PR as strategy for global understanding

Irawan Abidin, Advisor, Association of Public Relation Practitioners (Perhumas), Jakarta

There is today a crying need for greater mutual understanding between nations -- not only between governments but also between people of these nations.

For instance, despite a fairly large number of Muslims who are exemplary citizens of the United States of America, the impression among Indonesians is that most Americans believe that all that Islam encourages is terrorism. And there are just too many in Indonesia who believe that all Americans are cultural, economic and political imperialists.

There are many other examples. A great many international investors for instance, believe that all of Southeast Asia is still in the throes of the Asian economic crisis, when a closer look would reveal that these countries need foreigners to invest here as it is the only way to help these economies.

Diplomats may feel that they are called upon to provide the solution, but they cannot do much. Hence the solution to the problem of a lack of mutual understanding between nations is not diplomacy, but public relations with a diplomatic content and intent.

A good working definition of public relations is "the planned and sustained effort to harmonize an entity or group with its public through messages and media that effectively reach that public."

Thus the effort cannot be sporadic attempt. The word "public" means a group of people whose opinions, attitudes and beliefs affect the life of the entity or the group for which the PR effort is being carried out.

The messages must be we well chosen, designed and packaged and channeled through a media mix that will reach the target public. This is the part of public relations that requires the services of professionals -- the expensive part of public relations.

Thus it is possible to design and wage a campaign aimed at the general public in the United States, for instance, to persuade them to think that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Southeast Asia are moderate and they represent Islam. The idea is that when the target public loses its stereotype image (assuming there is a stereotype) of Islam, the benefits from the subsequent growth of goodwill could be considerable.

It seems then that the mass media should undertake this kind of task themselves. The media that has the capability to carry the messages of such a PR campaign is the American media, which could if it were a priority. But given that the media tend to look for interesting, which is often the negative side of things, a public relations effort is needed. The main challenge of designing a public relations message is to make it so interesting that the mass media cannot refuse it.

Only governments and groups of governments can possibly have the resources to wage, on behalf of their people, such a public relations campaign.

Governments used to wage limited public awareness campaigns by simply hiring some international public relations firm. But while international PR firms have access to editors and know how to package a message once they know what the message should be, they do not have an instinctive feel of what that message should be.

Further, most governments do not have PR professionals who can work with the international PR agencies and extract the most effective services from these agencies. Many governments have carried out sustained lobbying efforts but that is an entirely different activity.

To ensure a sustained effort to promote mutual understanding between nations, governments can acquire or train its own public relations professionals and give them this task and the resources necessary to carry it out.

Public relations professionals would mean professional communicators who can design a long term public relations program and adjust it from year to year on the basis of feedback and credibly propose policy adjustments to the government, on the basis of the same feedback. That means they should be professional communicators who are also ranking officials.

Ideally, they should work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as their target public is located abroad. That will take some doing, some time and some expense. But it is obviously cheaper and much more effective than hiring an international PR firm, and over the years will bring a great deal of benefits, including the growth of mutual understanding between and among nations.

The above is based on the writer's address to a recent seminar during the 30th celebration of Perhumas.