Today is the last day of class for this semester,for some of us we will never see each other again.To those i will never see again ,i wish you all the best in life,i hope we will keep bloging so as to keep in touch.
As for me, my blog will be on holiday for some weeks because i will be traveling to Dubia,i will resume bloging when i return.
I also wish everyone good luck in the exams and a good holliday.
cheers
The Nigerian Niger Delta crisis is a case of an unmanaged issue that has become a crisis,this unrest started as pressure groups in the 1990’s and has continued up till this very day.It started as the python analogy of Seymour and Moore (2002).This issue has lead to the militarisation of the entire region and is given the country a bad image. That is why i have decide to write about it as my dissertation topic and i hope that the crisis will be resolved very soon so that the contry’s image and reputation will be redeemed.I aslo hope that my dissertation will add a positive impact towards solving the crisis becaues i have a great dream for Naija…
In the process of sorting out my assignment on Ethical Communication Management, i have come to realise the importance of research in public relations.The first step in PR process is research,and practitioner consider it as an indispensable tool.Research is a fact finding excercise that enables a practitioner assess public perceptions of an organisation,appraise the current social,political,cultural and ecomomic situation in which an organisation operates,and also determine the consequences of organisation’s policies and actions on its publics.
Research eliminates guess work and recourse to institution when dealing with organisation and its various publics,it also demands from the practitional the skills of listening ,inquisitiveness,investigation,dialogue and foresite which would enable the PR practitoner obtain the necessary information on which management would base its policies and actions.
This is why at the various stage of public relations programme,research is very essential,so lets keep on carring out researches.
I just want to know if CSR is the new form of propaganda,this is a bit confessing to me.i have read about how in the past public relations was associated with propaganda by spreading the faith of their organisations through incomplete,distorted or half true information.Today Puplic relations can succeed only when the basic policy is ethical and the means used are truthful.
Some organisations do CSR not because they want to get closer or giving back to the community because the ultimate responsibility of business is to serve society,but because it is the new trend,some even see it as a competition among themselves.
Example is orgamisation “A” did the beautification of major Road ,Organisation “B” will want to do someting that people will see and say that they are contributing to society as well.if this is all what CRS is,it means that such organisations do not believe in the cause, they just do it to have a public reputation,then it is not different from the propaganda used in the past.
I was going through the web site of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations and feel i should share this with every one.
Public Relations in Nigeria has come a long way,just as the development of public relations practise was linked to world war 1 and 2 in the USA, its begining in Nigeria have also been liked with world war 2.
The NIPR (NIgeria Instituted of Public Relation) will celebrate its 45th anniversary of PR practise in Nigeria this year.The colonial government before the world war 2 was concerned with collection of taxes and running of a police force to maintain law and order in three protectorates amalgamated into Nigeria in 1914.
The PR practised before the world war was merely a maintance of relationships with the traditional rulers to get intouch with the people,during the second world war however,the need arose for the colonial government to set up an information office which was later known as the public relations office of the government,this center later became the PR department in 1944.
In the Private sector ,the first organization to establish a PR department was the United African company,porpolarly known as the UAC,the unit was called the information department in 1949.The nigerian railway corporation also extablised its own PR unit in 1956,also the shell petroleum development company then known as BP created its own in 1969.
The first umbrella organisation of PR practitionals was established in the 1963,known as the Public Relations Association of Nigeria (PRAN),it was later renamed in 1969 as the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).It was legally empowered by the decree 16 of 1990, which made it a chartered body.
In the post independence era,there was significant development in government public relations activities,government took the advantage of information ministry and utilisezed effectively the machinery at the federal level to build its image.Since the political stucture allowed autonomous control of information channels at state level the party in power effectively utilise the machinery to promotes its image,there were laison officers in each state and during president Shagari’s Administration (1979-83) the ministry became a part of the office of the president.
The industry in Nigeria is relatively young when compared to that of UK and the USA, but it is growing and will cotinue to grow.
