A PR jargon guide

I have my first PR job interview coming up and I’m frightened the recruiter will use some jargon words I don’t understand and I’ll look like a fool. Any tips?

By Chris Cooke

PR people, like people in any industry, do use some jargon terms which will be less than familiar to people outside the industry. As a general rule, in a job interview it is better to admit you don’t know what something means than to pretend you do and get it embarassingly wrong. If it’s a junior role you’re going for, an enthusiasm to learn will normally come across better than a know-it-all who clearly doesn’t.

That said, there are some basic PR terms you should try and remember, if only to demonstrate you have a genuine interest in the industry. Here are twelve such terms to be getting on with.

1. Agency v Consultancy v In-house

Companies who specialise in PR and which are hired by a number of other companies to help them with their public relations are called PR agencies or consultancies. The PR departments in other companies – ie companies whose primary business is not PR, and who only work on PR activity for that company – are in-house PR teams. Agencies and consultancies are really the same thing, though those agencies who work primarily on communication strategy rather than implementing campaigns, and those agencies who specialise in areas of PR other than media relations, are more likely to call themselves consultancies.

2. B2B

Business to business, and in PR this refers to communication between one company and another company – normally from a company that primarily provides services used by other companies, eg accountancy, training, office supplies.

3. Corporate Communication v PR

So, what is corporate communiation and what is PR (or public relations)? To many people these two terms mean the same thing – and we tend to use them interchangably in esPResso. That said, some parts of the PR sector, mainly those involved in media relations and consumer facing campaigns, are more likely to say they work in PR, while other parts of the industry, such as those working in internal communications, public affairs and financial PR, are probably more likely to say they work in corporate communications.

4. CSR

Corporate social responsiblity. This is based on the idea that a company has a duty to behave responsibly in the society in which it operates (or, a cynic might say, to at least appear to behave responsibily). An increasing number of companies have people, often in the PR department, who consider how their organisation’s strategies and operations can be more socially responsible. A lot of CSR activity revolves around being more environmentally friendly, supporting charitable or community groups, and funding training and education programmes, either for your workforce or in your local community. Some cynics reckon the growth of CSR will be hindered by the recession – ie many big firms will be less concerned about behaving responsibly once money is in short supply.

5. Crisis management

Basically this is about having a plan in place that can be effectively actioned when an organisation is in ‘crisis’. The crisis can be anything really – a major financial problem, the departure of an influential senior executive, the involvement of the company in some kind of scandal etc. A lot of crisis management is about successfully communicating your way through and out of the crisis situation, hence why this is part of PR.

6. Financial PR v Investor Relations

The difference here is easier than it sounds. Financial PR tends to be about communicating a company’s position to the financial and business press (the media current and potential investors read) whereas Investor Relations is about communicating a company’s position directly to investors.

7. Internal Communications

Sometimes called employee communications – which is a bit more self-explanatory. This is when a company communicates to its employees (sometimes also including those who are technically speaking not employees, eg contractors). Traditionally this usually involves staff magazines, intranets and team meetings or employee conferences, though internal communications has come a long way in recent years and all sorts of new channels are now used to keep the internal audience up to speed.

8. Intranet

Yes, we used a bit of jargon ourselves there. The intranet is basically a company’s internal internet – ie web pages only accessible by employees. In many companies this is an important internal communication tool.

9. Lobbyists

This is a term normally used for those people who communicate a company’s position to government – local, national and international. The implication of the term ‘lobbying’ is that the PR person is trying to influence or persuade govenment officials to do something that is in the interest of the company (eg vote a certain way, amend government proposals, propose new laws). Lobbying is also often referred to as public affairs.

10. Press release

Probably self-explanatory, but a very important thing to know! This is a document issued by a company to journalists providing an official statement on a specific topic. These may be proactive press releases, announcing a product launch or promotion a company is staging, or summarising a financial report the company is about to publish, or reactive, providing a company’s official line on a news story, or a potential news story, that involves them.

11. Stakeholder

Anyone with an interest within the company. That can be any kind of interest – not just a financial interest. So this includes employees, the local community, interested journalists and politicians as well as shareholders.

12. Target audience

In order to effectively communicate a PR person needs to first consider who they are trying to communicate to. This is important because different people will read different kinds of media, and respond better to different kinds of language. The specific group of people the PR person is targeting is, unsurprisingly, their target audience.