Focus on Asian Public Relations Management

This chapter focuses on how public relations is shaped and applied in the countries that comprises the region under investigation. Because public relations was born and developed in the west of the globe, are the theories and principles applicable in a non-western cultures and environment?

Applying theories to non-Western cultures
There are two important theories which provide the ground where the fast-growing public relations sector in Asia is being built. They are Excellence Theory and relationship theory.

I wonder whether the role of public relations is practising properly in Asia countries. In Vietnam, public relations emerged only for only few years ago. The role and functions of public relations are misunderstood and undervalued. Some people even don't know what public relations is. People usually think public relations is marketing!!!

I think Asia has the most variety of cultures, economic and political status whereas these have a certain impact on dynamics of public relations development.

Language is one of the barriers in the practice of the profession. For example, India has more than 20 languages. Although English may be the language of business, it is really hard for public relations practitioners to reach average educational people in a grassroots campaign in a country like India.

Moreover, economic and political activity are more controlled in Asia. This is also a limitation for public relations people in their practice.

Public relations and a public sphere
As economy and politics are mostly controlled by the governments, the concept of public sphere or public opinion is something dissimilar in Asia countries whereas the image of public sphere has been historically important to the function of journalism and news media.

For public relations in Asia, relationship building and framing are the main theoretical components. Framing requires a public relations practitioner to think about an issue or event in a particular way. Practitioners need to understand the ideological positions of stakeholders so the frame they build around the issue or event matches the agenda embedded within the stakeholder ideology.

Professionalisation of public relations in Asia
In Japan, public relations is practised in a cultural and economic context that differs little from Western countries. This is because Japan is the second largest economy in the world.

In Indonesia, public relations is directed neither by a code of ethics nor by certification

In Singapore the primary purpose of public relations is government propaganda

In Malaysia, it is employed at a variety of levels but fluctuates depending on the political circumstances of the day.

Country by country practice

• China

After years of incidents, Chinese public relations marked its growth and development by the win of hosting 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. A public relations institutions was also established in China, namely China International Public Relations Association.

• Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, business activity accounts for most public relations practice. Public relations pedagogy in Hong Kong crosses public and private institutions, such as universities and colleges. The freedom of the news media is also a factor contributing to the accessibility for Waster public relations practice in Hong Kong.

• Indonesia&Malaysia

Public relations is practised narrowly in Indonesia mainly because of the dominance of religion which limits the practice of Western-style public relations. Public relations' purposes are mainly for nation building due to the control of the government on news media.

• Japan

Japan is an interesting place for the practice of public relations because it has the world's largest advertising agencies and circulation news media.

• Vietnam

Public relations is in its infancy in Vietnam. It is practised primarily by international organizations. Nowadays, public relations' role is more recognized by many companies and organization, including non-profit organizations. However, its role and importance is not completely understood and practised.

New Media and Public Relations

Advances in digital technology have engendered a shift in communication patterns characterized by the shift from the "one to many" broadcast paradigm of mass media to the "network paradigm" of "many to many" communication. There have been so many studies stating high potential of new media in public relations practice. However, some others also cite that new media is one of the biggest challenges facing the public relations profession. Why? I personally think even though new media have the power of fast and wide dissemination, it creates controversial issues on legal, ethics, and so on.

Impact of new media
Traditional public relations techniques are no longer appropriate in much of public relations practice as they fail to connect with an internet-savvy public. The advent of new media means the communication environment is more complex and more immediate, with "instantaneous and far-reaching" consequences for organizations. Publics are more powerful and can form across geographic boundaries. Their capacity to generate and share information allows them to challenges organizational information, ensuring greater transparency and accountability on the part of organizations.

Industry attitudes
Surveys suggest that despite widespread internet access and use among communication professionals, the internet has not really changed public relations strategic or practices. It is said that PR professionals haven't yet worked out how best use what the internet offers us. I guess the inability of PR practitioners to control over the information on internet is the main problem. New media has given the role of producing and editing media to audiences' hands. This limits the ability of PR practitioners to perform their role of building and maintaining their organizations' reputation.

