An important concept for PR campaigns and strategies is the importance of understanding and defining publics and stakeholders. Our strategies of communication should be related to our target audience. Know your public and understand their expectations are the first step to achieving a good communication campaign plan. As a result different segments should also have differentiated communication strategies. To help identify and understand different groups that are relate to the company I’ll explain them through the stakeholder and situational theory of publics.
First of all let’s understand the definition of audience. Mass communication is intended towards a general audience. Traditional mass communication has been targeted towards a large number of unorganized, anonymous and isolated groups. First this source of media was seen as a source of manipulation and targeting of ideas and information. The receiver wouldn’t challenge or critically think about the message being transmitted. The information was only to sell and disseminate ideas. At this time Edward Bernays, considered the “father” of public relations, started to use communication as a form of control and manipulation of public opinion. Some of Freud’s techniques of subconscious notions were applied. Bernay believed that giving the power of decision to the public was dangerous to society. So Bernay would make the public think that their decision was due to their individual needs, when in fact it was the result of a manipulation and control of their desires.
The century of the self by Adam Curtis. BBC
John Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC, declared: “It’s occasionally indicated to us that we are setting out to give the public what we think they need – and not what they want – but very few people know what they want and very few what they need”. The expression articulate very well the perception mass media had of their audience at the time.
However nowadays society has sustained important changes and the concept of active audiences has gained increasing strength. Opposite of passive, the active audience take responsibility for their choices. They decide what to consume, where and how. Today companies need to adapt their business and communication towards their audiences’ particular needs. According to the Reception Analysis study the public is also the creator of the messages meaning. They discuss together with the organization the meaning that the message should have.
For PR professionals these audiences are mainly based in stakeholders and publics. The different concepts between both aren’t sharp and some theorists in the field still mix them up. The organizations’ stakeholder, a term originated in political theory, are the group of individuals that influence or are influenced by the company. Publics are stakeholders that faced a problem or issue related to the company. If the PR department know and understand the different stakeholders the company relates with, these stakeholders might never become publics. The mapping of stakeholders is essential to cement a communication strategy and it’s primarily based on the power and interest of the stakeholders towards the organization. If the stakeholders have high level of power and interest they are key in the organization survival and should be seen as essential by the company. If they have power but the interest is low, the organization should try to keep them satisfied and it shouldn’t require too much effort. However if the stakeholders have little power but there interest is high the organization should keep them informed.
Stakeholder theory
If the relationship between companies and stakeholders are manageable the company wouldn’t have to worry about them becoming publics, which could result in them organizing themselves against the organization. The situational theory of publics elaborated by Grunig and Hunt (1984) predicts some actions that can help strengthen the relationship between publics and organizations. According to Grunig and Hunt the publics are divided in latent, aware and active. The latent publics are the groups that have an issue/problem against the company’s action but they haven’t recognized it yet. When the group recognize the problem exists they are known as aware publics and when they start to organize to discuss and act against the problem/issue they are called actives.
Understand different concepts of audiences, stakeholders and publics are essential to create an influential PR campaign. As I said before, without knowing who you’re talking to, the strategies can’t be defined and efficiently implemented. However it’s important to make clear that in today society these concepts are much more complicated. It’s harder to frame in pre-set concepts. However it’s our job as PR professionals or academics to adapt the changes and reformulate theories in terms of today’s society. Always seeking to understand the role that different groups have in organizations plays an important role in defining our campaigns.
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