“Public sentiment is everything. 

With public sentiment nothing can fail;

 without it, nothing can succeed.”

—Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 8/21/1858)

“Change the things your heart desires…Change the ways of this changing world.”

—Woody Guthrie, “Changing World”

First, a Story…

The year is 1860, and there’s a man standing on a street corner in New York City holding a brick.^[1]

Very carefully, he bends down and places the brick at a 90-degree angle to the street. Seemingly satisfied, but saying nothing, he carries another brick to a second intersection. This time, there’s another brick already there, also at a 90-degree angle to the street. He picks up the brick and replaces it with the one in his hand, placing it parallel to the street.

Still silent, the man walks down the street. A crowd is beginning to form.

“What’s with the bricks?” someone asks.

No response from the man, who continues on his course, brick in hand.

He walks toward the next intersection, pauses, and enters a museum.  About a dozen people follow, paying the cost of admission to solve The Mystery of The Guy with The Bricks.

Never speaking, our protagonist lingers in a museum full of oddities for a few minutes. He exits the museum, and starts once again down the route, attracting an even larger crowd, once again placing bricks at intersections. He remained there every day for a week, drawing large crowds on the sidewalk and into the museum. Eventually, a police officer stopped him because the crowds were an impediment to traffic.

Was this the first public relations idea?

As it turns out, The Guy with the Bricks approached the proprietor of the museum asking for money. For its part, the museum was having issues attracting patrons.

The museum owner — none other than P.T. Barnum — gave him money to buy a meal, and told him to return the next day for a job with decent pay and easy hours. The man was told it would be a peculiar job that involved remaining completely silent and laying down bricks at a few different intersections. The man complied and carried out his task.

The arrangement worked out for both parties. The Guy with the Bricks earned a living, and the hundreds of people who followed him into the museum more than paid his salary.^[2] And Barnum gained attention for his museum – not just from gathered crowds, but from the notoriety earned from the idea.

The Takeaway

P.T. Barnum was more than willing to attract crowds by almost any means necessary. As he put it, “every crowd has a silver lining.” He was generally well regarded by members of the public, who enjoyed seeing what he’d do next to drum up business. Today, many of his strategies and tactics — though wildly creative — would be deemed unprofessional, unethical, and occasionally illegal. At the same time, Barnum’s story and tactics highlight how communication can be strategically harnessed to influence the public. He may not have been the most ethical communicator, but Barnum was a key figure in the development of using communication to influence public perception.

We’d like to believe the field of Public Relations has matured since the time of P.T. Barnum, that we’ve risen above the purely entertaining and completely distracting stunts. But that isn’t strictly true. A sizable chunk of the public believes that PR is essentially a blend of damage control and Barnum-inspired publicity stunts. The technological tools may have changed, but the underlying communication objectives have not.

The next couple of chapters will delve a bit deeper into some of those thornier ethical issues.

For now, though, it’s time to clear up some initial definitions, because Public Relations and Strategic Communication involves a lot more than masonry-related anecdotes from the 19th century.

Public Relations: A Brief Overview

Founded in 1947, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is recognized as the foremost organization for Public Relations practitioners. Similarly, the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), founded in 1967, is considered the most important organization for PR students. Thanks to these two organizations, in large part, the definition and practice of Public Relations has substantially changed since the 19th century, becoming a vital part of corporations, nonprofits, governments, and entertainment industries among others.

While the term “PR” is used frequently in public discourse, defining PR can be a difficult task. An academic researcher in the late 1970s administered a survey in the hope of defining PR and concluded that the answers were “so diverse and conflicting…so uncertain and inadequate, that hardly any two of them have been alike or even similar.”^[3] Even today, no PR job is the same, and each client requires a different strategy.

