Don’t shoot the messenger!

According to Kevin Moloney, the pluralistic society in which we live today has transformed PR into a powerful form of advocacy. In fact, today’s society is a competitive society: many voices want and need to be heard. The problem however is that media are saturated; people have therefore to compete and grab media’s attention to be heard.

Moloney point of view is valid; however it opens the door to political spin. In fact, if media are saturated with so many messages, who decides what message should be communicated?
So maybe it is better to embellish the truth to make the message more interesting, to make people want to listen to it. Then it is justified to spin if it is the only way to get a message heard.

But then again, there is not only one way to look at this problem. Political PR might be responsible for some spin but only because Political PR is responsible for the political communication. PR professionals do not rule countries, presidents and prime ministers do. Those are the people taking the important decisions; those are the people who make the choice to lie to their citizens. PR cannot be blamed for bad decision-making as it only communicates the message. If citizens do not trust their governments and politicians anymore maybe it means that politicians should try to do a better job and not blame it on bad PR.
And what happened to the fourth estate? What happened to journalists being the government’s watchdogs? What happened to the media being a forum in which all opinions can be expressed?

PR might have a part of responsibility in spin but it is definitely not the only one to blame.

Identifying and Prioritizing stakeholders

Identifying and prioritizing publics or stakeholders is very important for Public Relations practitioners especially for in-house PR. In fact, some groups of stakeholders can influence the way an organization acts. Some people will often support an organization such as shareholders others have to be won over or at least monitored to avoid a crisis such as consumers or pressure groups. It is therefore important to have a model that helps classifying stakeholders.

Correctly identifying and assessing the role and importance of each stakeholder can make the difference between a successful and a non-successful organization.

One tool that might help prioritizing stakeholders is the power interest matrix.

In fact, although a lot of different stakeholders may exist, some of them may have more importance than others: some of them might be affected by your organization, some of them might have the power to block you, and others might not care at all about what you do.

Minimal effort: stakeholders with low power and a low level of interest à no immediate action required but have to be monitored carefully in case their position in the matrix changes

Keep informed: Stakeholders with low power and a high level of interest à no immediate action required but have to be kept informed and monitored carefully in case their position in the matrix changes.

Keep satisfied: Stakeholders with high power but a low level of interest àmost challenging stakeholders to maintain relationship with: despite their lack of interest in general, they might exercise their power in reaction to a particular project or initiative.

Key players: stakeholders with high power and a high level of interest à these are the “key players”, their reaction towards the organization’s projects and initiatives must be given primary consideration.