Public Relations is Different from Propaganda, Advertising, Marketing and Publicity

By Andrew Bishop Mkandawire (AB Deevado)-MC Yr 4

4^th May 2012 Share World Open University-BT Campus

The subject of Public Relations aims at creating mutual understanding; mutual benefit; sustainable relationship; art and science of maintaining, improving and solving of communications problems, and timing of communication programs for success orientation between the organization and its publics.

An extended understanding of PR as a definition can be supported by (Jefkins 1998, p. 06) who argues that it ‘is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics’; (Jefkins 1995, p. 08) states it ‘is the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organization leaders, and implementing planned programs of action which will serve both the organization’s and the public interest’; and ‘PR is the is the management function that focuses on the relationships and communications that individuals and organizations have with other groups (called publics) for the purpose of creating mutual goodwill’, (Baran 2012, p. 308). 

With this understanding of Public Relations efforts can then be employed to differentiate from the following:

Propaganda according to (Jefkins 1998, p. 11) is the means of gaining support for an opinion, creed or belief.

The Propaganda activities are quite different from Public Relations activities. It divides its activities into Band Wagon, Naming, and Curd Stalking. Band wagon represents the ambition to have many supporters of an idea or activities without considering who they are to be affected with the idea and usually the majority support share few benefits from the ideology. Naming is where the owner of the message tends to maximise his mention in the media to block those competing with him. Only his good works, achievements are aired to the public.  And curd stalking is where the owner of the message exposes weaknesses of the competitor in a nuisance way so that the public should lose favour of him. Public Relations never behave this way. For example, instead of tarnishing image of the competitor it does create industrial relations. In addition PR activities are many like Public Affairs, Government Relations, Community Relations, Employee Relations, Industrial Relations just to mention a few.

Propaganda is as well different from PR because of its aims. Usually it has primarily negative connotations, but seeks to generate more or less automatic responses to given symbols-it is used by bad guys as well as good guys, (Baran 2002). From this statement it can be argued that audience can find it difficult to believe the message in propaganda form even if it can be produced by a good guy or even if it can be of goodwill. The publics do not legitimise the credibility of the message which has a form of propaganda. This is different from PR whose message has public credibility and bad guys cannot find way to use it because it depends on sustainable good relations.

Another aspect is the seeking of public response. Propaganda has shown according to (Baran 2002) that it seeks automatic response from the public from its symbols or messages. This can be to avoid the public to realise the motive behind the message before the owner of the message benefits. This does not guarantee mutual understanding and relationship nor benefits but maximisation of self-interest or egoism. PR is utilitarian in nature. Utilitarianism (utilitarian ethics) founded by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), (Oz 2000, p. 08) ‘is a form of Consequentialism that views good behaviour as any behaviour that increases happiness’.

Utilitarianism holds that an action is judged as right, good, or wrong on the basis of its consequences. As a Consequentialist principle, the moral authority that drives utilitarianism is the calculated consequences, or results, of an action, regardless of other principles that determine the means or motivations for taking the action.

It also includes the following tenets to any action or purpose that has to be regarded ethical: An action is morally right if it produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people affected by it; and An action is morally right if the net benefits over costs are greatest for all affected compared with the net benefits of all other possible choices considered; and 3. An action is morally right if its immediate and future direct and indirect benefits are greatest for each individual and if these benefits out-weigh the costs and benefits of the other alternatives.

Propaganda indeed may contain a message that is biased, intended for bad actions and only to satisfy the inner selves. For example, the propaganda that went behind changing of Malawi Flag Colours biased government authorities and many have criticized it to be unethical action which was intended to make government authorities get advantage of fraud of government monies. Public relations works for mutual understanding whose mission or communication messages guarantee credibility, objectivity and its aim would be to make publics understand the services, functions and advantages of changing any organization mission.

Advertising can be understood as ‘any paid form of nonpersonal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor’, (Belch and Belch 2004 p. 16).

The concepts are quite different ranging from the communication purpose to their costs.

Advertising aims at disseminating a message through persuasion. This is forcing one to buy a product through both enticement and lurement. PR does not lure. It firstly gives out enough information about a product before a customer come-up with decision to purchase. The costs of advertising are very expensive than those of PR. For example, the advertising message will incur costs of accounts, creative work, production and media air time. A PR message is usually covered as media news. For example, a press conference about a new product will be covered by media house as news like wise the press releases in this case placement is usually free.

Further than discussed above, Public Relations and Advertising are different in forms of: level of supplementary; degree of operation costs;   limitation of practice; level of effect; and level of creation of organization image.

