Public relations is a part of marketing and communication strategies that craft an organisation's message, and communicates it to the public, including; Customers, investors, employees, suppliers, distributors, media/journalists, social media networks, the government and the public. These messages can now be communicated in various ways; One to one, one to many, or many to many. Across different forms of media; owned media, third party media and/or social media.Basically, Public relations is the managing of communication between organisations and its public. The objective of public relations is not only to change the perception of an event from poor to good, but to also change it from good to better.
Public relations can be used for a number of business activities:
- Customer retention - using PR activities such as; events, launches and media liaisons to support marketing to retain custom, grow sales, and increase market share.
- Investment - using PR activities such as corporate hospitality to encourage new customers and further investment via the development of investor relations.
- Bargaining status - using PR to build brands in order to achieve better relationships with suppliers and customers.
- Staff relations - using PR to portray a healthy organisation in order to attract and maintain a desired quality of staff
- Business development - initiating and building new business through PR activity such as events, corporate hospitality, and business to business communications in order to develop business from new or existing customers.
All these uses of PR work to improve the way an event is viewed by the public, other businesses.
Florence and the MachineThe Public relations of the Florence and the Machine tour, isn't just about promoting the tour or the album, its about promoting Florence as a person. There is information being released daily, about the Florence and the Machine tour through the Internet and through social media. However, Florence is going further than this by doing regular appearances on TV shows and articles in magazine to show her fan more about herself, rather than just about her music. Florence has made many recent television appearance such as; appearing on the culture show, and performing on the Brit awards which has gain her a lot of positive publicity and has made Florence a house hold name. Florence has also been on the radio recently, on Dermot O'Leary's Saturday session on BBC radio 2 and on BBC radio 1 discussing her performance and Brit award success with Fearne Cotton. However, this table (below) i found on mintel shows that there is a decline in the amount of people who are listening to the radio. Therefore, you have to think, is this the best and most effective way for Florence to publicise herself?
Florence has also recently launched her new facebook page and appeared in popular music magazine, Q magazine. Often public relations can be more effective than advertising as people feel that they are getting to know the person behind the music, rather than just going to a concert of an artist whose music they enjoy. Florence has done a lot of public relation related stuff lately and i believe this is because she has been wanting to promote herself, her tour and her album and this is the most effective way for her to do it. Here is a video of Florence's performance at the Brit awards 2012.
London Fashion Week
The London Fashion Week's public relations may be different to that of most other events, as most of the time, rather than the British Fashion Council (BFC) promoting the event as a whole, it is often that then event is showed through the designers. You can view some of the articles about the London Fashion Week if you go onto their website and click on the 'press' button. While the designers are using public relations to boost the knowledge of their brands before the Fashion Week, they are also boosting the knowledge of the London Fashion Week itself. Because the London Fashion Week is an event which would be difficult to promote alone, it is good that the event will be linked to the designers who's designs are showcased at the event. There has been many articles in the papers about the various designers who will be attending the London Fashion week. There has also be articles done about models being banned from using sunbeds, this article was released just before the London Fashion Week and was related to the event and the London Fashion Week was mentioned in the article.
Just before the Fashion week was to begin (February 15th 2012) there was an article in the London evening standard, which discussed actresses such as Scarlett Johansson are expected to see the first ever shows by Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and Moschino's cheap and chic line, this article also discussed the impact in which the London Fashion Week has on the economy.
During the London Fashion Week the British Council, and BFC has arranged for the launch of the international fashion showcase to take place. Over 80 emerging designers will be given the chance to to showcase their work. The public, together with international press and buyers will have the opportunity to explore the collections of some of the most innovative, emerging fashion designers from around the world.
Through the designers publicity the London Fashion Week is gaining awareness.
So all in all, the London Fashion Week uses launches and their designers as there public relations, i would imagine that this works for them as many fashion magazines will want to discuss the designers and because the event is a well known one. I think that Florence and the Machine have a better method of Public relations than the London Fashion Week. This is because Florence's public relations are more direct to her tour. Whereas, the London Fashion Week's public relations are more about the designers or the launch, even though the event would be discussed, it does not allow the reader to get to know about the event.
