COM 658 1-3 Short Paper
The public relations industry has, since antiquity, comprised the methods using which organizations communicated with the public, an eminent example of which is the seventeenth century’s Congregation de Propaganda for the proliferation of the Catholic faith (Caywood, 2012). While this doesn’t necessarily bring the idea of open, bidirectional communication to mind, it actually espoused the value of communication with the public as opposed to the communication to said public.
The Catholic Church established the Congregation to win back Protestant converts; a college (one of the first examples of formal public relations degrees?) was created specifically to train missionaries to engage in dialog and communication with the public in order to sway them to a specific doctrine or theology. This wasn’t simply a matter of preaching to the masses, but of actively engaging them in discussion (The Gale Group, 2003).
The nineteenth century The Public be Damned era turned this traditional definition on its head, when large corporations opted to limit access to its operations for the sake of corporate efficiency and lucrative activities (Caywood, 2012). Web 1.0 contributed by creating one-way communications channels, limiting opportunities for public feedback and external stakeholder involvement (Brown, 2009). Web 2.0 was something of a gamechanger in this regard, allowing PR professionals to unobtrusively but definitively move back into the niche of influencer.
Returning to the credo that public relations are actually about relations with the public, the PR professional today can leverage the democratization of the Internet to advise and persuade, empathize and share with the public to influence said public, rather than to simply deluge an unsuspecting public with strident, authoritative messaging (Brown, 2009).
Social media has provided a solid channel on which to engage in this multi-directional flow of information and opinion. As the public does not unequivocally trust what they are told, and as they now have multiple sources of information they can use to research what they are told, authoritative brand messaging is being replaced by single individuals who are more relatable, who engages in discussion with the audience, and who can empathize with and share similar experiences with the audience (Brown, 2009).
These PR professionals, i.e., the aforementioned single individuals who act as trusted friend and advisor, leverage the same multi-channel approach as the audience, which uses the approach to do their research on products and messaging. Take Southwest Airlines: not only do they engage with their internal and external stakeholders on social media (Facebook and Twitter, most notably), but they also discuss in open-commentary forums and blogs, on the ground (e.g., at charity drives that they host and/or sponsor), and using live video in many of the aforementioned forums. Anecdotally speaking, this activity involves large numbers of single Southwest representatives creating and sharing content using a first-person voice: a quick review of Southwest’s blog, Stories from the Heart (https://bit.ly/2QxNGpj), shows us that each entry is written by a single named Southwest employee, whether the subject matter is customer advocacy (e.g., a post on travel when pregnant) or employee charitable and volunteering opportunities. This is a clear example of a company that integrates multiple channels on and using social media to champion individual PR influencers to further engagement with their brand.
This strategy pays homage to the PR directive that as the public conversation will go on with or without a brand’s direct involvement, it is imperative that brands hold conversations and engage in discussions openly with their audience, demonstrating that they respect their stakeholders’ opinions and values as well as their spending power (Brown, 2009). Naturally, this approach also hearkens back to one of the foundational principles of public relations: engaging in discussion quickly and as close to the beginning of said discussion as is possible, in order to control the narrative and encourage the public to accept the brand’s version (Caywood, 2012). Who better to write that story than an approachable, personable staff representative who can meet the audience on the social media channels where they are?
References
Brown, R. (2009). Public relations and the social web : using social media and Web 2.0 in communications [iBooks version].
Caywood, C. (2012). The handbook of strategic public relations and integrated marketing communications [Kindle edition] (2nd ed.).
The Gale Group. (2003). Propagation of the Faith, Congregation for the. In Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/propagation-faith-congregation