While most did use the internet for public relations purposes, few really exploited the potential of new media to foster dialogic and two-way communication.
In a series of interviews conducted in Southeast Asia in 2006, one public relations consultant suggested that the profession was "scared" of new media and did not know how to use it.

However, there are still some cases where PR people successfully made use of internet and new media. PR campaign by IKEA is a good example. (See video below or click HERE to see)

Legal issues
The impact of new media on professional communication has seen the emergence of new legal and ethical issues. Not only does technology make it easier to plagiarize with its "cut and paste" culture, but it also exposes legislative grey areas such as the boundaries between personal and professional communication.

Ethical issues
The CIPR has developed guidelines for using social media, partly in recognition that the rapid and dynamic growth of social or new media means that appropriate legislation around the use of such media is not always in place. The three principles are: integrity, competence and confidentiality.

Astroturfing
It is an another unethical practice of creating fake entities that appear to be real grassroots organizations, when in fact they are the work of people or groups with hidden motives and identities.

Social media
New technologies like Facebook, MySpace, etc encourage greater participation and interaction on the part of users. They are described as easy to access.
Research from Europe suggests that practitioners may have finally begun to embrace social software such as blogs, websites and wikis. The challenge for practitioners is to develop online texts that engage publics rather than simply drawing on such sites for research purposes. Another difficulty is how to measure the impact of social media in terms of its capacity to influence and persuade publics and audiences.

New media applications
Here are some new media applications:
1. Blogs
2. Podcasting
3. Second life
4. Social network
5. Twitter

Reputation Management and An Issues-Crisis Perspective

Reputation of an organization has a close relationship with its survival. A company cannot be run with a bad public image. Therefore, public relations has to deal with reputation management. Which is the most important consideration in public relations – reputation or relationships? I think both are equally important and support each other. An organization cannot have a good reputation while its relationships with its publics are declining; and vice versa.

The challenge of corporate public relations

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is defined as "the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time". Corporate public relations is so challenging in part because the community seems to have contradictory expectations of big business. I guess the role of a PR practitioner is to show CSR of his/her organization to the public as a practice of reputation management.

How is reputation created?

It is said that reputation is the results of consistently delivering on promises. The task of public relations is to make sure the organization gets credit for the good things it does. Potentially, everyone in an organization can contribute to overall reputation, whether positively or otherwise.

However, I am wondering how an employee can contribute to building reputation for his company? Is it possible? I think what he can do is:

- putting efforts into his work to increase productivity and work quality

-performing professionally when dealing with customers

I wonder whether I am right...^^

The role of corporate public relations

The key role of corporate public relations at a strategic level is as a facilitator and adviser, that, :

- helps to ensure that stakeholder needs are understood and met

- encourages consistency in delivering on promises

- coaches employees at all levels in communicating effectively with stakeholders

- helps to articulate and frame messages that it may well fall to others to deliver.

MAJOR CONCEPTS IN CORPORATE RELATIONS

Corporate reputation

Corporate reputation can be defined as "a collective assessment of a company's ability to provide valued outcomes to a representative group of stakeholders"

Stewart Lewis listed six facets of overall reputation: social responsibility, environment responsibility, leadership, quality of products or services, financial performance and treatment of staff.

However, how do people measure an organization's reputation? In which method?

Corporate image

Image is said to refer to perceptions held about an organization at a given point in time, whereas corporate reputation itself is supposedly established over the longer term.

Grunig suggested two different meanings of the word "image": production and consumption of images.

The danger of the term "image" for public relations is that it may be viewed superficially. Practitioners may fall into the trap thinking good relations with stakeholders can be built on the basis of slick and cynical manipulation of corporate image. This is mistaken from an ethical as well as a practical perspective.

Corporate brand and identity

There is a considerable overlap between an organization's identity and its corporate brand although there are important differences.

Corporate identity can be defined as the tangible manifestation a corporate personality. It is the identity that projects and reflects the reality of the corporate personality.

Corporate brand refers to the company behind the products and services, not only the products brand itself.

A product brand represents the promise of a bundle of attributes that someone buys and that provides satisfaction.