In 2012, PRSA crowd-sourced a definition, asking practitioners to define PR, as its own definition had not changed since 1982.^[4] After reviewing nearly a thousand submissions and requesting additional feedback on its work, PRSA designated three “finalists” for the official description of PR.^[5] From those finalists, the organization announced the winning — and today the most commonly accepted — definition of PR: “Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”^[6] For its part, PRSA offers it as a definition, rather than the definition of PR, because, again—“No two public relations jobs are the same.”^[7]

If we unpack that definition a bit, it becomes clear that PR is not just a one-off attempt to garner favorable publicity, rather it’s a process under the umbrella of strategic communication.^[8] The primary focus is on building relationships between an organization and (subsets of) the general public. Although PRSA identified a desire to avoid the use of jargon in its definition, the term “publics” managed to find its way in there. It’s not a typo; it’s an important term to understand. Let’s dig into that word a little more.

The term public in Public Relations refers to a group of people whose members share common interests or values in any given situation.^[10] Consider your own activities, hobbies and interests — chances are, you’re a member of a wide range of different, sometimes overlapping, publics.

There are an infinite number of publics. For example, take Travis Kelce, a professional football player for the Kansas City Chiefs. You may think of his fans as a public. Then again, we could break that public into multiple publics. Some may be fans from his reality TV show, Catching Kelce. Others may like him from television ads where he promotes COVID shots. Or some might be fans of his nonprofit work in the local community. Other publics may include people who are Swifties – Taylor Swift fans – who like him because he likes Taylor. (Who knows what happens with this public if they break up!) And then we have football fans, Chiefs fans, fans of the University of Cincinnati where he attended school, and even people who have Kelce on their fantasy football roster. Each of those publics has varying strengths of ties to Kelce. Some are transactional and short-term, and others are deep-seated and will endure over time. The more you study any situation, the more publics will emerge.

The basic idea is that PR practitioners generally act to build and strengthen relationships with members of publics that are key to their organization’s success.

Some experts categorize publics as either primary or secondary, and also conceptualize them as latent, aware or active.^[12] A Primary Public is one that is absolutely essential to the success and functioning of an organization. A Secondary Public is still important to an organization, but their support isn’t as critical for success or is simply “nice to have.” Publics may also be characterized as active or inactive depending on the audience. A Latent Public is dormant because that group is not aware of, or involved in, a particular situation — but they could be motivated to join a public.^[13] An Aware Public emerges from a Latent Public that develops after they recognize a problem or see an opportunity in a situation, and they begin to actively monitor the situation. An Active Public is the final “life stage” of a public, and develops as an Aware Public begins to actively participate and exert influence on the outcome.

A final term related to publics is Stakeholders. In theory, there are differences between stakeholders and publics. Stakeholders are identified according to their relationships to organizations, while publics are identified according to their relationship to organizational messages.^[14] Another way of thinking about it: Organizations essentially choose their stakeholders through their marketing strategies, partnerships and investments, while “publics arise on their own and choose the organization for attention.^[15] To put it even more simply, stakeholders are “insiders” and publics are “outsiders.” In practice, however, “stakeholders” and “publics” are often used interchangeably, as “stakeholders” typically references those aware and active publics who have the most to lose or gain in any given situation.

In the field of Public Relations, strategically communicating to each of these different audiences is essential. As such, PR practitioners have to carefully segment the general public into smaller publics, or target audiences, to get the right message, to the right audience, at the right time. For our purposes, an audience becomes activated through a campaign – targeted at them to act – and then go back to becoming a public once the campaign is finished. Target audiences – those segmented publics we’re calling on to act — is a common term in Public Relations.

However, audience segmentation is not something that solely belongs in the domain of Public Relations. Marketing and Advertising also engage in similar practices, so before we go any further, we’ll turn our attention toward these closely related fields.

Public Relations, Marketing & Advertising

Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising are constantly evolving fields of study and practice. Practitioners use different technological innovations, which can alter and blur boundaries between the related endeavors.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) has, since 2017, used the following definition: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.”^[16] Since the mid-20th century, the key factors in marketing have been referred to as the “marketing mix” or “Four Ps”: Product (what’s being sold), Price (how much it costs), Place (where it’s sold and promoted), and Promotion (how it’s promoted).

