REVIEW QUESTIONS
15.4. Explain why public opinion is important to the success of public relations.
Public relations programs are built on an understanding of public opinion on issues
critical to the organization, such as the company’s impact on the environment and its
local community or workers’ rights and how the company deals with employees. The
public relations strategist researches the answers to two primary questions about
15.5. Compare and contrast the practice of advertising with the practice of public
relations.
The objective of advertisers is to create a level of consumer awareness and motivation
that delivers sales. The goal of public relations specialists is communicating with
various stakeholders, managing the organization’s image and reputation, and creating
positive public attitudes and goodwill toward the organization. Ultimately, the
15.6. In analyzing PR tools, compare the use of controlled and uncontrolled media.
Explain the difference between the two categories.
The public relations practitioner has many tools, which we can divide into two
categories: controlled media and uncontrolled media. Controlled media include house
ads, public service announcements, corporate (institutional) advertising, in-house
publications, and visual presentations. The sponsoring organizations pay for these
15.7. What are the primary tools of publicity?
Publicity is an uncontrolled message, and media relations is seen as the most
important core competency for PR professionals. The news release is the primary
medium used to deliver public relations messages to the various external media.
Although the company distributing the news release controls its original form and
content, the media decide what to present and how to present it. What the public sees,
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15-8. In evaluating the effectiveness of public relations, explain the difference
betweenoutput and outcome evaluations.
Public relations practitioners track the impact of a campaign in terms of output (how
many news releases lead to stories or mentions in news stories) and outcome (attitude
or behavior change). Such tracking is done to prove the effectiveness of the PR
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
15.9. Why is public opinion so important to the success of public relations? In how
many different ways does it affect the success of a program like
Häagen-Dazs’sLove Honey Bees campaign?
Public relations practitioners need to monitor and to mold public opinion. The
overarching charge of public relations is to manage an organization’s image and
Public opinion must be monitored in order to understand what various publics think
about an organization, that is, to grasp their perceptions. Programs can then be
Public relations objectives are designed to make changes in the public’s knowledge,
attitudes, and behaviors related to a company, brand, or organization. Usually, these
15.10. A few years ago, Oprah Winfrey suggested to her viewers that they could get a
free meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken if they printed out an Internet coupon.
Oprah’s endorsement created demand from 4 million new customers that
franchises could not meet. Is all publicity good publicity? Or was this just a bad
idea that hurt the client? Organize into a team, pick a point of view, and prepare to
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present it to your classmates. You might also propose how you would handle such
a situation.
Some students will take the point of view that ‘all publicity is good publicity’ and
focus upon the huge amount of free media exposure KFC received as a result of this
incident. Others will describe this incident as a debacle that resulted from poor
planning and quite possibly damaged consumer perception of the brand, as well as
the company’s reputation. Regardless of which side is taken, students must
TAKE-HOME PROJECTS
15.11. Portfolio Project: Identify a small business in your community that might benefit
from a public relations plan. Study the organization’s situation, identify a problem
that can be addressed with public relations, and outline a plan to help the
organization. Prepare your proposal in a 3-page (maximum) paper.
Students may want to incorporate some of the following tips for small businesses to
communicate their messages more effectively. They are:
• Wrap your story around a bigger idea. Find a broader context or news hook for
• Keep it short and personal. When reaching out to journalists, a few quick
sentences via e-mail, free of industry jargon and explaining who you are and what
• Pay attention to Web basics. Building a website and getting good rankings on
search engines such as Yahoo! and Google can help customers find businesses –
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• Host events. These don’t have to be expensive, but small themed events with food
• Seek out brand ambassadors. Find customers willing to talk up your product to
• Publish a newsletter. It sounds old fashioned, but with so much information
15.12. Study Häagen-Dazs’sefforts to solve the problem of the disappearing honeybee
colonies on its website. Look at the corporate social responsibility program on
Ben & Jerry’s website. Compare and contrast their efforts to be good corporate
citizens.
On the Häagen-Dazs website, students will find a link to www.helpthehoneybees.com,
which outlines in detail this brand’s efforts to deal with the honeybee problem. On Ben &
TRACE NORTH AMERICA CASE
Read the Trace case in the Appendix before coming to class.
15.13. Reviewing the public relation tools in this chapter, identify at least two tools you
could use effectively on a national basis to increase the impact of the “Hard to
Explain, Easy to Experience” campaign.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
WEB REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Provide a basic definition for public relations.