The links between issues, crises, and public relations management

Crises are unpredictable events that can impact an organization's viability, credibility and reputation. An organization's reaction to the crisis, in terms of timing, stakeholder communication and corporate behaviour, will leave an indelible impression on its publics. The reaction of key publics during the crisis will determine if the company survives and is able to recover. Therefore, I guess public relations practitioners should be very careful when dealing with the publics, especially when external environment is changing rapidly.

Public relations practitioners should consider the media's portrayal of events as they will play a vital role in the organization's attempt to communicate with their key publics.

What is issues management?

Issues management is a specific management function that seeks to identify potential, emerging or actual trends, concerns or issues likely to affect an organization and its key publics. Once the issue is identified, the organization will develop a coordinated response to best manage and influence its progression.

EXAMPLE of ISSUE MANAGEMENT

In mid-2006 a significant fraud issue was surfacing in Queensland with the Queensland Police Service estimating AU$300,000 per month was being swindled from innocent victims and sent off shore to fraudsters in Nigeria.

Fraudsters often encourage their innocent victims to use services like Western Union, a money transfer service offering fast and reliable money wiring, to transfer funds overseas.

Following Western Union’s successful consumer fraud prevention campaign with the Metropolitan Police in the UK, Western Union and the Queensland Police Service formed a partnership to trial a similar program to empower Queensland consumers with the knowledge of how to prevent fraud affecting them. The services of PPR were engaged on behalf of Western Union (Asia Pacific) to assist in the strategic planning and drive the trial in Queensland.

As Western Union’s business model is based on agents managing locations, with no offices in Queensland, PPR determined a media campaign, with the support of the Queensland Police Service, would be key to reaching the target audience. The strong talent consisting of scam victims and reputable police spokespeople underpinned the success of the campaign.

Within one week of implementation, and as a result of the increased calls from the public, the Queensland Police Service prevented 15 incidents of consumer fraud.

A PR campaign was organized to:

• Make consumer fraud topical to capture the attention of the general public and show it can “happen to anyone”
• Empower consumers with fraud prevention tips (already prepared by Western Union) which show the seriousness of the situation
• Encourage consumers to report potential fraud incidents to the Queensland Police Service

PPR provided strategic advice, based on local market knowledge, to determine the best state-wide media campaign focused on providing consumers with the motivation and information needed to protect themselves against consumer fraud.

1. The strategy behind the media campaign plan included:Highlighting Western Union’s credibility by promoting its partnership with the Queensland Police Service to emphasise consumer fraud is a community issue, not a commercial one for Western Union
2. Removing the stigma attached to victims by using local victims of fraud to highlight anyone can get scammed
3. Educating consumers on how they can prevent themselves from becoming a victim, thus reducing the incidence of consumer fraud, and protecting customers’ positive experience using Western Union,
4. Demonstrating Western Union’s position as a good corporate citizen by highlighting its serious stance on consumer fraud
5. Creating a high profile press conference which would make the issue topical and generate coverage highlighting the seriousness of the situation.

Public Relations Management in Organizations

Although PR practice is done in reality and according to the situation, PR campaigns may change from one to anther, PR people should use theories to guide decisions and choices in every event because theory provides a model for the practice of public relations.

Understanding systems theory
Systems theory provides a framework through which to view organizations and their relationships with the environment. It is used to explain how public relations helps understand and manage the relationships an organization has with its stake holders and publics who make up its environment.

Types of systems
1. production , eg. production line
2. supportive subsystems, eg. finance pr procurement departments
3. maintenance subsystems, eg. public relations
4. managerial subsystems that coordinate and control the other subsystems

Open and closed systems
Closed systems and public relations
A closed system is isolated from the environment and other systems. The public relations function has low regard for the environment because they are unlikely to interact with other publics. They may adopt one-way communication. The disadvantage for the systems is that they are not able to take advantage of opportunities or move quickly to address potential problems.

Open systems and public relations
Open systems continuously exchange inputs and outputs with the environment through permeable boundaries. Organizations actively seek information from their environment, which is received as input into the organization system. In open systems, public relations takes on a functional approach that is concerned with two-way communication between the organization and the environment.

I think opening system is a wise choice for organizations.

