what is PUBLIC RELATIONS AND
HOW DOES IT BENEFIT YOUR organization’s REPUTATION?
Written by Guest Blogger Pete E Cento, Managing Director, The Cento
Group, Naples, FL
Naples, FL –
August 20, 2013 – What is public relations and how
does it benefit your company’s reputation? Whether you’re a communications
professional working in the PR industry or a business deciding whether to hire
a PR professional to enhance your organization’s reputation with the public
including consumers, it’s a question worth asking.
In today’s
fast-paced world the role of a public relations practitioner is changing with a
host of new channels of communication. These channels include social media
strategy and messaging, content marketing, inbound marketing, and so on. The
skills being used to deliver the message to the public is very much founded in
public relations.
The reality
today is that effective communication is a combination of strategic PR, digital
media and online marketing. All of us should be incorporating best practices
from each other’s disciplines to provide clients with creative communications that persuade and influence.
Public
relations can be defined in many ways, but ultimately, it can be condensed as follows:
“Public Relations can create and protect reputations and builds relationships.”
Since
graduating from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International
University, I’ve been a long-time member of the Public Relations Society of
America, Miami and Southwest Florida Chapters (PRSA); the Florida Public
Relations Association, Southwest Florida Chapter (FPRA); Miami International
Press Club; National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ); and I
currently serve as co-moderator and Southwest Florida Manager of the South
Florida Public Relations Network (SFPRN) and the PR Daily Digest.
I first
began my journey to “the dark side” of PR and media relations in the mid-90s at
Burger King Corporation in Miami. The transition from working as assignment
desk editor and news producer for CBS Miami, Telemundo/NBC and Univision
Network in Miami to the corporate world was difficult.
I was accustomed
to working in a busy newsroom environment with police scanners blasting in the
background, phones ringing off the hook on the assignment desk, with the
preferred communication of yelling about “breaking news events” between
reporters, news producers and assignment desk editors. Then there were the
shouted assignments for news crews to cover the weekly county commission
meetings. That was then.
But in the
corporate word, I found myself sitting in a small cubicle on the seventh floor of
a waterfront, glass-paned building across from Biscayne Bay on Old Cutler Road
and Eureka Drive in south Miami-Dade County. My role at Burger King included
working as media relation’s specialist in the global communications department
and managing crisis incidents at Burger King’s company-owned and franchised
locations in the Caribbean, North America and Canada. There were days I would stare out the window
at a school of dolphins frolicking in Biscayne Bay. I managed numerous crisis
incidents, including tainted iced tea, Mad-Cow disease, alleged food poisoning
cases from customers, i.e., salmonella and E-Coli, shootings, robberies,
hostage situations, and the bombing incident at the 1996 Atlanta, Georgia
summer Olympic Village.
After
working for Burger King, I represented a number of global clients at The IAC
Group, a Hispanic marketing, advertising and PR firm in Miami. I was
responsible for developing strategic media relations and integrated marketing
campaigns for Pfizer, Target Corporation, AT&T Wireless, The Real Yellow
Pages from BellSouth, Publix Super Markets and Anheuser-Busch. I developed a
disaster preparedness manual and disaster communication plan for AT&T
Wireless senior-level executives in Atlanta and also served as media
spokesperson during four hurricanes and tropical storms that impacted South
Florida and The Florida Keys.
After
working for two years on the agency side, I accepted a new job as Associate
Director, Media Relations for the University of Miami. I managed a staff of
four writers and six interns and was responsible for promoting the UM School of
Law, School of International Studies, UM Nursing School, UM Department of
Psychology and the Rosenstiel School of Atmospheric Science. During my tenure
at UM, I managed several global issues, including a Billfish research project in
the Florida Keys, “How Hurricanes Form in the Atlantic Ocean” and U.S. and Cuba
relations with the Elian Gonzales crisis, the 5- year-old Cuban boy who was
found floating on a raft, his mother drowned at sea, while escaping the
Communist regime in Cuba. Every day for more than 8 months, UM professors were
interviewed by global media, including the Boston
Globe, New York Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel,
MSNBC, CNN, PBS, CBS News, ABC News and NBC News. I also served as UM
spokesperson during the annual Atlantic-basin hurricane season and during
numerous crisis situations at the university.
From 2005 to
2012, I worked as PIO and External Affairs Field Specialist for the Department
of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). During my
tenure working for the federal government, I was deployed to more than 40
disasters from California to Massachusetts and effectively communicated FEMA’s
role before, during and after a disaster with local and national media in
response to aftermath of severe flooding, tornadoes, tropical storms,
hurricanes, ice storms, wildfires and severe droughts. I also produced a Disaster
& Hurricane Preparedness television program for Space Coast Government
Television (SCGTV) and Orange County TV in 2008 in the aftermath of Tropical
Storm Fay. (Sept. – Dec. 2008)
During my
career in Communications, PR, media relations, marketing and now social media,
I’ve represented a number of clients as Managing Director and President of The
Cento Group, a multilingual and multicultural PR firm founded in Miami in 1996.
For more than 16 years, I have developed strategic communications, PR,
marketing, social media strategy, public affairs, disaster preparedness and
government and community relations for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society,
Southern Florida and Puerto Rico Chapters, Fox Broadcasting Company’s launch of
MundoFOX, Spanish-language broadcast television network in August 2012,
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), the National Association of
Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, New American Alliance in Washington, DC,
NOAA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
According to the Public Relations Society of America,
“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually
beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”
Simple and
straightforward, this definition focuses on the basic concept of public
relations — as a communications process, one that is strategic in nature and
emphasizing “mutually beneficial relationships.”
“Process” is preferable to
“management function,” which can evoke ideas of control and top-down, one-way
communications. Instead of defining process, relationships and publics, how
about providing examples of creative ways you have engaged in these efforts as
they correlate to public relations. The goal of the blog is to share personal
business experiences so freelancers can relate to and learns from your efforts.
As a management function, your public relations strategy may also comprise
some of the following tactics:
·
Anticipate, analyze and interpret public
opinion, attitudes and issues that might impact, for good or ill, the
operations and plans of the organization.
·
Counsel management at all levels in the
organization with regard to policy decisions, courses of action and
communication
·
Take into account the public ramifications of
business decisions, policy, products or services and the organization’s social
or citizenship responsibilities.
·
Research, analyze and measure the progress of,
action items and marketing communications to determine if you successfully
reached your target audience.
·
Collaborate with internal
partners to identify goals, budget and give staff the tools to manage programs
and organizational
The good
news is that public relations pros are doing something of significance to help
bridge the gap between the public and organizations. And, if you’re thinking
about hiring a public relations expert – because you feel reputation and
relationships are important to your organization and you need to be persuasive
with people who matter to you – be assured, you’re thinking along the right
lines.
Media contact:
Pete Cento
Managing Director, The Cento Group
239-287-8061
Notice: The views expressed in the Guest Blogs are solely the
opinion of the Guest Blogger and may not coincide with the views of the
Organizational Freelancer Blog. 9/9/13.
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