Hello Peeps!!!

Alright! i found this interesting article about the situation of Public Relations in New Zealand. I did a summary on it and i thought to share. Apparently PR in New Zealand is not regarded in a positive light, which is not uncommon, because it was only lately the PR in my country started blossoming. The case of New Zealand brings to mind the challenges (with regards to perception of the public) faced by the PR profession and its practitioners, in most countries.

Most people perceive PR in a negative way, such as spin doctoring and smoke and mirrors ; as such do not consider it fit for management roles. Others feel the job of a PR personnel can be done by anybody else, so there is nothing complex or special about it to warrant a separate portfolio. *sigh*. I would live you to read the summary of the article and find out for yourselves ways in which we can change the lingering stereotypes, starting with our small environments.

Enjoy :) 

                                                                            

                                                                      

                                                                         

A SUMMARY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS AMONG THE FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT: A NEW ZEALAND PERSPECTIVE

By

Graeme D. Sterne

Public Relations Journal, Vol. 2 No 3; 2008

 

Objectives: This study explores the position of public relations in New Zealand business hierarchy, the perceptions of business leaders about the profession and the source of their opinions.

Introduction: Public Relations is generally believed to be a management function amongst other things if recourse is made to the tons of academic definitions on the profession but the reality of the market place in New Zealand poses a threat to its management function. The changes in New Zealand business environment such as migration and globalization call for new ways of managing and conducting businesses. In New Zealand public relations is viewed in three ways:

1.      Its media publicity answerable to marketing

2.      Strategic communication is a senior management function handled by the CEO

3.      PR elements such as reputation management, relationship building, and media relations are responsibilities of the CEO or MD with little or no need of PR.

In a bid to discover why public relations is not esteemed highly and utilised in New Zealand, the author of this article decided to carry out a research using samples from the country’s 200 largest companies.

Body: The sample consisted of senior managers and above. Data was gathered two ways; cluster sampling was used and 100 companies were phoned. 28 companies agreed to participate in longer face-to-face interviews; there was also an uneven distribution as some companies declined the offer to participate. 32 senior managers did the longer interviews: 8 CEO’s, 4 Marketing GM’s, 5 CFO’s, Legal counsel or Strategy GM and 15 corporate/public affairs GM’s. Some of the people who declined stated that they didn’t believe in PR, while others said people didn’t know they recruited PR practitioners, all of these to some extent showed the negative attitude towards PR in New Zealand.

Questions such as: What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of PR when you think of PR and who handles reputation management, crisis communication and community relations were asked. Analysis was done using symbolic interactionism for longer interviews.

Findings:  57% of respondent stated that PR is associated with event management, promotions, launches and reports to marketing; they believe that media management in terms of crisis has a strong element of lying, spinning and promoting positive not the whole view. In short the profession suffers from spin doctoring perception.  42 out of 81 respondents stated that PR is at management level but under different titles such as GM, Director or VP of public affairs or corporate communications, while 13 describe it as intertwining and overlapping with marketing. 73% employ PR practitioners at some level.

There is also the constant need to reinforce the competence of PR practitioners at management level and constantly advocating for their roles in operations. 45% link communication evaluation to their financial bottom line, while relationship building based on transparent communication is judged on the quality of your information. Public relation is often seen as a communication manipulation tool used by marketers, its role seen as by-product which can as well be handled by management. Some say it’s cheaper than advertising and are pressured to use it by their American headquarters. Also a few recognise that PR could have a more strategic role in stakeholder management.

27% of the CEO’s stated that they were the only ones who could represent the organization as spokesperson except in rare cases; all the CEO’s believe good performance is the basis for reputation not PR. Their value for strategic communication is with regards to delivering business outcomes but not any price and as such it is important to have transparent communication to build trust. CFO’s and legal counsels handle communication because they believe PR practitioners lacked the business prowess or command little respect at management table. CEO’s also ranked PR lowest in communication elements and considered each other key to reputation management; advertising was also rated low, mainly because of its one-way communication method and high cost of running it.

When quizzed about the source of their perception of PR, most of them stated it was from personal experience, senior colleagues and the media. Only a very few said the internet, seminars and education was responsible. One CEO however admitted that the relationship between him and his GM of communication is an ideal one. Some of the bad experiences were as a result of overstating and being unable to deliver and the utilisation of smoke and mirrors. Regardless of the education, workshops and seminars, these perceptions have been formed overtime e.g. those who studied in the UK were aware of the PR disasters of Exxon, Bhopal e.t.c.

On the way forward, PR practitioners are advised as follows:

a.      PR duties should be stretched beyond publicity and advanced qualification needs to be clearly defined as to what role it plays.

b.      PR practitioners are advised to strive in changing the already damaged reputation through their performance as most of these executives gained their perceptions through experiences.

c.      They need to take advantage of the need for best practices and good communication practices to address their already damaged reputation.

d.      In-house practitioners have to be skilful in negotiating their role, develop business skills and competencies in order to raise their value.

e.      Emphasise the strategic nature of communication, evaluation and representation of goals and use business process for those who report who report to CFO’s or legal counsels.

   

Five I’s of New Zealand PR:

Integrative: Fusing all communication functions to achieve consistent messaging across organizations –marketing, government relationships, customer service, and interest groups e.g. using the Maori tribe model as a holistic view.

Integrity: Requires eradicating spin, smoke and mirror, while heralding transparency, honesty and not embellishing reports. They consider the country to be small and as such there’s nowhere to hide.

Interactive: Two-way communication practices, especially in the web should be encouraged as it helps to delineate long term relationship based approach. The flexibility required to be an interactive communicator and a responsive agent of change requires that communicators operates independently and placed at management team.

Incorporative: the diverse communication practices, such as technology, face-to-face for traditionalists, word of mouth for community groups and written word for low context audiences requires the need to develop PR practices that are inclusive of the diversity of cultures, sub cultures and generation e-communication among stakeholders.

Interpretive: Understanding trends in the environment and translating it into advice for the company. Awareness requires research, measurement and evaluation to measure impact and adjusts policy to accommodate the need to change, sits well with strategic functions of management.

Conclusion: The spate of crisis at all levels requires the inclusion of PR to be able to handle such crisis better. The future of PR lies with the practitioners because executives draw most of their perceptions by observing PR performance. There is the need for one who operates with integrity, skill, articulation and has a long term view on relationships.