Public relations activities date back to 1900. Of course, there were many early forms of public influence and communications management in history.
Edward Bernays, one of the pioneers of PR, opines that there are three main elements of public relations: "informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people." Scott Cutlip said historic events have been defined as PR retrospectively, "a decision with which many may quarrel."
In modern society, and to an extent the global communication space, public relations has taken centre stage to help business leaders, state actors and non-political kingpins create favourable images by building strong relationships to muster reputation management.
For example, Fifa is using public relations strategy to address health among the youth under the age of 15 with #BringTheMoves and get more active. Fifa cleverly boulders this campaign by partnering with Qatar Airways, WHO and the Health ministry in Qatar aiming to keep the kids active in anticipation to grow football from an early age with a long-term agenda of growing the reputation of the football game globally.
Audiences vary and the need to draw the public attention to conversation and media input becomes very important. Could the public relations professional go silent to study the science and bring out the telling the story to the consumers?
The GMO debate is standing out in current conversation and ignorance about GMO introduction in Kenya continues to bog down public understanding.
Where does public relations come in to influence the public on the right perspective and take a bold fast check for the public who cannot interpret the scientific information the scientists thoughtfully have shared with the media providing flittering information on this subject matter?
Public relations is a useful component of marketing; blue-chip companies are very keen to use public relations to heighten their marketing strategy to answer the issues of the target market, pricing, product competition, messages, and team execution to meet their business growth projection.
Let business leaders consider employing using public relations tactics, innovation, and creativity to build brands and tell our story to attract brand love, and personality of the business and make people trust you.
Public relations practitioner
