Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the flow of information between an

organization and its publics. PR aims to gain an organization or individual positive

exposure to their key stakeholders. Common activities include speaking at conferences,
winning industry awards, working with the press and employee communications.
The Industry Today
The public relations industry is most prominently separated into two camps - in-house
and agency. As industry consolidation becomes more prevalent5 organizations are more
often faced with a choice between boutique firms or large global agencies. Smaller firms
typically specialize in only a couple topic areas so they have a greater understanding of
their client's business and stronger relationships with journalists in a specific market.
They are also often cheaper and grant more attention to smaller clients. . Larger firms
have access to more resources and experts in certain areas of public relations.
Almost any organization that has a stake in how it is portrayed in the public arena
employs some level of public relations. Most often one or more PR managers that work
for the company works with a team of agency employees that work on several different
accounts. Large organizations have larger dedicated teams for PR. .
Public relations is an important management function in any organization. An effective
public relations plan for an organization is developed to communicate a message that
coincides with organizational goals and seeks to benefit mutual interests whenever
possible.
A number of specialties exist within the field of private relations, such as Investor
Relations or Labor Relations.

What are the key elements to successfully integrate a public relations

strategy into an advertising campaign?
By Gabrielle DeTora
As seen in the

HealthLeaders Media publication Healthcare Marketing Advisor.

A strong communications plan integrates all healthcare touch points. A public

relations (PR) strategy and an advertising campaign represent two parts of a
much larger pie. An advertising campaign message is an expression of the
overall hospital brand. Its message must be consistently driven across multiple
channels that range from PR to advertising to internal communications. The
advertising campaigns theme, content, style and image are all used in the
delivery of this message through these channels. However, to reach all of your
hospitals touch points, PR must have relationships with volunteers, transport,
food services and more, to genuinely integrate the message through their words

and actions. This brings a brand message to life through the experience your
stakeholders share.
PR should go beyond press in its strategy, creating brand ambassadors in all its
stakeholders including employees, board members, patients, volunteers,
physicians and nurses. Key elements to building word-of-mouth through these
audiences include corporate communications with large companies in the region,
as well as hospital internal communications tools such as training programs,
employee newsletters, displays around the facilities, the Intranet, manager
meetings, promotional items, cafeteria table tents, payroll stuffers, and more. PR
can use hospital and affiliate hospital board communications materials and board
meeting agendas to deliver the advertising campaign message and build opinion
leadership.
And of course, the advertising campaign should be communicated through proactive and reactive press relations. Every media opportunity is a chance to
deliver the defined message.
Pitching stories that embody the campaign message, finding/creating themed
sponsorship opportunities, and writing themed hospital publication editorials and
online content through digital channels are all key elements to delivering the
advertising campaign messaging through PR.
To successfully integrate a PR strategy into an advertising campaign, marketing
and PR strategist must start by fully understand the business goals. They need to
know exactly how target audience(s) will hear about, purchase, pay for, and talk
to others about the services defined in the business goals. Strategists should
conduct a gap analysis to understand the benchmarks to compare their effect
against that of your competition and how they will incorporate the ROI tracking
metrics into their communications plan up front before stetting the strategy (see
my article Connect Branding to the Bottom Line published online in
HealthLeadersFinance.) Only then can strategists create an integrated
communications plan to move the show.