This controversy has often reflect the big ego of marketing and public relations practitionals,this two management functions most often confused create tension within organisations.The head of both department may dispute between themselves over the right to plan and present communication strategies .This conflit of interest i think, lies in the definition of marketing and public relations.
In today’s market,organisation strive to build up long lasting relationship with individual customers .They keep the relationship going, making individual customers satisfaction the corner stone of effective marketing management.
While public relations involves contacting the relevant target public and convincing them of the benefits of a particular argument,to support specific issues and to accept an organisations proposal.
The only similarity i see in this is that both public relations and marketing activities are planned and excecuted to satisfying outside groups but in different areas and i hope with time,this issue will be clearified.
I have being reading some books recently for my assigment on Ethical communication Management,and discovered that the discussion of Media Relations cannot be complete without raising the issue of crisis mangement.Planning for a crisis is essential at the three stages of crisis management:pre-crisis,crisis,and post crisis,it is also impotant to be prepared.
The organisation of a crisis management plan is often a role left to the Public Relations specialist,this means that communication take top priority.The first task is to understand the extend of the problem,by understanding the organisation can ensure it sends out the right message or even answer media enquiries.
A crisis does not have to be a disaster such as a crashed aircraft or an explosion in a factory,most threat to an organisations stability are very dramatic and can have disastrous effects on an organisation.
During any crisis,the media can play a positive role by showing concern in their reporting,negative reporting may aggravate the crisis and causing a damage to the organisations reputation which the communications team is hired to protect.
I think the the answer to getting the media and favorable public opinion for an organisation is pro-active public relations,consultancy PR can also be useful at crisis management as they can assist in creating a steamline crisis communication plan that will get vital information to appropriate audience at the right time without losing control of the message during the stressful period.
Good media relations can only be establised if public relations practitional have an understanding of the functions of the media in the society.Editors and reporters need public relation people,the Media rely on materials and ideals from public relations people and practitionals need the Media as a medium to display thier stories.
Relationship with the news Media is central to the Practice of PR that is why many believe that PR is nothing but Media Relations.Many also belive that journalists usually end up in the PR profession.Yet when you listen to journalists and PR practitioners talk about each other,one getsthe inpression that the feild of media relation is a battle ground.
Journalists think PR people dump unwanted press releases on them and push to them self-servind stories that have little news values.while PR practitioners feel that they are at the mercy of reporters and editors who are biased against their organisations, and that the Media men would rather expose than explain showing little or no understanding of the complexities of thier organisations.
The situations does not need to be so,understading journalistic rules and practices,and being able to exploit them to achieve positive coverage is an important condition for successful PR.
Corporate identity may influence perceptionof an organisation in the same way as a person may project something of is personality by the clothes he wears,car he drives,the job he holds,the area he lives etc,so organisations may project their identity through thier products and services,environments and all graphic information materials.
An identity influences perceptions by being consistently put on the mind of the publics through organisation’s vehicle of communication.consistency aids recognition,Recgocnition breeds Familiarity and as we know familiarity breeds favouribility.
people communicate a lot about organisation for which they work,consistency in communicating organisational personality can influence public perception of an organisation as a unique and credible one,as an organisation with a caring face .
Effective corporate identity ensures that people recognises the face ,voice and style of an organisation.A friendly ,memorably ,caring identity can also influence financial audience,therefore thre is the need to emphasize the iportance of using identity to foster positive coprporate image.corporate image is the totality of all the impressions that an organisation makes on all its audience.
Now that the Public Relations programmes have been put onto clearer perspective,it becomes easiers to discuss where each proramme is better performed, in-house or consultancy,and who is better able to execute the programmes,the public relations executive or the consulting firm.
The two terms have been simply defined by their names.where an organisation set up an internal public relations department,whether in a cain of stores,branches or at the head office the public relations department staff are emlpoyees of the organisations, it is the in-house public relations.where,however, an organisation for any resons uses the services of a consulting firm,that is public relations consultancy service.
I think the two: in-house and consultancy are not rivals.The specalist talent and skills available within the two can be tapped into to make the job more easier for both