Despite some academics and practitioners wanting to add more Ps to the list — People, Process, Physical Environment, Packaging — or editing the marketing mix altogether in favor of something like the “Four Cs” (Consumer, Cost, Convenience, and Communication), the Four Ps have proven durable.

With respect to Advertising, the AMA uses the following definition: “Advertising is the placement of announcements and messages in time or space by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/or persuade members of a particular target market or audience regarding their products, services, organizations or ideas.”^[17] As with the definition of Marketing, it may not be concise, but it’s fairly descriptive.

Until recently, the divisions between Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising were reasonably distinct. PR focused on image maintenance, earning media attention, and developing relationships. Marketing focused on promoting services and products to gain revenue for an organization. Advertising focused on paying for media coverage of messages, products, and services for an organization. There was some overlap, to be sure, in areas such as branding and storytelling.

Since the beginning of the 21st century and the widespread adoption of social media, these once distinct fields have overlapped more and more. This is part of a larger trend of media convergence, a phenomenon where the lines between media producers, consumers, and distributors have blurred.^[18] For PR practitioners, this may have blurred the lines with Marketing and Advertising but opened up new ways of connecting to publics and earned media opportunities.

Say, for example, that an organization decides to partner with an influencer to create content that appears on social media platforms and also links back to an owned website through affiliate links. That’s a fairly commonplace scenario, and it would take a moment to disentangle precisely where the boundaries of PR, Marketing, and Advertising begin and end.

The media landscape has changed quickly, and practitioners are frequently being asked to do a little bit of everything. That’s where Strategic Communication comes in.

Strategic Communication: A Brief Overview

Since the 1930s, researchers have called for an integration of Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising.^[19] A variety of terms have been used to describe the blend, including Marketing Communications (“Marcom”), Communications Marketing,^[20] Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)^[21], and Strategic Integrated Marketing Communications.^[22] Of those, IMC remains the favored term.

Strategic Communication is similar. Whereas IMC is focused more on achieving revenue goals, Strategic Communication is focused more on achieving organizational goals. For our purposes here, we’ll borrow from a couple of the more popular definitions: “Strategic Communication is the purposeful use of communication by an entity to fulfill its mission and engage in conversations of strategic significance to achieve its goals and objectives.”^[23] It has emerged as a preferred term in recent years, because it more accurately represents the modern-day practice of PR, which is multifaceted and includes elements of both marketing and advertising.

Today, practitioners operate in a hybrid media system that combines new and traditional forms of communication.^[24] Organizational storytelling occurs simultaneously through paid, earned, and owned media channels. Leading researchers believe the future of PR will merge several complementary professions under one discipline.^[25],^[26],^[27]

Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising have always had more similarities than differences. Thanks to new technology, practitioners will need a well-rounded skill set to navigate the blended media environment.

Focus of the Text & Key Terms

This text begins with Public Relations as the centerpiece, and expands to include Strategic Communication more broadly. In a sense, think of PR as the primary focus, with concentric circles drawn around it to form a larger whole that is Strategic Communication.

Each of those concentric circles are in constant motion, so this text is an attempt to capture a picture of a rapidly changing environment. As one PR scholar put it, “public relations is a piece of some whole. The challenge is to continue to search to discover the whole and public relations’ place in it.”^[28] This text investigates, documents, and explains “the whole” of PR that we’ll simply refer to as Strategic Communication.

The terms “company,” “organization,” “customer,” and “consumer” will do a lot of heavy lifting in the text as well. When “company” or “organization” are mentioned, it could refer to anything from a nonprofit to a government agency, political candidate, religious organization, school, sports team, law firm, or entertainment figure — just to name a few examples. When “customer” and “consumer” are mentioned, it could refer to website visitors, buyers, subscribers, donors, volunteers, applicants, voters, and fans — again, the list could go on and on.