Role and responsibilities
The role and responsibilities of public relations are influenced by two forces: the professionalisation of public relations and the nature of the organizational environment.
The responsibilities of a public relations manager is defined as:
1. monitoring and evaluation
2. issues management
3. policy and strategy advice
4. trouble shooting and problem solving

Public relations, the dominant coalition and links to other departments
Public relations departments operate alongside others, including marketing, human resources, legal, research and development, and operations.

Public relations and the marketing department
There is common ground between marketing and public relations functions in organizations and in some organizations the two functions are combined. PR and marketing have some tasks in common such as image assessment, customer satisfaction, corporate reputation, media strategy, corporate advertising and employee attitudes.

Public relations and the legal department
The relationship between the public relations department and legal counsel in organizations is mirrored by the tension between the courts of the public opinion and the law.

Public relations and the human resources department
Unified by a joint interest in employees, the relationship between public relations and human resources departments is important in organizational systems. At the operational level, research into employee benefit rpograms that are used to recruit and retain employees shows that there are opportunities for collaboration to determine appropriate methods and channels of communication.

The practice of public relations in organizations

Public and audiences
Public relations programming often starts with the development of a publics or audience map for the organization, that is, a list of people who are aligned to or have a stake in the organization. The map contains broad categories of people or groups that affect or are affected by an organization.

Internal relations
Internal communication is the public relations specialty dedicated to the building and maintenance of relationships with and among themselves. When practicing internal communication, PR practitioners should notice the impact of organizational culture, understand employees and their information needs and build and maintain good communication channels.

External relations: contemporary challenges
PR practitioners have to deal with events, community relations, and media relations as external relations.

Public Relations Practice and Strategies to Proactively Manage Activity

Public relations is believed to be one of the critical strategic tools used by an organization to help it achieve its objectives. Although public relations is a diverse profession in which practitioners deal with a range of issues for a range of organizations, the commonality still exists, eg. codes of practice, theories, communication tools, etc. After reading the chapters, I understand why there is more and more companies recruiting PR practitioners. :) Let's see how effective PR is.

There are categories of public relations effectiveness

1. Work practices and approach - responsibility, commitment, teamwork spirit, etc.

2. Skills, abilities, and knowledge - Advisable, good knowledge, technical ability, etc.

3. Experience and background - solid experience, track record, sound journalism experience, etc.

4. Personal attributes - high professionalism, people oriented, genuine, creative, etc.

5. Judgement and ethics - honest, ethical, integrity, etc.

6. Relationship with management - accepted by management, seen by management as contributing to organizational goals, etc.

7. Image and reputation - good reputation, well known, high credibility and acceptance.

8. Works for the profession - building the profession, protecting the reputation of the profession, etc.

The public relations role in different types of organizations

Nowadays, PR appears to be important in many organizations, not only corporate sector but also not-for-profit organizations. Each type of organization have its own advantages and disadvantages within which PR people work. For me, if I had a chance to choose, I would choose to work for a non-for-profit organization for few years before thinking to work for a company. IN NFP organizations, PR practitioners have a chance to improve their creativity and learning skills to organize events within a low budget. I think it's quite interesting.

Day-to-day challenges and pressures

• Good relationships: need to develop good relationships with workmates, managers, etc.
• Good process: every practitioner develops process and frameworks for their activity. The aim of the system and process is to achieve good consistent result every time.
• Time management
• Effective budgeting: the demand from manager and client for maximum results within a given budget.
• Keep good record
• Being proactive rather than reactive
• Keeping clients and managers happy: the best way is to achieve the planned results and to come in on time and on budget.
• Building and maintaining good networks because it will affect our practice
• keeping up with changes, especially advanced technology.
• understanding the contribution of research

Strategy in Public relations

What is strategy? Strategy is central to the role and function of public relations.The strategic contribution of public relations practitioners develops problem-solving for the entire organization by working with other departments and coordinating problem-solving activities.

What public relations strategy can achieve

How to develop a strategy? To do so, a PR person need to do a range of activities including research, analysis, goal setting, setting objectives, identifying publics and audiences, developing strategies, devising and implementing tactics, monitoring and evaluation.

