Public Relations in the Modern Era

Public relations has always been present in society. Be it stone tablets, papyrus, or a telegraph in Morse code, a “modern” form of communicating with the masses has always been around. Think back to a time when moving pictures and radio were all the rage, and a United States president who would give fireside chats on the home radio receiver. “Don’t touch that dial” was one of the most common ways to keep an audience listening and watching. Paperboys would stand on the corner shouting the daily news while waving a paper in the air that had a huge headline that said, “War in Europe!” as people tossed a nickel to the lad and took a paper for themselves. Just a few years later we had news being portrayed on television for the first time, with the 24-hour news networks popping in the late 80s. Now we see companies handle a crisis in real-time in the modern era of public relations.

Cleveland has a history of radio and television, and especially public relation efforts over less than ideal situations. Ask your parent and grandparents about the Kent State Massacre, and the lengths to which Kent State and the United States government as a whole went to paint themselves in a good light, and the violent student protestors who aggressively sat in a park on campus and malevolently shouted things in protest over the Vietnam war. How dare those students play music and lay on blankets for weeks on end, they practically destroyed the campus!

If you think that is an exaggeration, go check the newspapers from 1966-1970. It’s amazing how the history we read in textbooks is very different from the culture of the time, and it’s all thanks to public relation efforts.

Acclaim has been in the public relations industry for over a decade, and we wanted to illustrate the different avenues a business or brand can take when dealing with unfortunate situations. The most common approach is to simply create a press release for print media and websites. Sitting down and writing out a statement on a tragedy is the most immediate thing to do in tough situations. Explain things in a way that paints your business’ image in a good light and be as honest as possible.

The next traditional approach is contacting journalists and media outlets to run the releases you’ve created. Contacting journalists to run your copy has a multitude of mutual benefits. Journalists are always looking for stories to run to fill up columns, and it may spark their interest in contacting you to learn more, which gives you an opportunity to talk about an incident in your own words. Media outlets also want to fill up their columns with stories, and when one is handed to them, they often jump on the chance to get an inside look at ongoing predicaments. When dealing with public relations in the 21st century you have to stay out in front of any news about your brand or business.

To piggyback on the journalist and outlet approach, you may get a chance to speak on radio and television on the troubles facing your company, or the happenings concerning the public. It’s always a good idea to face a problem when dealing with public relations. If there are multiple parties involved, you want to make sure you are the first one in line, as maybe another party might speak ill of your company or non-profit, and you do not want that hitting the public first.

The last traditional approach is scheduling a press conference or an event and trying to attract media coverage of your announcement. This involves either allocating a space and time for your announcement and sending invitations to those journalists or news organizations to attend the announcement. This last option is a bit more work but does prove useful and shows immediate concern on your behalf. It’s always better to get out in front of announcements like these depending on the severity of the situation,

Leveraging platforms like Facebook, X, LinkedIn, or even Reddit can have a have a huge benefit. This allows you to receive comments and interest right away and can help you gauge public opinion without too much effort. Posting news like that can be terrifying at times, but again getting out in front of it will do more good than harm.

There are tons of tools out there in multiple CRM platforms to engage in “social listening” and see what types of tags and posts people are putting out onto social media. This lets you peer into the void and see what people are saying without making your presence known and will help you build a strategy around your future posts, press releases, or statements. Also, just sharing announcements with your audience shows them that you want them to be informed, it shows good intentions, which is somewhat rare in the modern era of public relations.

Sending emails to your clients or subscribers also gets you in front of their eyes much quicker than announcements or stories in a paper or blog. It can provide time-sensitive information during a crisis and can show people you care about them being informed. This effectively builds and nurtures your relationship with your audience, media contacts, and even your shareholders.

Lastly, and this is the most time-consuming, you can create announcement videos on your website, social media, and distribution to media outlets. This approach is the most eye-catching and requires the most effort, but it shows concern on behalf of your business and can help communicate in the most effective way possible. Image if President Nixon’s resignation was a memo sent to a news outlet. It would not have illustrated the situation nearly as clearly.

Let’s start with the positives, as there is already enough fear over the rise of AI in 2024. Artificial Intelligence will be able to handle some of those tasks I mentioned in the previous section, like social listening. Having a dedicated system consistently gathering information about specific hashtags and mentions will save you a lot of time and money. AI will also make the automation of emails much quicker in a much shorter amount of time, granted it will most likely need to be rewritten as AI has yet sound completely convincing or remorseful. It will also be able to predict the trends happening on social media much faster than traditional methods.

Here is where conspiracy theorists will have a field day. The negative impacts of AI could be devastating. The spread of misinformation has been a problem for the past 15 years online and will only be exacerbated with the rise of robotic accounts controlled by artificial intelligence. AI can already imitate your face and voice with the extreme advancements in the past two years alone and can make a problem much worse if someone has ill intentions. This can greatly influence public image and could easily damage a brand’s reputation if it is not confronted quickly and effectively. It will ultimately lead to trust issues across the board, but the good news is every company will face the same extreme levels and there may be national efforts soon to reign in the trust concerning online content.

The Three Major Pillars of Public Relations

First is “Earned Media” by which other media outlets, content creators, or influencers derive content concerning you. This can be good, bad, indifferent, or anything in between. Sometimes it is better to hear from other sources about a situation, instead of just the parties involved as people feel multiple resources are more trustworthy than one lone resource.

Second is “Owned Media” where the business, personality, or brand creates their own source of information. This is always important to do, even if people do not trust who may be creating it. Getting out in front of a contentious announcement, or detrimental memo is the least a business can do when confronting a crisis. Even if someone doesn’t believe you, they will recognize that you spoke on the topic. Relating to the public is key in every situation, not just the bad situations.

Third is “Paid Media” where information is disseminated through a paid service like Google Ads to be pushed in front of specific audiences. This happens in tandem with the other two usually, and is an effective way to target an audience, but it would be extremely hard to gauge the effect is has without social media listening tools or tracking capabilities installed on the announcements.

• Make sure to build strong relationships with media contacts and influencers because you want those connections to launch a story from you first before your competition or bad actors.
• Having a proactive approach in crisis communication helps with planning and execution of public relation announcements and will help in the future where problems might arise, or tragedies suddenly happening.
• Having transparency, authenticity, and being responsive in tough situations shows your clients, audience, and shareholders that you care. Showing up is sometimes the best thing to do in a hard situation.
• Monitoring the landscape is invaluable and will help you adjust your PR plan as you navigate the landscape.
• Continuous adaptation and innovation go hand in hand with the last point. Use the technology available to change your approach as you go.

To finish up this post we wanted to make sure all Cleveland businesses and non-profits know there is no “perfect” way to approach public relations. Sometimes tragedies happen and the best we can do is own the situation. Life happens and mistakes are made. Make sure to take responsibility where you can, and to speak out on problems that were out of your control.

In the future, AI will present some problems, but it is hard to see society just giving up on news announcements and reality so easily. Make sure to cultivate relationships with media outlets and prominent voices in the news industry, and to always get your story out in front of your clients. In the end, we can only do so much when a crisis occurs, just be honest and forthcoming.

Please contact us here at Acclaim anytime for advice on navigating a crisis here in Cleveland, we’ve sailed that ship dozens of times.