These terms are simply shorthand for larger ideas. While there may be some substantial and important differences between them, the key takeaway is that ideas that fall within the realm of PR and Strategic Communication may be applied to a wide range of situations. In its description of PR, PRSA states that practitioners tend to specialize in one or more of the following areas:

• Corporate Communication
• Crisis Communication
• Executive Communication
• Internal Communication
• Investor Relations Communication
• Marketing Communication
• Integrated Marketing / Integrated Marketing Communication
• Media Relations
• Content Creation
• Events
• Social Media
• Multimedia
• Reputation Management
• Speechwriting
• Brand Journalism^[29]

Experts Talk Back:

Three Questions with Alyssa Giaimo, Digital Marketing Manager at After School Matters

After School Matters is a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that provides after school and summer programs for teens who primarily come from marginalized communities. The organization helps nearly 20,000 Chicago teens each year learn new skills and connect with community leaders.

So initially, I was at a PR firm for about six months, and didn’t really love the PR firm style — I didn’t resonate with a lot of the clients that we had. They brought on a pipeline company, and a gun-manufacturing company, and I was like “this isn’t me.”

Then I started working at a nonprofit because I had one nonprofit client at the PR firm, and I was like, “I love this, this is great.” So I went to World Pulse and helped women with this online platform to communicate with one another to share their stories and connect on all sorts of issues. And there were hundreds of thousands of women across the globe, so it was a really big audience. And I was doing newsletters, social media — similar to what I’m doing now. I was there for a year and a half or so.

And then the pandemic happened, and I wound up moving to Chicago, and volunteered at an urban farm here, and found out about After School Matters through one of the teens who was in an After School Matters program who was volunteering that day. And I was like, “that sounds so cool,” because I’ve always been interested in youth development, education, and giving people the opportunity and resources to prosper.

So I saw that they were hiring, and here we are. Now I do digital marketing content, strategy, social, newsletters to all the different audiences—so having to tailor that for donors, and then talking to parents, and then talking to community members, and to teens — and all of that differs a lot…so still having that organizational tone to everything, but being sure that it’s accessible to those that we’re speaking to. So that’s the condensed version, but I’m really enjoying where I’m at right now.

I really enjoyed the PR firm for a bit there. It was only toward the end that they got some new clients. I loved being able to work with passionate people from those different companies or organizations, and try to home in on what they’re trying to do, and make it the best that it can be.

With that being said, there were lighter touch points—I wouldn’t be communicating with them all the time, as I am working in-house for just one client right now. So that was nice in the vein of being like, right now I’m working on a corporate newsletter. I’m touching base with them on Friday, and it’s Monday, and I’m working on it in the midst of my other projects, so it gave me an opportunity to manage my own time. There was a learning curve to that too, where it was like “I’m working on these two clients these days, and then these three the next day” — or whatever. Or am I shifting back and forth? And that can sometimes get complicated because with different clients, you’re doing different types of projects — for example, social, and a year-end report, as well as a newsletter—but I like a variety of content, and I think what I really enjoyed there is I’d be challenged with so many types of different projects.

But it was challenging to get a new client, figure out their tone of voice, and run with it and do well at it. Because for me, I feel like I need a little bit of time and opportunity to educate myself and understand what they’re doing as a company or organization, their voice, their vision, their mission—whatever—to be able to authentically speak for them. So that’s huge, but at the same time, with all communication roles, I feel like it’s a very fast-moving career, and everything is changing all the time, so I liked that. I liked that it was very different, and that it challenged me.

With that, some clients had things that needed to go through multiple iterations, multiple rounds, and learning how to communicate about “well, we went this route because of this.” So being able to find a common ground: Being able to advocate for my expertise, and also having them  share that “we’ve done this, and this is what we like, and that’s what we want to go with.” So my soft skills and human connection skills were really strengthened through that opportunity, especially when the clients were pretty engaged, and connected to the work that they were doing.

