One thing I have learned in my internship is that as a PR consultant you have to know your audience, and with every client comes a new challenge and different publics.
One may ask why is knowing publics such a big deal in PR?
This is because public opinion is what we as PR consultants try or work on controlling or manipulating; we mould people’s thoughts and alter them to be in favor of our clients; that is the basic work of PR Consultants. In short PR consultants manage public opinion.
“Public opinion represents a consensus, which emerges over time, from all the expressed views that cluster around an issue in debate, and that this consensus excises power” (Cutlip, S M 2000)
Publics are normally divided in to primary and secondary groups to better serve and deal with each group. The primary group consists of the media because they are the main means of communication for us to get information out there we need the media. The second group is the actual people who use or buy our services.
Just last week we had a press conference to announce the “Nowruz festival” which will be held in KL this year
Nowruz or Persian New Year as some call it is a festival celebrated by Iranians; now in the past two months about six Iranians were charged with drug trafficking in Malaysia. Therefore in writing our media invites, press releases and post releases we had to be smart about what we tell the media. We ended up calling it the “Persian New Year” although the client would have preferred it as the Iranian New Year. After we gave them our PR view and advise they approved to the use of Persian New Year.
Now this where the understanding comes in, we had to use words that denote to the Iranian New Year but not saying Iranian New Year, this was to avoid the media causing a fiasco about it. Like I said before we if control information we give the media we have a chance to control public opinion over issues affecting our clients.
You see the believe is that public opinion= what is in the media, although this is not entirely true it does have some sense to it, people mostly believe or cause a fiasco about the media has to say about certain issues.
For instance if the media had questioned celebrating the Persian New Year in Malaysia regardless of the number of Iranians living in Malaysia, the public would have reacted some out the same considering that a number of Iranians have been charged with drug trafficking. It would not have been a good job on our side or rather it would have given us a lot of work.
All in all it boils down to building good relationships with both the media and the actual people who buy or use or client’s services for successful PR.
1 comment:
Hi Palesa
let me start by saying i heard about the incident where Iranians alleged drug traffickers where nabbed at the Malaysian Airport trying to smuggled drugs in the country. The incident stirred quiet a commotion in the country making things a bit hard.
I would like to acknowledge your company for hosting such an event as it in someway an effort to rebuild the tarnished image of the Iranians. I can't imagine what a challenge it was to conduct such an event at that point of time and the difficulty you guys have to go through to choose a less sensitive title for the event.
Anyway I personally think it is a good move in terms of the company and the Iranians because you all benefited from the event.
Good luck!
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