But back to the topic of research - in essence, I've been doing pratically nothing but that. Now, having been there and done that, I must say that research is ESSENTIAL for anything (note, I actually put it in ALL CAPS and bold for a reason).
How else would we know the best way to convey a message to people, what words or images don't offend them ?
How else would we be able to find the opinion of the general public on something or other ?
How else would we be able to have a relationship with every customer ?
Research, like you didn't see that coming.
PR isn't solely about promoting the company, or throwing flowers at the company's threshold (now that was literally calqued from a language which I shall not mention), because in essence, it's the only means for a company to get a message across. Regardless of whether the PR department is within the company or otherwise, PR is what companies turn to when in doubt, or simply when they have issues to address, or if they're just not seeing good times. And it takes a great deal of PR to boost the company's reputation - if it has already been lost.
Take Skoda for example. Skoda was a car manufacturer with a previously poor reputation. A test session with an unnamed car, which turned out to be a Skoda model, proved to be successful, but when the test subjects found out that it was, in actual fact, a Skoda model, they started writing off the company already. Now, faced with such a case, any company would be more than prepared to use more than words to boost the company's standing. This is where PR would come in.
And most of all, the commandment echoed through all time, which should be the number one commandment for anyone working in a PR department :
Thou shalt not lie.
Signing off.
Narin
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