ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out the true potential of public relations (PR) as a powerful management tool which can help to promote a good image of the company and so have a direct effect on the bottom line. It is ironic that the public relations industry, which focuses entirely on managing reputations, itself gets such a bad press. In the public mind, and the minds of many senior executives, PR means one thing - employing the services of so-called 'spin doctors', those twenty-first-century alchemists who can turn base stories into golden publicity opportunities. The chapter presents the whole truth about PR. It looks at it from the other side - the PR practitioner, the link between the company and the media. The industry's trade association, the Institute of Public Relations, offers this: Public relations is the application of a planned and sustained programme of communications between an organisation and those audiences essential to its success.
