What is Public Relations and why is it important?
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) defines public relations as “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics”.
The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) defines public relations as a decision-making management practice tasked with building relationships and interests between organisations and their publics based on the delivery of information through trusted and ethical communication methods.
At Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A), we describe Public Relations as the way in which a business, an organization and an institution interacts with identified audience and stakeholder groups to create space and support for the fulfillment of its mission and achievement of desired outcomes. It involves managing external relationships for the benefit of the business, organization and the stated mission of the entity.
Public Relations is therefore very broad. The bigger the brand, the wider the mission, the larger the operation – the more people involved in the value and innovation or regulatory chain and the more relationships that need to be cultivated, nurtured, maintained and sustained.
PR is important because companies operate in an eco system, and a broader society and they need the support of others to succeed. Organizations need the support of communities, government, media, the public etc to continue to do their work.
If you run a public-school, restaurant, hospital or any sort of business that has a lot of traffic or relates with the public on a regular basis you would understand this.
Public Relations (PRI is about how you proactively manage those relationships. Being strategic about PR is taking the initiative to identify, build, and nurture relationships to build trust and goodwill even if there is no specific request or transaction or project at stake.
Having a proactive PR strategy is good to help build goodwill.
PR is about identifying the stakeholders that are most crucial to your success and deploying an integrated strategy to build and nurture that relationship over time. Public relations require time and resource investment. It is very much like building a personal relationship. The relationship must matter enough for you to put the time and investment into seeking, building, nurturing and prioritizing.
And this is where stakeholder and audience mapping come in.
Every public relations effort, initiative or agenda should have an identified audience or target that has been researched, mapped, and studied to some extent. If you do not have an identified audience persona or a named stakeholder, you are targeting – then it is very likely that your PR strategy will fail.
Who is a stakeholder?
A stakeholder is anyone who has interest and/or influence in your activities, operations, initiatives or corporate existence. Interest and influence is an important basis for stakeholder identification and mapping because it helps you to identify not just the stakeholders that you have a formal relationship with but also those influential ones that you may not presently have a formal relationship with e.g. sections of the media, community, civil society groups, social media activists, opinion formers, influencers etc. And depending on the kind of work that you do – this may be very important.
Some stakeholders would need to be proactively engaged e.g if you are launching a new app and you need to get the product out there, your marketing plan should have a PR promotion element when you work with trusted voices and personalities that can help create awareness about your app – or host special events that target demographics that are a key market for your product.
How is Public Relations practised?
There is no one size fits all approach to practise PR because it is mostly about relationship building, audience targeting, opinion forming etc but there are time-tested methods and broad categories that most PR initiatives can fit into. And it is important to classify them so that PR professionals and leaders know the options available and then decide how to leverage on these options.
- PR Events – These are special events that are held with the sole purpose of building relationships with identified stakeholders, interest groups, audience segments etc. It could be inviting beauty influencers to a product launch, or members of the community to a rebranding event or hosting a dinner for a section of the media. Events are a very important part of Public Relations practise, but it is important to have a strategy around the event otherwise it becomes merely a social gathering without a tangible measure of reward. Even though PR is a long game – it is possible to have incremental targets along the way. E.g., A target for a PR event could be getting an important regulator or industry personality to make the keynote speech at a corporate event or conference. The objective of that could be to establish media and brand visibility.
- PR Campaign – A PR campaign is a series of events and activities designed to achieve set objectives i.e, create awareness, introduce a brand or an idea or a product, create affinity and acceptance and begin to establish a relationship with the idea or brand. It is likely to involve in person events, with the face of the brand or a convener acting on behalf of an organizatio or a business. The objective is always to build relationships, establish presence and to expand networks towards an identified purpose.
- Sponsorships & Donations – Sponsorships and Donations are also very well known public relations tools used as a way to establish or cement status in a community as a corporate citizen and also to build relationships with community leaders and local authorities. Everyone likes a good photo op and these sorts of programs create goodwill for the companies or organizations involved.
- CSR and Community Projects – Corporate social responsibility projects can also be used as a PR tool but it is important to ensure that there is real social impact of these projects and that vulnerable people are not exploited simply for media buzz. But these are all accepted Public Relations tools and activity programs.
- Publications – Written material are very effective PR tools. And it is important for every organization to have enough digital and printed materials (if necessary) to showcase who you are and what you do. A company brochure, annual report or product e-book etc. All these give credibility to an organization and show that you are serious about what you do. Press Kits developed for media events are also an important PR tool. They provide information and help the audience interact better with the brand, product or entity.
- Media Activities – Media Relations is an important aspect of PR. It involves building relationships with media platforms and personalities for the purpose of the corporate or organizational mission. This could involve organizing press events, facility tours for the media, invitation to corporate events, product launches and also attending media-organized events as well – appearance on specific shows etc. The purpose of this is to use the reach of the media platforms and their proximity to your targeted audience to create space and support for the mission of your brand or organization. A PR professional working in this space would need to take the time to study the landscape, get a list of targeted media personalities and begin to build relationships with them either directly or indirectly working through a PR agency or media consultant/specialist. But in many cases, a PR practitioner would have to build their own direct relationships and this takes time.
- Stakeholder Relations – This is an integral part of PR and depends on the specific sector or business in question. The stakeholder could be an investor, regulator, community groups. Stakeholder relations is an generic term for the process of managing relationships with identified groups and interests on behalf of the business, organization or institution.
How Stakeholder Relations Works
Stakeholder Relations is often a very dedicated aspect of PR where the PR practitioner is expected to dedicate their fulltime to building these relationships. And this includes attending events of shared interests, following activities the stakeholder is interested in; attending their events etc. And even though other people within the organization may also have relationships with regulators for instance, it is not a full time job for them. The role of the PR practitioner is to nurture the relationships 24/7 to ensure that there is access, goodwill, support and an open door for conversations that need to be had at everytime.
According to Sola Abulu, the Principal Consultant of Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A)
The role of PR is to ensure that the door is never closed to the business in the spaces where we need them to be open.
Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A) is a strategy and communications training and consulting firm dedicated to enabling businesses, brands and institutions to achieve their desired objectives through strategic communications, organizational effectiveness and reputation risk management.
Enrolment is ongoing for the Public Relations, Media & Stakeholder Management Course scheduled for July 31, 2025 from 9AM – 4PM West Africa Time via ZOOM.
Register here to join the session: https://www.solaabuluassociates.com/signup-interest/ or send us an email on training@solaabuluassociates.com (Enrolment ends on July 29, 2025).