Corporate Communication - Media Relations

The topic for today is media relations. The media today is dominant and plays a crucial role in molding the mindsets of the public.

Photo Credit: Google images

Media relations involve maintaining and managing communication with the media. This comprises of communicating with the journalist, all the writers, editors and producers who control what will appear in print, online and broadcast. Media relations deal with informing the media about the news, policies, missions, vision, aims, ventures etc. of the organization.  This way the information is given directly to those who produce and publish news. The main aim of maintaining media relation is to get positive coverage for the respective organization.

Let's not complicate this, basically media relations is nothing but maintaining healthy relations with the media so that they don’t write/broadcast anything that will bring negative thoughts about the organization in the minds of the audience. Lets understand this with a fun example.

Example:

Imagine a situation where, you and your family live in a building in which, about 50 other families reside. Now, one day the police come to your home and after about an hour they leave along with your father. Residents have seen this.

Imagine the kind of speculations that will happen. Everyone will have a different story to share. So many assumptions!!! People are bound to discuss and gossip about the incident and when they discuss it, everyone is going to have a theory of their own. Some might say he was arrested for drug abuse while some may say murder and what not. They may even come up with a back-story ‘they just renovated their house and bought a new car, where do you think they got the money from? … I always knew there was something fishy about them … they are smugglers! ’.  There will be so many theories about why the police was at your home. The chances are nobody will talk about it in front of you but will gossip as soon as you turn your back! They won’t try and find out what really happened, they usually just gossip, that’s easy, no?

While, what really happened was, your father’s childhood friend, now a cop, came to meet him and then they both decided to go out for lunch! -_-

So at this point there are so many theories and questions in the minds of the neighbour’s. How would you clear the misunderstanding? Simple! Every neighbourhood has these peculiar people who are informers, these are those, who find out thing about everyone living or dead! They spread the news of what they found. These are those very people who somehow are always aware of what’s happening and what’s not. They are curious and voluntary detectives of the society – yes! These are none other than uncles and aunties we turn to for information about absolutely anybody living in and around!

The easiest way to get the true story out would be to go to these voluntary detectives and tell them what really happened! How fast do you think the news will spread? It’s a curious neighbourhood after all! :P

Now from the Point of view of the organisation,

The Family = Organisation

The Neighbour’s = External audience

The Voluntary detectives = Media

Can you picture that? In this case there is something that happened in the organization and its external audience, who is not aware of the true story start assuming what might have happened? In order to clear doubts and to tell them the true story, the organization turns to the media and through press releases or conferences share their side of the story. By doing this, they help to notify the external audience about what happened and clear the rumours.

Photo Credit: Google images

Most organisations share their side of the story with the media before the media finds out about it themselves. The perks of doing this are that, the organization is being true and honest with the media as well as saving them their time and energy.  This also results in positive coverage for the organization. Apart from that, because the media and the organization work closely with each other they tend to develop friendship. This is what media relations are about, maintaining and managing communication with the organizations. 

For today, that’s all folk’s!! :)

“Being relevant to your customers only when you’re trying to sell something means choosing to be irrelevant to them for the rest of the time.”

― Stan Slap