Why a Political Campaign Can Never Succeed Without a Public Relations Arm

Why a Political Campaign Can Never Succeed Without a Public Relations Arm

As a person getting actively involved in a political campaign for the very first time, you may find yourself becoming outraged by the amounts of money spent on public relations.' This is especially likely to be the case if one of the things you are campaigning for is austerity where you may be finding it hard to reconcile the gist of your campaign's message with the huge sums of money spent on things like public relations. All this would be emerging from a background where you are of the personal opinion that such huge expenditures of money by a political campaign on public relations are unjustified (and that if you have good political messages, they should find their way out naturally,' without the need for expensive PR).

In order to demonstrate what often justifies such lavish expenditure of money on public relations by political campaigns, we have to start with an assertion that a political campaign can never succeed without a public relations arms. This is, naturally, likely to go against your previous view that good political messages should find their way out organically, without the need for such expenditure on PR. As an ordinary reader of the newspapers (or an ordinary TV news viewer), you may be misguided into believing that the reporters just go into the field, and cover whatever events are coverage-worthy, for presentation to the general public on TV, newspapers and so on. But the reality is quite different. A lot of behind the scenes' work goes into the preparation of news. It is on that basis that the members of the fourth estate make decisions on what to cover and what not to cover. It is still on that basis that the said members of the press corps make the decisions on what to give front-page coverage to, and what not to give front-page coverage to.

Sometimes, as you may have noticed, items that are definitely worth of front-page coverage end up being tucked in between the pages (or, even not being covered altogether). It is also at these times that you will notice some items that can't really be said to be front-page news nonetheless ending up at the front pages. So, how does all this come into being? Well, that is where public relations professionals come into the picture. Let us take an example where you are having an event. In readiness for the event, you commission truly good public relations professionals. Chances are that you are likely to end up in a situation where the PR professionals create so much buzz around the event, using their contacts in the media fraternity that the event however insignificant ends up being front-page news. This is likely to be happening at the expense of another possibly more significant event, whose organizers (believing that is very newsworthy)don't bother to involve PR professionals in it. That way, the press corps end up at the insignificant event to which they were invited, rather than the significant event to which they weren't invited!

We have to appreciate the fact that the success of a political campaign depends wholly on the masses buying into (at least part of) the message of the campaign. We also have to appreciate that the only way you can reach significant numbers of people is if you get favorable media coverage. And if the only way you can get favorable media coverage is through working with good PR professionals, then the inference would be that a political campaign can never quite succeed without a strong public relations arm.

It is the public relations arm's work that would ensure favorable coverage for the campaign, leading to the masses buying into the campaign's message.

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