Public relations is a fundamental communications discipline covering a wide range
of functions that helps an organization connect with the people it touches. Those
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functions include internal relations, publicity, advertising, press agentry, public
affairs, lobbying, issues management, investor relations, and development. Public
2. How are publics and relationships important to the practice of public relations?
Public relations focuses on all the relationships that an organization has with its
various publics. By publics, we mean all the groups of people with which a company
3. What role do reputation, goodwill, and integrity play in a public relations
program?
Public goodwill is the greatest asset any organization can have. A well-informed
public with a positive attitude toward an organization is critical to the organization’s
survival. This is why creating goodwill is the primary goal of most public relations
programs. Sometimes a totally unexpected crisis can threaten an organization’s
A reputation of integrity involves more than image. Image is a perception based on
messages delivered by the advertising and other marketing communication tools.
Reputation, however, is based on an organization’s actual behavior. Image mirrors
4. What role does integrity play in the media relations process?
The area that focuses on developing media contacts, that is, knowing who in the
media might be interested in the organization’s story, is called media relations.A
successful relationship between a public relations person and editors and
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5. What is a crisis management plan?
There is no greater test for an organization than how it deals with a crisis. The key
to crisis management is to anticipate the possibility of a disaster and plan how to
deal with the bad news and all the affected publics. Preparing for a potential crisis
An effective crisis plan can help both to avoid crises and ease the damage if one
occurs. A plan outlines who contacts the various stakeholders who might be
6. What are the key strategic decisions in public relations planning?
Planning for a public relations campaign is similar to planning an advertising or IMC
campaign. The plan should complement the marketing and brand communication
strategies so the organization communicates with one clear voice to its various
publics. The plan also identifies the various key publics and the public relations
7. What is marketing public relations, and how does it differ from other forms of
public relations, such as corporate relations?
One area in which advertising and public relations overlap is marketing public
relations. Marketing public relations is defined as the process of planning and
delivering programs that encourage sales and contribute to customer satisfaction by
providing communication that addresses the needs and wants of consumers. It is
8. Discuss the role of research in public relations.
Research is used by an organization, as well as outside public relations agencies,
throughout the planning and implementation of a public relations plan. It’s also used
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The public relations effort may also begin with a more formal type of background
research, called a communication audit, to assess the internal and external PR
environment that affects the organization’s audiences, objectives, competitors, and
ASSIGNMENTS
Individual Assignments
1. Locate a public relations professional with a nonprofit organization in your
community. Interview that person to learn about the role of public relations in their
organization, and how it helps advance and maintain relationships with key publics in
the community. Why is public relations critical in a nonprofit organization that is
often operating on a limited budget? Write a 500-word report on your findings.
2. Using the tools and techniques discussed in this chapter, create an outline for a public
relations campaign plan for a student organization on your campus. How will the plan
be conceived, implemented and carried out? Finally, how will it be evaluated? Share
the plan outline with the student organization’s key leaders and gauge their reaction to
it.
Think-Pair-Share
1. In small groups, review the GE Ecomagination campaign by visiting
www.ecomagination.com, watching the accompanying ad on www.youtube.com, and
visiting related websites. Why do you suppose GE has launched this campaign? What
was the strategic objective of the GE Ecomagination Challenge, in your opinion?
Does this campaign appear to have been successful? Is it possible to turn a profit and
go “green” at the same time? What are the possible long-term rewards for a company
like GE going green?
2. Consult the two teen-targeted anti-smoking Web sites listed here and compare them in
terms of their appeal to a teen audience. Which one do you think is the most
interesting to this age group? Which one is the least interesting? Compile the best
ideas from both of them and write a report to your instructor on why the ideas are
good and what else a website can do to reach a teen market.
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http://www.thetruth.com
http://www.generationfree.com
OUTSIDE EXAMPLES
1. Learn more about the emerging role of ethics in public relations by visiting the Public
Relations Society of America online at http://www.prsa.org. From the homepage,
type “Ethics” in the search box and read the code of ethics. What does it tell you
about the state of the PR profession and the ethical dilemmas that practitioners
encounter every day? Compare and contrast these ethical guidelines with the ethical
guidelines governing advertising that were presented in Chapter 3 of this textbook.
Summarize your findings in a 500-word report.
2. This chapter describes Howard Rubenstein, founder and CEO of Rubenstein Public
Relations, Inc., as an elder statesman in the public relations profession. Go to
YouTube.com to watch him in an interview with Douglas Simon. What are the key
points Mr. Rubenstein makes in this interview and in what ways do they reflect the
principles discussed in this chapter of the textbook? Also visit Rubenstein Public
Relations, Inc.’s website (rubensteinpr.com). Review the entire site, while paying
special attention to the services offered and the case studies. In general, how does
this firm contribute to an organization’s brand communication efforts and add value
to a brand? Summarize your findings in an eight slide PowerPoint presentation to
your class.
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