Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Research in Public Relations

Identifying & Describing Publics Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ All Public Relations situation at any stage be at the management level or the communications/tactical level needs to identify its publics It is essential that a PR practitioner grasps the distinction between a “public” and an “audience”

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ The term public has traditionally meant any group (or possibly, individual) that has some involvement with an organisation. Audience suggests a group of people who are people who are recipients of something- a message or a performance. Thus an audience is inherently passive

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ But goals of PR programs is to stimulate strong audience participation Thus there are two different terminologies given “passive audience” and “active audience” The term public (“active audience”) encompasses any group of people who are tied together, however loosely,by some common bond of interest or concern and who have consequences for an organisation

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Then according to traditional PR there are Internal and External Publics Jerry A. Hendrix identifies the following major publics: media, members/employees, community, government, investor, consumer, International and special

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ When any particular public regardless of its broad category, may become a focal point for a public relations effort then the public singled out for attention is called a “target public” or a “priority public”

Identifying Priority Publics Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Priority Publics are generally chosen for economic or political reasons-only the members of a priority public you have chosen to receive a specially designed message Sometimes priority publics are determined by large-scale changes in socioeconomic or sociopolitical environments

Describing Priority Publics Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Priority publics can be described in any 3 ways: Nominative form involves giving the public a name, such as ‘stockholders” Demographic approach involves looking at the public’s statistical characteristics such as age, gender, income, education etc Psychographic method examines the public’s defining emotional and behavioral characteristics

VALS 2 Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ It is a psychographic casting done by SRI international to profile consumers in USA VALS 2 designates 8 categories of consumers Actualisers are successful people with high self-esteem who are open to change and whose lives are characterised by richness and diversity

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Fulfilleds and Believers are principle-oriented. They differ from each other where Fulfilleds are practical consumers, looking for durability and quality Believers having a more modest income and educational levels are more likely to favor established brands

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Achievers and Strivers are status oriented. While image is important to achievers, they value structure and predictability over risk and stick to purchases they know will demonstrate their success to their peers Strivers on the other hand are limited by resources but want to be stylish and are often impulsive

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Experiencers and Makers are action-oriented and want to demonstrate their impact. Experiencers are usually young, disdainful of conformity and authority and are likely to spend on entertainment and clothes Makers on the other hand are more traditional and conservative and impressed with anything that doesn’t have a functional purpose

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Strugglers are so constricted by income and education that they are usually focused on meeting their most urgent needs. They constitute a limited market but tend to be loyal to certain brands

Internal Publics Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Management (Top and Middle) Staff and Employees Stockholders Directors Media to communicate: personal, audio-visual, publications, direct mail, exhibits, , fax, webpage etc

External Publics Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Direct (marketing communications) : customers, sales representatives, traders and distributors, suppliers and competitors Indirect (institutional communications ): potential customers, potential investors, financial community, government, community (environment) Mass Media to communicate: personal, audiovisual, publications, direct mail, exhibits, broadcast fax, etc

Internal Publics and perceptions of organisations Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud points out that individuals in any cohesive organisation identify with the ego ideal (ideal stereotype) of their leader. As an organisation expands and matures, this ego tends to become the collective aspirations of its people. Diffuse as this may sound, it is real. Industrial psychologists have long known that people, if they have any choice in the matter, will not work for an organisation when they disapprove of its image, its self- image and its ego-ideal

Determining an Organisation’s image Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ What is does? What is says? What people believe it to be?

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ The best way to promote the use of internal publics as PR’s frontline is to make employees feel involved. PR researcher James Grunig says that a person involved in a situation seeks information, and that a person motivated to communicate about a situation is also motivated to develop a solution for it

External Publics and Perceptions of Organisation Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ They should not be considered as an undifferentiated “mass” They may be supportive or adversaries Be careful when perceptions of a company do not match reality Seeing opportunity in terms of competition

Public Opinion, Public Opinion Research and Public Relations Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Public Opinion is a collective opinion, what most people in a particular public think Public Opinion expresses beliefs based not necessary on facts but on perceptions or evaluations of events, persons, institutions, or products

Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public Relations,UDCJ Public Opinion is unstable and is only as good as the information in its formation Public Opinion researchers know, measure, analyse and weigh public opinion and other information; but the PR practitioner’s job is to help their organisations and clients deal with the impact of public opinion