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The chartered institute of public relations, London defines public relations as “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its public”.
According to the public relations society of America “public relations helps an organization and its publics to adapt mutually to each other.
The definition offered by the author Dr. C.V. Narasimha Reddy, who is also the editor, public relations voice is: “public relations is the management of two way communication process between an organization and its public to promote the corporate mission, services, products, reputation and gain public understanding”.
Publics - ‘Public’ may be defined as a group of people sharing a common interest or common values in a particular situation. In public relations, public (active audience) encompasses any group of people who are tied together, however, loosely by some common bond of interest or concern and who have consequences for an organization. (Newsom, 1999).
Longman dictionary of mass media and communication defines public as “people, who all have the same relationship to same person or group, constantly changing and not necessarily organized, the individual of a public may or may not know and communicate with each other”.
Stakeholders - In the modern corporate world, stakeholders are the term used for public. The idea or concept of stakeholders has come from the term ‘stockholders’ which means people who have bought shares from publicly held company and, thus, developed vested interest in that company. Similarly, there are many others with similar vested interests in an organization, such as employees, customers who may or may not actually own the company’s stock. But they have interest in the company as customers, suppliers or opinion leaders, and are collectively called stakeholders. Thus, stakeholders cover a broader spectrum of public. Sometimes, public also stand for the audience in public relations who receive messages through media.
Major PR publics - Every organization has public. Public in public relations management, by and large, are divided into two categories as internal public (employees) and external publics (customers).A third type of public also emerged as international public in the wake of globalization and information revolution. Such division is highly essential to identify organizational public to reach them with need based messages. Individuals and institutions constitute organizational public as individual public and institutional public. Both are equally important for public relations.
Categories of publics - The public in public relations may be as impossible to count as the stars, but like the stars they can be grouped into categories. Public of a corporation may be grouped as follows:
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Employees – Employees are the first among the public relations publics, for the organization cannot function without employees in providing services either to the investors or to the customers. In fact, the company cannot exist and start operations without employees. Each type of employees has to be tackled differently depending on the nature of the work and needs.
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Financial publics – The growth of any organization depends much on the financial resources. Financial public have to be tackled in a different way compared to employee public. Investors rely on growth in share price over time and any sudden or consistent fall may generate a merger or takeover of the company. The financial market is closely linked to investors and bankers. The financial public can be divided into three broad categories:
- Shareholders
- Investment analysts, stockbrokers, institutional buyers of large blocks of shares such as insurance companies, unit trusts, pension funds.
- Financial media of both print and electronic.
- Suppliers- The suppliers of materials and services are of great importance to any Manufacturing company. Without raw material, no products can be manufactured. The maintenance of good relations with suppliers and services will help in smooth running of the organization.
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Distributors- Distributors play a key role in marketing of products and services. Distributor relations is an aspect of public relations and marketing support which no manufacturer or service provider can afford to neglect. Distributors are unlikely to sell a new product in which they have no confidence.
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Customers- “Customer is the master” and “the customer is always right” are the adages that are followed by all organizations. And the good customer relations are the roots of public relations. The target of public relations communication is not only the current customer but also potential customer of the future. Customers meet is an important tool of customer public relations.
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Government- In government, bureaucracy is the key role player. All organizations need the support of the government, consisting of several departments and regularity authorities. In government relations, business organizations primarily are concerned with weighing impending legislation for its impact on the company, therefore it is necessary to identify government as a public and make contacts to improve communications with government officials and departments. At the grassroots level, village panchayat, president and its secretary are the key government public.
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Opinion leaders- In a society, there are people whose opinion is of great importance to the society. These opinion leaders are also known as persons in the middle as they carry message to the primary publics.
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Media public- A good media relationship is always useful for any successful public relations programme. The mass media greatly influences the public opinion. It is, therefore, imperative to identify the media and separate the public of any organization to launch public communication programmes. Even in the case of media, we can’t treat all the representatives of the media as media public.
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General community- The general community consists of those who may not be directly related with the business of the organization. But their moral support is most required for the success of the business. General community may also contain present and future customers, future employs and their families.
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Special public- As we have specialized periodicals in journalism to cater to the needs of specialized category of readers, there are special public in public relation as well. In fact magazines are classified based on their contents and relevant readers.
- International public- International publics include host country clients, customers, public officials, media, etc. International public are those who recite out of the country but have interest in your business. Public relation professionals are dealing with both national public and international public.
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