Pr, Histories and practises, An introduction

The time has come to get our teeth into some more in depth theory on the practices of Public Relations, and how it fits into specific areas in communication and society.

Our first real taste of how the public relation wheels really work took place in the form of a two day workshop with Myc Riggulsford. Myc has previously worked in broadcasting and journalism, and has enjoyed high profile positions such as press officer for the A.A before becoming Head of Public Relations for The U.K Transplant Service. Since 1991, he has owned his own consultancy company, The Walnut Bureau, and is currently in a position where he can work 100 days a year and enjoy the rest of the year on his organic farm in North Devon.

It was armed with this past experience and knowledge in the field of communications that he came to speak to our group.

Myc began by distinguishing the main groups that are associated with not for profit public relations. These include government and its individual departments, charities, pressure groups and organizations that include research facilities. We looked at their agendas and how they worked along side each other.

By looking at the agendas that each group had I started to realize the importance of knowing how to deal with specific organizations. Myc highlighted the power certain groups hold, for example, the R.S.P.B, whose membership currently stands at around two million members, although they act as a charity organization they hold tremendous power. The government currently want to use the sea surges near the mouth of the River Severn to power electricity using turbo power, but because the wetlands are owned by the R.S.P.B they refuse permission to build there.

We then looked at what public relations actually is, a concept that has never been fully explained by theorist. We looked at public relations as a communicational tool and looked at some of the models used.
Based around a receiver and a message recipient we also looked at the barriers faced by the message getting through to the public through technical, social and legal problems.

We also looked at areas to consider when pitching ideas to a client on these included the audience, objectives, strategy and the good old S.W.O.T analysis.

We looked at the models used in the public sector as forms of communication.

The Deficit Model.; Giving out information that has to be learnt with a; ‘you must know this, it is important,’ approach to communication.

The Dialogue Model; Not just telling you the information, also looking for the way the public reacts to it. A form of two-way communication.

Myc also explained the principle of Upstream Engagement. Trying in advance to find out possible worries or problems that could be faced. There was obviously no Upstream Engagement when it came to peoples present complaints about the smell of B.O in pubs after the smoking ban came into force! Upstream engagement is about trying to second-guess outcomes.

To finish we looked at a variety of past campaigns that have taken place. We looked at the powerful message that could be contained in using images alone, (a great tip for preparing PowerPoint presentations.) We looked at how important it was to know who to target and how to target them. We did this by looking at different historical movements and how they linked together in the form of religious faith, rights and protest on social changes.

By categorizing what is important to the individual, and on what scale, i.e. personal, family, local, international etc, we were able to see what areas to tap into the subconscious and the importance of targeting universal interests, such as money, power, sex, fame and food.

I found the 2 days very useful to start to structure my understanding on what is needed to gain successful communications and how, if used in the right way, to reach the right audience, with the right message the effect communication has as a powerful public relation tool.