Tonya Veasey

Public relations: everyone talks about PR – why it’s important, why you have to have it, why you have to be good at it. But why? Is PR just a box on a checklist that needs to be checked? Or is there a greater purpose?

OCG PR believes there is, or at least there should be, a greater purpose: ultimately, the goal of public relations is to create change. 

When you boil down public relations and its many iterations – advertising, marketing, digital, creative, and media relations, just to name a few – it’s basically about effective, integrated communications. What’s the best way to tell a story, express an idea, issue a call to action or draw a contrast? And when you’ve done those things, what do you want the end result to be? Most likely, you want to create change. Maybe it’s changing behavior. Or attitudes. Or thinking. Or a decision.

Think about it. Let’s say you’re a company that sells green widgets. The problem is, your potential customers are all in the habit of buying red widgets. You believe you offer a better value to the customer, but they’ve been buying red widgets for years. In order to succeed, you have to change the customer’s attitude and thinking so that they recognize the value green widgets offer. And ultimately, you have to change their behavior in order to get them to buy your product instead of the competitor’s.