• Research: Research is the process of symmetrically gathering information that will provide the basis to establish an understanding of situations and issues and make sense of them
• Analysis: Identifying Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats (SWOT)
• Goal setting: Identifying what need to be achieved based on situational analysis
• Setting objectives: Objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Result-oriented, and in Timeframe (SMART objectives)
• Identifying publics and audiences: knowing who we are dealing with
• Developing strategy: planning strategies and tactics in ways that will result in your audience constructing only the intended meaning, not other meanings.
• Tactics: how public relations work gets done and tactics are often seen as the bread and butter skills of public relations
• Monitoring and evaluation: to know whether the goal was achieved, whether the strategies and tactics were effective.

Example of a good plan PR campaign

http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/gta/?page=show&id=550

This was a PR campaign conducted in 2005 with a good plan where research, analysis, goal, objectives, audiences, strategy, tactics, and evaluations were clearly identified.

Engaging with the Media

Media are the main tool that public relations practitioners use to draw an organization’s public image. The public relations role involves looking for opportunities to public newsworthy stories about their organization to increase awareness, improve community relations, attract people to an event, even minimize concern about something that is not working well. I think media is the most powerful and useful tool for a PR campaign because of its huge ability in spreading news and affecting people.

Useful theories in communication

I suppose PR practitioners should know these theories so as to know the ability of media effects on audiences. There are some theories which are useful in PR practice: Agenda-setting theory, Uses and gratifications theory, Spiral of silence theory, Two-step flow theory, Framing theory, Sociological theory and social reality. I guess these theories are very good guides for PR practitioners in their practice of the profession.

The foundations of media relations

Media releases are the key tool in media relations, but to be effective they must contain real news, not hype. The reality is that the media rely on public relations practitioners as sources of news. Often there is no time for reporters to go out and chase news in the courts and on the streets. Public relations are ready and willing to fill the gaps. Judy VanSlyke Turk (1986, in Joy Chia, 2008) concluded that almost half of the stories about agencies contained information from a public relations source. Zawawi (2001, in Joy Chia, 2008) found that surveys, papers and submissions sent to journalists with the intent of gaining media coverage could also be regarded as public relations.

Key to success

The golden rule for all public relations work, not just media relations, is to under-promise and over-deliver. :) Nice term, I think! Always send to the journalists and reporters before the deadline and more than what you promised.

Tools to attract media attention

• Celebrate anniversaries
• Writing a good media release

An example of a PR campaign which successfully make use of media

The Museum of Tropical Queensland (MTQ) in Townsville opened in 2000. By 2003, visitor numbers had dropped 67%, with the greatest decrease in the local/regional market.

MTQ established a Community Pass Program to develop this audience through Council-subsidised free entry.

The challenge was to:

• Make residents aware of the program
• Raise their interest in museum activities
• Encourage first time visitors
• Develop cooperative programs with Councils

Communication activities included production and distribution of posters in high-traffic areas, media articles and the distribution of flyers to specific audiences.

The MTQ Community Fun Day achieved outstanding results, including:

• Attendance by 3154 people (compared with 846 on the museum opening day)
• 89% were local residents, with 63%of these were first time visitors

The development of strong media partnerships resulted in:

• Generous promotion of MTQ activities and the program through the news, interviews and CSAs

• The region's newspaper printing a museum story weekly, always including information about the program.

To date, resident visitation has totalled 17% (29,705) of the catchment population, and the first six months of 2004 saw a record 38,165 visitors

Major strategy was to develop strong partnerships with media, local government and business in order to help the museum extend its budgetary resources and gain greater impact.

ITEM	MEDIA	TARGET AUDIENCE/S
Displays	Posters Banner	Library users, Council visitors, general community
Promotion	CSAs on TV and radio for two weeks	Local/regional community
Media releases	Interviews and news On-air radio reads	Editors Local/regional community
Media photo opportunities	Newspapers and TV	Editors Local/regional community
Telephone messages	Councils telephone on hold
Promotion during the day	Outside broadcast by 4TO with key presenter "Harro"
Promotional points	Fridge magnets, stickers and balloons given to visitors on the day	3,154 Community Fun Day visitors