Read all about it - the definition of good PR

Angela Ward, Head of PR Services at The Marketing Eye, describes how PR adds value to businesses.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what PR actually is.

Having been a journalist for 20 years, I’ve been in contact with PR people and their messages for a long time – but now, on the other side of the fence and as a PR myself, I have to explain public relations to new and potential customers and it is useful to be able to explain exactly what it is.

During my time as a journalist I came across a wide variety of PRs – from those working in the beauty industry, who supplied me with almost hysterical press releases telling me how their latest perfume would change my life, to City PRs representing private equity firms on their investments and buyouts. Both very different types of approach – but still equally important PR to the firms involved.

The New Oxford Dictionary says that PR is: ‘The professional maintenance of a favourable public image by a company, organisation or individual’ and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, which should know what it is talking about, says PR is ‘the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics’.

To put it simply, PR is about building and guarding reputations. Every organisation has a variety of ‘publics’ and this is not just ‘the public’ at large. As a company, your publics can include clients/customers, distributors, suppliers, influencers, investors, the local community and, importantly, your own employees.

If the message that your employees are hearing, seeing and feeling every day in the workplace is a positive one, then they will be going home each day and spreading that around for you – whether that’s in the local pub or just between family and friends.

What PR isn’t is advertising. Advertising allows you to say whatever you want, within the constraints of law: it obviously has a cost implication, but it brings guarantees. Your copy will be included as you wrote it. But will people read your advert? That obviously depends on a number of factors – such as where you advertise and how attractive your advertisement is.

With PR, there are no such guarantees and you can’t control what a journalist will take from your press release, but if your copy gets used or your business is mentioned on an editorial page, then you get that all-important third party endorsement.

You can shout about how good your business is until the cows come home, but people may not believe you – and the more you shout, the less likely they will listen or give credence to what you are saying. If somebody else says that you are a good company with good products or services, whether they are a journalist, a happy customer or a member of your own staff, then that’s good PR.

The future of print advertising

I have often complained about the dearth of business news in our area. Our local weekly paper, the Courier, can only manage a double page spread and the resources of one freelance journalist. The Argus, which is daily, has business news once a week and tends to be centred on Brighton. Across the border in Kent, The weekly Kent Messenger produces an 8-page supplement once a month.

In magazine form, we have South East Business, which is increasingly beholden to thinly disguised advertorials. Kent Director is run out of Cambridge, Sussex Business Times has disappeared and I haven’t seen a copy of Business First for several months either.

The issue, of course, is advertising, or rather, a lack of it. With advertising revenues having plummeted and so much content being available for free on-line, there is no money to pay the journalists. This is not a healthy situation for any of us. We need quality journalism in a democratic society, whether it is reporting on local news or international conflicts.

The dilemma for media owners is well documented, and, whatever the answer to their conundrum is, it is hard to see how it lies in advertising. A recent survey showed that most marketers now find print advertising the least effective form of promotion when measured in ROI terms.

This is hardly surprising. The Internet in general and Twitter in particular has allowed us all to become our own editors. We can pick out the content we want from a vast array of sources and easily filter out anything we don’t want – most commonly, the advertising. There is no shortage of readers; it is just that they have gone to other sources, such as blogs, e-newsletters and social media.

I had these thoughts in mind when The Courier came to see me this week to talk about its new approach to business news. The paper, like the Kent Messenger before it, has decided to consolidate the business news into a monthly 8-page supplement. I like the idea. In fact, I’d like to see it go further and set up an on-line forum to allow two-way dialogue with the business community on business news.

Naturally, the representative didn’t come to see me for my insight: it was to sell advertising and what struck me this time was, rather than give me the usual spiel about stellar circulations and perfectly aligned audience demographics, the approach was to say “if local businesses want a business paper, they will have to support it with advertising”.

I don’t know if I find this resigned or refreshingly honest. Either way, it does raise the question about how media owners will be selling their advertising in future: as a means of raising awareness of products and services, or as a form of corporate social responsibility?

But isn’t this the way that newspapers started in the first place – as a way for business people to promote their political persuasion and points of view? Perhaps it’s true. Everything does come full circle in the end.

What do you think? Do businesses have a responsibility to support their local media with advertising?

Spinning out your expenses - how to handle a PR crisis

Most of us are, of course, scandalised by the revelations surrounding MPs' expenses claims. Finding out that our elected representatives are troughing away at tax-payers expense to feather their already gilded nests has hit at the very heart of our trust and confidence in the political system.

The news has temporarily eased the failure of individual banks and the financial crisis in general out of the headlines, but the one thing that both issues have in common is that they are nightmare scenarios for the PR teams of the companies and institutions involved. Rarely the recipients of sympathy, one can only imagine the head-in-hands feeling that these people are suffering as they think how to salvage the reputations of their hapless charges.

We have seen an evolution in the tactics adopted by PRs in recent weeks, undoubtedly determined by the magnitude or sheer indefensibility of the circumstances they find themselves in. At one time, the standard reaction to a crisis was to deny that one existed and then swiftly follow it up with an attack on the accuser's credibility. One thinks backs to the handling of the infamous dossier used by the Blair government as justification for declaring war on Iraq.

More recently, denial has given way to attempts at justification (or even laughable claims of "I'm the victim in this") and then gushing apologies and requests for forgiveness.

The contrast between the banks' approach to the banking crisis and that being taken now by Parliament is marked.

RBS struggled to throw off its institutionalised arrogance when the scale of the crisis in the bank first emerged. Head of PR, Carolyn McAdam, doggedly issued 'no comment' responses on behalf of her bosses to the frustration of the media and the public alike. Sir Fred Goodwin and Sir Tom McKillop then did little to engender public sympathy with their forced apologies in front of the Treasury Select Committee. Only under new management has RBS shown contrition, which is now being rewarded by public acceptance and early signs of progress.

In Parliament, we have seen a much more rapid journey from denial through to apology. Last month, Home Secretary, Jacquie Smith, denied any wrong doing over her husband's late-night viewing choices. Since then, once it became apparent that the collective hand had been well and truly caught in the cookie jar, the tactics have changed. MP's have been forced in front of the media, apologies issued, jobs lost and statements of corrective action made. In no way, does this defend the indefensible (or pass comment on the sincerity of the apologies), but it does show how, when faced with a PR crisis, quickly choosing the right response is vital to mitigating the damage.

Knowing how to handle a PR crisis should form part of the disaster planning in any organisation. With new media, such as Facebook and Twitter, crisis situations, not always founded on reliable facts, can occur very rapidly and it is important to be able to react quickly and appropriately.

The lessons from the events of 2009 so far are to:

• Respond promptly and address the public as quickly as possible. Failure to do so only fuels the rumour mill


• Maintain honesty. Lying or attempting to cover up will be discovered and make a bad situation worse


• Be informative. If there is a sense that there is more to come out, the story will run and run


• Be sympathetic to the victims of the crisis. Take whatever steps you can to relieve any loss or anxiety


• Maintain relationships with the media. A team that is seen to be helping the media will generally receive more favourable treatment, than one that blocks it with a terse 'no comment'.

A crisis communications plan doesn't have to be a weighty tome, it can be a simple set of guidelines that first considers the types of crises that could occur and then walks through the main steps for dealing with them. Like any form of insurance, to leave such things for another day is tempting, but dangerous. Temporarily diverting PR efforts away from new press releases to writing and fine-tuning a crisis communications plan could prove a valuable investment in the long run.

Do you have any experience or advice in how to manage a PR crisis? We are particularly interested in hearing opinions from professional PRs on how the current MPs' expenses crisis is being handled.