Writing for Public Relations Company
Based on your own interests (for example in terms of career progression or research interests), you are asked to choose a company/organisation, brand/product/service, or event/person: This should be different than the one for Coursework 1. During a six weeks period from Monday 11th May 2020 (week 3) to Friday 19th June 2019 (week 8), you should follow the PR activities of your chosen company/organisation, brand/product/service, or event/person, collecting any information available to you. Examples include press activities, press releases, media mentions/appearances, media statements, websites, blogs/wikis/tweets and messages on other social media, presentations, events, sponsorships, corporate image management, financial relations, internal or other general stakeholder communications.
Based on the information collected during this time, you should analyse PR activities of your company/organisation, brand/product/service, or event/person, and, drawing on relevant literature and theory, critically evaluate and assess the PR material you collated during this time. Of course, previous activities, particularly crises or PR challenges, may matter and can be used to contextualise your project, but your analysis should put emphasis on the data collection period, i.e. what happened before and during it.
You should relate to the corporate image(s) that is/are being presented. The projects should incorporate some (practical, strategic, theoretical, critical) reflections regarding the future PR activities of your company/organisation, brand/product/service, or event/person.
The sections that should be considered are therefore:
- Presentation of chosen company/organisation, brand/product/service, or event/person (this part is to focus on recent history, while identifying critical elements especially those pertaining strategy and communication as well as ethics and stakeholders)
- Analysis of the diverse range of PR activities such as audiences, channels, messages, reputation, ongoing issues/crises, etc. (this observation needs to be structured around specific critical components as identified by each student; there also needs a clear understanding of motives’ and objectives, their moral justification, or otherwise, and possible reactions/responses)
- Critical assessment and evaluation of observed activities (it is advisable to consider this not as a separate part to be located at the end of the project, but as an ongoing process aiming at providing practical, strategic, theoretical and critical reflections as the basis of the overall assessment and evaluation of the chosen company/organisation, brand/product/service, or event/person PR activities)
