Posts Tagged with definition
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“…PR people are ruining social media…” “…P.R. people drive me crazy…” “…PR sucks…” Okay, that last one is more of a paraphrase than a quote, but you get the point. PR has taken a bit of a lashing recently. Beyond being tired, cliche and trite, the “PR Sucks” meme is an informal fallacy - a straw man argument. The assertion of most of these pieces is that because much of PR (particularly agency work and especially over the last 20 years) has been focused on earned media (media relations), that PR people are not suited/incapable/really bad at social media strategy and implementation. That media relations models don’t work in the social world, so clearly we’re ill-suited. But media relations of course is only one specialized function – this argument reveals more about the respective writers’ (lack of) experience or limited view of PR and its role in management than it does... Continue Reading
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Some ongoing critiques of PR “professionals” methods, some recent discussion about how we define ourselves and and constant battle to explain what I do to my parents (they’ll tell you I am a teacher) has meant I’m thinking a lot about what we do as public relations professionals and what it means to practice PR. We can always cite the “bible” of public relations, Cutlip, Center and Broom’s definition which goes a little something like this: “Public relations is a management function that seeks to identify, build, and maintain mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and all of the publics on whom its success or failure depends” That’s great, but what do public relations professionals DO? In a final-chapter manifesto from Berger and Reber’s book “Gaining Influence in Public Relations,” they give us a list of things that we DON’T do. “HEAR THIS: I am not a flack, a shill,... Continue Reading
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