I had one client with a school district, and we were trying to get a bond and a levy passed for them because it was a public affairs public relations firm, so they all had some sort of public affairs component, and that was the one that resonated with me the strongest. Because this team — this group of people — care so much about these students, and these employees, and they want to make it the best building that it can be, and the best district it can be, et cetera. And I think that group of people really spoke to me to the point where I wanted to be on their team. Because their camaraderie, their connection, their collaboration was so real—and just to be that one extra person to help create their plan and their strategy was really special.

So that’s kind of what led me to realize that the nonprofit route and being able to be with people who are really passionate and connected to a vision and a mission really resonated with me, and being able to progress and evolve with that client would be really special, rather than: It’s a six-month contract; see ya later. But that’s fun, too: To let go and be done with things.

There’s a long list that I could come up with, but one thing I think for all people — especially people in this field — is to stay up to date with the news to the best of your ability. It depends on where you work, of course, but with me being in Chicago, knowing Chicago news is pretty imperative. It’s a big thing in my job, especially with teens that might be mixed up in things — we need to know about it, and it’s a huge city.

So I think staying up to date on local news, and some global news and just understanding social, digital, and marketing news is really huge, and it also makes you a stronger communicator, and it gives you a better opportunity to be more intentional with the content you create, with the outreach you might have for a client, or whatever it may be. Because being able to understand the climate that’s going on — you don’t want to sound tone-deaf. So that’s just a huge thing.

I’d also say just show up every day and do your best. That sounds cheesy, but at the end of the day, to create quality work, you want to be proud of yourself.

So that, and striving to get inspiration from other organizations, other companies, other websites. Like we’re doing a website redesign right now, and that’s been a huge project for me: Looking at other websites: what are they doing; how is it oriented; what is the user experience like. And it’s not copying, it’s just being able to draw inspiration and use that to better amplify what you’re trying to do and what your product is, or work is. So regularly consuming content that’s related to what you do, or what you have to be doing for that client will really benefit you. I followed so many other nonprofit orgs on social, and it helps me get ideas, too, and also celebrate what they’re doing at the same time.

Another thing is you should always be a cheerleader for yourself. I was at this organization that I loved so much, I was there for a year, and at nine months, I was like “I’m doing more work than what my job title is, and I love this, and I want to be here, and I love this team, and I want to do this, but I need a raise, and I need a title change, and I need other departments throughout the organization to know that I have a strong role here, and I’m the person to come to.” And that takes a level of comfortability with the team, and gaining confidence. I got the title change, I got the raise, and I’ve been able to gain more leadership opportunities and represent our team in other cross-departmental meetings, which feels really good.

And with that, my boss told me, I have three other team members that have been there for five-plus years, and none of them had asked for a raise, or asked for a promotion — and of course right as I got one, someone else wanted to get one as well. And they’re deserving, right? But the moral of the story is to advocate for yourself and be able to document what you’re doing, so at my weekly one-on-one with my boss, I’m able to really show what I’ve done, what my priorities are, what the focus is — things like that. So be your own best friend and root for yourself.

Summary: Putting it All Together

Public Relations and Strategic Communication are part art, part science. They involve equal parts of strategy and creativity — and they’re always changing.

Public Relations exists alongside Marketing and Advertising. The boundaries between each of these fields were once well-defined, but have eroded over time, thanks to social media and innovative technology. Strategic Communication emerged as an umbrella term that encompasses PR, and also includes elements that traditionally were in the domain of Marketing and Advertising. Nearly 100 years ago, practitioners called for an integration and closer alignment of PR, Marketing, and Advertising efforts, and recent technological advances encourage further blending.

The roles, expectations, and ideas of what it means to practice PR has always been in flux alongside changes in technology. As technological tools evolve, so do the ways to engage a specific audience. Changing roles for PR professionals leads to a demand for new skills and training for those roles.^[30] Over time, the contours of PR and Strategic Communication are determined by these conditions.^[31]

At the same time, the functional aim of Public Relations and Strategic Communication remains the same: To understand the context, and communicate the right message at the right time in the right place to the right audience.^[32]