Business Plans& Idea

Public relations is the art and social science of analysing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organisation leaders, and implementing planned programs of action which will serve both the organisation and the public interest.

Mexican statement

The Manager in the PR firm has to play two roles: first, as a manager in the commonly understood management terms and secondly, as the public relations manager as described in the PR literature.

Role of a PR manager

In the famous HBR article ‘Myth of the Well-Educated Manager’, finding opportunities and problems is described as more important than problem solving capabilities of a manager. The author was referring to Manager in a general sense, but it is especially true for the PR professional. Moving a step from being a ‘communication function’, PR as a management function needs to be involved in policy decisions; striving for harmony between the best interests of the organization and its publics.

The PR manager has a pivotal role ‘to interpret the public opinion climate to management’, suggested Scott Philip, a PR thinker. In his book ‘Effective Public Relations’ (co-authored with Allen and Broom), the author suggests that the PR manager’s role calls for research skills, an aptitude for strategic thinking, and a tendency to think in terms of the outcomes or impact of public relations activities. Practitioners in the PR manager role do not limit their tactics to communications. They use environmental scanning and organizational intelligence, negotiation and coalition building, issues management, program evaluation and management counseling as public relations tools.

Not just a communicator, the PR professional is expected to anticipate problems, plan to prevent problems, and manage problems and crisis when they arise. But the growth of PR management cadre remains stagnant due to the ‘gratification’ that many professionals enjoy in their roles as ‘technicians’, and are happy being the same over their career in the industry. A PR technician is primarily concerned with writing, producing and disseminating communications; they see themselves as ‘wordsmith’. Till the time media coverage is counted as the source of measuring performance, technicians will lead the profession.

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