Public Relations Is What Public Relations Does: Conclusions from a Long-Term Project on Professional Public Relations Modeling and Evaluation

This chapter discusses selected data from the final report of a long-term project searching for scientific approaches and developments in public relations conceptualization, strategy, and evaluation. At the same time it clarifies the range of an approach that deals with public relations as applied media and communication science (see also Baerns, 1995b). The study in question reconstructed and re-evaluated 493 of a total of 530 German public relations campaigns submitted between 1970 and 2001 for the Goldene Brücke (“Golden Bridge”), a prize then awarded by the German Public Relations Association (Deutsche Public Relations-Gesellschaft e.V., DPRG, Berufsverband Öffentlichkeitsarbeit) for outstanding work in the field.1 For more than thirty years it traced the advances in public relations within the German Federal Republic. There are indications that in other countries similar developments are under way (see, e.g., Xavier, Patel, & Johnston, 2005).