PR as strategy for global understanding

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.