#PRCommsMonth - We Are Capable of So Much More
After I completed my master's degree in the UK, a new opportunity had come my way that was challenging me to step into a new role. As a new worker in a PR & Communication agency, my main job is to help clients plan and execute PR activities offline. It does not seem difficult, but as a PR person, I know that we do much more than that. I have thought the value of my work, and I will share some of my insight below.
Rather than simply writing and executing, PR is about creating intangible assets. During the 9 months of work, I have participated in some projects like product premiere, dealer conference and annual meeting. Through these projects and help of my colleagues, I realize that PR is actually to help organisations communicate their purpose and culture to more people, so as to expand their influence and create intangible assets. For instance, we once helped our client reach cooperation with Dunhuang academy, and the client led their core dealers to Dunhuang for donation and sand control. This is to convey their environmental awareness and sense of social responsibility.
Actually, organisations are increasingly expected to create broader social value. As an agency communicator, we help organisations visualize the goals of activities through a variety of forms and providing more effective solutions. The Global PR & Communication model provided by Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (GA) sorted out and summarized these values in a more systematic way and divided them into five building blocks: Purpose, Brand & Culture, Reputation & Reputational Risk, Communication, Connecting Intelligence & Intangible Asset Metrics. It helps more communicators, especially new practitioners like me, to be more clear about the value and contribution of PR and Communication.
In order to realize the value of PR & Communication and make more contributions to the organizations and society, communicators should have professional ability and knowledge. In the process of work, I think the ability to communicate is very important.
Analysing and clarifying the organization's purpose and needs through communication is essential. At the same time, the ability to solve problems is also important, a professional communicator should have ability to understand the social and cultural background, identify risks, see a broader picture, and propose appropriate solutions.
We are pleased to see that GA provide us a global capability framework. The framework divides the 11 capabilities that communicators should possess into three areas: communication capabilities, organizational capabilities, and professional capabilities. Detailed sub-capabilities give communicators a clear goal and help us to promote ourselves.
In the post-epidemic era, PR & Communication industry still face lots of challenges. Off-line activities suffer from a number of problems and brand image become a more and more important element to overcome the difficult. In this situation, the integration of content marketing and network technology has become an inevitable trend and also a subject we need to discuss seriously. Although the world and environment are constantly changing, and there are always new challenges impacting the PR & Communication industry, as practitioners, our core values and core capabilities are the most important. Therefore, we should clarify the concept and clearly transfer the value of our industry to the outside world. On the other hand, we should constantly improve our professionalism to defend what we do and do much more for it.
Jaelyn Li
Account Manager, The Pai PR & Communication Co., Ltd, China
Any thoughts or opinions expressed are that of the author and not of Global Alliance.