The web has become very important to PR. Mike Grehan, a UK search engine marketing
specialist, puts it this way:Both online and off, the process is much the same when using PR to increase awareness,
differentiate yourself from the crowd and improve perception. Many offline PR companies
now employ staff with specialist online skills. The web itself offers a plethora of news sites
and services. And, of course, there are thousands and thousands of newsletters and zines
covering just about every topic under the sun. Never before has there been a better
opportunity to get your message to the broadest geographic and multi-demographic audi-
ence. But you need to understand the pitfalls on both sides to be able to avoid.
(Grehan, 2004)What is PR?
Let’s start with an understanding of traditional PR – itself somewhat intangible. As you
will know, ‘PR’ and ‘public relations’ are often used interchangeably. Unfortunately, PR
is also an acronym for ‘press release’ or ‘press relations’. Of course, the scope of PR is
much wider than press releases. The UK Institute of PR (IPR, 2003) defines PR as:the management of reputation – the planned and sustained effort to establish and main-
tain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.The ‘publics’ referred to include the range of organisations a company interacts with and
is dependent on. These include investors, customers, employees, suppliers, government
organisations and non-governmental organisations such as charities.
The Public Relationships Consultants Association (PRCA, 2005) defines PR as:the managed process of communication between one group and another ... [it] is the
method of defining messages and communicating them to target audiences in order to
influence a desired response.You can see that the PRCA definition is more action-oriented, in fact, not dissimilar to
definitions for direct marketing. IPR (2003) notes that public relations involves activities
such asmedia relations, corporate communications, community relations, corporate social
responsibility issues and crisis management, investor relations, public affairs and internal
communications.From a marketing communications and traffic building perspective, the main activities
we are interested in are media relations which are used to influence those in the market-
place. While web sites are important tools for promoting investor relations and CSR
(corporate social responsibility), this is not our main focus here. The definition of PR
activities above omits activities that can directly reach the consumer such as ‘buzz mar-
keting’, although the media often have a role in that.CHAPTER 8· INTERACTIVE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS