€Å"through the looking glass† distortion that can make a single person on an Internet newsgroup more potent than the entire public relations department of a major corporation. â€Å"Nobody is small on the Web,† says Alan Wallace, a principal at Santa Monica-based Inter Active Agency, a brash, two-year-old firm dedicated to the proposition that PR agencies not already on the Internet are already out of business. Source: Richard Rapaport, PR finds a cool new tool. Forbes, Oct 6, 1997 v160 n7 pS100(6) The internet has clearly made the workload easier to handle for PR firms, however there is also a negative aspect about this tool; there are scarier implications that surround the world of internet, such as the reality, that corporate status can be savaged as dissatisfied customers and shareholders exchange comments on the World Wide Web. It can all occur without the companies’ knowledge, if they are not monitoring, and contributing to the forum, message boards and chat rooms it can end up as a damaging mix of rumours and misrepresentation, and severe consequences can follow, as Quigley Cold-Eeze discovered (appendix (iii)). When a company faces a crisis, there has never been a more powerful or potentially more destructive tool than the internet, according to Text 100 managing director Katie Kemp: â€Å"Once it gets on the net, you lose control of it. † Source: Haymarket Publishing Ltd, PR makes its way to IT boardrooms, Marketing, May 27, 1999 p59(2) PR agencies that have the technical expertise can set up monitoring services. Edelman Technology, the high-tech sector of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, assists the complex needs of technology corporations large and small. Staffed by IT specialists in key global markets, Edelman is among the leading industry players in the area of high-tech PR. Edelman has a system called I-Wire which monitors the internet, checking on 55,000 user groups and bulletin boards. It means that if there’s trouble, the team responsible can take action. â€Å"As technologies converge and the pace of development slows, competition for press coverage will intensify,† says Lewis. â€Å"Agencies with little knowledge of journalism and poor technical expertise will be exposed. Weak stories will fail, and so will weak agencies. â€Å"