Public Relations is wide and work for the entire organization that is across the organization departments. It affects the entire organization through internal public (employee) and external (customers, financial lending institution, government departments) relations, corporate strategy formulation, implementation and control consultancy. Advertising for example is attached only and encircled to marketing department which takes functions like recruitment and selling of products. Advertising incurs more costs than PR although it is limited to marketing. Public Relations functions are also much common in organizations than advertising functions which are absent in many organizations. For example, Share World Open University has a public relations department but it has no advertising department. This means organizations can survive with public relations functions without advertising as it is true with lawyers, medical doctors, and fire brigade enterprise services. And finally, public relations work much to control litigations, public harm and this creates sustainable relations with publics. Advertising cannot manage to defend or enhance understanding of a business strategy to the publics. It can neither control litigation nor control public harm. And it is just expensive to manage an advertising campaign than a public relations campaign. For example, you can place the press release in the news column or bulletin for free but an advert cannot be accommodated.

Marketing is ‘a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others’, (Kotler et al 2009 p. 6). Marketing is about identifying meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest good definitions of marketing is “meeting needs profitably” and the major responsibilities of marketing are to identify, to anticipate and to satisfy customer requirements profitably. 

PR and Marketing are different in that PR is for entire organization while marketing is a departmental function. Activities that emerge from PR Department directly affect the entire organization. For example, success of Financial PR will mean increase in productivity (increased product output and number of employees) and growth of marketing function (like export trading). Policies of the organization like in production will change for improvement and maintenance of quality. In short marketing functions depend on PR successful communication programs.

The plane motive of the two differs as well. Marketing aims at selling the product or services with value or that satisfy customers to identified markets while public relations aim at creating understanding with sustainable relationship with its publics. With marketing what is greatly important is the selling of products and services to maximise the profits for the organization. Public Relations recognise that the most important aspect in business is the creation of good, mutual relations and understanding that ensure that both organization objectives are achieved and the public benefits sustainably.  

Marketing self-interest motive is to experience the instant benefit from its customers through maximization of revenue realization. For example, soon the product is introduced to the market the provider starts monitoring the product life cycle progress in which the growth stage is the most desired stage by businesses as it generates more revenue and profits. With public relations it can educate, inform or create awareness about the organization mission without actually waiting for instant benefit. For example, a business can employ PR function of educating the market without expecting direct or instant benefit like how MR PRICE textile enterprise did two years before it came to Malawi in 2009.

This is why marketing depends on PR for it to achieve its objectives. For example, (Belch and Belch 2004, p. 566) argue that public relations activities when merge with marketing are designed to support marketing objectives as marketing public relations (MPR) functions. The marketing objectives that may be aided by PR activities include raising awareness, informing and educating, gaining understanding, building trust, giving consumers a reason to buy, and motivating consumer acceptance.  MPR ads value to the integrated marketing program in a number of ways: building market excitement before media advertising breaks; creating advertising news where there is no product news; introducing a product with little or no advertising; providing a value-added customer service; building a brand-to-customer  bonds; influencing influential’s; and defending products at risk and giving consumers a reason to buy.

And since PR continuously communicates with its public, it gets an opportunity of understanding their needs and wants. No wonder for MPR to succeed, PR may not hesitate to use a social sciences technique in knowing publics social position. Usually, this is by executing a business research is the planning, collecting, analyzing of data relevant to business decision making and the communication of the results of this analysis to the management Guler & Gani (2004).

Publicity results from information being known. This known message or event publicised can be good or bad and usually uncontrollable.

The major differences are slim converging at the level of control and preparation of the message. PR will ensure that the whole organization communicates and passes need to communicate to the public about the new program because this is the corporate strategic issue. And the preparation of the message will follow professional, ethical and legal standards of writing guided by objectives, mission and vision of the organization. Publicity can originate from any angle without control and even with bad impression. For example, last year there was publicity of Share World Open University at Nyasa Times that exposed its weaknesses from its financial crisis that led to not paying lecturer’s salaries which were low, lack of water at the BT premise, lack of computer lab and adequate books in the library, 45% school fee hike among other weaknesses (www.nyasatimes.com). This was bad publicity and it failed to justify why such information was necessary to the public mostly how it could benefit the institution and its publics mutually.

Therefore this is how PR can be differentiated from propaganda, advertising, marketing and publicity.

REFERENCES

Baran, SJ 2002, Introduction to Mass Communication, 2^nd Edition, Boston: McGraw Hill

Belch, GE & Belch, MA 2004. Adverting and Promotion, 6^th edition, Washington, McGraw Hill

Guler, O & Gani, AS 2004, Business Research, Cape Tow, Juta and Company Ltd

Jefkins, F 1995, Public Relations Techniques. 2^nd Edition, Boston, Butterworth-Heinemann

Jefkins, F. 1998. Public Relations Frame Works, 5^th edition, Harlow, Pearson Education

Kotler, P et al, 2009, Marketing Management, 13^th edition, New Delhi, Pearson Education

Oz, E 2000, Ethics for the Information Age, London, Business and Education Technologies

Staff Writer 2011, ‘Share world open university fails to pay lecturers low salaries for three months’, 27^th April, 2011, viewed 27^th April, 2012, http://www.nyasatimesreakingnews.com/.

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