Josiah Minotto
Comm 100s: Mass Media & Society
The Pennsylvania State University – Professor Nichols
Student-Led Lecture: “The History of Public Relations”
Summer Session – July 23, 2019
Public Relations as a Whole
Overview
Over the past two hundred and fifty years, public relations have been a staple of American Communications and continues to impact our culture. By definition, public relations is the practice of deliberately managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public. To put it simply, personal relations is earned media. Dating all the way back to 1773, the Boston Tea Party incidence is a prime example of early personal relations. Samuel Adams, a “master of propaganda”, organized the political messages among the colonists to enforce change. Famously inspiring the Boston Tea Party, he ran the show of spreading the need to rally and protest the British in order to gain independence from this monarchy. Inspiring generations to come, he formed the basis for American public relations. Often equated to publicity, personal relations focus is gaining interest toward people or products from the public. This can mean projecting a company’s best interest or even masking certain aspects that a company does not want to display to the public.
Personal relations often involve the countering of negative media impressions of the client that were created by others. During World War 2, the Office of War Information was created to censor war news, document social change, and create a central means for government to communicate about the war. It was basically the head personal relations organization for the government at the time to monitor the country’s image towards the public’s best interest. Continuing to influence the public today, personal relations is a large contributor to how mass media is perceived by the public.
The Barons of Personal Relations
Including many companies such as Fleishman-Hillard, Weber Shandwick, Hill & Knowlton Strategies, Burson-Marsteller, Incepta, Edelman Worldwide, BSMG Worldwide, Ogilvy PR, Porter Novelli, and Ketchum, personal relations has a wide variety of who is on top. As described in advertising, the Big Four are companies that rule the industry: WPP, Omnicom Group, Interpublic, and Publicis. These Big Four companies, with the exception of Edelman and Incepta, own every big public relations firms known worldwide. The key to becoming a baron like these examples is having a global reach. Hill & Knowlton Strategies has 83 offices is 46 countries making it one of the biggest and most diverse PR company. In order to cover a wide variety of business, these firms mostly operate on five prominent activities: corporate communications, financial communications, health care, public affairs, crisis management. With some smaller firms covering less ground, every firm focuses by approaching their activities through three lenses, production, distribution, and exhibition.
Production
The spread of “earned media” always starts with PR companies having a good relationship with relevant news outlets that they can project their clients through. Being codependent, PR staff members create, sell and think up possible sample stories for the journalists/editors. Commonly known as a “press release”, which is a short essay that is written in the form of an objective news story, PR firms find a “hook” to reel in these outlets in order to give a beneficial view of the person or product they are presenting to the public. It cannot be too obviously centered around benefiting the client though, because this isn’t an ad. It is a ploy of subtlety to enter the public’s mind in order to shine light on this person or product. The goal is to impact; for example, if a tech company is about to come out with a new product, their PR team will come up with a way to project how good the product is to possibly a technology magazine. Showing specs and new additions, the PR firm will hope that this never-before-seen product will be shown in a tech magazine in good light. That way, it will appeal to the audience that if this magazine shows how good it is, they will need to purchase it and use it. Successful companies have PR teams that are open, honest, and genuine towards the public because it leads to a strong relationship with the product or person’s audience.
Distribution
After fully preparing the “campaign” or game plan for a client, PR send the materials to the “proper publicity outlets”. In simple terms, this means a media vehicle that can reach the projected audience that PR is targeting. Having pre-set lists of outlets, PR practitioners use the information they have about the audience to decide which outlet would best fit enticing them. Progressive software can even track discussions of the client’s opinion on the person or product to which the PR firm responds by paying people insert comments that reflect positivity towards the client. Press releases in the form of video are also very effective. If a new movie is coming out, interviews given by news outlets to actors/actresses in the film is an example of this. The interview is set up by PR companies and the interview is shot so that it seems exclusive to the news outlet, therefore giving it “originality” for the audience to divulge with an end goal to attract viewers to go see the movie. Using many different methods, personal relations firms have made the distribution of clients to outlets an art.
Exhibition
With both the production and the distribution of the product or person the PR firm is trying to convey in mind, the entire process is nothing if the audience does not find it enticing or appetizing. This is where the exhibition of the client comes into play. Between deadlines and the sheer amount of work handed to journalists to complete, writing a piece of work can cost a lot of time and money. With personal relations, a basic “schedule” is given to these journalists and allow these writers to manage their time with low cost stories. Director’s and editors of news outlets may offset the expensive cost of an original local story by having an already completed low cost work by personal relations. This is all known as “information subsidies”. With this “ease” given to outlets, PR firms can sometimes encounter risk when exhibiting their story. There is not only one PR firm trying to get their clients out in the world at one time, so journalists and director’s can often be selective in what they choose to be in their outlet. Often times, PR clients may not get used which can lead to uneasiness. This is why it is crucial to have a trustworthy personal relations company that has strong relationship’s with outlets to exhibit the client’s product/person. With this, if a PR company’s client has any sort of bad image or material that contradicts the original report and the news outlet finds out, it is very likely that the campaign given by PR will backfire. In all, there are many topics for a PR firm to consider when exhibiting their client to the public.
Black PR Pioneers
As early as the mid-19th century, leader’s such as Fredrick Douglass became the beginning for African American personal relations. Writing three autobiographies on the events he endured as a slave and free man, this self-taught writer and speaker became internationally known for his earned media towards displaying to the public what slavery really was from a first-hand point of view. This was the beginning of many African American personal relations leaders to come.
Succeeding Douglass came people such as Joseph Varney Baker, Maggie Lena Walker, Patricia Tobin, Dr. Jessie J. Lewis, Sr., Barbara Harris, and many others. All achieving earned media to enhance their businesses and become known is why they are known. Not letting anyone stop or get in their way, the dedication that was taught to them as children stayed with them until the day they passed on. Firm’s such as The Lewis Group, Tobin and Associates, and Joseph V. Baker Associates were all started by these leaders and still are impacting the world of communications today, inspiring many to come.
Works Cited
“Black PR Pioneers.” The Museum of Public Relations, www.prmuseum.org/black-pr-pioneers.
Editors, History.com. “Boston Tea Party.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 27 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/boston-tea
-party.
Parker, Spidey. “Tom Holland and Jake Gyllenhaal Mexico Press Tour Video! #Tomholland #Spidermanfarfromhome #MCU.” YouTube, YouTube, 4 May 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WDAY7oSfic.
“PR Timeline.” The Museum of Public Relations, www.prmuseum.org/pr-timeline.
Turow, Joseph. Media Today: Mass Communication in a Coverging World. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.