Public Relations Philosophy, Part 1

One of the most misaligned firms in the PR game is the military. Especially since Vietnam there has been a general distrust between the military, who toed the company line of all is well, while for the first time the war was being televised and clearly all was not well. The need for a shift in the way public relations were dealt with during that war was clearly a necessity that was not seen, prepared or implemented during the war, and there are clear indications that the Tet offensive, Launched during the Lunar New Year, was partly a public relations campaign on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to show both the South Vietnamese and the Americans that the Vietcong (N. Vietnam) had the will and the ability to continue to fight even up against superior fire power, and a better equipped, better trained, larger American military force. As a PR campaign it was highly successful, but the American response was not. There didn't seem to be a common message of hope and certainty. In fact, there seemed to be a message of chaos, which led the citizens of the United States to believe that the war was unwinnable.

Times have certainly changed, but the military's need for a strong and unified voice remains. The military's public relations challenge is a very delicate and a very unique one. While truth should always be the cornerstone of any good PR campaign, the fact is if a military were to lay all there cards on the table for all the nations of the world to see, well, there are several scenario's that might play out. Most of them would result in the coalescing and destroying of American military power, allowing a power vacuum that could likely be filled by China. Another country whose interest in Public Relations has only recently taken hold, and this appears to be mostly as a tool towards a tyrannical capitalism, which they seem quite committed to, although in a much more savvy way than the overblown rhetorical blunderings of Joseph Stalin. His propaganda was more of a campaign against all enemies of his dogmatic from of communism, than any real public relations campaign towards forwarding the goals of the commintern, a Leninist idea anyway, who was perhaps more concerned with the ideals of socialism than the intense centralizing of power within his own hands.

Those were the more committed, serious practioners of what we call public Relations: building relations between people, whether they are customers, consumers, communists, or just an interested public. The truth is that is what PR is mostly about today: Selling. If you're not selling some brand of product, you're selling a brand of country. Cardell Media, a consulting firm that has a PR branch puts it like this:

Most people think that the only way to get good PR is to come up with a story. But there is another way. This involves positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. Whatever your profession, there's an area that you're an expert in. If you're a dentist contact the media during the next national smile week. If you're an accountant, contact the local press before the next budget and tell them you're an expert on tax and available for commenting on how the budget will impact local business. Get the picture. PR starts to be easy - when you know how.

(http://www.cardellmedia.com/publicrelations1.html)

Most of the internet world, at least, seems to feel that PR and marketing are the same animal. Perhaps they are right, but then again perhaps that's just the fast food talking. Truly the common element in the industrial age is that just about everyone is selling a product or a service, from one angle or another. The marketers, well let's wait a moment for them, and the PR folks are totally different animals, or so I like to think. As the U.S. dept. of Labor claims there really isn't a clear demarcation as to what's PR, what's marketing, or what fits into the realm of publicity, but there are interconnections without a doubt. Regardless of the other's, for the PR folks it's all about making connections with people you'll probably never meet, and putting forward an honest and integrity persona; it usually helps if you actually possess these characteristics, but the truth is human's are not the best judges of character.
As far as the actual job the United States Dept. of Labor and Statistics describes it thus:

Public relations specialists handle organizational functions such as media, community, consumer, industry, and governmental relations; political campaigns; interest-group representation; conflict mediation; and employee and investor relations. They do more than "tell the organization's story." They must understand the attitudes and concerns of community, consumer, employee, and public interest groups and establish and maintain cooperative relationships with them and with representatives from print and broadcast journalism.

(http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos086.htm#emply)

They go on to list a host of other activities that may fall in the lap of a PR individual, such as, maintaining contact between the bigwigs and the regular customers (i.e. set up conventions, make videos, and other visual accoutrement). PR folks, as has been shown, can also work for the really big business, the government. In that capacity, they generally tend to, eh, keep people informed of the situations at hand, and once the revolving door turns them out into the private sector they then are allowed the freedom to step out of the spotlight and use their contacts as a way of helping the company find a sympathetic ear on capital hill.

One of the ironies of all this is that in a small business, where staffing is short, generally the PR lady also wears the advertising and the publicity hat. There just isn't enough money to hire all around the board. Surely, these individuals work hard, but one has to wonder if that PR hat helps to bring a level of integrity to the others or vice-versa.