Public Relations Strategy Free

Corporate communicators should note the academic debate over their relationship to public relations, and pass on. Leave that for their sabbatical. More pressing is managing the great river of messages from and to stakeholders. Here good practice, experience, and a little well chosen reading are keys to survival. Public Relations Strategy is a good pocket‐book for survival. It has that hard edge of concise statement, short summary, listing, diagram and case study which the practitioner in doubt needs if she is to navigate today’s swirl of messages. Communications, power, organisational survival; professional roles; reputation assurance; internal message management; integration with marketing, and e‐comms are the book’s target areas. Professional enthusiasm, however, does not dull the hard edge: readers are reminded (p. 130) that “Most in‐house practitioners know from experience that as counsellors they rarely make final strategic decisions or choices”. No illusions about your place in organisations is a prerequisite for good decisions. The text has its foundations in business management as well as communications theory and practice. Stakeholder management is well handled at pp. 28‐29 and 44‐45. The author (who is editor of this Journal and a colleague of this reviewer) offers her advice after 20 years in corporate communications, and as part of the “PR in practice” series from the UK’s Institute of Public Relations. And by way of a footnote, that debate about the public relations link is touched on at p. 108.