e-PR: Not merely doing it online

e-PR: Not merely doing it online

By Aleta Hanafi and Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): If there's something strange in your
neighborhood, it's time to call in the ghostbusters. If your
company is under fire, who're you gonna call?

For instance, if your company's employees go on strike to
demand better salaries and benefits, or if news leaks to the
media that one of the directors has swindled a large sum of cash
from the company's coffers, or if environmentalists are accusing
your company of polluting the sky, who should immediately jump
into action? During crises like these, the public relations
manager will be the first one to lose sleep.

As a PR manager at a leading palm oil producer in Indonesia
recently admitted, the PR functions in most local companies are
generally limited to fighting "brush fires".

This is reflected in the way most organizations are
structured.

"Because my tasks are mainly to answer the questions asked by
the press, to browse all the newspapers and magazines every day
to check whether there is any news about our company, and to
prepare the annual report, I do not really have a direct line of
communication to the board of directors," he said.

Only when a crisis appears to be getting out of control is he
able to communicate directly with the board.

Indeed, PR seems to mean different things to different people.
In a lot of companies, PR is also part of sales and marketing
efforts, which actually reduces its original function to simply
persuading prospective customers to buy their products and
services.

Still, the profession seems to continue to attract more and
more people.

In the U.S., for example, the Department of Labor has
projected that the "employment of public relations specialists is
expected to increase faster than the average occupation through
to the year 2006".

Interestingly, one does not really have to be trained in
communication schools to become a PR specialist. Every day we
meet PR managers who come from various backgrounds, ranging from
secretaries to engineers.

It certainly requires a lot of traits to become a successful
PR manager, though, with a high level of intelligence, a
willingness to learn as well as good communication skills being
key ingredients.

What is PR, actually?

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) adopted a brief
definition in 1998 that says: "Public relations helps an
organization and its public adapt mutually to each other."

In their book Strategic Public Relations Counseling, Norman R.
Nager and Richard H. Truitt define public relations as a planned
and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and
mutual understanding between an organization and its public.

Given such a broad scope of PR responsibilities, it is not
surprising to learn that companies have long outsourced their PR
needs to independent PR companies.

This has led to the emergence of local as well as
international PR companies. We now have global PR companies such
as APCO Worldwide, Burson Marsteller, Ogilvy Public Relations
Worldwide, Porter Novelli International and Weber Shandwick
Worldwide.

Again, PR companies are viewed differently by different
people. Some client companies see PR companies as merely event
organizers, while others rely completely on PR agencies to handle
their entire PR requirements, from strategy to implementation.

PR activities are not limited to businesses alone.
Governments, political parties, nonprofit organizations, charity
institutions -- all should have a good PR manager to really
succeed.

Enter the "e-"

After the Internet became commonplace and the "e-" was added
to all sorts of business activities, it was no surprise to hear
people increasingly use the new term e-PR.

Mat Haigg, for example, even wrote a book titled e-PR, the
Essential Guide to Public Relations on the Internet. (If you are
interested, you can read a review of this book at
www.websearchworkshop.co.uk/reviewepr.htm).

Our question would then be whether e-PR is simply conventional
PR activities transported onto the Internet?

In a lot of ways, e-PR is not much more than putting
conventional campaigns online. However, the new capabilities --
and speed -- that information technology, especially the Web, has
at the same time expanded the scope of PR activities.

Today, we would automatically expect every bona fide company
to have its own website, where we can browse its PR materials.

Press releases, success stories, new product announcements,
the latest product catalogs and even product reviews in various
publications are generally available on a company's homepage, so
that everyone -- journalists in particular -- can access it at
any time from anywhere. However, certainly this is not all that
e-PR is about.

An interesting, real life example of e-PR activity might be
what Victoria's Secret, a well-known lingerie shop based in the
U.S., did last year.

During the Super Bowl, Victoria's Secret announced the
schedule of its "Online Live Lingerie Show".

A lot of people -- especially men -- saw the announcement.
During the online show they flocked to the website and caused a
major Web traffic jam.

Victoria's Secret successfully received the maximum impact for
its publicity by reaching its targeted audience through the right
medium.

e-PR is not only about creating images like PR normally does
through conventional media, it also provides powerful tools for
publicity, creates enormous databases, distributes PR materials
globally and at the same time conducts market intelligence
surveys.

Take PR Newswire, for example. This company relies on the
speed at which information flows on the Internet and the huge
database that it has collected to provide a comprehensive range
of communication services to PR and investor relations
professionals.

It does not only distribute press releases in the textual form
that we are familiar with, it also sends out video, audio and
photos to the public, including journalists, investors and
consumers. It is no secret that a lot of media across the world
get their news from press releases fed by PR Newswire. As an
additional service offered by this company, organizations of any
type can also outsource the development of their websites to
them.

Take Think PR is another example of an e-PR company that would
not have been really possible without the help of the Internet.
This UK-based company provides a specialized service in writing
press releases. You provide the company with as much information
as you can, including a web address where it can obtain further
information, and within two days it will have cooked a
professional press release for you. All is done online!

Clearly, on the side of PR service providers, the Internet
provides a broader range of opportunities.

With the speed of the Internet, the ability of computers to
collect, manage and use huge amounts of data, and some creative
thinking, you can start a variety of e-PR services that people
may not have thought of, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And, with dot-com companies still trying to make their
presence known or to survive on the Internet, it is the right
time to come up with innovative e-PR services.

The Internet is a jungle of information, and companies require
effective ways to draw the public's attention to them. e-PR can
help them.

On the side of the clients, however, e-PR may have expanded a
company's PR capabilities, yet all the new tools and capabilities
will mean very little if your company does not have real value to
offer the public.

Zatni Arbi is an IT observer and regular contributor to The
Jakarta Post. Aleta Hanafi is a PR associate consultant at
Ogilvy, Jakarta.