Public Relations & the Profit Motive: Can't We All Just Get Along
Horton may be right that driven CEOs treat profit numbers as “isolated abstractions;” however, IF he was wrong about CEOs, why would we even need the PR practitioner? If all CEOs focused on reputation and relationships, instead of profit, where would we be? Well, I for one believe that the disciplines of organizational communication, public relations, etc may not even exist if it weren’t for the profit driven business school grads. As businesses grow ever larger, employees become more and more specialized. Thus, you have your CEO who specializes in achieving large profits and the PR person who specializes in reputation and relationships. There has to be a balance between specializations, doesn’t that make sense? Why does it have to be that one person is wrong and the other is right in his or her approach? Why can’t we just think of it as two separate schools of thought…aka, agree to disagree?
The dilemma really reminds me of the chicken and the egg argument…which came first, the business school view (one maintains reputation and relationships to produce revenue) or the public relations view (reputation and relationships lead to revenue)? Personally, I believe that the public relations view came first, but does that even matter in today’s society?
The dilemma really reminds me of the chicken and the egg argument…which came first, the business school view (one maintains reputation and relationships to produce revenue) or the public relations view (reputation and relationships lead to revenue)? Personally, I believe that the public relations view came first, but does that even matter in today’s society?
posted by Brittney Mills @ 10:09 PM
1 Comments:
At 11:02 PM, January 14, 2008,
cfriedman22 said…
I don't think that just because a company is profit driven they aren't concerned about PR. I did advertising sales for a free weekly newspaper here in Fayetteville and one of our largest advertisers was/is Public Works Commision (PWC). Why in the world would PWC spend thousands of dollars on advertising when they don't have to? They are a monopoly, as everyone needs water and electricity and generally have no other options for obtaining it, so they have no real need to advertise. The reason they do it is PR. Yes, they have the profit mechanism down pat, but they need PR to maintain a positive image in the community. They do that by running full page ads with conservation tips, upcoming events, earnings reports, etc. It makes them look accountable to the public and "down to earth" almost, rather than some secret entity that takes your money every month.
I think other companies that do not have such a monopoly on their services must rely very heavily on PR and company image to keep customers coming back mostly due to threat of competition. If somebody else can do the same service or give you the same product, odds are very good that the company will be very cognizant of their PR reputation.
I also wanted to comment on the part where Horton quotes Page saying "Isn't it obvious that many corporations and corporate leaders time and again express their ideals and intentions in lofty rhetoric that is time and time again repudiated not by the public, but by their own actions. Employees notice. Customers aren't fooled" (6). I agree totally with this, as this scenario actually happened in a place that I worked that shall remain nameless. Our boss liked to spout all these great values and commitments to customers and blah blah blah. When in fact, he lied to many people, made promises he couldn't and had no intention of keeping. The employees certainly noticed, eventually got tired of it, and within a span of a few weeks 9 of 12 employees quit. And customers knew what was going on too. It was unbearable to work in that environment. Too bad he didn't read this article!
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