Luca / 27 February 2016 / Categories: Digital PR & Digital Marketing, Articoli Which is the objective of PR? Often friends ask me with curiosity: "But… what’s your job exactly? I have not understood very well.” My answer is always the same, even though I think that, despite they nod, they did not fully understand what I exactly do for a living. Often they confuse my work with doing "advertising" (indeed you might say that "I do advertise" for my clients towards their target audience), but I do not do advertising the way you might think. Public Relations are a deeper world, more complex, where the product or message of a company is taken over by a PR that creates a "strategic message" and packages it for the right client target audience, so that then the relevant public talks as positively as possible about it and make sure that others, reading or listening to what is said about that product will buy it, making the company benefit from it. Advertising, on the contrary, always has a positive message. "My washing detergent washes so white, that whiter than this is not possible.” Who would ever create an advertisement saying "Our washing machine is always broke, so, please do not buy it?” On the contrary, an article coming from a journalist reports the personal opinion of anyone of us, or an expert, and you feel it has been done with a more critical and open eye. In other words, PR creates what in jargon is called "brand awareness" helping the spread of a brand or a product, placing it in the market through the media (and other target audiences, that we will see more in details), raising as much as possible its approval rating. The goal of PR, then, is to support the business of the customer in order to sell and make revenue, in the easiest and most lasting way, reaching the widest target audience, managing and guiding the perception of the media. How? We will see it later. It will be therefore responsibility of the PR creating the ideal type of communication, the messages, and the necessary Communication Strategy choosing the best partners to support the BUSINESS GOAL of the customer at the very best, in order to obtain positive articles in the targeted media, in order to inform the journalist (or a representative) by offering him the best view of the product created by the customer, and the image of the Customer himself. Every customer has some business objectives to reach: those who sell newspapers, those who develop videogames, those who create hardware, those who make clothes, those who sell cans of tuna fish, those who do "consultancy", etc. All these "clients" in the end must be able to sell what they produce. And the PR will ensure that this sale takes place in the easiest way that is possible, helping the product to become well-known in the market and letting people know that that product or service exists and is valid. Remember a very important thing: behind any famous person, behind a big political, behind a large company or a brand, there is always a press office, a PR, that manages not only his relationship with the media, but often also with the public. So, do not underestimate the power that public relations and "communication" have in your business. Public relations, however, have "tools" that, despite the latest changes taking place, are always"evergreen". These are: - PRESS RELEASES or MEDIA ALERTS - MAILING LISTS (key tool of each PR Agency – the “treasure” of a PR Agency) - PRODUCT TESTS - INTERVIEWS - CONTESTS OR SWEEPSTAKES - SPEAKING OPPORTUNITIES - TRADESHOWS AND CONFERENCES - PRESS AND CONSUMER EVENTS - CRISIS MANAGEMENTS - MEDIA PLANNING (a tool existing since a long time but that is becoming more and more strategic and that will differentiate PR Agencies in the years to come). I hope that "self appointed" PRs (or who have been appointed) within companies having never done this job before, will start feeling unconfortable for what they are doing (or thought they were doing) and will begin to have the reasonable doubt PRs are not such a simple and obvious path, but have insights that go far beyond the writing of press releases (later we will see how to write them…) or how to pitch product tests (we'll see how to manage them as well), or simply emails ("I've seen things that you humans..."). My intention is therefore to direct them towards productive and effective actions. Doing PR is not easy at all. That’s why there are now Universities and Degree Courses that teach everything about the world of PR and Communication. Print 4259 Rate this article: 5.0 Tags: Luca Monticelli BlogPRPublic RelationsStar2ComPubbliche RelazioniCommunicationBUSINESS GOALComunicazioneAgenzie Stampa Please login or register to post comments.