THE NATURE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

Public Relations and Society in Nigeria

            Public Relations is one concept that is widely misunderstood and misapplied in Nigeria. Many people have come to associate the term with the singular creation of a favorable image without minding the who, what, to whom, at what cost and of what effects the image will serve. Thus, the term is easily confused with propaganda and advertising. However, public relations is not any of them. It is all encompassing with components effectively combined for results.

            Like any social science concept, public relations has several definitions. Despite the variety however, there may be observed common terms in most of them.

            Kogan (1965:9) defines public relations as the continuing process by which business tries to win the goodwill and understanding of its customers, its employees and the public at large, inwardly through self-analysis and correction, outwardly through all means of expression. The German Public Relations Society defines public relations work as the ‘deliberate and legitimate effort to create understanding and to build and cultivate trust in public opinion on the basis of systematic research’. The German definition is close to that of the British Institute of Public Relations, which sees it as the “deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its public”.

            Defining public relations Kanu (1985:1) believes that it is the “business of creating and maintaining public understanding and support through effective communication. In other words, PR is a continuous and constructive exchange between business or interest groups and its beneficiaries or clients.

            From all these definitions, we could pick out a common understanding that each of them agrees to. For example, they all agree that PR is a:

            Deliberate, Conscious and planned activity, whose goal is to achieve the:

            Creation of mutual understanding and sympathy through acceptable or legitimate means, between an organization (public or private) and its workers, its clients and the public. This will boost the public image of the company or organization and establish confidence in public mind translated as high opinion rating.

            The practice of public relation, according to Black (1976:6) in any organization is likely to center around the following:

1. Strengthening mutual understanding between the organization and any one who deals with it both within and without;

2. Advising on the packaging of the organization’s public image through credible activities;

3. Identifying organization’s practices that are likely to offend public opinion and work towards eliminating such practices.;

4. Working towards expanding the spheres of influence of an organization through appropriate publicity, advertising, exhibitions, films, etc at right times.

5. Undertaking any action directed at improving communication within the organization and between it and its external publics.

From the above, the objective of public relations is the achieving and retaining of goodwill, for the organization, safeguarding the gained reputation and ensuring internal members identification with the interest of the organization.

Perhaps, because of the nature of PR practice, it is often misconstrued to mean propaganda or advertising. A clear distinction exists between them. Propaganda is an instrument of politicians who use it for the manipulation of public opinion for ultimate control. Propaganda is based on self-interest, which may be distorted with falsehood with little modesty or ethical consideration. In it, the means should justify the end.

Advertising, on its own, means communicating to persuade the people to buy a particular product or patronize a given service. Advertising involves cost. It is not free publicity, nor is it exaggerated publicity about what is being advertised as to appear spurious to the intended audience. The advertiser must pay for his message and respect the ethics of advertising.

On the other hand, public relations go with responsibility, guided by ethic and truthful in persuading the people. Thus, PR scholars warn that public relations is not

1. Covering failures, mistakes or poor services of the organization to the public;

2. Projecting a point regardless of the truth, ethic, good taste and social responsibility;

3. Outright advertising, even though it can be useful in sales effort;

4. More praise singing and gimmickry. Over usage may even prove counter productive to the organization’s image;

5. Unpaid advertising;

6. Only press relations, this is only one of the aspect of PR, and

7. Non-political especially if it is emanating form government organizations.