Today, I did get a chat with the Assistant Human Resources Manager about my internship at the company. He was asking me about what I have been learning so far. I have been able to talk to him about some of my concerns. Hence, I have talked to him about the need to create a PR department at Cargo Handling. Usually the company organizes some activities at the end of the year and I have been shocked to learn that the company actually paid for the events to be published. Furthermore the company does have a website but there is no media section available.
In addition Cargo Handling offers some scholarships to their employees and to me this can be classified as Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR). However the corporation does not even know that this is called CSR. Another reason why they need a PR department is that there is no newsletter and also they do have an intranet but they do not really use it.
1 comment:
Hi there,
I think it was brave of you to put these idea’s forward to the Assistant Human Resource Manager. One of the major problems I believe within many companies who operate without a Public Relations department is that they fail to see the difference between marketing, advertising and PR.
At the moment I am working in a very small company which combines marketing and publicity into a single sector which is controlled and initiated by only one person. Having been witness to the mountains of work she gets through everyday I am amazed. But really this leads me to my point; often companies are unaware of the difference. In a way marketing and PR (I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying this) are quite similar; one is products/service based and the other is focused on company/person. I realise though that PR does focus on ethical and social issues where marketing does not but this is where the line is drawn, perhaps the key difference.
The lack of a PR department may be the sole reason for your company not having a media section on their website. They might not have the resources to check media outlets for mention of themselves and they (bar the advertising) wouldn’t be initiating any media coverage. I can understand why your company decided to pay for advertising for events – perhaps they could find no way of making a ‘story’ out of them, think of no other way of positioning the event so it would encourage media and public interest.
The lack of a newsletter may be a lack of personnel; actually it would interest me as to how large your organisation is… Anyway I think that you would have a wealth of knowledge to offer them and there will be heaps of opportunities for you to expand PR within your organisation.
Chelle xx
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