Corporate Public Relations
Corporate Public Relations, along with its basic function of conveying essential corporate information, can also be used to create brands that express to your stakeholders your company’s vision, values, and the virtues that make you who you are, thereby building a favorable reputation. Brands allow you to grow your customer base and to sell more of your products and services. Reputation improves your standing among your many stakeholders, by communicating your mission, your philosophy, your commitment to ethics and to the greater good as a responsible member of the many societies in which the corporation operates.
Stakeholders are many, and are not limited to society as a whole, or to just customers, but also includes, for example, the talented employees that you need to attract, retain, motivate and inspire for you to survive and to thrive in a highly competitive and global marketplace. And, Corporate Public Relations is how you let them know and appreciate both what you make and who you are.
We at Inoue Public Relations are able to help you improve your standing with all your stakeholders through our strategic approach to public relations, especially in the areas of Reputation Management, Brand Management, and Corporate Social Responsibility.
1. Reputation Management
The activities to build a favorable image among a company’s many stakeholders, which includes investors, suppliers, distributors, employees, customers, government, and local communities are collectively called Reputation Management. Top executives, such as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, play a key role in communicating the values, mission, and philosophy of the company through ongoing public relations activities, especially through our core competency of Media Relations.
But it is more than just projecting a favorable image. Your reputation and how you are perceived will also be created by such things as corporate earnings, dividends to shareholders, relationships, growth in market share, creating the next generation of products and services, and by the corporation’s demonstrated commitment to the community through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. It also requires communicating internally and externally your commitment to ethics.
2. Brand Management
There are a range of activities to manage the names and symbols that communicate the value proposition of your products and services, and positions them in the market. Brand management involves gathering and analyzing information from which a strategy is then formulated to build a brand that successfully resonates with customers, and favorably differentiates it from those of competitors.
Strategic public relations is used to establish brand identity in the market that projects an image of superiority. Understandably, there is a strong relationship between corporate brands and corporate reputation for which the power of public relations must be applied.
3. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Increasingly, your many stakeholders are looking for corporations to actively participate in building a better world. Corporate Social Responsibility is the recognition by stakeholders that corporations should do more than just sell goods and services, and should also use their resources to make improvements in the overall economy, society, the environment, and to contribute to sustainability.
A recent trend is to make CSR more effective for both society and corporations by what is called Creating Shared Value (CSV) by which business processes are focused in ways that both improve the world and also improve profitability. CSV is an effective approach and a core activity of strategic public relations.