Letter to Cousin

Dear Tyson,
How are you doing? I am going to school up at Utah State majoring in public relations and really enjoying it. Public relations, in a way, is quite similar to marketing and advertising, however, the difference is that rather than pitching a product necessarily for sales often PR professionals promote understanding about a company to the public.
PT Barnum best described the difference with this quote, “If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations.”
Often a marketing or advertising professional will plan an event or promote a product; the public relations person’s responsibility is to generate positive news coverage about that event.
Public Relations professionals also work with situations such as crisis control or internal public relations, which is the process of promoting positive messages to employees within a company to encourage employee moral.
An example of crisis control would be, for example, when McDonalds received so much negative press from the documentary “Supersize Me” their PR person’s responsibility was to generate positive press which they did by putting healthier items on their menu.
I have heard it all summed up best by someone calling public relations “professional brown nosing.” I am not too far into the program yet but it seems to be a very exciting field. I hope all is well with you and hope to hear from you soon.
-Justin Badger