Nice to Meet You PR!
PR. These two letters are really popular to use for the last few years in Turkey. We can hear these letters in different places. But, if someone asks, probably most people who use this term, use it without a good level of knowledge. Let’s open PR, PR stands for Public Relations. What is Public Relations? In basic words, reputation management of organizations or governments, non-profit organizations etc. Does it make any sense? If you say no, let's dive in more. When I was at the beginning of my academic life, I was trying to explain PR to the people around me who do not know what does public relations mean, because you know, especially in Turkey, you know that most of your relatives are going to ask your profession again and again, if you are not a student in Faculty of Law or Faculty of Engineering and you should define your department to them in the most basic way in the world. At that time I was saying that PR is what you see when you go to a Mall. Everything you see there is a print of Public Relations. I know, this is not perfectly fit but it worked.
Actually, PR is a really wide area when you are in it. “How?”, “Why?”. I hear your questions. Here is why, because you can use PR to defence your organization, solve problems or you can announce your new product with appropriate PR tools. “What is a PR tool?”. I heard you again, wait, I will tell you and be patient.” Let’s think about a situation, your organization is under false accusations, you know that, but the public does not know it, PR is your guide at that moment. PR is going to draw your map to the brighter future of your company. Now it’s time to dive into PR tools. We can think PR tools are a normal toolbox. It is full of tools that you might need one day. When you need it, choose the most appropriate one and try to fix it. Let’s count some of them; Special Events such as fairs, festivals, marathons etc. Educational Gathering Events such as panels, workshops, seminars etc. Demonstration Events such as rallies, boycotts. We can add more but let’s keep it here.
Now it is time to talk about my ideas about PR to let new students of PR departments know about the things that they are going to see. Public Relations is an ocean. You can drown easily. About tactics, the sky's the limit. The sky's the budget and your creativity. PR can be a bit grey about creativity because you should do the best thing to solve your problem in a fast way and maybe your preferences can not be the most appropriate way to solve it. To the new students of PR, what you should do in PR is to understand your environment, you should be able to see the possible future, you should fix every problem in the easy & fast way. You should build trust. You should create perceptions. But, in the end, you should be ethical. Do not forget, ethic is your heart. Be ethical.
Kaan Poçukoğlu
ESN IUE Member
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