subject: A Brief Understanding Of Public Relations [print this page] The term public relations (or PR as it is more commonly known today), is one that has at least been heard of by the majority of people. However, most have no idea where the term originated from and that it and all of the basic and general practices that are covered under the term actually are around one hundred years old.
The very first use of public relations is said to have been carried out by Edward Louis Bernays who, after graduating in 1912 from Cornell University and with the help of Ivy Lee, established the very first PR company in 1919 in New York City.
Over the coming four years, the company grew substantially and Bernays began to offer a Public Relations course for the first time in 1923, as well as publishing a range of different books, most notably his famed publication Crystallizing Public Opinion in the same year of his first PR course.
There is actually very little to say from here on, as history speaks for itself. PR grew considerably decade upon decade, up to the current day, where public relations is seen as being extremely popular and one of the most important factors that needs to be considered by a business of any size, whether a sole-trader or a multi-national corporation.
Divided up into a vast array of different specialist topics, the term PR company no longer refers to one company who implement a set of techniques as it did when it first began to be implemented almost one hundred years ago, but to a range of different businesses who can implement many different PR types, from retail public relations through to health and beauty PR.
The primary reason why there are so many different types of PR companies is due to the popularity of PR increasing and people needing more specialist services. For instance, whilst one hundred years ago implementing PR for one company did not require much change to implement it for another business, as time progressed, however and more different industries and sectors began to be setup or grow larger, particularly with invention of both the television and then later the internet, PR became something that needed to be tailored to a specific industry. Therefore, by hiring a company that offers a service dedicated to a certain industry or business type, you can guarantee that you will receive a more tailored service than a business who offers simply a generic PR service.
Without Edward Louis Bernays, who is cited as being the founding father of public relations, the PR industry (and many associated industries, such as advertising and promotion), would not exist or be as popular as they are today. As one of the most influential men of the last one hundred years, Bernays established a service that is used heavily today to ensure that companies prosper in their given sector, which in turn has a massive effect on the global economy, showing that public relations has a substantial effect on every company in the world today.
