School – Ryan Baldwin

My Semester with Public Relations

As I continue with my major in Advertisement and Public Relations I still do not have a defined image the differences between advertisement, public relations, and marketing. However, with this semester coming to an end I can now more clearly see what public relations is and how it helps business or any type of organization. My fundamentals of public relations class demonstrated the importance of public relations that I had never seen before. It helps keeps business in a good public eye, but even more important is how hard they work behind the sense. They are there maintaining the brand’s image, keeping the public relation healthy, but also always preparing for anything that may go wrong. At the beginning of this class I described public relations as, “the way a business interacts with the public, allowing them to create the brand image they desire.”

Now I can see that this idea is correct but is missing a lot. Public relations handle much more than the brand image. They manage events, press conferences, and anything that involves communication with the public. I also can see that their goal is not to sell product or serves they are trying to sell the brand. Even if public relations is not trying to sell the product, other parts of the company are. It is important to remember that public relations runs along side advertisement and marketing. It takes all three of these departments to have a successful company. Sometimes through out this semester I was so amazed by how much the public relation department was in charge of I would forget about the other ones. I am an ad focused and I would always think of the ad way of going about things, so it was important for me to remember that I am not in the department for this class. I enjoyed learning about public relations through this class, however it reinforced my belief that I want to follow my career in ad. Even if I do not pursue a career in public relations I do think it was good I was able to learn the basics of it.

Knowing the basics of public relations will help me collaborate easier with public relations workers in the future. It will allow me to know what they are capital of and understand their point of view. I enjoy the selling of products and not brands, and therefore, want to continue my degree with an ad focus.

Through out this semester I have worked very hard on my first ever planned book. This plan book came with a real client and their current problems. It showed me that in public relations you can work for business and organizations no matter how big or small. This plan book took me step by step in how you would create one in a real public relations situation. Now that it is finished, it feels great to have the weight off my shoulders, but it also left me something to be proud of. Most college classes end and you get a grade and move on, but this class left me with a 45 page plan book that has all my hard work and ideas in.

Not everything in the plan book went smoothly. It took a lot of research and preparation to complete. But now I can see all my hard work together and see that it was all worth it! Everything tought me something. From the cover teaching me how to do simple designs on Canvans, to the time line teaching me new skills at excel, I learned something new from everything I did.

Now becoming a senior, I look forward to applying this knowledge into my classes next year. I am excited to be one step closer to start my career in ad, and I know I will be using the knowledge I learned in this class for the rest of my life.

Public Relations is Not What I Thought it Was.

No matter how big or small a business is they have to worry about their public relations. To me public relations is the way a business interacts with the public, allowing them to create the brand image they desire. According to Caroline Black the author of The PR Practitioner’s Desktop Guide, “Public relations was born the moment the first organised group understood that it had a need to communicate with people- in other words it has been around since the dawn of civilization” (Black, p.7). This shows that all business have always had public relationships no matter when they were active through out time.

I am currently starting my first PR class at Grand Valley, and already through my first week I have learned so much. As an Ad emphasizes it took me an extra semester before getting to the PR classes. Before this class it was hard for me to see the difference between Ad and PR, but after this week I am beginning to see it. I now think of PR as the relationship between the company and the consumer where Ad is just trying to get the consumer to buy more or create new consumers. For example, on a social media for an Ad post may bring the price of a good and provide a link to buy it. Where on the other had, a PR post would focus on building the relationship between the customer and company, and would not show any mention of buying the product. Overall, I believe ads are focusing on making money where the focus of PR is to establish a bond between consumer and company.

As an Ad and PR major who is having difficulty understanding the difference between the two of these, it must look as if they are the same to people not involved in the industry. When research exactly what PR is I found a great quote by Robert Wynne, who is a Public Relations professional in California, where he states, ” The public relations industry does a terrible job of public relations.” In this quote he is trying to get the point across that people who work in the public relations field do a terrible job explain what there job is. This is very ironic sense they are paid to communicate to the public for a company, but fail to inform the public what exactly they do as a professional.

I believe the public relations field is full of gray areas and over laps with many jobs. However, no matter where you work there will be the same underlying duties. According to the Public Relations Society of America in their articular titled, “About Public Relations,” the main duty of public relations is to analyzing the public’s view of the company, issues that may impact the company for good or bad, crisis communication, manage the reputation of the company, preforming research on the audience and how to reach them, planning and implementing campaigns, setting goals, planning, budgeting, and overseeing content used to gain customer engagement and turn into leads. I use to think advertising and public relations were pretty much the same thing but in the last 7 day’s I have learned how different they are. Between the articles I have read preparing to write this along with what I have learned in class, my view of public relations has changed directly. I still plan on finishing my major with the empathizes in advertising, but my interest in public relations has gone up a lot. I want to be the best employee possible so what ever will expand my skill I will happily learn.

Black, C. (2002). The PR Practitioner’s Desktop Guide. EBCOhost. 7-18

About Public Relations. (n.d) Public Relations Society of America. retrieved from: https://www.prsa.org/about/all-about-pr

Wynne, R. ( Jan 21, 2016). Five Things Everyone Should Know About Public Relations. Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwynne/2016/01/21/five-things-everyone-should-know-about-public-relations/#25632f262a2c