The opinions of the public are sought for many reasons. American businesses constantly ask questions, through telephone polls or written questionnaires, to find out the tastes and preferences of American consumers. They also poll employees to check the level of support for their policies. Car manufacturers, cosmetic makers, and cereal producers spend millions of dollars each year trying to find out what Americans prefer. It’s an essential part of customer relations and brand management. In our current digital age, opinion polls may not be as direct. Companies have now circumvented these traditional methods of polling their consumers by looking at your web browsing and shopping habits, for example. Nonetheless, these are all examples of how consumers are approached by companies in their specific ads, brand messaging, and more.
There are many full-time, large companies that conduct these polls under contract to any corporations, politicians, government agencies, and trade associations that are extremely interested in gaining specific answers to scientifically developed questions. In addition to Harris, Gallup, and Roper organizations, which are well known because of their longtime, extensive political polls, there are many other polling organizations, employing thousands of people for this work. A new research area involves message testing for public relations purposes. President Reagan's handlers first employed this technique to determine the highest audience approval. Now pioneers at this technique, Rowan & Biewitt, of Washington, D.C., test audience reaction to negative television coverage, among many other topics, to determine the best audience reaction to an issue and how to handle those responses appropriately.
Opinion surveys help public relations practitioners educate a wide segment of the American people about the benefits of any given product. Providing surveys to America's major corporations is a large part of the function of the nation's foremost public relations firms and their counterparts in corporate public relations departments.
Educating the public involves projecting a positive, wholesome image of the represented company to the different publics it is trying to reach. Public relations are image building: It is making sure that a company is seen in the best possible light by those who see its advertisements on television or read them in magazines and newspapers.
Now more than ever, people in all segments of the general public have a great deal of power—whether they are the PR practitioner or a consumer.
It is one thing to report generally the existence of "value conflicts" between businesses and other groups in our society. It is another to report that a company's stockholders are accusing it of economic sin or that its employees are at the point of staging anti-exploitation walkouts. It is even more difficult to report that consumers have filed petitions with several federal and state agencies, and that the general public erroneously believes that corporations are "ripping off' the consumer to the tune of 28 percent net profit each year. It takes a tough skin to insist that these problems also be added to management's worries.
Even the middle class is getting restless! And that means the bulk of all of us, America's primary consumers. For this reason, the public relations expert in the years to come will have to stay ahead of still rapidly changing business and societal conditions. Public relations will still have to react to difficult situations—nationally and internationally--but above all the public relations industry will depend on skilled practitioners who can also anticipate trends. The public relations professional must be able to teach the client to comprehend that the world is in a drastic state of change and to cope with those changes.
At times, the public relations person must exhibit the fervor of an evangelist when competing for a client's attention. But the well-grounded client will have respect for the professional in the field who continues to point out that many of the client's problems are related to public relations and that creative and successful techniques are needed to solve them.
Never forget that the hallmarks of the public relations craft are communications and persuasion. Specialists must hone their understanding of the forces that change public attitudes, that change a group of cooperative employees into a surly bunch, that change loyal customers into dissidents, and that change placid stockholders into irritated strangers.
See the following articles for more information:
- What a Public Relations Person Does Today
- Public Relations Serves Many Functions
- Defining Public Relations
- The Career of Public Relations
