What is PR as it relates to business?

Question

What is PR as it relates to business and what are some examples?

Answer 1

public relations

Answer 2

"Public Relations" is how a company "relates" to the "public" on a one-to-one (or one-to-many) basis.

In other words, in the same way that you want your house looking nice when family or even strangers come to visit, a "PR" department ensures that its "house" (i.e., the business/company/firm/whatever) appears "nice and clean" to anyone who looks at it. It does not, necessarily, have anything to do with marketing (e.g., sales, commercials, etc), but it is certainly involved with that. "PR" tends to be how the company relates to the public (e.g., phone operators; help desk or customer/technical support; etc).

For example, company ABC has a phone operator who greets the caller with a genuinely friendly voice, while company XYZ uses a machine that requires the user to answer a lot of silly questions just to be disconnected a few minutes later. Company ABC is what PR firms refer to as being "customer/public/client/etc friendly", while company XYZ is what PR firms refer to as a "public relations nightmare"!

Assuming that both of the above companies offer the same product or service for the same price, based solely on the preceding paragraph, who would you do business with? If you answered "company ABC", then you're smarter than most companies! ;)

BTW, the "PR" contact for the President of the United States is considered to be the "Press Secretary", since that's from whom the media (i.e., reporters, and thus, the public) gets most of its information from (we don't want a dirty House, do we?). ;)

Answer 3

PR=Public Relations

Advertising is the part of marketing where you pay for your company's name and info to be placed

PR=You don't pay and thus don't control what is said. You build relationships with reporters in your industry and try to get articles or your company mentioned in articles.

It's more effective than marketing, but harder to achieve.