Like businesses, governments have a reputation to maintain. This alone demonstrates why it is important to think about public affairs – the meeting point between Public and Government Relations, whose aim is to shape genuine, transparent relationships between major actors in the public and private spheres.
Transparency is the first basic reason why public relations professionals are so important to governments. The latter need to speak out and publicize what they do, as a means of being accountable to society. The chances of this message being misinterpreted are drastically reduced thanks to strategic communication, which also enables governments to target the specific audiences they wish to address.
But why does reputation play such a big role? First we need to distinguish between “reputation” and “image”. Image refers to any snapshot or time-sensitive initiative announced by a government and targeted at external groups, who form their respective opinions about it. Reputation is built over the long term, out of several images, and therefore carries more weight. Therefore, the more negative images a company or government projects to its key audiences, the more that organization’s reputation will suffer. As the pandemic scenario of the past year has made clear, a government’s attitudes and statements shape how it is perceived – and understanding how to publicize its initiatives in a targeted and assertive way is essential.
Just as one negative image will not destroy a wholly positive reputation which has been consolidated over time, a single positive image won’t transform a bad reputation either. In this context, it is essential to understand which audiences contribute to this perception. One major mistake which governments make is to only consider important groups which belong to governmental spheres. Public affairs strategies assume that there are other, highly significant stakeholders that can directly impact the construction – or consolidation – of a government’s reputation, such as local communities. These strategies ask “what should I say, and who should I say it to, to build a positive reputation?”.
In addition, Public Relations professionals can help to understand these audiences’ expectations, while building and reinforcing key messages in a way that makes sense to them, by creating a communication plan that takes a broader view into account.
Why is it so important to look at the big picture? As with businesses, a government doesn’t have the luxury of creating its own reputation, but it does have the power to manage it. The first step towards doing so is to understand that different audiences impact a government’s reputation, by issuing opinions and generating a widely accepted perception. So close attention must be paid to what messages are shared, what form they take, and through which channels they are issued. In an increasingly digitized world, these opinions grow ever more powerful, reaching more and more people in very little time.
