15 PR experts sound off: “How would YOU define the modern public relations?” Which responses resonate with you? How would you define public relations?

1. 1/23
What Is Modern
Public Relations?
15definitions
From Experienced
PR Practitioners

2. 2/23
Every organization, no matter how large or small,
ultimately depends on its reputation for survival
and success.
What does it mean today?

3. 3/23
Different Organizations, Different PR Definitions

4. 4/23
IPR puts it simply:
Public relations (PR) is the way
organizations, companies and individuals
communicate with the public and media.
A PR specialist communicates with
the target audience directly or indirectly
through media with an aim to create
and maintain a positive image and create
a strong relationship with the audience.
Examples include press releases,
newsletters, public appearances, etc.
as well as utilization of the world wide web.

5. 5/23
In 1982, the PRSA National Assembly adopted
this definition: “Public relations helps an organization
and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

6. 6/23
In 2011/12, PRSA spearheaded
an international project aimed at updating
the definition of public relations. It included
a crowdsourcing campaign and a public
vote that resulted in the following:
Public relations is a strategic
communication process that builds
mutually beneficial relationships between
organizations and their publics.

7. 7/23
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) stresses a different aspect of public
relations. It underlines that every organization, no matter how large or small, ultimately
depends on its reputation for survival and success. And in today’s competitive market,
reputation can be a company’s biggest asset – the thing that makes you stand out from
the crowd and gives you a competitive edge. Effective PR – we read in CIPR statement –
can help manage reputation by communicating and building good relationships with all
organization stakeholders.

8. 8/23
Public Relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what
others say about you.
Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning
understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned
and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding
between an organisation and its publics.”

9. 9/23
The main definition of public relations
used by the PRIA is almost the same.
However, with the massive change in the
communication process brought about
by the information era, public relations –
explains the PRIA on its website – could be
easily described as:
The management function which evaluates
public attitudes, identifies the policies
and procedures of an individual
or an organisation with the public
interest, and plans and executes
a programme of action to earn public
understanding and acceptance.

10. 10/23
What Does Public Relations Mean to PR Practitioners?

11. 11/23
In 2006, for me, it was simply about building and managing
a brand’s reputation – how companies or individuals are
perceived, how they perceive themselves and how any
disconnect between the two can be addressed. This relied
heavily on strong media relations and resulted in positive
coverage in newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio. Job done.
In 2016, reputations are still at the heart of PR, but the road is
longer and has many more twists and turns. Today, for me, PR
is about the art of communicating, creating debate, shaping
personalities, influencer relationships, producing quality
content, and owning the conversation. We also can’t ignore the
rising importance of search engine optimization as an objective
in our PR campaigns.
danielle hibbert
Senior Project Manager
at Belfast-based
consumer PR agency Clearbox

12. 12/23
Public relations is communication of an intended message
that aims to result in a shift of audience’s attitude (towards a
person, brand, event, etc.).
rafał sałak
Communications Lead
at Prowly

13. 13/23
For me the definition of PR is reputation management.
It’s ensuring that your brand has a clear message and
successful PR is ensuring that message is effectively
represented and interpreted to the right audience. Effective
PR is about being proactive, not just reactive to situations or
brand/business activity. With the rise of PESO (Paid, Earned,
Shared and Owned), PR’s need to focus on content with
transparency is key.
jordan townley
PR & CSR Specialist
at PageGroup

14. 14/23 PR is the art of convincing others (consumers, media, influencers,
etc.) of a company, brand, or product’s relevance, rather than
simply telling them. PR agencies have always worked to provide
their clients with reasons to be talked about and to help them
identify and communicate a purpose in people’s lives. It’s been
the only way to grab the audience’s attention without paying for it.
And in a rapidly evolving digital world, this is what consumers are
demanding more and more. They have become disillusioned with
companies who have crumbled in the face of social and digital
transparency and are now proactively choosing brands that are
authentically on their side. They want brands with a purpose,
brands that give customers good and relevant reasons to choose
them. And that’s why PR is becoming an increasingly powerful
discipline – because we’ve been doing just that for years.
charlie de mierre
Creative Director
at Porter Novelli London

15. 15/23
Public relations is the practice of understanding the purpose
of an organization and its relationships within society. It is
the planned and sustained activity of engagement between
these two parties to influence behavior change, and build
mutual understanding and trust. Engagement between an
organization and its publics is the core of public relations
practice. It is a two-way process by which an organization
communicates with its publics, and vice versa.
stephen waddington
Chief Engagement Officer
at Ketchum

16. 16/23
Public relations is the act of spreading awareness on behalf
of a company, product, brand, or individual. Publicists do
this for their clients by garnering media coverage, creating
partnerships, owned content strategy, etc.
kristen tischhauser
Managing Partner
at talkTECH

17. 17/23
Public relations: everything that’s done in order to create
or maintain a subject’s public image in a specified target
group. The subject of these activities could be a product, a
company, or its department, an individual or an idea. The
target group could be narrow (for niche products) as well
as very broad (for example a whole social group). PR is
carried out with various tools – both traditional, like media
relations, advocacy, or employer branding, and modern,
like social media relations.
grzegorz miller
Blogger
at Social-pr.pl

18. 18/23
We are living in an era when huge amounts of information
are available wherever we are and whatever we do. Radio,
television, printed press, social media, blogs, internet
portals – a whole range of different content available at our
fingertips twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. At
the same time, a human being is a cognitive miser, as first
described by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in 1991. One is
only capable of learning, understanding, and using a small
portion of information that he or she is bombarded with.
It is at the confluence of this flood of information and the
human mind that a place for PR exists. To me, PR is the
ability to attract the attention of selected audiences through
strategic and tactical spreading of key messages.
filip kochan
Communications Officer,
Poland and the Baltics,
World Bank

19. 19/23
PR is a set of tools we use in our everyday work to achieve
the above-mentioned goal. Regardless of the press
release, event, interview, blog, or another tool employed by
the communication professional, PR requires the building
of relationships with your audiences or transmitters of your
messages. An investment in building these relationships is
essential for bringing the highest returns in the PR world.
...
filip kochan
Communications Officer,
Poland and the Baltics,
World Bank

20. 20/23
Public relations is the art of creating lasting relationships,
based on respect and truth, between interdependent
entities existing in the public domain. PR has nothing to do
with manipulation, twisting the reality, smearing competitors
or political opponents, or praising made up qualities of
products, services, parties, or public figures. PR teaches you
the principles of correct exchange of information between
individuals and companies.grzegorz szczepański
CEO
at Hill+Knowlton Strategies Poland,
ZFPR

21. 21/23
PR isn’t just about the relations with the outside world. Ask
yourself: why do you need to have those relationships? Why
and how will you nurture them? What are your goals? And
for every product there’s just one ultimate goal: delivering
value and making revenue.
PR is about identifying the right people/organizations
with whom you want to establish those relationships, and
developing the right communication and cooperation
models on how to achieve your business goals via them.
vlad shvets
Growth Hacker
at Fogger

22. 22/23
By the book: PR is a feature of the management which
consists of maintaining favorable relations with everyone
surrounding the company, which determines its success or
failure.
From my professional and life experience: everything that
we do or say is Public Relations.
To phrase it differently: PR is a never-ending story full of
nuances, amazing characters and unexpected plot twists.
PR turns companies into heroes and heroes into lovebrands.
Always opened on the most recent page and ready to take
you to the unexpected.
olka kaźmierczak
fashion PR expert,
founder of Fashion PR Talks academy

23. 23/23
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