Selecting an IMC Career: Influences, Choices and Destinations

Integrated marketing communication incorporates both customer and non-customer stakeholder groups. While the literature commonly refers to this distinction as marketing communication and corporate communication, respectively, and practitioners accept the need for these roles, this study aims to explore the student perspective. US-based research suggests that students are more interested in marketing communication activities such as promotion that target customer stakeholders, and less interested in corporate communication activities that target non-customer stakeholders including employees, investors, and government (Bowen, 2003). The findings of this study match its US counterpart, and present implications for both the education and practice of marketing communicatio

Building self-evaluation skills through criterion-referenced assessment in public relations

Although technical skills in public relations are essential to practice, skills in self-evaluation, critical thinking, and problem solving are required when new practitioners move to management roles (Van Leuven, 1999). Public relations courses integrate specialist subject knowledge with graduate skill sets and capabilities in non-technical areas (Butcher & Stefani, 1995). Given that autonomy in learning is a skill valued by employers (Clifford, 1999) and advocated by accrediting professional bodies (Anderson, 1999), this study explores how public relations students build skills in and perceive the practice of self-evaluation. Currently, the public relations education literature presents a limited treatment of self-evaluation. Therefore, this study is guided mostly by the education literature and uses criterion-referenced assessment to determine how more than 150 students understand assessment requirements, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and interpret the differences between their self and their tutor's judgement of performance. The results indicate strong support for student understanding of assessment requirements and self-evaluation techniques but lower than expected support for understanding the differences between their self and tutor judgements. These findings are significant to educators, practitioners and professional bodies as they have implications for lifelong learning for public relations professionals

Using evaluation techniques and performance claims to demonstrate public relations impact: An Australian perspective

Public relations professionals use many methods to demonstrate their contribution to organizational goals, yet it is unclear how their attitudes towards evaluation and the reporting of success matches real outcomes. Ten years after the International Public Relations Association produced an evaluation gold paper, this study combines research on Australian practitioners’ evaluation practices and attitudes, and data from industry awards to identify how practitioners demonstrate their accountability. Data suggest that despite the attention paid to evaluation by the academy and industry, practitioners still focus on measuring outputs, not outcomes to demonstrate performance and continue to rely heavily on media-based evaluation methods

Understanding Assessment: The Student Experience of Criterion-Referenced Assessment in a Public Relations Course

Criterion-referenced assessment (CRA) involves designing assessment tasks in line with subject goals, identifying skills to be demonstrated within an assessment task, assigning relative weights to, and describing each relative skill/criterion (Carlson, MacDonald, Gorely, Hanrahan, & Burgess-Limerick, 2000). In order to increase transparency and encourage assessment for learning, CRA was embedded within an undergraduate introductory public relations unit in 2004. In 2005, research was undertaken to explore the ongoing effectiveness of this assessment paradigm and to identify how more than 150 students used the CRA approach to enhance their learning. The findings of this study show continued strong use of and support for CRA, which has encouraged implementation of CRA across the public relations sequence

Operationalising Strategy: An Evaluation of Strategy in Public Relations Campaigns

In public relations planning, strategy plays a critical role in determining how organisations respond to and manage environmental relationships and demands. However, despite extensive international research into the planning elements of research, objective setting, and evaluation techniques, research into practitioner application of public relations strategy is limited. This exploratory study seeks to provide an empirical foundation for understanding practitioner use of public relations strategy by analysing 106 Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) Golden Target Award submissions from 1997 to 2001. The sample demonstrated attention to both communication and action components of strategy, however, there was little evidence for a preference between singular or multiple strategy approaches. No consensus appeared on the use or non use of message strategy, however, specific channels and combinations of channels were favoured, as was the specification of tactics within strategy statements. This study’s outcomes suggest that practitioners need a greater awareness of the key components of strategy in order to strengthen their strategy statements and differentiate their approaches, while demonstrating their effectiveness in achieving organisational outcomes. The findings are significant to marketing communication strategy development given the contribution of public relations to this area

Toward a Model of Organizational Legitimacy in Public Relations Theory and Practice

Despite the widespread acceptance of organizational legitimacy as a central concept in management theory, public relations researchers and practitioners have been slow to consider its importance in establishing and maintaining organization-public relationships. This paper outlines the critical position of organizational legitimacy in public relations by tracking its development in organizational studies and demonstrating its importance in building and maintaining the expectations of stakeholders. A model integrating organizational legitimacy and organizational adjustment and adaptation within open systems is proposed, emphasizing the importance of public relations practice in creating and managing the displays of organizational legitimacy. Further research in this area is also proposed to test the model’s propositions as well as to investigate the effects of other influences on the model, including organizational lifecycle, organizational monitoring resources, types of legitimacy, and communication channels

Examining Objectives and Evaluation: How Practitioners Measure their Success

Public relations professionals use many different methods to demonstrate their contribution to organizational goals, yet it is unclear how the reporting of public relations success measures up to real outcomes. Ten years after the International Public Relations Association produced a gold paper on public relations evaluation, this study uses data from industry campaign awards to identify how practitioners use evaluation to demonstrate their success. Results suggest that media evaluation methods continue to dominate evaluation techniques and practitioners often mismatch objective and evaluation types in their campaign reporting, and fail to demonstrate how specific objectives have been achieved

Changing roles for changing times? How listed companies interpret their role as communicator

In recent times, there has been a strong call for a greater focus on the ‘relationship management’ function of public relations. This exploratory study seeks to contribute to this movement within public relations scholars and professionals by exploring the relationship management aspects of financial public relations. Still a relatively new discipline, financial public relations faces many challenges in both the planning and implementation of communication programs for shareholders. The increasingly competitive nature of the world’s financial markets and the changing profile of the traditional shareholder are raising important issues for financial public relations professionals. This study explores the ways listed companies understand their relationships with their shareholders and the way such understanding influences the communicative practice of the listed companies. Data were collected from seven Australian publicly listed companies via interviews. A conceptualisation of four major roles played by a listed company in building and maintaining its relationship with its shareholders is provided. Two roles that the listed company believes the shareholder plays in maintaining the relationship are also identified. Challenges to the roles are identified, including the changing profile of the Australian shareholder, the influence of new technology, and growing shareholder activism

Accountability Through Objective Setting: An Evaluation of Program Objectives in Advertising and Marketing Communication

This study examines how advertising practitioners set campaign objectives. Four years of advertising and marketing communication campaign data were analysed from 59 award winning case studies. Difference emphases were found between advertising and marketing communication campaigns with informational and output objectives much more common in marketing communication campaigns, and attitudinal and output objectives being the least common in advertising campaigns. The majority of objectives, particularly in advertising campaigns, failed to meet the important tests of measurability and time specificity, and practitioners frequently included multiple outcomes within one objective, thereby complicating evaluation efforts