A lot of my time in the past many years has been spent in educating a variety of people on the basic fundamentals of Public Relations. I have also used these crystallised insights in the academic sphere to demystify a simple, yet complicated concept called Public Relations. I have created what I call the House of Public Relations where I use the analogy of a house to explain PR and the various concepts that make it.
Let us for a moment imagine a two-storey house built with a solid foundation and the important aspects on each of the floors. To my mind the Foundation of Public Relations is made up of Communication, Campaigns, Culture and Common Sense. All good public relations are built on a brilliant base of at least two of these elements.
The ground floor of this house is where all the daily grind takes place. The living room, the dining area, the kitchen and the study. The kitchen here is all about Content. Similar to what happens in the kitchen with food items from sorting, cleaning, chopping and cooking, PR professionals are constantly ideating, developing, creating, distributing and evaluating content. Content could be in the form of text, images, sound and events. This content is then shared. The dining area is where the sharing happens with various stakeholders. This sharing happens by Connecting. Connect is a crucial aspect of Public Relations. The four primary constituents with whom connections are made are – Employees, Customers, Investors or Shareholders and Communities. Sharing with employees happens through internal communications and with communities through corporate responsibility. We often mistake media as a stakeholder. However, media (traditional journalist and influencers/bloggers) are a special interest group and an important connect for brands. Crisis discussions is what happens in the Living Room where families discuss the risks they face, the potential issues that they may have to confront, how these can become a full-blown crisis and sometimes lead to disaster – which are four stages of a crisis. Crisis Management starts with mitigating risk, planning to deal with one and repairing damage that comes despite the very best of planning. The study room is where Counsel takes place. Most often PR professionals are advising the face of the organisation on behaviour and presentation of the individual and of the brand. All this is done to offer the world at large a solid product or service which is key to all the Four Cs mentioned above.
As we take the stairs to the first floor where the three bedrooms are located. The master bedroom is where the family plans for the future. This is the room of Strategy. The children’s room is where most often tales are told to little ones. This is the room of Storytelling. These are two significant factors of good public relations. Every successful Public Relations framework has these two at the core. The guest bedroom is a collection of three Is – Impact, Innovation and Influence. These are deployed as and when the need arises just as a guest bedroom is put to use as and when there are visitors. Impact is another word for corporate responsibility also referred to as Philanthropy, ESG, Sustainability among other things. Innovation happens through evolved thinking and unusual ideas and Influence is the power to use people of certain stature to socialise the brand. This ranges from employees to brand ambassadors. There are three balconies for the three bedrooms. A balcony is a space that helps us look inwards and outwards. The three concepts placed in the three balconies help a PR programme thrive internally and externally. These are Research, Ethics and Measurement.
Continue imagining this house as you climb to the second floor. This is made up of a five cornered terrace and comprise of Goodwill, Respect, Engagement, Affinity and Trust. Each of them is important in their own way and some brands need one or more of these depending on various circumstances. One or more of these elements can also be used to measure a brand’s success. A easy way to remember these five words is with GREAT, which is the main objective of all public relations. We climb up to the water tank of the terrace which in yester years helped as a landmark to those visiting. This is the ultimate goal of reputation management or public relations. Every brand seeks it. This is Credibility. This in simple terms is the House of Public Relations. The entire concept is best understood through a masterclass by the author undertaken free of cost in exchange for a charity donation.
He is also the Founding Dean of the School of Communications & Reputation (SCoRe).
He can be reached at @amithpr on twitter.
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