Two readings by Gae Synnott

First of all, I am really trying my best to reduce the length of my blog posts because I know that people will get scared by the sheer length of my post and not want to read it. But I cannot help it, I have to cover every aspect of the reading if not I will get paranoid! So I apologise to anyone who is afraid to read my blog because of its length. Thank you! Anyway, back to my readings..

Missed readings #2: Public Relations Research

Research is an essential tool for public relations practitioners. This is because they have to thoroughly understand what their clients want them to so and it also helps them to solve problems. Through proper research, practitioners are able to develop strategies to deal with their situation accordingly (Synnott, 2009). By doing research practitioners are able to provide useful information relevant to the project at hand and also justify their plans supported by evidence and theory (Synnott, 2009).

Practitioners also need to look out for public opinion when doing their research. Public opinion refers to the expression of the public’s attitudes and their evaluation of what is happening in the society (Sietel, 2007). Take for example Singaporean’s ‘Kiasu’ mentality, Practitioners will be able to observe what is happening and also get first-hand account from the public about how they feel about the ‘Kiasu’ attitude and whether they think it is stereotypical. Thus, this is also a form of research that practitioners can adopt.

It is really nice to see familiar terms in this reading such as qualitative and quantitative research since I have already learnt it in my other module. This shows that whatever we learnt in other modules is all inter-related. Qualitative research provides in-depth data, whereas quantitative research provides statistics and numbers (Synnott, 2009). An example of qualitative research would be focus groups and one-to-one interview and the sample size would be relatively small. An example of quantitative research would be surveys with yes and no answers and the sample size is usually large as you are more interested in gathering the numbers to provide statistical data. Sometimes, practitioners can use both the methods to strengthen their research and the merging of both methods is called triangulation which I learnt in my audience studies module.

Once practitioners are done with their research, they have to present their findings appropriately and it does not mean that they have to prevent just their statistics of their finding but they have to present their relevance to the topic as well (Synnott, 2009). Furthermore they have to understand what they are presenting so that they will be able to answer questions.

I think it is important for PR practitioners to be able to conduct research so that they can come up with creative and better ideas for their clients regarding campaign and promoting of the client’s company. For example, we have a PR planning as an assignment for OCD Company where we have to reach out to our target audience with limited budget and resources. This means that we have to research and analyse what methods would be the most effective with limited budget and resources. Furthermore, we have to research how many people know about the company and their take on the company as well. Thus, this shows the essential of researching as well.

Some research requires high budget, but this is usually associated with big scale company. In my opinion, it is still possible to conduct research with limited budget and resources. It will definitely be challenging but it is still possible and it will bring out our full potential as well.

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Missed Readings #3: Public Relations Practice

Public relations is one of the critical strategic tools used by an organisation to help achieve its objectives and PR practitioners requires strategic and competence skills in order to practice PR appropriately (Synnott, 2009). It is essential that PR practitioners adapt the planning skill as only through planning are they able to achieve results. Furthermore, planning is able to prevent problems from occurring as practitioners will already foresee the problems when they are planning and thus they will already have the solution ready.

There are different types of public relations roles in different types of organisations. They are: The not-for-profit sector; The corporate sector; The public sector and The consultancy.

The not-for-profit sector requires practitioners to be able to multi-task and be the jack of all trades. An example of the NFP is the International Red Cross Society and a challenge faced by them is accountability as donors wonder whether the funds raised are used for administrative purpose instead of helping the needy. The NFP is a safe environment for practitioners to learn because it offers great opportunity to be creative especially with small budgets; it helps you develop good people skill and many more (Synnott, 2009). But the most important thing is the experience gain would enable you to understand how community organisation works (Synnott, 2009).

The corporate sector’s main focus is on improving and building business to ensure ongoing profitability (Synnott, 2009). Corporate organisations differentiate between line and staff functions and sometimes practitioners would have to work under a matrix structure. This means they would have 2 bosses to report to. This could be both a positive and negative thing as work would be more efficient, yet at the same time, miscommunication or power struggle may occur as both bosses would want practitioners to follow their way.

The public sector has to deliver government messages about programmes and services (Synnott, 2009). Examples of campaigns by the public sectors would be quit smoking or drink driving hazards. According to Grunig and Jaatinen, they claimed that the public sector leans more towards one way communication (1999). However, it has slowly shifted to being open to the public’s opinion as well (OECD, 2003). I think this is a good public relations practice as engaging the audience would make them understand what is going on as they are participating in it as well.

The consultancy is a stand-alone business that generates income by providing PR services to clients and satisfying those clients’ needs (Synnott, 2009). This is where ethics play a part as these consultancies would need to satisfy their clients and thus they are likely to do what the clients ask them to do as they are more profit orientated.

Public relations practice meets day-to-day challenges and pressures such as time management, effective budgeting, maintaining good records, keeping clients and managers happy, keeping up with changes and many more (Synnott, 2009). Thus, PR is not an easy job as you have to be able to adapt to changes and handle stress and hectic schedules.

In conclusion, these two readings were inter-related as it went more in-depth about what PR is really about. It talks about the technical terms and the different kind of organisation and how practitioners work in these organisations. On the bright side, at least I was not bored of the readings because I found some information for my debate topic =). Hopefully I did not give any hints to my opponent. =)

signing off,

nivitra